Aurora Magazine 2018

There’s No Place

B R Y ’ C H E L L J O H N S O N

As I made my daily commute into West Terre Haute on my way to Saint Mary’s, I glanced up at the trees wondering if I’d see a black body dangling from one. I raised my eyebrows surprised at the thought. I had been going through here for years and years and never once had I had this thought. But these are the times. Places like West T probably have all the space and time in the world to do something like hang a body from a tree, and no one would be the wiser…I shook my head loose from the dark, morning thought and kept driving, my eyes, every so often, sweeping the thickest branches above... A year before, when Black Lives Matter was too loud for this campus, there was a Facebook post I recall reading about a girl who went to Indiana State University. She was black. She walked down the dorm hall to her room after a full day of nonsense, and found on her door, a noose in the form of a note written by fellow dormmates: “Go back to Africa you messy nigger.” They were white if you hadn’t guessed. Her room had been meddled with as well. She remained poised but was clearly distraught in her post. She wanted her loud pain to be seen and heard. People shared it out of surprise, some thought it was funny, but to the black students on this campus, we knew that this was the low rumbling of the begin- ning of an earthquake. Only our world would feel it. Only our

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