by Sapphire
learnin lot: to too two. three diffrent 2 words.
Each one is diffrent different. Four for fore. Three four words.
Stori
Ms Rain tell me to koncentrate on my story.
When I kft can not spell a word Ms Rain tell me sound out firs lettr c
and draw a lin. Thas
concentrate. Latrer she will fill in rite spelling for me.
But my spelling is impruv. Way way improve.
Ms Rain say I seem dpress deprssjoji is she say angrer turn in.
Jermaine say not necessarily rally (Whutevr Ms Rain say Jermaine don agree)
Rite write write more she say talk more say gte get V2 hos staf to get babee sitter xtra hr so I can go to meatings, movie.
You no I never (good spell) bin a movie, cep vidios on Mama’s VCR. I never bin chuc. Rhonda goe ALL the time. Want take me an Ms Rain. She want take hole skool sins she bin savd.
For
a monf it bin like this. I feel daze.
Ms Rain see it
say you not same girl i kno.
is tru. I am a difrent
persn
anybuddy wood be don’t u think?
dont
u
think.
Ms Rain
say go back back back
far
you
can rember. what four? I say
whut i got to rmember i nevr dun forgit mama daddy scool
Y why go thru ALL (i like that word) DAT ALL
DAT ALL DAT SHIT But Ms Rain
worred worryed worried about mi. Thas nice sumebuddy care but I don want to worri her. She sen note 2way hous for me to cum scool Vi hr erly to write. And go downtown wif Rhonda for insect talk grup and chuc. I think I AM
MAD. ANGERREEY angerry very mi life not good
i got dizeez. Ms Rain say NOT dizeez I say whut is it then. I Talk angr to Ms Rain she say u notice yr spelin change wen yu hav feelins not tal bout in book she say i am nt dyslx mine that say its emoshunal disturb lets talk bout it I was fine til HIV thing
she say i still fine
but prblm not jus HIV it mama Dady
BUT I was gon dem
I escap dem like Harriet
Ms Ran say we can nt escap the pass.
the way free is hard
look Harriet H-A-R-R-I-E-T
i pratise her name.
Rita say keep tinkin whut you got to bee thankfill for
Jermaine (she bes writer in skool) say semicoln no coin
go befour list
i gt two bee thankfill four:
Ms Rain
ocool school
girlz in class
Abdul
Toosday Rita take me VILLAG
Sat we go muzeum
sun day chuch
MONDY we gonna read Harriet T. book I feel btretter L, j glad I write my book Precious
3/6/89
Wat it be like to bee in luv. I wondr this al the time ALL time all the time.
I kno sex sex so much. I kno bout sex alot a lot wht it be like to hav a fren, thas a guy I mean.
I GOT frens.
I don’t sho Ms Rain everything in my book no mor. she mi techer Don want her kno if I rite about SEX if I have sex wif a kute coot boy thas my own age I wil .
Rita got a man. Rhonda God. Ms Rain a fren.
Jermaine say hole worl her lovr.
3/8/89
My favrt thing to take Abdul down to nursery at breakfus
then
not eat breakfus. n that giv me time to
wallk throo Harlem in
mornin to school
mostly pepul goin
to work
faces faces
iron brown
black glas
tears
not jazzee
Harlem
downtwn sky opn blu legs for
sun.
I hit 116th n sometimes I walk up Madison and go aroun the park, the park nevr clean but green.
Pas bafhouse. Bafhouse where faggits meet nekkid fuck each other. I wondr wat that be like, trees, after park liberry on 124th. I got libry card.
Nex door libry is none house. Nones live ther serve god don fuck. Rhonda say you go in basement where nones live is babee bones. Rita say das a lie. She Kathlic. I say God. Sho me god. Keep going down 124th vaykent lot.
i stop. Gon rite bout vaykent lot. uuuuuuugh dog shit dog shit
crummel up briks
steell fence
lifes of trash
cancer yr eye
multiply
ugliness
greazee shit
garbage cans, rottin
cloze PAMPER filthee
dope addicks
pile up
flow ovr
uglee
I HATE
HATE
UGLY
turn from vaykent lot n is vaykent pepul with kraters like what u see wen you look at spots on the moon, wen you see moon on space movies is holes on it, kraters. thas on dope addicts arms
— kraters. Dese not crack addicts like on one-two-six. Dese people on 1-2-4 is HAIRRUN
shuters. There eyez is like far away space ships, they don see you, only smell pepul go buy for money. They money dogs. If they sniff money they will try to take it. I guess. Thas whut I always here. I nevr reely had a dope addict hurt me. We hate dope addicts. We, me, norml pepul. I git confuse how i git wif dope addicts. How whut they got I got. I don unnerstan DOPE. Whut I see do not look like fun. it look SAD. It look teef fall out. they have gums not teef, talk funny, walk stupid. WHY? If I stay on 124th to 7th Ave more vaykent lot. Maybee pass nigger wif needle in his arm noddin in the wind. Drops of blood drip down, maybe pass sex sicko wif peniss out, flashlite eyes shine sperms on you. Its a block like a fog wif worms, the pepul worms. I hate em.
UGLY.
But confuse.
Across from bar on Lenox btween 124 n 125 is only zerox shop in Harlm. blak sister and dater own it. when zerox at school break down I cum there git zerox. in shop she got books, cards, blak stuff” I hardley ever have money to buy stuff.
I DIE for I steel. Nver will Precious Jones steel (no more) or shute dope.
Thas whut tv sho, niggers steel shute dope steel shute dope harlm crime crime. On top bar is Diane Mclntyre’s skool. I wood hav liked to go to dancin scool when I was young. Its too late now.
I’m eighteen. An Abdul a boy. Boyz don go Only faggit boyz. I don want Abdul to be faggit or dope addict
But what I confuse about is this. Itz so uglee dope addicks—dey teef, dey underwater walkin, steelin. Spred AIDS an heptietis.
But Rita was one of dese pepul an she is GOOD.Iluvher.
When I get to school early sometimes I just sit in front part on the black plastic couch that need tape where it cut and the yellow foam pads show through. School start at 9 o’clock. The secretary get here at 8:00 a.m. I don’ get here before that
‘cause the door locked and I would have to wait in the lobby downstairs. Which I don’t like.
Our room is nice. Nicer since we have one day where we come in “raggedy” and bring our own cleaning stuff ‘n posters, pictures, ‘n plants from home ‘n fix up our room. Ms Rain say bring something of YOU! I bring picture of Abdul and plant from Woolworth on 125th Street. It growed.
Leaves big. Ms Rain done changed its pot three times.
Ms Rain get here ‘bout 8:15 or so, usually right behind or in front of Rita or Rhonda. They bofe erly birds too. Ms Rain jus’ give whoever here the keys from her purse to open up our classroom while she do whatever she do—fix coffee, git books from supply room—stuff like that. By 8:30
a.m. early birds good to go! Room quiet sunny.
We just open our notebook, Ms Rain usually say something like, Y)u got 10 or 15 minutes ‘fore the
“rabble” get here. Yeah, I don’t know exactly what is the rabble. She jus’ joking for Jermaine and them who hit the door roun’ 9:05 a.m. Always a little late,
always complaining ‘bout something—
the weather, train, what the newspaper say.
Me, I, just look at the sun coming in through the front window. Pretty soon it move around and come in through the side window. I like the routine of school, the dream of school. I wonder where I be if I had been learning all those years I sit at I.S. 146. Favorite book?
Maybe it’s our book, the big book with all our stories in it. Not mine yet. I’m just putting stuff in my journal now.
Telling time is easy. Fractions, percents, multiplying, dividing is EASY. Why no one never taught me these things before. Rita say, All people with HIV or AIDS is innocent victims; it’s a disease, not a “good,” a “bad.” You know what she mean? Well, thas good ‘cause I don’t. I cannot see how I am the same as a white faggit or crack addict. Rita kiss my forehead, hold each my cheeks with her hands, look me in my eyes,
“Negra,” she say, her eyes big like babies’, black black eyes. “You don’t see now but will. You will.”
I don’t know how I will, I don’t even know what she’s talkin’ about. She’s talking about Life, Ms Rain say. Well, I don’t know what life is all about either. I know I’m eighteen, magic number. And my reading score is 2.8. I ask Ms Rain what that mean. She say it’s a number! And can’t no numbers measure how far I done come in jus’
two years. She say forget about the numbers and just keep working. The author has a message and the reader’s job is to decode that message as thoroughly as possible. A good reader is like a detective, she say, looking for clues in the text. A good reader is like you Precious, she say.
Passionate! Passionately involved with whut they are reading. Don’t worry about numbers and fill in the blank, just read and write!
I’m changing. Things I don’t care about no more: if boyzlove me extensions new clozes what I care about is:
STAYING HEALTHY
sex ( )
notebook, writing poems
Ms Rain say don’t always rhyme, stretch for words to fall like drops of rain, snowflakes—did you know no two snowflakes is alike? Have you ever seen a snowflake? I haven’t! All I seen is gobs of dirty gray shit. You mean to tell me that nasty stuff is made of snowy flakes. I don’t believe it.
Each day is different. All the days is gobbed together to make a year, all the years gobbed together to make a life. I have a secret. Secret is, I mean I think Rita and Ms Rain halfway know but they too nice to get any further in my business than I want them in. I mean I have kids.
But I never have a guy, you know like that. It never usta be on my mind. All I want before is Daddy get the fuck off me! But now I think about that, you know, that being fucking a cute boy. I think about that and I think about being a poet or rapper or an artist even. It’s this guy on one-two-five, Franco, he done painted pictures on the steel gates that’s over almos’ all the store windows. At night you walk down and each one is painted different. I like that better than museum.
It’s so many different ways to walk the few blocks home. Turn a corner and you see all different.
Pass 116th ‘n Lenox, more abandoned land, buildings falling down. How it git so ugly is people throw trash all in it. City don’t pick it up; dogs doo doo. Peoples wif no barroom piss ‘n shit. Ugliness grow multiplied by ten. Keep walkin’ down Lenox to one-twelve you pass projects. I never did live in projects. I live in 444
Lenox Avenue almost all my life. Where I live before that house I don’t know, maybe wif my grandmother.
Wonder about Mama sometimes. Wonder about Carl more. Carl Kenwood Jones. I got session wif counselor today. Last week we try to figure out how long I been infected. People at retard place say Lil Mongo don’t got it. She say that could mean Daddy get AIDS pretty fast from time he first infected to time he die? ‘Cause if Lil Mongo don’t got it maybe he didn’t have it 1983 when she born. Then after she born he go away a long time. So maybe I get it eighty-six, eighty-seven?
Counselor say, I’m on top now. I’m young, is got no disease and stuff, not no drug addict. I could live a long time, she say. I ask her what’s a long time. She don’t say.
I think some of the girls at Advancement House know I am … am positive. I mean wifout trying I know some of they bizness. They never was too friendly; since Mama come wif her news, they even less friendly. But who cares? I’m not tight wif these girls in the house. These bitches got problems, come in room and steal shit. I know I ain’ the only one that got it, even though that’s how it feels. But I’m probably the only one get it from they daddy. Counselor, Ms Weiss, say she try to find out as much about Daddy for me as she can.
How much I want to know? And for what? I tell counselor I can’t talk about Daddy now. My clit swell up I think Daddy. Daddy sick me, disgust me, but still he sex me up. I nawshus in my stomach but hot tight in my twat and I think I want it back, the smell of the bedroom, the hurt—
he slap my face till it sting and my ears sing separate songs from each other, call me names, pump my pussy in out in out in out awww I come.
He bite me hard. A hump! He slam his hips into me HARD. I scream pain he come. He slap my thighs like cowboys do horses on TV. Shiver.
Orgasm in me, his body shaking, grab me, call me Fat Mama, Big Hole! You LOVE it! Say you love it! I wanna say I DON’T. I wanna say I’m a chile. But my pussy popping like grease in frying pan. He slam in me again. His dick soft. He start sucking my tittie.
I wait for him get off me. Lay there stare at wall till wall is a movie, Wizard ofOz, I can make that one play anytime. Michael Jackson, scarecrow.
Then my body take me over again, like shocks after earthquake, shiver me, I come again. My body not mine, I hate it coming.
Afterward I go bafroom. I smear shit on my face.
Feel good. Don’t know why but it do. I never tell nobody about that before. But I would do that. If I go to insect support group what will I hear from other girls. I bite my fingernails till they look like disease, pull strips of my skin away. Get Daddy’s razor out cabinet. Cut cut cut arm wrist, not trying to die, trying to plug myself back in. I am a TV set wif no picture. I am broke wif no mind. No past or present time. Only the movies of being someone else. Someone not fat, dark skin, short hair, someone not fucked. A pink virgin girl. A girl like Janet Jackson, a sexy girl don’t no one get to fuck. A girl for value. A girl wif little titties whose self is luvlee just Luv-Vell-LEE!
I hate myself when I think Carl Kenwood Jones.
Hate wif a capital letter. Counselor say,
“Memories.” How is something a memory if you never forgit? But I push it to the corner of my brain.
I exhausted, I mean wipe out! What kinda chile gotta think about a daddy like I do? But I’m not a chile. I’m a mother of a chile myself.
In school we had to memorize a poem like the rappers do. And say it in front the class.
Everybody do real short poems except me and Jermaine. She do poem by lady name Pat Parker. I get up to do my poem, it’s by Langston Hughes, I dedicate it to Abdul. Introduce myself to the class (even though everybody know me). I say my name is Precious Jones and this poem is for my baby son, Abdul Jamal Louis Jones. Then I let loose:
Mother to Son
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.
And after I finish everyone goin’, Yeah! Yeah!
Shoutin’, Go Precious! And clapping and clapping and clapping. I felt very good.
Ms Rain say write our fantasy of ourselves. How we would be if life was perfect. I tell you one thing right now, I would be light skinned, thereby treated right and loved by boyz. Light even more important than being skinny; you see them light-skinned girls that’s big an’ fat, they got boyfriends. Boyz overlook a lot to be wif a white girl or yellow girl, especially if it’s a boy that’s dark skin wif big lips or nose, he will go APE over yellow girl. So that’s my first fantasy, is get light.
Then I get hair. Swing job, you know like I do with my extensions, but this time it be my own hair, permanently.
Then, this part is hard to say, because so much of my heart is love for Abdul. But I be a girl or woman—yeah girl, ‘cause I would still be a girl now if I hadn’t had no kids. I would be a virgin like Michael Jackson, like Madonna. I would be a different Precious Jones. My bress not be big, my bra be little ‘n pink like fashion girl. My body be like Whitney. I would be thighs not big etc etc.
I would be tight pussy girl no stretch marks and torn pussy from babies’s head bust me open.
That HURT. Hours hours push push push! Then he out, beautiful. Jus’ a beautiful baby. But I’m not. I’m eighteen years old. One time boy come to Advancement House to see girlfriend, he think I’m somebody’s mother. That bother me.
So there if I have a fantasy it be how I look. Ms Rain say I am beautiful like I am. Where? How?
To who? To not have no kids mean I woulda had a different life. Counselor ask me one time is it the kids or is it I get raped to have ‘em. Bofe;
‘cause even if I not raped, who want a baby at twelve! Thas how old I was when I had Little Mongo.
What is a normal life? A life where you not
‘shamed of your mother. Where your friends come over after school and watch TV and do homework. Where your mother is normal looking and don’t hit you over the head wif iron skillet. I would wish for in my fantasy a second chance.
Since my first chance go to Mama and Daddy.
Ms Rain always saying write remember write remember. Counselor say talk about it, talk about it— the PAST. What about NOW At least wif school I am gettin’ ready for my future (which to me is right now).
