The cows make her shriek, the way that city rats might alarm a country child.ĭasani’s roots in Fort Greene reached back four generations, to her great-grandfather Wesley Sykes, who left North Carolina to fight in Italy with the Army’s segregated all-Black regiment, the Buffalo Soldiers. Dasani squints at the horizon, finding nothing but hills. They look out the car window, seeing farmhouses and silos pointing to the sky. Dasani’s two oldest sisters, Avianna and Nana, have come along for the ride. I am at the wheel, next to Chanel, who would soon turn 37. On the drive to Hershey, Dasani watches as Route 78 gives way to a country road, cutting through vast fields of corn. I’d be so happy - I’d be so happy to go to school. Then he watched her step away, his eyes wet. He hugged Dasani hard, saying, “I love you,” which he never said. Out on the stoop, standing in the snow, was Dasani’s stepfather, Supreme, a 37-year-old barber. She carried no suitcase, only a stack of family photographs, a bottle of perfume and a small black purse filled with dozens of coins. To avoid saying goodbye, she distracted Lee-Lee with the cartoon show “Peg + Cat,” slipping away before the toddler noticed.
She was her mother’s firstborn but acted more like a parent with her tight-knit flock of siblings, who spanned the ages of 2 to 12 - her “full blood” sister, Avianna, their four half siblings, Maya, Hada, Papa and Lee-Lee, and two stepsiblings, Khaliq and Nana. She had spent her rocky childhood guarding the survival of her siblings, learning to change diapers before she was in kindergarten. “Yet.”Įven Dasani had yet to grasp what her departure would mean. “She don’t understand,” Dasani whispered. The toddler pushed her tiny nose into Dasani’s face, mumbling “No, no, no, no.” Then she poked Dasani in the eye with a piece of Bazooka bubble gum. “You know Sani leaving, right?” her mother told Baby Lee-Lee that morning.
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