Moving

"I'm looking to move," I told my assistant today. "Do you know of any places? Maybe in Shelby or Alligator?" She thought a moment and then popped next door to ask Mrs. A--, a teacher who lives down the street from me in Clarksdale.

"Mrs. A-- says there might be a place near her," she told me. "Smaller than your house, down on her end of the street." Later in the day I posed the same question to another first grade teacher who is a Duncan local. "You seen the Country Club apartments?" she asked me. "They up in Clarksdale."

I work with these women daily, and I realized that that's really all they know of me, outside of that I am temporary, from elsewhere, and white. They don't see me as a part of their community. Perhaps I'm being too sensitive and really it's just that they thought I would be happier living somewhere close to where I already am. Hopefully I will find a place in Shelby, though, and I can be more than a fleeting white face.