Essence 2

She gathered the bricks into a dusty pile as the two healthy, older boys rode around her circles. Laughing at knocking over the doll house her brother built for her to play with her Barbie’s. She’d play inside in the dollhouse her aunt gave her, but it didn’t fit her Barbie’s. Mama told her Santa brought it, but she knew it was the same one she’d seen in her rich cousin’s house last year. Right down to the crack in the kitchen floor. Her first taste of pride told her not to play with that house, even if her Barbies would fit in it. Her Mama and two brothers lived in the broken down house built decades before by the grandfather who fought in the war and was one of the few black men in Warrenton with his own business “back in the day” that she never met. Her earliest memories are of running in those fields bordered on three sides by families who conducted fox hunts monthly, owned cows, and big cars. Routinely her head play would be interrupted first by the terrified fox running for it’s life, followed by the trail of blood thirsty dogs, followed by distinguished looking men in red coats and white pants who greeted her with disgust when they had to guide their horse around her playground and saw right through her otherwise. Surrounded by two older brothers who saw her as a liability and her dollhousewrecking cousins up the way, she didn’t have any cohorts. No one to play Barbies, play house, she filled in her head. She created a little sister, a daddy, even a maid who she pretended to be when she did chores. The only other girl in her world was Mama. But Mama was caught up in being Mama. Between working, cooking, cleaning, organizing, preparing, she stopped asking long ago if Mama would play Barbie or let her be a pretend teacher. The answer was always the same. With no Daddy, Mama did have to do it all. But, all she had in her was enough to do what needed to be done, the fun stuff was a luxury they couldn’t afford – just like the like the running water and new roof they couldn’t afford. The little girl was oblivious to the gravity of her surroundings. The buckling roof, the lack of running water, having to wear two pairs of pants in the house because the house had no heat and the chimney needed to be re-built; all seemed normal. At her age, normal was any where her Mama, brothers, and a hot meal were. The scenic baths on the front porch in the metal tub filled with water hauled from the spring were spent daydreaming at all the sights and sounds of nature. Those moments of ignorant bliss would provide her solace in the years to come. By 8, she and her family were forced by social services to move to public housing the nearby big city. The house, while comforting to a inquisitive, creative child, had been deemed ‘unfit’ according the tiny white lady who came to the house. She poked and tipped around their home as if it was contaminated before writing up the report demanding that ‘fit’ housing be obtained or they would take her and her brothers away and put them in ‘fit’ housing in an orphanage. When the family moved their scant belongings into the public housing project, the buildings were crisp and clean. The paint was barely dry on the walls as her brothers excitedly setup their rooms. She didn’t get a room to setup; she had to

share her Mama’s room. This was okay because they’d yet to live anywhere that she hadn’t shared her Mama’s bed. In the sprawling country, she was the only little girl her age in her eyeshot. Here, there were kids in every box. The buildings reminded her of the brick dollhouse her brother had rebuilt for her each time the cousins up the hill knocked it down. Each apartment looked like boxes stacked on top of each other and connected like lego blocks. In each stacked box, there were kids. All the kids were brown like her and they didn’t have Daddys either. Within a week she had a Barbie club of five little girls who got up at the crack of dawn waiting for the moment their Mama’s let them out of the house so they could go seek out one another. As enchanted as she was to female companionship, it was all roses. Some of the girls were mean. They’d lived in public housing before. During the first meeting rundowns, some girls even revealed living in two or three other “projects,” as they called them, before moving to Garden Villages. Those girls always talked about things she didn’t understand but kept her around because she was funny. Part of her humor was borne out of her ignorance of boys, makeup, fashion, and rap music at the tender age of 8. She slowly got up to speed. As she got up to speed, she found her Mama’s attentions focused on her more intensely. But, it wasn’t the kind of attention she wanted. It was the, “Don’t let them little fast ass girls get you in trouble,” “Stay away from them nasty little boys and don’t let them see your goodies. I ain’t raising anymore damned kids,” “Stop walking around here acting like you’re grown,” and the like. She started school that year and learned that not all white ladies who talk proper were evil. The lady who tore her away from her country paradise had become the bad guy in every Barbie scenario since watching the cow who’d kept her company at the bus stop shrink into the distance through the back window of her uncle’s pickup. At school, she met white ladies who didn’t see her as a liability. Her second grade teacher helped her bind the book that went on to win the school writing contest. The white people at school complimented her perfect diction, great handwriting, and most of all, her uncanny ability to pickup mathematical concepts and fly through reading and grammar assignments. She always had As on her report card. Report card day was the one day she could count on getting praise from Mama. When she’d show her Mama the A riddled report card, Mama would smile and lecture her on how important school was and how her education was her only way out of being poor. She thrived on praise but found it caused friction between the Barbie crew that had quickly moved away from playing with Barbies to figuring out how to put on eye shadow and who had a boyfriend and who didn’t. Her home friends teased her about being so smart and having to be in the “whitey” classes. At school, she never saw her “home” friends. She was in small classes with rich kids with whom she began learning algebra in the fifth grade and reading Shakespeare in the sixth. A standout, the one her home friends called Twiggy because she was so skinny, was the richest of the rich. Twiggy and the little black girl became close after both being the new kids in fourth grade, sitting next to each other, and being moved through three different math books before Christmas that

year. They were both sent to the “Signet” program for the gifted where they were made certain they had seats beside each other. They attended lunch and recess with all the other kids, but other than that they spend their day in the makeshift classroom beside the library with a handful of other kids of various ages and grade levels. The two teachers in the class patiently went from child to child and provided one-on-one teaching and learning at the pace of the child’s intellect. Between assignments waiting for teachers to deliver the next lesson, they two girls would talk about their lives. The life of horse farms, tea parties, and ballet lessons was foreign but intriguing to the little black girl who listened intently as Twiggy described the ball gowns her mother wore out to fancy dinner parties and the jewelry her mother bought from stores all the way in New York City. She always tried to stay quiet and hope that Twiggy would ask about her life today and she just listen to the stories of her enchanted life as rich. Finally the time came when Twiggy stopped telling her stories and asked the little black girl about her life – where does her Mama work? What kind of car does your Daddy drive? The little black girl didn’t know anything but honesty and told Twiggy the truth: her Mama’s on welfare, she lives in the projects, my Mama can’t afford a car, and she sleeps with her Mama because they don’t have enough room. Twiggy swore she was lying. A week later, Twiggy had cleared it with her mom for the little black girl to come to her house for a sleepover. However, the lbg’s mother wasn’t exactly open to the proposition. “Her family owns horses?,” she said, “and they want you to come sleep in their house?” “Yes,” lbg said excitedly. “These people aren’t some kind of hippy religious freaks are they?” she said. Slowly lbg’s excitement went from high to rock bottom. Why should they be flawed because they’d want me to sleep in their house? Why couldn’t they be good people who wanted to secure companionship for the only child who in the midst of a farm had no other little girls to play with. A plight lbg knew all too well. “Well, I’m gonna send you up there looking like some little project kid. I don’t want them white folks talking down to you and whispering about how ‘she looks like that because she lives in the bricks’ Naw, tell her weekend after next. The check will be here next week and we can get you some new pajamas, slippers and a proper overnight bag.” Mama never let her surroundings make her forget who she was like so many women in the brick embrace of project living. What had been strictly referred to “public housing” when we initially moved in, one of six inaugural residents, had quickly become just another project. The rose theme of the Rosewood Gardens was highlighted by beautiful rose bushes of multiple colors adorning the yards and common areas. Everything was new and shiny. The floors were even and didn’t creak like the ones at the country house. Our toilet was indoors. I could take showers inside. Vents piped warm waves of air over me in the

winter and cool waves of relief in the summer. We were never alone as we could easily hear the movements, conversations even television programs of our neighbors upstairs, to the left and to the right of us. In many ways, we traded our privacy/solitude/calm for conveniences of modern society. We all became anonymously connected. And eventually that connection lead most to begin adopting the same habits and tendencies and wants and needs. If you knew your neighbors above you liked to party because you could hear the music blasting every night, it was nothing to see them on their way to the shared dumpster or the mailbox bay and get yourself invited to the party. And once you get yourself invited to the party, you might find that their party involves some thangs you never partied with before, be it drink or drug or gambling, etc. Less than one percent of the residents in the Gardens were employed. Most stayed at home all day tinkering around their cube, sitting outside on the tiny porches or balconies, cliquing up and gossiping, forming rivalaries – you see where we’re going here. The residents of the Garden came from all over the greater metropolitan area to this panacea in the suburbs. Built to accommodate the overflowing shelters full of young, single mothers who had no where to go and no one to help them. The panacea was conceived to be a breeding ground for turning these poor single mothers into productive members of society. The community was responding to small but egregious phenomena in their upper middle class community. There weren’t enough poor single mothers in the community of lawyers, educators, and big city executives who didn’t mind communiting an hour away for the peace and comfort of suburban life. So, when they built Rosewood Gardens, very few came. As a result, they were forced to reach out the metropolitan area in order to meet the housing numbers that securing their federal funding and subsidies. From this pool came a ramshackle conglomeration of big city projects veterans with mentalities brought from the drug wars and crime that came out of the being named the “Murder Captial of America” three years in a row. Then there were the true suburbanites who’d truly fallen on hard times, and in that spectrum were families like ours from destitute rural areas who were just happy to have a warm place to sleep. Each experience brought a new dynamic, a new experience that changed most, for better or worse. As the rural set began mingling with the city set and those just down on their luck began to make habit of waking up at noon with day after day of leisure, and Asians and Haitians just off the boat started talking at the mailbox, on the playgrounds, at the swimming pool, patterns began to emerge. After the rural set got their dumpster invites to party with the city slickers, they discovered drugs. Where they had been smoking weed grown off the back porches of their trailers; pure and unhampered, the city slickers introduced them to weed that had been processed and laced infused with shit to keep you coming back for more. And, where ever there’s drugs there’s money, and where there’s money there’s conflict. What was conceived as a breeding ground for success became a success of different kind. One at the opposite end of the spectrum. Drugs became king. What had been a few bags

of weed here and there became a full-service location for anything you could imagine, cocaine, heroin, pills – you name it. Soon, traffic to the brick paradise was in full swing. It wasn’t just the trade in residents, but the Mercedes that would ride through at 1pm on a Wednesday and put a big wad of money in a 16-year old’s hands for enough high to get him through till the next day. That wad of money was enough to fund than 16-old’s entire month of expenses. But instead, it went to one of the immigrant shops that sprang up in the abandoned shopping center on the street directly across from the Gardens. They sold everything from fake hair, to candy to razor blades to crack pipes to liquor to ice cream sandwiches to “name brand” clothes and sneakers. You didn’t need a car to get there and everything was priced for “our” budgets. Big sales were scrawled all over the windows around the first of the month for government check recipients and again around the 15th of the month for unemployment check recipients. In between, the “regular prices” were exhorbitant as if to drive a hunger to binge and spend what little money the government or state deemed you worth. The alternative? The 16-year old boy with his pocket full of loot ready to buy up anything for sale to make up for a lifetime of not having by having way too much or having so much you don’t know what to do with it. Lbg knew the 16-year old boy. He lived in the cube on top of her family. As his family began to change and adapt to the conditions, my mother fervently held fast to her sense of self. It was frustrating and admirable. Her courage serves as a solid reminder even as she walks this earth today. You are not your surroundings, no matter what those surroundings might be. As her building got “hotter”, with police raids, drug traffic, gangs, and violence, her Mama reverted deeper into the music and literature she once dabbled in. It was nothing for her to come home from school and hear classical music filling their cube and her mother reading and old tattered book so intently she didn’t even acknowledge lbg’s entrance. The contents of her readings she’d gleefully recite around the cube. Some of the only glee-filled moments she can remember from her Mama. “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Macbeth ~ Shakespeare Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor – Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now – For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. Mother to Son ~ Langston Hughes LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock ~ T. S. Elliot [This is a woman’s trip and I need my stuff Somebody almost run off wid all my stuff and I was And I was standing there the whole time looking at Myself the whole time and it wasn’t a spirit that Took my stuff it was a man Whose ego walked around like a xx shadow Was a man ?? my innocent It was a lover I made to much room for Almost run off wid all my stuff and I want it back] >>Get actual text of the Lady in Green Monologue These are the words she can remember falling from her mother’s mouth to her ears. Her Mama’s favorites were T. S. Elliot, Faulkner, and Hughes. Who knew that early exposure would leave such a profound footprint on her budding personality. While the lbg longed to join the “lock down” parties, her Mama strictly forbade her from and never partied with the crowd so she wasn’t in attendance. Instead, while listening to the parties jumping upstairs she’d sit by her mama as she read the

literary greats and lbg read Nancy Drew, Cleary, or whatever books Mama could find in the 25 cent bin at the flea market. As a result, when the lbg went to school, teachers could immediately see her intellect and abilities soar past her project comrades and immediately pulled her out of the “fundamentals” group and into the advanced group and on to the Signet group. Despite the positive attention she received from the seeds of knowledge her mother was planted in her head, she longed for the approval and “coolness” of her project comrades. As she began to mature, she exerted equal force to her Mama’s pulling away from the riff raff in pushing herself into it. However, she could always understand the inherent value in being able and capable enough to get out. Something felt wrong about having to rely on someone else for your basic necessities. Standing in line for cheese and flour, waiting desperately at the mailbox, starving from the end of month stretch the welfare check and food stamps didn’t cover, for the next check to arrive. It was commonplace to find a resident sobbing on their cube porch because, as a result of some paperwork error or procedural transgression had their benefits – the check, food stamps, and insurance – were cut or suspended for a period of time. That feeling that her fate was in someone else’s hands grew into a determination to acquire what she wanted and needed on her own – by hook or by crook. Her first experience “by hook” hooked her. The other members of the old Barbie crew were quite adept at going into the immigrants’ stores and either by grouping up so that they couldn’t watch everybody or distracting the store owner with questions or erratic behavior coming out with all sorts of goodies: candy, lip gloss, barrettes, etc. Lbg’s fear of her Mama’s wrath always left her outside as the lookout because she was too afraid to steal anything. Her Mama was first and foremost a disciplinarian and any transgression whether real or perceived was met with ruthless force – and it was always swift and consistent. It wasn’t until she saw that New Edition tape in the music case at Mr. Woo’s grocery did her “by any means necessary” philosophy took form. With the Barbie crew at her side and the 16-yo as lookout, she slipped the New Edition cassette tape in her pocket and proceeded out the door. When Mr. Woo began yelling at her to put it back, she ran. Ran right past the 16-yo lookout and didn’t stop until she hit the corner and looked back. She saw her crew running toward her and the 16-yo stomping the store owner’s head into the concrete, kicking him in his gut, and finally picking up a bottle nearby and smashing it against his knees. “Now try to run somebody down for motherfuckin’ tape you dirty chink,” the 16-yo yelled as he took off running. Watching him run toward her with bloodied knuckles, sweat rolling down his cheeks, and that wild look in his eyes took her breath away. No man, male, boy had ever done anything to protect her. Her Mama was always the one who mitigated danger in their home. Her father was a formless name whom she wouldn’t know if he walked past her on the street. Her brothers weren’t exactly what one would describe as protectors, more protectees of their strong-willed Mama. But 16-yo had just saved her ass from juvenile and worse her

Mama’s wrath. “You okay?” he asked as soon as they were back in the safety of the bricks. [bagging?] At the age of 10, she was all ready starting to see boys as less disgusting beings and more like desirable companions. Her early advancement in this direction was no doubt fueled by her push toward conformity and hearing the shenanigans that went down in the “lock down.” Little did she know others were also taking notice of her development into project prey. The people in the gardens were mainly comprised of single parents on welfare, however, the back row of buildings, farthest from the riff raff, housed elderly, physically and mentally handicapped people. They had it worse of all, unable to protect themselves, they became targets for the drug hungry residents who knew that the third of the month was the best time to strike. Her Barbie comrade upstairs’ grandmother lived in those buildings, so did Mr. A. He was a younger fellow, she couldn’t understand why an apparently able bodied person like himself would chose to live here of all places. She didn’t know his sickness was on the inside. He always looked out for her and her Barbie comrade. When they’d make the trek to the back row to get money her mother had begged out of the grandma that she’d surely spend on drugs or so her BC could get a good meal because her Mama had sold the food stamps again or just to get away from the commotion, we’d always run into Mr. A. All the warnings her Mama had given her about strangers and caution didn’t seem to apply to Mr. A. After all, he lived in our tribe, bought us school supplies in September, gave us full size candy bars at Halloween, and slipped us paper money here and there year round. He even knew our birthdays and would give us a few extra dollars on our special day. Even though my Mama forbade me from BC’s house and told me to watch out for “nice” old men, I frequented both spots anytime I thought I could get away with it. A trip to the store for a soda easily became a trip to the backside row, to BC’s house to steal a soda out of her fridge and hang out for a few hours. A trip to the swimming pool always meant parading around the bricks with BC in her bathing suit with no intention of swimming but trying to push further into the brick social structure. The way their cube was situated her mother couldn’t see the sprawling doom behind their building, so she got away with what she could, when she could. “Where does your Mama think you are now?” Mr. A would often ask jokingly. She’d girlishly rattle off the latest lie she’d told Mama to get out of the house. During a daytime party at her “lock down” at one of her Mama’s friends’ cubes, she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sitting in BC’s tiny basement floor bedroom, they tested out the lip gloss shades they’d snatched out of the Peoples drug store on the corner. When they heard the shouting, it didn’t phase them. It was normal for the revelers to raise their voices, verbally battling for superiority or disputing the outcome of a card game or sports match. It would be loud for awhile and then die down. The smells of the drugs they smoked, the liquor they drank, the incessant sound of sniffing from her Mama’s bedroom, was nice for

lbg to visit but she didn’t want to live there. The crowded apartment was always suffocating and she always appreciated her cube a little bit more when she returned from BC’s cube. But on this day the shouting continued and it got louder. They stopped and listened. They could make out that somebody was mad about some money and that was always a bad sign. The room outside was hushed as the wronged party shouted about someone in that room having stolen his wallet and that no one was leaving until he got it back. And then, the all too familiar pop. It was one she’d never heard so close to her. While it was normal to hear the sounds of gunfire in the streets, they were always in the streets, never in the same cube with her. Never close enough to actually pose a threat. At the first pop bodies started pouring into her room in the back corner of the cube. Grown folks were pushing and knocking their little bodies to the floor trying to find cover from the popping sounds. The two terrified little girls both saw their salvation at the same time as their eyes fell on the cracked open window just above their heads. In the midst of the commotion, BC methodically pushed out the screen and pushed the window up enough for them to wiggle out. BC made sure lbg got out first and she slid out behind her. Laying on the ground in front of the window they struggle to catch their breath. They didn’t even hear the footsteps coming out of the building until they heard the window break against the shots aimed at the window as the wronged man wildly waving the gun ran out of sight. They threw themselves into the thorny rose bushes to provide much needed cover. Unable to run to the comfort of my Mama and explain that I had been at BC’s and a shooting popped off, both of us too terrified to go back into BC’s cube, we headed for Mr. A’s. He gave us each a shot of vodka named, “something that’ll calm you down.” Lbg, unfamiliar with drinking, sipped at the shot glass as if it were tea at a tea party. It smelled disgusting to lbg and reminded her of how BC’s mother always smelled in the mornings. Meanwhile, BC, all too familiar with drinking, took it straight to the head. The sun was starting to set and thanks to “something that’ll calm you down,” lbg was certainly relaxed but knew she’d better be over the threshold before the street lights came on. “I gotta go or Mama’s gonna kill me,” lbg announced. “I’ll walk you home on the way,” she added. “Oh, she’s fine,” said Mr. A. “I’ll take good care of her and make sure she gets home. I’m sure the cops and all are still sniffing around.” And with that lbg left her friend to a predator. BC stayed there. Lbg had to go home. She wasn’t supposed to be at BC’s in the first place and she would certainly earn her death if she was found in this grown man’s apartment Mama had all ready warned her about. She couldn’t put her finger on the specific changes, but after that day, BC was different. Lbg thought it was because of the shooting. Final count was three dead, including her uncle, and six wounded, including BC’s Mama. When lbg arrived home, her Mama met with open arms. Hearing the shots, Mama was terrified that her baby girl was hurt or hit. After that incident, B was sent to live with her grandma on the

back row. BC’s Mama suffered a wound to her shoulder which prevented her from taking care of her daughter but not from keeping the parties going. The 16-yo stayed to take care of his Mama and stay closer to his customer base. As a result, BC and I spent more and more time with Mr. A and eventually his cube became a popular hangout spot for directionless kids. He’d organize the kids into teams and give us opportunities to play “real” sports, had legit cable, and friendly, welcoming demeanor. He always talked them up, made them feel special, he knew which kids weren’t eating and which kids were being mistreated and he pulled them under his wing. He was popular with all the residents, even the junkies whose kids he regularly fed. My mom even praised him for being so good with the neighborhood kids and not preaching to their mothers about their lifestyles. “These people come up in here and preach to them tramps all day and all night about what a bad life they living, they don’t wanna hear that shit. They’ll be getting high until they make the decision in their soul to stop. Mr. A don’t waste his time with that foolishness, he makes sure them kids eat and goes on about his business,” Mama had said. And that was as close to an endorse as anyone in the bricks would get from Mama. He was so popular, in fact, that he was hired by the housing authority as a maintenance man, with a shiny master key to every apartment in the complex. He was no doubt included in the statistic of those who’d found gainful employment because of coming to Rosewood Gardens. It was around this time, lbg’s Mama had finally found a job that she could get to without scraping up money for bus fare or needing a car and paid reasonably well. Her Mama was a proud woman and balked at the thought of going out to work for minimum wage, raged at the audacity that these crackers would think she’d lower herself to work manual labor, and was adamant about only working at the jobs she wanted to work. So when she applied at the local computer plant, everyone laughed. They laughed right up until her first day at work at the computer factory. Lbg was so proud of her Mama with the big shot factory job which more than trumped the kitchen help, ass wipers, and day labor jobs prevalent in the brick population. The only catch? The job was a second shift position. So, lbg became a latch-key kid. She was considerably younger than her brothers. One spent only a few months in the Gardens before shipping off with the Navy and her other brother finished his senior year of high school from the Garden and enlisted in the Army. This left just lbg and her Mama in the apartment. Her Mama gave her specific instructions as a latch key kid, the first of which was “Come straight off the bus, get in the house and lock the door, walk through the house and check that all the windows are locked and don’t open that door for anybody until I come home.” And, that’s exactly what lbg did. She didn’t fall into BC’s pleas to let her come over until her Mama came home from work or to go hang out at Mr. A’s or walk to the corner store for candy, even if BC was buying or stealing as the case may be. She wanted to make her Mama proud and trust that she wasn’t like the brick set even though she longed to run with them.

And she was doing so well with her newfound responsibility. She looked forward to her afternoons alone watching whatever she wanted to on TV, reading SE Hinton books, and trying on her Mama’s clothes, shoes, and makeup. It wasn’t that she felt alone as she could still hear the footsteps and conversations of the residents on all sides of her, but that she had privacy to explore on her own without her Mama’s watchful eyes or the direction of BC or the formality of school. After school she’d come home and tinker with her brother’s record player and the hundreds of records he left in his room when he left home. She learned all the words to Rapper’s Delight, Heart of Glass, and True. She’d sit for hours as the sun faded into night listening to the radio, finger ready on record making mix tapes. She was doing so well. Until the banging at the door one day. She assumed it was BC with some half-baked scheme to get her out of the house. But it wasn’t. It was Mr. A. Following her Mama’s orders, she rolled back over on the floor and found her place in the book she was reading. So, she really didn’t know how to react when she heard a key in the door and flew opened. Her head peeked over the sofa, he saw her right away. “Well, I’m sorry little misses. I didn’t know anyone was here, no body answered,” Mr. A innocently shared. “It’s okay. Mama told me not to answer the door for anybody,” she said. “Good advice. I’m just gonna go change this filter and be outta your hair,” he said heading down the hall. She rolled back to her book until she hit his foot as she turned the page. His foot was right at the edge of the page as he looked down at her. Squatting down in front of her, “You know you’re a pretty little girl. Way prettier than all these other girls around here. I can see you getting out of here and being rich and famous,” he said relaxing his squat to Indian-legged perch directly in front of her. Stunned, she didn’t know what to say. No one had ever called her pretty, she’d heard smart, articulate, she’d even once heard her aunt say to her, “You’d be pretty if you weren’t so black.” That’s as close to pretty as she’d gotten in her decade on earth. “Thank you” was all she could muster without even looking up from her book. He snatched the book away from her tossed it across the room. “Did you hear what I said? I was trying to give your nasty ass a compliment and you can’t even look me in the eye when you talk to me?” she’d never heard Mr. A raise his voice so she shrank back into the corner the way she did when her Mama was about to beat her. He lunged at her, catching her by her throat, “You look me in my fucking eyes, bitch, you hear me?” “Yes, sir,” she was crying now. She was sorry, she didn’t know it was that important to him or she would’ve looked him in the eyes. “What the fuck are you crying about? What do you think I’m gonna do something to ya? Is that it? You weren’t worried about them little boys I saw you talking to when you got off the bus today hurting you.”

“No, no I know you won’t hurt me.” “That’s right, I won’t. I wanna be your friend and teach you things and help you become a better woman,” he traced her neck with the forefinger of his other hand. Around her shoulders and to the bumps that formed on her chest. “Haven’t I always helped you out with stuff. Remember that folder I got you for school, you’re favorite color, red, I fixed up that bike and gave it to you.” His words were garbled in her ears as her mind was focused on his hands on a bathing suit area. He went on recounting all the “favors” he’d done for her and her family and how absurd it was for her to imagine that he wanted anything but the very best for her. As he talked his hands moved down her body. “And if life teaches you nothing else, it’s not to look a gift horse in the mouth, right. When somebody’s trying to help you, let them,” he said as his hand rested in her crotch. “You gonna look this gift horse in the mouth little misses?” he said removing his hand from her neck and reaching into his pants and exposing his bathing suit area to her. She’d never seen a real one. The closest she’d ever come was seeing a few in the Polaroids they’d found under BC’s Mama’s bed of BC’s Mama in various degrees of sexual involvement. So, she cut and ran toward the door. In one motion, he threw a hammer in her direction and caught her ankle throwing her to the floor face first with a piece of the handcrafted antique lamp that belonged to her great grandmother falling to the floor upon impact with the hammer. At that moment, she didn’t know whether to be more afraid of her Mama discovering her broken heirloom or the man she thought was safe touching her bathing suit area. At least she could try to turn the lamp so the chip wasn’t immediately apparent. The latter issue was far more pressing. “I can’t believe you’re acting like this, I’d hate to tell your Mama about those little boys and how you were showing them your stuff.” “I didn’t,” she struggled to shake the tears from her eyes so she could she and iron tight grip he now had on her arms tightening behind her back while she lay there on her stomach helpless. He swung her to her back with her arms and sat on top of her. She yelled but the sound of the apartment upstairs drown her out and got her knocked upside the head by the beast on top of her. “I can kill you or you can calm the fuck down,” he said with his hand firmly placed over her mouth, his hands so big and her face so small that the fingers that lay over her lips impeded nose breathing. She thought she was going to suffocate and die. So, she stopped squirming and stopped screaming but she couldn’t stop crying. The idea that he would do anything to make her cry made him angry, “What are you crying for? You’re going to like this, I promise, it’ll feel so good,” he said as he slipped that big ugly thing in her. And it didn’t feel good and she didn’t love it but she endured it because she didn’t want to make him angry. He violated the lbg girl in multiple ways before putting his big ugly thing away. He cradled her face on his way out, “I know it hurts a little the first time. But you’ll thank me latter. Women need to know how to do those things and you’re lucky I’m here to teach you. But if you tell anybody, BC, your Mama, anybody around here

about this,” his eyes went glassy. She could see the rage building up. He picked up his hammer from the table beside the now chipped antique lamp. As he raised his hammer and slammed it through the lamp breaking it into tiny pieces, “You’ll regret it. I promise you, you’ll regret it.” He walked out and slammed the door. She sat in a pool of blood on the cold linonleum living room floor staring at the broken lamp. It was easier to focus on fixing the shards of broken glass than to process what had just happened. Frantically, she picked up the shards. In such a rush to clean it all up, she cut her fingers multiple times and by the time she stood in the mirror naked and desperate for a shower, she was a blood soaked mess. She couldn’t tell the bloody finger prints on her face from the blood that leaked from her thighs. She’d scrubbed up all of her blood from the floor and put all the furniture back just as it was. But she knew she had to get it all off the blood off before she could start to forget it ever happened. Mama usually came home after she was asleep, around 11:30ish. A shower would get it off, she thought. Her mind wasn’t just trying to get off the blood but get off the disgusting smell of his sweat, the brutality in his voice, and the fear in her heart. She ran a steaming hot tub of water and filled with her mother’s coveted sweet smelling Neutrogena bubble bath. There she sat for hours rocking back and forth listening to her mix tapes as the tears persisted from her eyes into the bath water. She couldn’t hide the broken lamp but she could hide the horror behind what happened that day. So, she wrote her Mama a long note apologizing profusely for accidently breaking the lamp by bumping into the table and swore she’d do anything in the world to make it right and left it where the lamp once sat. It didn’t save her from big brownie, Mama’s discipline belt. The stinging lashes jolted her out of bed that night and left marks on her dark brown skin for days after. The belt marks faded far sooner than the marks that day left on her inside. It took her Mama a few days to let the anger over the lamp go and lbg was punished with extra chores. It took Mr. A a few weeks before sticking his master key in her cube door again. What she had hoped and actually prayed to God for the first and last time in her life to never happen again, was happening again. The changes she’d seen in BC were taking her over too. She didn’t want to be touched and jumped at loud noises. Like BC, she too began to veer toward clothing and experiment with makeup to show off more of the one thing men wanted from her. After all, that was the only attention she’d ever gotten from a man so that part of her, her breasts, ass, and coochie, must be her only value to men. Unlike BC, lbg’s Mama put a firm foot down on her advertising aspiration and began reigning her in more than ever before. The master key visits persisted for over two years. Over time, she learned to accept it, endure it, and bathe it away. It wasn’t until lbg began visiting her friend Jennifer

was she able to talk to anyone about Mr. A. Because BC and the other girls in the Barbie clique so idolized Mr. A, lbg didn’t dare share what an animal he was with them, they’d hate her for saying anything bad about him or worse, be jealous because of the attention she was getting from him. Outside of that social support, school offered no time to really delve into anything but the generalities of how they lived. Her Signet friends rarely came to school talking about what they ate for dinner and she never opened up to the sexual abuse endured on a varying scale from daily to weekly visits. Everyday the door knob didn’t turn until her Mama came home was a triumph and every day that it did was a defeat. The problem was she had no control over either. She manifested her need for control in her studies. School became they only safe haven from the turning door knob and her grades the only thing that made her feel normal. A failing grade struck at the deepest feelings of inadequacy and served as rationale for her situation. Her brain talk would see an F on a test and tell her, “See that’s why you have to do that nasty stuff and live in that nasty place, because you’re a failure. Loser, you’re just like BC’s mama.” On the other hand, her brain would look at an A, and say, “See, you’re going to be okay. It’s just a matter of time before you can get out of the Gardens, away from Mr. A, and be happy.” The A’s gave her hope. It was that unyielding drive for perfection that solidified her friendship with Twiggy. When they had class projects, they always went all out, always got 100s on their spelling test, and always spent recess in the library. When lbg’s Mama finally acquired pajamas, slippers, and a proper overnight bag so she could spend the night at Twiggy’s house, lbg was overjoyed. Lbg hadn’t spent a night away from her Mama ever, and had never even seen a house as grandiose as Twiggy described much less slept in it as a guest. The warm welcome from her mother was followed by an attempted hug from her father that she inappropriately and impulsively pushed away from. Lbg stood in the kitchen of Twiggy’s house. It was the size of her family’s entire cube. The center isle was the size of their master bathroom. Only on TV shows like Dallas and Dynasty had she seem such opulence. Twigg. y’s room was right out of a princess’ dream book, filled with every toy you could imagine. She slept on a pink canopy water bed and had a small fridge in the corner with tea set replete with table chairs and a real china tea seat. In the wee hours of the morning after the charge of hanging out with your best bud with no classes or teachers to impede our female bonding, we laid on her waterbed watching the sky from the huge bay window facing us. We both had a crush on the artsy-fartsy kid who drew cool, funny pictures of the teachers and got to and from school on his prized skateboard. Twiggy, with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and purity had a way better chance than I did. No one would think of doing the nasty things to Twiggy that Mr. A had done to her. Besides, lbg was sure that boys could see the nastiness in her and had given up hope that any boy her age would find her desirable. Twiggy revealed to lbg that Artsy had asked her to the

school dance and she was nervous. “What if he wants to kiss me? Or, like do it” Twiggy worried out loud. Kissing was disgusting, lbg thought, doing it was worse. But, she felt compelled to calm her friends apprehension. “There’s nothing to it. Just keep your eyes closed,” lbg advised. “You’ve kissed a boy before? You’ve done it?” Twiggy asked surprised. “I’ve known you since third grade and you kissed a boy and didn’t tell me?” “It was nothing, I’m just saying for you, just don’t be nervous.” Lbg tried to sidestep the hole she’d opened up. “No way, girl, tell me who was it?” Twiggy pushed. “No one you know, does it matter?” lbg wanted to change the subject. Her mind went blank as her lips searched for an appropriate way to turn the conversation. She didn’t want mire her time in paradise with thoughts of hell. “I don’t care if I know him or not, tell me how it happened, what it felt like, everything,” Twiggy sat up at attention waiting for details. “Twiggy, it’s not, like, I don’t know, it’s not like you and Artsy.” Lbg hedged. The words felt natural. Surely, she could trust Twiggy and after two years of enduring Mr. A’s visits, she needed someone to open up to. “What do you mean? What are me and Artsy? I don’t get it.” She was so naïve. “I mean, he’s like my boyfriend but he’s not.” Lbg hoped that would be enough to put it to rest. “Why isn’t he? You kissed him, right? Was he a bad kisser? Are you a bad kisser? Did you go all the way, really?” she didn’t know enough to stop asking questions. “Twiggy, he’s a grown up. He’s like a friend and he helps us out and sometimes we kiss and stuff.” “He’s a grown up?” her face frowned up the way a face contorts when a fart is discovered in the room. “Yes, but he’s a really nice guy. He helps all the kids in the neighborhood.” Lbg defended her perpetrator. She didn’t want Twiggy to think there was anything wrong. “He’s always real nice and very gentle,” She lied as the absurdity of a grown man having sex with an 11 year old could make sense in any fashion. “It’s going to hurt really bad the first time but after that it’s not so bad.” Twiggy stopped pushing as lbg divulged more details. Her last words to lbg that night after lbg swore her to ultimate secrecy, were, “Don’t worry, I know what to do.” Twiggy’s internal voice told her this wasn’t right. What transpired from there would create a permanent riff

in lbg’s relationship with Mama and leave her striving for her Mama’s approval and affection and recognition for the rest of her life. A few weeks later, lbg arrived at the safe haven one morning ready to learn and was immediately escorted to the principal’s office. The apologetic look on Twiggy’s face should’ve served as a clue. She thought she was in trouble or maybe was being considered for the new magnet school that was about to open up whose participants were being handpicked from the city schools. But it was none of those things. It was another skinny white lady, accompanied by a skinny black lady, turning her life around again. They opened up with friendly conversation and offered her juice and cookies. It was the end of the month and with food scarce at home, she looked forward to the hot school lunches sustenance. While she basked in the delight of an extra cup of juice and three whole cookies, she wondered if she’d be out of here in time to present her science project in third period. “You’re a beautiful girl,” the skinny black lady said, looking her in her eyes. From that moment forward, she felt discomfort and disdain whenever someone commented on her looks. “If someone is hurting you, you deserve to be safe, you know that, right?” she continued. “Yeah,” lbg was still enthralled with the juice and cookies. “Do you have any boyfriends?” the skinny white lady asked condescendingly. That’s when lbg looked up from her last cookie. Examining the badges the ladies wore, she deduced they were from social services. She replayed her conversation with Twiggy immediately and connected that to the apologetic look in homeroom. “Do you?” the skinny white lady leaned in. The skinny black lady just stared at me with pity in her eyes. She looked down at the table and whispered, “No.” The skinny white lady scribbled something in her paper. The skinny black lady furiously wrote something in her notepad. The skin on lbg’s lips was dry, even after a full cup of juice, her mouth suddenly became desert dry. The aridity of her lips gave her something to focus on as the ladies continued questioning her. She pulled off layer after layer of skin as she pushed, “No”s and “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”s from her lips. “We have a report that something is going on lbg,” the skinny black lady reached out to touch her and lbg pulled away inappropriately and instinctively. “We only want to help. Are you afraid of someone? We won’t tell anybody, we just want to keep you safe.” The skinny black lady was winning her trust. “I don’t want to upset my Mama or my family,” lbg said low.

“Does your Mama know about your boyfriend?” the skinny black lady asked. “No, and she would be so mad. So, please can I go back to class. I have a science project third period.” She thought if she could convince the ladies that there was no danger here that they would leave. Her reassurances wound up digging her deeper in the hole. “So, let get this straight, you have a boyfriend your mother doesn’t know about?” the skinny white lady looked over her glasses at her like she was trash. “Yes,” she gritted her teeth. “And, it’s none of your business. Can I go?” lbg stood up. “Yes, yes honey in a minute, I promise.” The skinny black lady chimed in. “Tell me about your boyfriend, is he nice to you? We just want to make sure your safe. Sit down and talk to me.” The skinny black lady offered her the chair beside her, her arm outstretched. Lbg was afraid if she told too much more she might cry and then these chicks might call her Mama. So she spun the story like a fairy tale with Mr. A cast as her prince who helped her and loved her and made love to her. Because he was so good to her, she rationalized, these ladies would whisk her back off to class and wish her good luck. “So, you do these things with him because you want to? Has he ever hurt you to get you to do these things?” the skinny black lady asked her brow more wrinkled and filled with concern than before. “Yes, so can I go now?” she had a kick-ass science project she’d worked on for months. She couldn’t wait to hear the praise her science teacher would shower on her upon her presentation, complete with the three panel presentation board she bought at the corner store with money Mr. A had thrown at her when he deemed she was getting better at making him happy. The walls started to close in when the two white men in suits entered the room. They filled the room and sucked up all the air. The skinny black lady, “Lbg, this is Detective ? and Detective &, they want to hear about your boyfriend.” That’s when lbg realized what was about to happen. What had been her own cross to bear, her secret that she’d developed coping mechanisms and rituals around, this disgusting part of herself was about to be exposed to everyone that mattered to her. Teachers, classmates, the Barbie crew, and worst of all her Mama. “Can you describe your boyfriend?” one of the suited men said. “No, there is no boyfriend. It was all a lie. I don’t know why you’re here.” She shouted.

“She’s protecting him, I have detailed notes, here. She shoved her notepad toward the police officer. “Are you saying everything you just told me was a lie?” the skinny black woman asked her. “I just wanna go, please, my Mama’s gonna kill me and I don’t want a C in science, please can I go?” From there,

Mama seemed less worried and more content. Her fears for my ultimate demise at the hands “of some boy” were beginning to bubble up but her attention and focus was on the strange habits of my older brothers. I saw nothing wrong with

I felt more like the people I saw on TV when a family was represented.

Traded for privacy