Hobby Lobby
Growing up, I idolized my older brother. As spoiled as I was, and as many clothes as I had my closet, when Derrick grew out of something, I wanted it. This is how I ended up with Derrick’s all black Jordan hoodie. I wore it everywhere, rain or shine, either on my arms or tied around my waist. My father hated this hoodie. “It makes you look like a boy, Mia,” he’d say, but I didn’t care.
When I was twelve and my brother was sixteen, Derrick and I went to the Hobby Lobby down the street from our house in Arlington Texas, an errand for our mother. As we walked the aisles, looking for the stamps my mother needed, Derrick noticed a woman–a tall skinny white lady in the ugly, blue Hobby Lobby vest– watching us from a post by the aisle we were on.
“Mia, come here,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me a few aisles down and stopping.
“What are we over here for, bubba? Mommy needs stamps,” I said. I wasn’t trying to get yelled at for buying the wrong thing and wasting my mama’s money.
We stayed on that aisle for a few minutes, just browsing the small, wooden boxes on the shelves. Derrick grabbed my hand again and pulled me back down to the aisle with stamps, grabbing the ones that we needed and handing me a few to hold so he didn’t drop them. Before we could leave the aisle, the same lady appeared again this time with her manager.
“This is them,” she exclaimed, pointing to us. “They’re trying to steal the stamps. I saw the little one put some in her pockets.”
I looked at my brother, fear etched across my face. “Bubba, I didn’t put nothing in my pockets, I swear!”
Derrick looked down at me and smiled. His way of saying “I know.” The manager, an older white woman, with frizzy gray hair and a thick mustache on her thin lip looked at us with a sneer on her face, “Put it back or I’m calling the police,” she said.
I put the stamps I had in my hands on the ground and reached into the pockets of my hoodie, showing the woman that they were empty, before pulling up my hoodie and turning in a circle to show her that there was nothing in my jeans pockets.
“I saw her take them,” the first lady said. “She had to have hidden them somewhere!” I didn’t notice my brother typing on his phone until he began speaking into it.
“Mama, we need you,” he said. I could hear her agitated voice telling him that she was on her way. We stood there with the two women, listening to them tell us how our mother wouldn’t be able to save us from our punishment. Derrick clenched his jaw, a habit he’d gotten from spending time with our uncle and watching him do it. I looked up at my brother, his six foot frame tense, with a slight smirk on his face. As the women went on and on about how we were terrible children for stealing their company’s merchandise, Derrick just nodded his head waiting for my mother, knowing that she was going to be absolutely pissed when she arrived.
When my mother showed up to the store with her rollers in her hair, and a jacket pulled over her shoulders, exposing her tattered “around the house” t-shirt, the first woman rolled her eyes to the ceiling and mumbled about my mother looking like a “ghetto bird” under her breath. My mother’s ears perked up and her head swung around in a way that only my mother could pull off.
“Bitch, don’t make me act a fool,” my mother said before turning to my brother and me. “What’s the problem? And make it fast. Your granny’s in the car.”
Derrick nodded toward the two women. “They’re trying to accuse Mia of stealing,” he said. My mother looked down at me then back to the two women.
“Where the hell is her ass going to hide one of these big ass stamps in those tight ass jeans?” my mother asked, glaring at the manager and then throwing an annoyed glance at my jeans. I knew I wasn’t going to hear the end of it when I got in the car. The jeans were an eight-ten, and I was heading into a twelve-fourteen, way too big to be trotting around Hobby Lobby in jeans from the second grade.
“I watched her put it in her pocket,” the first woman said, seeing that her accusation had only managed to piss my mother off more than the comment she’d first made upon seeing my mother walk into the store.
“No, you didn’t see her do anything. You saw two black kids and assumed they were up to something,” my mother yelled, getting the attention of a few other shoppers in the store. “I ought to whoop your ass for making me come all the way down here for nothing.” She grabbed my hand. “Derrick put them damn stamps back and let’s go.”
Mama looked closely at the women’s nametags and typed their names into her phone. “I’m calling your corporate office,” she said as she pulled me toward the exit, Derrick following behind us and chuckling quietly to himself. I didn’t see anything funny.
“Stop all that crying,” my mother said to me. “You’re black in the south, Mia. This won’t be the only time you’re profiled.”
I didn’t want to accept that, though. That couldn’t be the reason that the woman thought that I was stealing. It had to be the hoodie. Maybe if I had worn one of the skirts Mama always tried to force me into, the lady wouldn’t have thought that I was stealing. She only thought that I was stealing because of the jacket. The jacket that was two sizes too big and made me look like one of the “thugs” that I saw on the movies. That was the last time I wore that black Jordan hoodie.
Dillard’s
During spring break my junior year of college, my brother and I went to the mall in search of a birthday gift for his girlfriend. He asked me to tag along to help him pick out something nice for her, claiming that with my experience working in retail I would know what would look good.
I watched as one of the women in the store watched us enter the store. Her eyes bulged in her head for a moment when she saw Derrick. This was expected, Derrick was six foot two and roughly one hundred eighty pounds, he was intimidating, until you got to know him. The boy wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight unless he was threatened.
We walked passed the short, stumpy, white lady to the women’s section and started browsing the racks. I noticed that when a white couple walked in, that same woman dropped everything that she was doing to help them out, and see if there was anything that they needed. I kind of chuckled under my breath but let it go, deciding not to take it to heart.
Derrick looked up at me from the rack of shirts that we’d stopped to look at with questioning eyes. I shook my head at him and looked back down to the shirts.
“What about this one?” I asked, lifting a faux neck blouse. A type of shirt with a choker type neck that still has a V-neck underneath.
“She doesn’t like purple,” Derrick said looking at a hideous polka dot button up.
“Put it back,” I said. “She’ll hate you forever if you buy her that.” I told him jokingly.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” the lady said, finally coming to see if we needed anything.
“No, but thank you,” Derrick said looking at another shirt on the rack.
“Put it back,” I said when I caught sight of the awful floral print. I glanced to my left when I noticed that the lady hadn’t left us alone yet.
“Is there anything in particular that you are looking for?” she asked.
“No ma’am,” I said continuing my search. I set down my bags to pull at the skirt that I was wearing.
I watched as she bent down pretending to pick up a garment from the floor while checking the bag I’d just set on the ground.
“Excuse you,” I said, yanking the bag out of her line of sight, already annoyed by her presence. “You can go irk someone else. We’re all good over here.”
The woman stared at me dumbfounded, as if I hadn’t just caught her peeping in my bags like they were hers. Over the years I had grown the same tough skin as my mother, and I had a pretty slick mouth when I was angry too.
The woman walked off silently about twenty feet away where she proceeded to watch my brother and I claw through the racks trying to find the perfect shirt to complete the outfit we’d put together.
Finally, we found a nice faux neck black long sleeved shirt and began to make our way to the register. I took the shirt off of the hanger ready to give it to the cashier, knowing that was one of the most annoying parts of ringing up a customer, especially with that style shirt. Before we could get to the register, however, the woman practically sprinted back over to us and snatched the shirt out of my hands.
I stopped dead in my tracks, trying to figure out where she had come from. “It’s company policy. I’m not allowed to let you take anything off of the hangers.”
I knew she was lying. We’d learned the same thing in my training for my job. If you thought a customer was stealing, you kept a close eye on them and never let them take anything off of the hanger. I didn’t know what she found suspicious though. Derrick had come straight to the mall after work and was dressed in a white button up and slacks, what’s suspicious about that?
I snatched the shirt back from her and bumped her as I walked past. “While you’re sitting over here hounding my brother and me, you might want to go check on the lady over there stuffing your four for twenty panties into her purse,” I said, then continued on my way to the register to pay.
“I’ll need her name and this store number.” I told the cashier, pointing to the lady, as she rang up our purchase. “I’m calling corporate.”
As we walked out of the store, I could hear Derrick chuckling behind me. “The hell you back there he-he haw-hawing at?” I asked, turning to glare at him.
“Your little mean ass is a shorter, light-skinned version of Mama,” he said, pulling on the barely-there chin hairs it took him nineteen years to grow.
It was true. I had my father’s face but my mother’s personality. I thought back to our terrible experience at Hobby Lobby and how my mother had handled the situation. She hadn’t changed. At all. She was still quick to jump down someone’s throat when she felt they’d stepped out of line, be it me or Derrick, or an employee in a McDonald’s drive through. I was the same way. Derrick, however, was the more laid-back kid in the family. He usually let things roll off his back and ignored the employees, something that I wouldn’t do.
In the seven years since the incident at Hobby Lobby, I have sadly gotten used to being profiled for being a black teen in the south. There are no more tears, and I don’t try to change or question myself to make the public like me. I am unapologetically black. Maybe one day when I have kids of my own, they won’t have to questions themselves like I did. Maybe they’ll be able to go to a store and not have someone watch their every move because they’re black in the south. Maybe one day we’ll honestly be able to say that racism doesn’t exist. That night when we went home, I found one of Derrick’s old black Nike hoodies and claimed it as my own, same as I did with the Jordan hoodie all those years ago.
Growing up, I idolized my older brother. As spoiled as I was, and as many clothes as I had my closet, when Derrick grew out of something, I wanted it. This is how I ended up with Derrick’s all black Jordan hoodie. I wore it everywhere, rain or shine, either on my arms or tied around my waist. My father hated this hoodie. “It makes you look like a boy, Mia,” he’d say, but I didn’t care.
When I was twelve and my brother was sixteen, Derrick and I went to the Hobby Lobby down the street from our house in Arlington Texas, an errand for our mother. As we walked the aisles, looking for the stamps my mother needed, Derrick noticed a woman–a tall skinny white lady in the ugly, blue Hobby Lobby vest– watching us from a post by the aisle we were on.
“Mia, come here,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me a few aisles down and stopping.
“What are we over here for, bubba? Mommy needs stamps,” I said. I wasn’t trying to get yelled at for buying the wrong thing and wasting my mama’s money.
We stayed on that aisle for a few minutes, just browsing the small, wooden boxes on the shelves. Derrick grabbed my hand again and pulled me back down to the aisle with stamps, grabbing the ones that we needed and handing me a few to hold so he didn’t drop them. Before we could leave the aisle, the same lady appeared again this time with her manager.
“This is them,” she exclaimed, pointing to us. “They’re trying to steal the stamps. I saw the little one put some in her pockets.”
I looked at my brother, fear etched across my face. “Bubba, I didn’t put nothing in my pockets, I swear!”
Derrick looked down at me and smiled. His way of saying “I know.” The manager, an older white woman, with frizzy gray hair and a thick mustache on her thin lip looked at us with a sneer on her face, “Put it back or I’m calling the police,” she said.
I put the stamps I had in my hands on the ground and reached into the pockets of my hoodie, showing the woman that they were empty, before pulling up my hoodie and turning in a circle to show her that there was nothing in my jeans pockets.
“I saw her take them,” the first lady said. “She had to have hidden them somewhere!” I didn’t notice my brother typing on his phone until he began speaking into it.
“Mama, we need you,” he said. I could hear her agitated voice telling him that she was on her way. We stood there with the two women, listening to them tell us how our mother wouldn’t be able to save us from our punishment. Derrick clenched his jaw, a habit he’d gotten from spending time with our uncle and watching him do it. I looked up at my brother, his six foot frame tense, with a slight smirk on his face. As the women went on and on about how we were terrible children for stealing their company’s merchandise, Derrick just nodded his head waiting for my mother, knowing that she was going to be absolutely pissed when she arrived.
When my mother showed up to the store with her rollers in her hair, and a jacket pulled over her shoulders, exposing her tattered “around the house” t-shirt, the first woman rolled her eyes to the ceiling and mumbled about my mother looking like a “ghetto bird” under her breath. My mother’s ears perked up and her head swung around in a way that only my mother could pull off.
“Bitch, don’t make me act a fool,” my mother said before turning to my brother and me. “What’s the problem? And make it fast. Your granny’s in the car.”
Derrick nodded toward the two women. “They’re trying to accuse Mia of stealing,” he said. My mother looked down at me then back to the two women.
“Where the hell is her ass going to hide one of these big ass stamps in those tight ass jeans?” my mother asked, glaring at the manager and then throwing an annoyed glance at my jeans. I knew I wasn’t going to hear the end of it when I got in the car. The jeans were an eight-ten, and I was heading into a twelve-fourteen, way too big to be trotting around Hobby Lobby in jeans from the second grade.
“I watched her put it in her pocket,” the first woman said, seeing that her accusation had only managed to piss my mother off more than the comment she’d first made upon seeing my mother walk into the store.
“No, you didn’t see her do anything. You saw two black kids and assumed they were up to something,” my mother yelled, getting the attention of a few other shoppers in the store. “I ought to whoop your ass for making me come all the way down here for nothing.” She grabbed my hand. “Derrick put them damn stamps back and let’s go.”
Mama looked closely at the women’s nametags and typed their names into her phone. “I’m calling your corporate office,” she said as she pulled me toward the exit, Derrick following behind us and chuckling quietly to himself. I didn’t see anything funny.
“Stop all that crying,” my mother said to me. “You’re black in the south, Mia. This won’t be the only time you’re profiled.”
I didn’t want to accept that, though. That couldn’t be the reason that the woman thought that I was stealing. It had to be the hoodie. Maybe if I had worn one of the skirts Mama always tried to force me into, the lady wouldn’t have thought that I was stealing. She only thought that I was stealing because of the jacket. The jacket that was two sizes too big and made me look like one of the “thugs” that I saw on the movies. That was the last time I wore that black Jordan hoodie.
Dillard’s
During spring break my junior year of college, my brother and I went to the mall in search of a birthday gift for his girlfriend. He asked me to tag along to help him pick out something nice for her, claiming that with my experience working in retail I would know what would look good.
I watched as one of the women in the store watched us enter the store. Her eyes bulged in her head for a moment when she saw Derrick. This was expected, Derrick was six foot two and roughly one hundred eighty pounds, he was intimidating, until you got to know him. The boy wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight unless he was threatened.
We walked passed the short, stumpy, white lady to the women’s section and started browsing the racks. I noticed that when a white couple walked in, that same woman dropped everything that she was doing to help them out, and see if there was anything that they needed. I kind of chuckled under my breath but let it go, deciding not to take it to heart.
Derrick looked up at me from the rack of shirts that we’d stopped to look at with questioning eyes. I shook my head at him and looked back down to the shirts.
“What about this one?” I asked, lifting a faux neck blouse. A type of shirt with a choker type neck that still has a V-neck underneath.
“She doesn’t like purple,” Derrick said looking at a hideous polka dot button up.
“Put it back,” I said. “She’ll hate you forever if you buy her that.” I told him jokingly.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” the lady said, finally coming to see if we needed anything.
“No, but thank you,” Derrick said looking at another shirt on the rack.
“Put it back,” I said when I caught sight of the awful floral print. I glanced to my left when I noticed that the lady hadn’t left us alone yet.
“Is there anything in particular that you are looking for?” she asked.
“No ma’am,” I said continuing my search. I set down my bags to pull at the skirt that I was wearing.
I watched as she bent down pretending to pick up a garment from the floor while checking the bag I’d just set on the ground.
“Excuse you,” I said, yanking the bag out of her line of sight, already annoyed by her presence. “You can go irk someone else. We’re all good over here.”
The woman stared at me dumbfounded, as if I hadn’t just caught her peeping in my bags like they were hers. Over the years I had grown the same tough skin as my mother, and I had a pretty slick mouth when I was angry too.
The woman walked off silently about twenty feet away where she proceeded to watch my brother and I claw through the racks trying to find the perfect shirt to complete the outfit we’d put together.
Finally, we found a nice faux neck black long sleeved shirt and began to make our way to the register. I took the shirt off of the hanger ready to give it to the cashier, knowing that was one of the most annoying parts of ringing up a customer, especially with that style shirt. Before we could get to the register, however, the woman practically sprinted back over to us and snatched the shirt out of my hands.
I stopped dead in my tracks, trying to figure out where she had come from. “It’s company policy. I’m not allowed to let you take anything off of the hangers.”
I knew she was lying. We’d learned the same thing in my training for my job. If you thought a customer was stealing, you kept a close eye on them and never let them take anything off of the hanger. I didn’t know what she found suspicious though. Derrick had come straight to the mall after work and was dressed in a white button up and slacks, what’s suspicious about that?
I snatched the shirt back from her and bumped her as I walked past. “While you’re sitting over here hounding my brother and me, you might want to go check on the lady over there stuffing your four for twenty panties into her purse,” I said, then continued on my way to the register to pay.
“I’ll need her name and this store number.” I told the cashier, pointing to the lady, as she rang up our purchase. “I’m calling corporate.”
As we walked out of the store, I could hear Derrick chuckling behind me. “The hell you back there he-he haw-hawing at?” I asked, turning to glare at him.
“Your little mean ass is a shorter, light-skinned version of Mama,” he said, pulling on the barely-there chin hairs it took him nineteen years to grow.
It was true. I had my father’s face but my mother’s personality. I thought back to our terrible experience at Hobby Lobby and how my mother had handled the situation. She hadn’t changed. At all. She was still quick to jump down someone’s throat when she felt they’d stepped out of line, be it me or Derrick, or an employee in a McDonald’s drive through. I was the same way. Derrick, however, was the more laid-back kid in the family. He usually let things roll off his back and ignored the employees, something that I wouldn’t do.
In the seven years since the incident at Hobby Lobby, I have sadly gotten used to being profiled for being a black teen in the south. There are no more tears, and I don’t try to change or question myself to make the public like me. I am unapologetically black. Maybe one day when I have kids of my own, they won’t have to questions themselves like I did. Maybe they’ll be able to go to a store and not have someone watch their every move because they’re black in the south. Maybe one day we’ll honestly be able to say that racism doesn’t exist. That night when we went home, I found one of Derrick’s old black Nike hoodies and claimed it as my own, same as I did with the Jordan hoodie all those years ago.