Laughing in the dark pgs1-43

 These first two chapters tell of Patrice Gaines as a child. They show her growing from a small nieve child into an older too old to be that young of an adult. Patrice Gaines grew up during the civil rights error and for a while did not know it. Her father was a part of the marines and to them color was not important it was how one served their counrty. In this being the case Gaines' two best friends were white. This was until one of her friends Charlotte moved away because her family was shipped to another base. So all that was left were her and Lucy. This friendship also soon ended because as they grew up they grew apart. So as Gaines keeps moving because her father kept getting shipped out a lot of dramatic expirences happened to her. She found herself against her own kind and chooseing whtees because she was told by her white friens that she was better. Gaines later grows up and regrets that expirence every time that she thinks about it. The most dramatic expirences were her movings and sexual assults/abuse. For a child to move she must make friends, leave friends, make new ones again, and help her mother settle because she was the oldest. From becoming what people called her as a child to a young adult Gaines' father's friends abused Gaines whenever they could. On page 37 Gaines relived one of those expirences. In reliving her pst Gaines says, " He slipped his hand under my dress, up my thigh, and inside my panties. His fingers fumbled there, tickling the edge of my vagina. I played faster. In the kitchen my mother and father and other friends, unaware of what was going on just on the other side of that wall, laughed and joked. All I remembered is fear and shame. This was one of my parents' best friends and a man that I liked" (Gaines 37). This quote was important because it showed a dramatic expirence of which she could talk about and give a vivid picture. It showed the start of a bad road which this expirence might have caused. It also shows past tense writting that says she has overcome this horrible expirence.