Lorde was the smartest girl in school, though she was not popular. When she complained to her mother, her mother had no sympathy and told her not to care, that she didn’t need friends. Lorde hated how he kept her after school to memorize Latin nouns. The head of the parish and school admitted openly he’d never thought he’d have to have Black kids here. The white students were also cruel, telling Lorde that Black people smelled differently. Their racism was unadorned, unexcused, and particularly painful because I was unprepared for it” (59). At the old Catholic school the nuns’ racism was “couched in the terms of their mission” but here these nuns were “downright hostile. People said it was because he had to start renting to Black people, and everyone at school knew about this. A couple of weeks after they moved there, their landlord hanged himself in the basement.

Their new apartment was in Washington Heights and Lorde started going to a new Catholic school. It was the first time they’d discussed race as a reality. One day she asked her sisters what “Colored” meant and they could not quite tell her. Lorde “grew Black as my need for life, for affirmation, for love, for sharing-copying from my mother what was in her, unfulfilled” (58). The family moved “up the hill” near where the girls used to go on their comic book adventures. Over time the real estate business got better as more money came into circulation for Black people. Her father took a job in a war plant out in Queens and worked the night shift, doing whatever maintenance repairs were needed. She was very proud of her important mother, who watched the skies, ran booths on Election Day, and gave out ration books. Overall, though, life went on as normal for Lorde. Mothers were asked to watch the skies for enemy aircraft. At school the students had to learn their blood types, pray, and do air raid drills. War came, and Lorde knew it was there because of the tight feeling in the house, her father’s tone, and the absence of their favorite radio programs.

Audre lorde a new spelling of my name