See Me, Hear Me, Know Me

Table of Contents

• Back in Style
• Together Again
• Bringing My Shine
• We Walk Together
• A Powerful Thing
• When Right Goes Wrong
• Words Hurt
• Fashion Speaks
• One Cold Day
• See Me, Hear Me, Know Me
• A Gift Worth Celebrating
• Standing Up to Racism

Back in Style

Makena races into Cherry Blossoms, her favorite clothing store, unable to wait a second longer after nearly a year of pandemic closures that kept school, work, and shopping stuck online. Amari, Makena’s younger sister, finally catches up, and Makena teases that she can’t slow down! This is the first time she gets to pick out new clothes for school. In grade school, Makena needed to wear a uniform. Last year, school was remote. So today is a day for fashion, and Makena can’t wait to see what she finds.

Makena calls over her Aunt Belinda, whom she calls Auntie Bling, while Amari and Mom go in another direction. Auntie Bling is a stylist based in Los Angeles. When Makena pairs a cherry red sweater with a bold orange plaid skirt and Auntie Bling says she loves it, that means a lot to Makena. Makena says the colors remind her of a kente cloth dress Auntie Bling brought back from Ghana nine years ago. Makena remembers loving that dress so much she wore it to preschool constantly and slept in it, dreaming of visiting Ghana herself someday. It made her feel one of a kind.

Auntie Bling reminds Makena that she still has that same shine now, especially through the outfits she has been photographing and posting online every day since school went virtual. She calls it her OOTD, or “outfit of the day.” Makena picks out an outfit every night, and each morning styles it based on how she’s feeling. She plans to keep posting her OOTDs even when she goes back to in-person school.

Nearby, Makena photographs a stitched top on a mannequin, and Auntie Bling recognizes the style as a dashiki. Mom explains that Black men and women wore dashikis throughout the 1960s and 1970s to show pride in their African heritage. Mom is talking in her librarian voice, but her face has that back-in-the-day look that she gets when she talks about something from growing up. To everyone’s surprise, Auntie Bling reveals Mom once sewed her own dashiki for a seventh-grade talent show where she recited a poem by Nikki Giovanni. She admits both the sewing and performing onstage terrified her, but she felt proud representing a young Black woman finding her courage.

Later, while Amari and Makena wait in the checkout line, two White girls try to cut in front of them, pretending not to notice a line exists at all. Makena speaks up, and the girls raise their voices, trying to say they were there first, until another shopper behind Makena backs her up. Embarrassed, the girls retreat to the end of the line. Makena tells Amari the girls simply saw what they wanted to see, then pulls her sister forward as the line finally moves.