Last year when Mrs. Sheen told us about the trip to the Walter Francis White National Civil Rights Museum, I knew what was coming. The rope in the box. The seventh graders were talking about it. But Auntie Toya’s hushed whisper was already loud and clear in my mind, “They put one of those hanging ropes in your daddy’s locker at the site.” My stomach turned.
Mrs. Sheen said there was a time in this country when people weren’t treated equally, like they are now. On the projector there was a clipping from a newspaper about James Powell’s murder in 1964. I couldn’t tell the difference between what happened to James Powell in 1964 and Philando Castile a few weeks before. When I asked Mrs. Sheen about it, she said that Philando’s murder was a tragedy, but she was talking about a different time. I crossed my arms and sunk further into my chair as she went on and on about how things used to be.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she said that to you too.
When we walked in the next day, she had these red and blue popsicle sticks in her hands. Half of us got red, the other blue. The blue sticks got to have a piece of candy and were promised a homework pass for any assignment, the red got nothing and had to write a one-page paper on a civil rights activist of their choice. Alex was off to the side of the room. “The oreos should’ve got red,” he said as he nudged one of his friends. Those who were near him looked at me, Marla and Angela. Angela hid her stick under her desk, twisting it between her fingers. Marla simply stated the obvious that we didn’t, so deal with it. Me, I popped the stick in my mouth, flipping it with my teeth like a stalk of wheat. Stagecoach Mary was on my mind since we just learned about her and the wild west. I pictured her with her gun at her hip, head up, nodding in approval. Alex got so mad, he slapped a chocolate bar out of his best friend Rick’s hand when he laughed. He got detention for a week, which ended his tantrum and Mrs. Sheen’s experiment.
We talked about how we felt afterwards. The red sticks were all over the place, calling Mrs. Sheen cruel. Others caught on to the game and sat in silence. A few of the blue sticks got it too, staring at the piece of candy they weren’t sure they should touch. One or two taunted their friends who didn’t have any. They dangled wrappers in their faces and opened their mouths wide, so we could all see the chewed-up bits. After hearing big mouth Alex complain about how he should’ve had a blue stick since his friends had one, Mrs. Sheen crossed the room and leaned against the edge of her desk. “Times aren’t like this anymore,” she said. “Think about Brown vs. Board of Education.”
Blah blah blah. I rolled my eyes at them and sighed, prompting Rick to kick the back of my chair. “Shut up double stuffed,” he said.
Now I had filled out my bra more than my friends, gaining me the nickname. I hunched over trying to casually gather the material of my shirt in the front. Mrs. Sheen was preoccupied with Alex, so I whispered, “tell that to your mom.” That shut him up. Marla turned in her chair to face me and I could see out the side of my eye that Angela, was staring too. We all knew his mom left when he was a kid, but that’s why he shouldn’t be an ass. I looked down at my notes as if I didn’t see them, and soon, they focused on Mrs. Sheen again. She went on about us being able to learn together and how she would have never met her best friend, Rochelle, had schools not desegregated in Georgia. She continued on about how her life was enriched by the black people who entered it. I looked to Marla who nodded slowly like she was trying to soak in what Mrs. Sheen was saying, or maybe even agreeing with it. That’s when I drifted off. I thought about how I entered the new grocery store on Williams Street with my parents and how we were followed around by the sales associate. The owners were from the nice part of town. My parents said they are enriched by our purchases, but they don’t see us.
My friends see me, though. I was glad we would be going to Walter White together. I was friends with Marla first. We were the only black people in our class at Joseph E. Brown Middle and lived close, so we gravitated to each other instantly. Our parents got along well enough. Marla’s parents believed that things would always work out whether that be their stack of unpaid bills, her dad’s next job, or Marla’s grades. They were always willing to trust the process in a way mine never did. Angela transferred in. We thought the new kid with all that wild red hair would sit with the other white girls, but Angela sat next to us, to everyone’s surprise. She seemed weird at first since she never spoke to anyone, but when Marla cracked a joke about another kid’s breath smelling like a dog’s ass, Angela giggled and said he looked like one too. Marla cackled and started slapping her knee. When Angela pushed back in her chair from laughing, I noticed a Coldplay sticker on her pencil case, my favorite band. From then on, she was cool by us.
“Man, wish we were missing math on this museum trip,” Marla said. Her chair was resting on its hind legs, placing all of her weight against my desk.
Unless the field trip was for the full day, we never missed math. Marla knew that. Math was our lunch period, so half day trips like this were always before or after. In this case, the trip was after. When I didn’t respond, Marla tilted her head back and said, “Lisa, you wanna go to math or what?” Angela was sitting to my right, watching us. She usually would have made a joke about how Marla was failing math and needed to go, but this time, nothing.
“Nah,” I finally said. I liked math, and Mr. Hendricks was a cool teacher. But any kid who chose school over a day out was annoying. “I just don’t want to see that rope in the box.”
The museum was supposed to be the last part our black history unit. A couple seventh graders heard us talking about it in the hall one day and said that when they went the year prior, one girl got so scared after seeing the rope in the box, she had to sit on the bus with a chaperone. They said you could still see blood on the rope fibers from where it had cut into flesh. I ran back to class before they could say more. I got rope burn from tug-o-war once, I sat for hours after, tapping on the red skin to see if it still burned to the touch. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be cut by rope. I hated that game and I hated the idea of going to Walter White even more. I told my parents what the seventh graders said as I slowly slid my permission slip over to them at the dinner table. It didn’t scare them, though. My dad said that it was a lynching rope. My coworker found one in his locker one day. And that was that. He signed the slip and went back to his meal as if he never said a word. I waited for him to tell me the truth, for him to wonder if I might have already known. I watched for my mother to give him a sideways glance saying that he might as well let me have it, but instead, she nodded while answering a message on her phone. Maybe that’s what happens when you get old, you don’t think the whole story matters anymore. But Philando Castile and my dad were only two years apart. For all I knew, it could’ve been him in a white box six feet under instead of Philando. I spent the next month, hands wrapped around the rosary I got at Sunday school, praying every time he put on his hard hat to leave the house.
Angela’s finger twirled a lock of auburn hair while her eyes darted between us. She watched our lips to make sure she didn’t miss a word. When her eyes finally met mine, she looked away and started flipping through the pages of her notebook.
Marla sat up and turned in her chair. “Yeah, I feel you. Lucky for us, things ain’t like that no more.”
“My parents wouldn’t say so,” I said.
“Neither would mine. But Mrs. Sheen our teacher, so she gotta be right.”
Marla shrugged and then got up to go to the bathroom. I wanted to believe that as much as she did, but I couldn’t see how. I straightened pencils on my desk as I looked out to the rest of the class. They seemed largely unaffected by what was coming even though I saw the same seventh graders talking to them about the rope. There were some girls in the front playing with each other’s hair, braiding and unbraiding it. Others seemed to shuffle items on their desk like me. There was a group huddled across from us, trying to see whose skin turned the reddest when slapped. One boy was doing math homework due in a few periods. His friends tried to get him to join their slapping game, but he shoved them off without words. He was the only one who showed the panic I was feeling.
Angela scooted her chair closer to me, screeching the chair across the floor. She leaned in and placed her hand on mine. “Are you scared? It’s okay if you are.” She gave me a smile that was reassuring. I told her that I wasn’t and her smile disappeared a bit. Part of me thought that maybe she wanted me to be scared so she could say she was too. Her parents were nice and told her that she didn’t have to go, but she wanted to since Marla and I were. They always seemed to be fine with her doing what she wanted. They even let her get out of running a mile in gym because she ate too big of a lunch and might get sick. Before I could say anything else, Marla swooped in and stepped between us.
“What y’all talking about?”
“Nothing, but can you move your big head please.” I placed my hands on either side of my head and outstretched them to show her the difference. She pretended to land a punch in the middle of my eyes before sitting down. We all giggled before being silenced by the bell.
On the day of the field trip, Mrs. Sheen was standing at the bus entrance with her clipboard. She used it to shade herself as she ushered us into the hot bus one by one. The white of her skin faded into this hot pink that looked like it would be sore to the touch. As we waited to get in, I rubbed my stomach to settle it a bit from a lunch of wilted lettuce. They served fish sticks too—which were the worst according to Marla, and something Philando Castile would have never served the kids in his cafeteria who had a fish allergy like me. During that crappy lunch all we talked about was the math quiz Mr. Hendricks decided to spring on us the next day. He smiled real wide, showing all of his teeth. That’s how I knew something was up before he even spoke. He usually hid his smile—he’s missing some teeth in the back.
The three of us squeezed into one seat since the bus was way too small for two classes. I was on the inside with one leg resting against hot metal and the other against Angela’s clammy thigh.
Rick was kneeling backwards in the seat in front of us, looking down. “Did you know you guys look like an Oreo?”
“Original,” I said. That was probably the second time we heard someone say it that day.
Angela rolled her eyes and briefly looked to the front of the bus where Mrs. Sheen and the chaperones were before flicking him off. Marla kicked the back of the seat where she figured his balls were. The close call was enough to get him to leave us alone.
“I told y’all not to have Angela in the middle,” said Marla before crossing her arms.
“You didn’t say shit,” said Angela, elbowing Marla in her side. Marla slumped to the side and scrunched her face like it was more painful than it was before straightening up and slapping Angela on the arm.
“Scoot in. You’re so wide.” Marla was shimmying into us, taking up more space than she needed. More of me was pressed against the siding where the screws started to dig in my exposed flesh.
“It’s not me,” Angela said while trying to use her hips to shove Marla back. She had a small smile on her face as Marla got madder by the minute.
I tried to make myself smaller. My pants fit differently than they did a year before. Everything was more filled out. I was waiting for one of them to call me out like Marla did when she told me I needed a bra. Luckily, they were both too preoccupied with each other to be bothered with me taking up space.
The museum was a plain building, made of smooth tan stone. If you were driving by, you probably wouldn’t even notice it. The glass door was the only window and it was almost completely blacked out. Unlike most places, Walter White seemed to be the only one that didn’t want to advertise what was inside. I guess they knew people wouldn’t just stop in if wasn’t part of the plan.
As Mrs. Sheen lined us up outside the entrance, I watched Rick and his friends acting a fool. They were shoving each other out of line, hoping Mrs. Sheen would catch the one who was pushed. I envied them all for being able to ignore what was right in front of them.
Marla nudged me forward. A gust of air conditioning hit me as I walked in, it was enough to almost make me feel cold. The walls and floor were dark, but spotlights from the ceiling made everything bright.
Mrs. Sheen told us to keep in groups, touch nothing, and meet her at the end for head count. Other chaperones dispersed throughout the exhibit in case we forgot, or more likely, in case we went rogue.
The first thing we saw when we walked in was a portrait of Walter White. He was the whitest black man I had ever seen: blonde hair, blue eyes. A prominent civil rights leader and the great-grandson of an enslaved woman named Dilsia and President Harrison. When we went over presidents, Mrs. Sheen only noted how President Harrison had the shortest term, nothing else. This clean version will be given to you too, if it hasn’t already.
By the portrait, mannequins made of knitted white cloth, stood in the corner of the first room. One wore slave clothes, a cream shirt with brown pants. The stitch lines were so straight for them being done by hand. Nana tried to teach me once, but even with her help, the stitches looked like small waves. The material was thin, and just looking at it, you could tell it wouldn’t be comfortable. They looked like they were made from the same cheap and rough material as my old doll’s clothes. I had no idea how enslaved people survived through winter or even summer, how they survived at all. There was a small black and white photo propped up next to the mannequin. It was of a slave wearing similar clothes except his pants were worn at the knees. His shirt hung off his body, exposing a pronounced rib cage underneath. The clothes were clearly too big, but I wasn’t sure if he could have ever fit them. It almost looked like they had belonged to someone else.
Near the clothes, lay a replica of a cotton gin. The picture behind the replica showed slaves hunched over in a massive field. One woman had a basket strapped to her back that was full and she stood tall amongst the others. There was a white man on a horse, shielding himself from the Sun. Mrs. Sheen once said that before peaches, Georgia was known for cotton. That picture seemed a long way from the vibrant peach fields being advertised at the airport.
“Hey,” Marla said while pointing back to the picture of the man wearing the worn slave clothes. “This guy kinda looks like Mr. Hendricks.”
When I walked back, Angela and I both leaned into the picture.
“He kinda does,” Angela said. “But Mr. Hendricks’ is um, uh . . . ”
She looked to me, before Marla added, “Light-skinned.”
Angela slightly nodded, looking cautiously between us both.
“They look similar though,” I chimed in.
Maybe they really could have been related. I remember when I had to make a family tree one year, I came home telling my parents about how some in my class could trace their families back to Europe when the first Queen Elizabeth ruled. I struggled tracking down my own. There weren’t many records, and the ones I could find, said little. One of my ancestors, Sally, had ten children who were all sold to different people. Looking at the man some more, I realized I could have been staring down my family’s past and not even know it.
Further in, we came across a drawing of a slave ship. It was enlarged so it took up most of the wall. Little black lines that represented bodies of slaves covered the bottom of the ship. They looked like neat sticks, crammed into any spot space would allow. On the bus, I had shifted constantly. I had tried to shield my thighs from the sun when they were exposed too long and I scooted closer to the metal siding so that air could reach the leg pressed to Angela’s, but after looking at that picture, I didn’t feel like I had a right to say I was uncomfortable ever again.
While the plaque explained how they were crammed and placed on top of one another, the picture did nothing to show that. It stuck out that the largest image in the room was the one that had the most truth missing from it. The one that showed sticks where people had been.
Close by, there was a black and white drawing of a home on fire, the year 1526 was written in the bottom right corner. The museum label said that the first recorded slaves brought to North America revolted, burned down the house and fled, never to be seen again. It felt good to know they escaped, that from the beginning, freedom was the only option.
“Wow, guys look at this.” Marla was already walking away. Angela grabbed my hand, yanking me away from the drawing.
She led us into a room full of pictures, some with replicas next to them. Marla stopped in front of one with a hanging man. Below it was the glass box of rope. I didn’t need to get close to know what the connection was. I kept trying to step forward to get a better look. It wasn’t until my third attempt, that I realized Angela was holding me back. I yanked her, and she let me guide her, slowly at first.
Three white men with their backs to the camera, hands on hips and heads tilted back, stood in the forefront. It looked like they were marveling at their work. The plaque said that the man was accused of stealing his master’s watch.
“They never found it in his possession, though,” I said to Angela.
“I see why we had to get signed permission slips now,” she said.
Marla shook her head. “How could they just do people like that? Like, why?”
I looked behind the men and the slave and saw other slaves working the field in the background. That had to be a question on their minds too. Why them? Why this way? I hated that. I hate that any of us feel the need to ask those questions, like there will ever be a good enough reason.
The rope wasn’t covered in blood like they said and it wasn’t the only thing in the room dedicated to hangings. There was wood from a lynching tree, and an excerpt from a newspaper writing about one of the hangings. For the first time since I walked in, I asked myself who was worse. Was it the person who saved this stuff for years, the one who decided to place it on display, or was it us who paid to see it? Here we were, looking at someone else’s pain. Hundreds of years later, we’re still staring at the hanging man.
My stomach twisted as I realized this wasn’t the last of it. Your stomach might turn too.
Mrs. Sheen showed us a video of two black men and a Jewish guy being hung in the fifties. I took a moment to survey where we were. I could still see part of the entrance and looking the other way, I saw how much further there was to go. I took a deep breath and moved toward a room that was full of bright colors.
There was a section of beautiful handmade dolls. Their skin, rich like chocolate milk when you add double the amount of chocolate they say you should, and their clothes looked like the ones slaves wore, but the bonnets and dresses were made with vibrant colors. I wished I had one. The dolls I used to play with when I was in preschool were all white. We would play house with the dolls. All the girls would pick ones that looked like them, leaving only the boy ones. I tried once to grab one with long curly hair that looked the closest to mine, but the girl who usually played with her, started crying. Everyone got upset with me for trying to change the dolls since we’d been playing that way for so long.
In the same room, there was this massive painting of slaves in front of their quarters. They were dancing, singing, enjoying food, and playing music. The sun was shining, and all their clothes were as colorful as the dolls. It looked like how any proper cookout should be, people coming together to celebrate each other. Mom told me this was how they kept their culture, their ways alive. “Why do you think we know those church songs, how to keep our hair, how to season our food?”
There were instruments that were replicated for us to use. The three of us tried to make our own music to accompany Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Marla and I closed our eyes while we sang to our beat and Angela kept up with us just fine, though she wasn’t familiar with the spiritual.
An emancipated slave had written a cookbook that was open to recipes for collard greens, cornbread, and chitlins. “My mama would say she put her foot in these.” Marla was dragging her finger over the glass covering to keep her place in the book.
“I should tell my mom about this greens recipe. She could use the help.” I began to laugh. Mom promised all her siblings that she wouldn’t attempt to make them again once Uncle Ron said they tasted like they came straight from the ground and were tough as hell.
“I want to try them,” Angela chimed in.
Marla patted her on the head like she was a child. “One day, but I’ve seen you throw down bologna sandwiches like they were the best thing on this planet, greens might have a little too much flavor for you.”
Angela began to poke at Marla and we all laughed until one of the chaperones came up to us and shook her head. We straightened up quickly and moved away from the adults.
I didn’t want to leave the space we were in. I could tell they didn’t either. We lingered around the doorway, faking interest in things we had already seen, until I spotted white knitted mannequin heads with head wraps on them. All of them were made with different colors and styles. Some of the knots used looked complicated. One was tied in a way to make the corners look like flower petals. Others just seemed efficient. The women in the pictures looked familiar. I could picture them picking out a scarf they thought complimented them and tying it up to show off their skills. It was nice to think of them carving out a part of their day for it. Aunt Denise always said that doing her hair and makeup was the best part of her day.
“Mama ties hers like this one.” Marla was leaning over the display.
“Really? We all use bonnets.”
“She likes something that will keep her hair in place better.”
“You really wear these?” Angela looked between the two of us, wide eyed.
“C’mon, you really gone ask us about everything in here?” Marla stood straight and put a hand on her hip.
Angela’s face turned red, like Mrs. Sheen’s arms. She began to mouth something, but looked at me instead. Part of me wanted to save her. I did understand her curiosity. I remember I once grilled her about why her mother always made us casseroles. She said, “It isn’t weird to us, so stop making me feel like it is.”
In the Jim crow section, we saw more pictures with better quality. For some of the pictures, that seemed to be one of the only differences from the few pictures of slaves before. They were better quality and wearing different clothes. Still people were being hung, still pictures of white people gathering around, just this time, they had clean white hoods to accompany them. Marla and Angela seemed to have shifted too. The bickering ceased as they both let the images and displays in the room swallow them up. I was fixated on Marla’s expression, horror. I wondered if she was thinking about if times really changed like Mrs. Sheen said. Angela stopped looking around, she wasn’t spinning like us. I’m sure she was full of questions, ones she knew we couldn’t answer, ones we wouldn’t want to. I was grateful for her silence.
A picture of people marching, looking proud, pulled me in. In the front they all had their arms linked. Towards the end of the row, stood three women who reminded me of us.
“Hey look,” I pointed, “That could have been us back then.”
Angela linked her arms with ours and smiled. It was nice to be connected to them.
Cocking her head to the side, Marla said, “Do you really think we would be brave enough?”
Angela snickered, “Coming from the girl who tried to knee Rick in the balls on the bus?”
“Nah, I’m serious. You see these pictures.” She pointed to the ones where people were murdered.
“It’s not like that anymore,” Angela said.
“Look around, it is like that.” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Angela put her hands on her hips.
I looked around until I found the perfect example. “See that picture of that burnt out church?”
She squinted her eyes until she could read the plaque. “Yeah, 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.”
“Remember the Charleston shooting last year?”
“Yeah, what’s it got to do with this?”
“I guess they trading bombs for guns now,” Marla said low.
Angela’s mouth opened as she shifted from a quizzical look to one of understanding. “I didn’t make the connection.”
“You do now.” I rubbed her shoulder.
There was an interview with a black man playing on repeat in the corner. Curtis was standing in front of a small group of people holding up signs that read, Freedom for all, Justice for our brothers and sisters, Do we not bleed red too? His accent sounded like Marla’s, really like her whole family. I liked the way they talked, how it passed down from generations. Marla’s grandfather once said, “This how my people talk, my daddy and his too. Ain’t nothing wrong wit it. You understand me don’t cha?” I tried to talk like that once and my mother said I sounded ignorant. I never got to meet mine and I always wondered if he sounded like Marla’s, or if he would have found it ignorant too. I’m glad Marla never changed the way she spoke. The world didn’t need to take away anything else.
I found the girls making their way over to a makeshift diner scene. A replica of the sit-ins. Without speaking, I grabbed them both and hurried us over to get the three empty seats. Marla seemed happy that I came back. They put a great amount of detail into the replica. There were place mats that had a real menu on them, fake ketchup and mustard bottles with napkin holders. Bright red leather seats to accompany the red counter. Behind it was an empty stove and a coffee pot that was painted to look like real coffee was in it. On the back wall was a picture of a sit-in. They all looked straight ahead, some with their hands laid flat against the counter.
“Didn’t your granddaddy do this?” Marla was looking at the headphones quizzically as she sat to my left.
“Yeah, but my mom said he never wanted to talk about it.”
“This will be something,” Angela said as she placed the headphones on and sat on the other side of me.
I was surprised by the high volume of a woman’s voice in my ears. The woman explained how the simulation of what happened during the sit-ins would work. She instructed us to close our eyes. The round stool already felt unsteady under me and it was uncomfortable. I looked up again at the picture to make sure I did it properly. While I closed my eyes, I made sure my head was up, just like theirs, like my grandfather’s.
I noticed the clinking coffee cups first. The sound was sharp and felt like it was still ringing long after it stopped. Muffled voices and then “Go home!” I heard a spatula hitting the grill faintly before the voices became clearer and in unison “Nigger!” was shouted at me from behind. I almost swung around in my seat, forgetting that it wasn’t my reality. “Fucking die!” More clanking cups or maybe they were smashing cups. I couldn’t tell if they were meant for us. “Go back to Africa.” This is my home, I thought. Splashing water. Someone screamed and I jumped. A hot hand. It was Marla’s. I was now leaning on her, no longer sitting upright on the stool. “Fucking niggers we don’t want you here, get out.” A pounding fist on the counter, their counter not mine. “We won’t serve your kind.” More chanting, but they are saying different things that I can’t make out. Utensils crash on the floor or counter. “If you don’t get, I’ll find you later.” A wet hand, Angela’s. I couldn’t tell how much longer it would last. More shouting. More chanting. More crashing. More go homes. Then it all died down.
The woman came back on the speaker and she seemed quieter now. She told us to imagine how it would have felt if we were the ones who had the food and drink poured on us, if our lives were the ones they threatened.
I opened my eyes, thrusting myself back into the present. When I looked up at Marla, she was wiping under her eyes with her sleeve. Angela made more of an effort to hold it in. Her throat and cheeks deepened red with each second that she held her breath. We stayed on the stools until a man asked if his family could take our seats.
No one said anything. Marla seemed full of stifled anger. It was the same look she had when she tried to fight Lacy, but Mr. Henricks broke it up before she could land the punch. Angela seemed to have turned in on herself. She crossed her arms over her body and squeezed. My eyes shifted back and forth between them while I transferred my weight back and forth on my sore feet.
I wanted to say something to fill the quiet between us all, but I didn’t. It felt useless to try and make it better when it wasn’t. My grandfather was supposed to be living in the changed times, the time that was supposed to be so much better than his own grandfather’s. I thought about Philando Castile and wondered if our generation was living in a changed time. I don’t really remember what we saw next on our way out. I know it was supposed to be hopeful though.
Mrs. Sheen was by the back door and took one look at the three of us and asked if we were okay. We nodded, giving her nothing more. She patted my shoulder since I was the closest to her, but I shrugged her off. She was shocked. I knew she was hurt, but I didn’t care, I was actually glad. She lied to us.
We climbed into our seat. Unlike before, I could feel the hardened goosebumps on Angela’s leg and it tickled a bit. I began to shift, but then gave up and leaned my head against the hot window which stung. The others followed us on. Unlike before, they whispered. Everything seemed quieter and emptied of the laughter we brought with us hours ago. Rick and his friends broke from that, planning a game of basketball after school. They sat away from us.
The three of us didn’t speak. Marla picked at some exposed filling from the seat in front of us while Angela watched her. A strong gust of wind came through causing a loud clanking sound over at a restaurant across the street. I looked over to see a Black Lives Matter flag beating against the pole it was hanging on. I hadn’t even noticed it before. I closed my eyes. Pressed my head closer to the window till my ear was flat against it, just listening to the beat.
NOTE: Revised from the original.
Contributor Notes
Chantel Kelly is a fiction writer currently living in Acworth, Georgia. She recently graduated with her MFA from the University of Kentucky and works as a content writer. You can find her on twitter @ChantelMKelly.
