Lies Left Unsaid

Caitlyn

The fact that I was murdered didn't come as a surprise; it was the fact that it hadn't happened sooner which shocked me. It was my parents' fault, which I know sounds like a typical teenager thing to say, but in this case, it's correct in more ways than one. They branded me from the start. With a name like Caitlyn Coates I was destined to become the prom queen, an actress, or the center of a sensationalized murder mystery. The last was to become my destiny in the spring of 2018, although just three years earlier I almost met a similar grimly demise. 

I had just completed my freshman year of high school and had applied for a summer internship at a school on the west side of Chicago. My mother suggested it as a resume builder for my college applications. I believe her exact words were, "nothing looks better than a pretty young white girl trying to help out children in a poor black community." I winced when the words came out of her mouth. "Mom! You can't say things like that!" I yelled at her, but she didn't seem to notice. She was already two martinis deep. I wouldn't necessarily say she was racist, at least not outright or in front of others, but there was no denying she felt somewhat superior in the way that growing up in a nearly all white suburb will do to you. There was so much about Chicago that she just didn't seem to comprehend, like the fact that there are areas that you just shouldn't go, unless you're asking for trouble. But it was hard to blame her for her ignorance about the big city that lay less than an hour south from my childhood home. She was a product of her environment. She lived in her little bubble, immune to the atrocities of the city. Every morning she would leave her comfortable 5,000 square foot colonial style home and take the train to her job downtown. Not the 'L' of course. She wouldn't be caught dead on that "dirty box car" as she referred to it. She took the more upscale Metra, where she didn't have to deal with homeless people or beggars; a place where she could be left alone to read her newspaper in peace. She rode the same line everyday and walked the same route for sixteen years, never stepping foot off the beaten path, yet she behaved as if she knew Chicago inside and out. It was her irrational confidence about the city, which gave me mine. At 15, I was naive enough to think I knew how to maneuver around the city on my own and my mother did little to stop me, handing me the money I needed for the bus ride to my internship interview. The train would only take me so far. Two bus connections were needed for me to reach my final destination. A bus is another thing my mother would never step foot on, but apparently her daughter wasn't too good for what she considered "public transportation for the common folk." 

My intelligence had opened plenty of doors for me in my young life, but it also enabled me to make some pretty stupid decisions, like thinking I knew what I was doing when I boarded the bus that day headed for a neighborhood of Chicago, called Austin. It was obvious from the moment I walked up the steps of the bus that I didn't belong. The people stared back at me as if I were an alien. One woman seemed to say with her eyes, "get off now if you know what's good for you." But I had my cell phone with the directions to my destination and like I said, my unfaltering faith in my ability to handle any type of tough situation. I got this, I thought to myself as I clung to my purse and the black folder which contained my resume and lists of accomplishments, of which I had already achieved many in just one short year of high school. I'd always been an overachiever. I think it drove my mother crazy when I was a child. I knew more than her by the time I entered middle school and she knew it. She herself, never graduated from high school, a fact she never let me forget. Raising a baby was her education. She always said she never knew how she wound up with a child as wise as me. "It must be from your father," she would say. By my freshman year, she finally gave up trying to prove me wrong, which probably wasn't an easy thing to do since I felt the need to challenge her on everything she said. About the only wisdom she did impart on me was to always listen to my gut, which may be what actually saved me that day.

I took a seat by the window, trying not to make eye contact with the others on the bus. Across from me sat a young mother rocking her baby in her arms. She didn't look much older than I was, yet we couldn't have been more different. She wore a short yellow shirt that exposed her midriff. Her stomach oozed out over the sides of her jeans and she stared at me with a hatred that I could only assume stemmed from jealousy. I was the classic rich girl from the burbs, who had been handed everything: money, brains, good looks, entitlement. I was the girl who thought she had the right to go wherever she chose and do whatever she wanted.