{"id":218,"date":"2025-05-01T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/?p=218"},"modified":"2025-05-01T18:14:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:14:21","slug":"ivionna-pettigrew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/2025\/05\/01\/ivionna-pettigrew\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivionna Pettigrew"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blanketed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hillsborough, North Carolina, when it’s winter\u200b,\u200b the snow falls heavily and steadily\u200b.\u200b It disguises\u200b \u200bthe natural slopes of Earth\u200b in an \u200b\u200bicy thick blanket. Every staircase is frozen over in a shield of slippery ice\u200b.\u200b \u200bIt \u200bcover\u200bs\u200b\u200b\u200b \u200band \u200bimped\u200bes\u200b\u200b\u200b any aspiration of inclination among any toe that dares to tread the road frozen over\u200b,\u200b yet significantly traveled. To open my eyes is to blind me with these whimsical ultralight beams I can\u2019t quite concede, so blinding,<\/em>\u200b\u200b <\/em>she thinks. <\/em>This phenomena occurring\u200b to a little girl from South Georgia who had only seen snow once, one inch off the ground\u200b,\u200b melting immediately due to the sweltering sun that \u200bholds\u200b\u200b the promise of day\u200b,\u200b is transcendental. The ground\u200b,\u200b\u200b air\u200b,\u200b and those flakes \u2013 too tiny to see but too cold to avoid \u2013 \u200baren\u200b\u200b\u2019t the only thing covered by the weight of blanketed snow\u200b;\u200b the entire city is overrun with it, minus the occasional trailer park or project duplex with dark splotches of life. The tiny town of Orange County is something like a suburb with only the natives knowing where their next meal will come from and spreading their frosty authority into black homes \u200b\u200bgivin\u2019 their intonations from the frosts\u200b,\u200b opposite the sun\u200b,\u200b of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not just black homes, but my home<\/em>, she thinks while crumbling under the innumerable weight of millions of snow-flakes, but no\u200b,\u200b she\u2019d only see<\/em> one big blanket supposedly dented by the 36% of the minority population of this terribly cold County. The influence of the snowfall presented itself in so many daunting ways\u200b,\u200b from Klan parades to child protective service raids. Engulfed with the absence of the free\u200b \u200bflow of blizzard storm air and without a blanket of comfort\u200b\u200b\u200b,\u200b was the existence of a small child living on a hill in\u200b a\u200b place totally unknown to her. Drugs infested her neighborhood\u200b,\u200b catching hold of anyone it could grasp\u200b,\u200b and it paralyzes their mind. This<\/em> phenomenon swept up her mom\u200b,\u200b leaving \u200bthe child<\/em>\u200b and her siblings as prey to the hateful flurry of the locals and indoctrinated self\u200b-\u200b\u200bhate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200b\u200bThe avalanche of influence first poured in as the welfare consumed what little hope of escape she had\u200b.\u200b \u200bIt\u200b\u200b\u200b followed with her dreams of a happy family slowly melting in conversations with guidance counselors\u200b,\u200b asking her single mother in \u200b\u200bconfidence\u200b, \u200b\u201cW\u200b\u200bho\u2019s with the child when you\u2019re away?\u200b\u201d\u200b\u200b <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she\u2019d mutter \u200b\u201c\u200bno one\u200b,\u201d\u200b under her breath,\u200b no one<\/em> \u200bwould hear her either\u200b. So began \u200b\u200bthe dwindling of light she once had turned into sorrow at the threat of losing what little family she had left. Over time they began not to care about just one little splotch in their perfect and pure society\u200b.\u200b\u200b \u200b\u200bS\u200bhe had one less thing to fear\u200b,\u200b she thought engulfed with the false security of societal invisibility.\u200b Still t\u200b\u200bhe snow persisted\u200b,\u200b and the matter of her denial\u2019s liquidity became like ice\u200b,\u200b just like the cold water that flowed into her house\u200b.\u200b \u200bA\u200b\u200b\u200blong with\u200b it came\u200b the chilling winter air because they couldn\u2019t afford the heat\u200b,\u200b and so she\u2019d stolen the water from the abandoned crack house next door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The winter passed\u200b,\u200b but the pressure of the snow remained because\u200b,\u200b as spring came\u200b,\u200b so did the most frightening \u200bevent \u200ba \u200byoung\u200b\u200b\u200b <\/em>\u200bch\u200b\u200bild\u200b could ever see. She looked out of her low window from the couch to see a little black doll on a crucifix\u200b,\u200b but that little doll didn\u2019t look like her or an odd incarnation of Christ\u200b. An anonymous black body was charred beyond recognition and in the hands of a man in a long white robe hooded with a pointy tip.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She remembers not having a clue what she was looking at but feeling this intense pit at the bottom of her stomach and unexplainable fear. Then hearing her babysitter say, \u201cThey can\u2019t make us leave, they\u2019re just men in hoods.” Why do they want us to leave? Is it because of the child?<\/em> She\u2019d constantly think to herself as she sank in\u200bto\u200b the couch and shut her eyes until she convinced herself she was asleep\u2026\u200bshe slept for years. The Ku Klux Klan has been operating since 1885\u200b,\u200b but until that Spring in 2015\u200b,\u200b she had never seen them in action. \u200bTheir existence was as chilling as they intended it to be for a little brown girl who\u2019d never seen hate in its purest form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was as if they poured it down and left it on the same streets she\u2019d walked every day since she moved to Hillsborough\u200b,\u200b and that hatred locked them <\/em>in their <\/em>home for 24 hours with no News broadcast telling them\u200b they probably should take cover from the storm. The month of new beginnings \u200b\u200bcoated itself in a thick block of snow like a little girl blanketed in a back room\u200b.\u200b \u200bS\u200b\u200b\u200bhe constructed \u200bit \u200bwith fear of \u200bbeing unable to\u200b\u200b to leave her home\u200b,\u200b bitten by the cold. The calmness of the cold froze over her in a panic of her innocence being stolen\u200b,\u200b she thought\u200b she\u200b \u200bwould\u200b\u200b never see the everyday white person the same\u200b.\u200b \u200bBecause, in the mass of hateful marchers\u200b,\u200b she saw a man that she had seen at the library every visit. S\u200bhe was always interested in the secrets books held because she couldn\u2019t read the best.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200b\u200b\u200b When she saw him then\u200b,\u200b the\u200b typical\u200b rosy blush on his cheeks was hidden behind the white blanket of hate he had put away \u200bthe rest\u200b\u200b of the year. All that was exposed of him was his eyes\u200b,\u200b and behind them was no greeting\u200b,\u200b but instead, an icy shield demanding we leave or never live in peace. All she knew was that she wasn\u2019t allowed to go to the library anymore\u200b,\u200b at least not alone\u200b.\u200b \u200bT\u200b\u200bhe blossom of a spark had enveloped her\u200b,\u200b and with the coming of the spring\u200b,\u200b a new outlook on the world began to appear to her. Those rosy cheeks of a sinister smile came to look more like fear than happiness\u200b.\u200b \u200bH\u200b\u200ber smile began to dwindle\u200b.\u200b\u200b I don’t think she smiled until she moved back to Georgia months later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess those frightened men disguised as defenders of snow got what they were demanding\u200b,\u200b but with that, they pushed away the only light that the neighborhood of sorrows had left. After\u200b the \u200b\u200blast declined call from shelters for single mothers running from this thing or another\u200b,\u200b her mother gave up her inquisition for a freed mind.\u200b When she moved back with her three babies and one in the oven. Later \u200b\u200bthe child found out from her mother, that <\/em>the house the family survived in was condemned for not having the adequate structure to insulate it. This meant the cold couldn\u2019t get to any black families ever again\u200b in the wondrous imagination of a little black girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny thing about snow is that thousands of flakes form a formidable shield that withstands the heat of light by refracting it back into the atmosphere. Just as one Klansman wouldn\u2019t hide under his cloak because he\u2019d stand out like a glacier on an open sea\u200b. Instead he might\u200b disguise his dismay in his cheery display of cherry cheeks and blur his face with the numbers of his men. There underlies a grin that would scare the bogeyman himself. This is because, like the snowfall of politics, there is power in numbers. Even in a \u201cterrorist\u201d organization like the Ku Klux Klan, there is some form of order\u200b,\u200b even if they do give her the chills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, normal terrorists don\u2019t often hide in plain sight like arctic foxes \u200b\u2013\u200b\u200b well\u200b,\u200b in uniforms. The branch of the Loyal White Knights based in North Carolina is said to be the most active group in the Klan recently, which means even though she only recognized one person under the cloak\u200b,\u200b many more of them were just everyday people that spread hate in their free time. All that passive hatred she\u2019d never \u200bseen\u200b\u200b\u200b before was plastered all over that scary day in the spring\u200b.\u200b \u200bT\u200b\u200bhe frost was formally hidden in the breeze coming out as ice, \u200bthreatening \u200bto push\u200b\u200b through the sun as it barely peaked above the cool\u200b,\u200b dense clouds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blanketed In Hillsborough, North Carolina, when it’s winter\u200b,\u200b the snow falls heavily and steadily\u200b.\u200b It disguises\u200b \u200bthe natural slopes of Earth\u200b in an \u200b\u200bicy thick blanket. Every staircase is frozen over in a shield of slippery ice\u200b.\u200b \u200bIt \u200bcover\u200bs\u200b\u200b\u200b \u200band \u200bimped\u200bes\u200b\u200b\u200b any aspiration of inclination among any toe that dares to tread the road frozen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":815,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/815"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}