by Sapphire
My father honestly I don’t remember him so much even though I know he was there everyday. I know he is white because he tells me this, tells me I am white. I wanna be what Mami is, not what he is. Mami says he is just another brainwashed spic. He had a shop on Tremont Ave where he work on wreck cars. From Mami is beans and rice, roast pork, flan, the pink and yellow lace dresses I wear to Mass. From him is be quiet be quiet go help your mother clean this place up it’s a mess it’s a mess speak English speak English SPEAK ENGLISH. It’s because of him I don’t speak Spanish. He tell Mami talk English talk English make the kids speak English. You want ‘em to grow up like you puta can’t get a job. Puta, whore bitch I know what you’re doing with these guys while I’m out working my ass off. I ever catch I kill you whore, hear me I kill you. Then he grab me, hold out my arm next to his, see SEE. Look he says you are WHITE. You are not no nigger morena puta WHORE. He’s crazy he don’t make sense. Momi is not that. He scream at
Mami, “My kids are WHITE!” Mami just look scared.
I’m six years old. The walls of the room are maroon. The velvet couch with the white lace doilies is the same color as the wall. It is so pretty. It’s my favorite. In the middle is the dark wood table with the crystal ball. Lace curtains is on the window. The shades is drawn. What’s inside is prettier, outside is just a brick wall. The table has a glass top on it. The edges of the glass where it’s cut is green colored, I like that.
The crystal ball is big. “Mami is at the table, her hair is black down her back, her lips like red movie star lips, eyes black like oil, looking at me.
She hands me a sourball, it’s my favorite; it’s melting in my mouth. By the time it melts I know she be going shoo shoo Negra, I got someone coming. Meaning one of the worry face clients talking in Spanish about somebody dead, in jail or in the arms of another, would be there.
But the taste of the sour ball stays on my tongue forever. It’s Papi walk through the door. He don’t say Mamita, he say Bitch! You think I’m crazy. I KNOW que tu puede. I KNOW PUTA! And he pull gun from his pants, shoot Mami— bang bang bang. Her brains fly out her head her mouth open blood blood blood everywhere, it look like one olive is hanging out her head like a man off a cliff.
She never speak nothing, fall out chair, go gurgle sound, more blood fall out her mouth. Her dress, hair, the carpet is red. Papi standing there, start crying.
If I close my eyes I could see Puerto Rico—
someplace water is blue jewels, palm trees, mangoes, music like Willie Colon all the time. But I never been there. Would it be different if I had been born there steadda here? He kill her there steadda here? What’s the difference? Go back?
To where you never been? I’m better off here with the AIDS thing and stuff. The health care ain’t shit here for addicts but it’s better than P.R.
my brother say. He went to P.R. die. I got friends here and stuff.
Ms Rain, senora La Lluvia, ask me to write more, write about my life now. Just talk some more in the tape recorder and she transcribe it. What life? Foster care, rape, drugs, prostitution, HIV, jail, rehab. Everybody like to hear that story. Tell us more tell us more more MORE about being a dope addict and a whore! Puta tecata puta tecata. But I tell you what I want, it’s my book—
we had a nice place, velvet things, lace curtains, the crystal ball. I ask her once my hand in the black river of her hair, my eyes looking up at hers, her caramel color skin, red movie lips, the perfume from her like a pink and purple dream—
show me Mami how to see. Show me what’s inside
the crystal ball. She look at it a long time then say, Ann Negri ta, you don’ t want to know.
MY YOUNGER YEARS by Rhonda Patrice Johnson
My younger years was actually spend in Jamaica which is where my family is from. It was me my brother and my mother and father who we call Ma and Pop. Things was good there until Pop die then we didn’t have money so we move to the U.S. For me that is when the problem start. What the problem is is hard to say but it was with my brother.
My mother git a restaurant on 7th Ave. between 132nd and 133rd selling West Indian take out. I work in the restaurant from git up in the morning to go to bed at night. I don’t go to school even. I could read and write some but when we got here I was twelve already and hadn’t been going to school for a long time in Jamaica. So my mother say, you almost grown so what’s the use. But Kimberton, he’s my brother go to school. A lot go for Kimberton—clothes, bicycle, computer toy.
He is one year younger than me. I wash down the kitchen, scrub pots, pans, grill, all that! Go to the big market with Ma at Hunt’s Point. Go to La Marqueta on Lexington with Ma. I make peas and rice, roti, cod fish cakes, goat curry, all that!
The people that want eat in we got two little tables in the front near the window. I serve people.
I fourteen when Kimberton start leaning on me. I don’t know how else to tell it.
“Ma, Kimberton leaning on me.”
“What you telling?”
“He bothering me.”
“Leave his computer stuff alone and he will leave your dolls alone.”
That’s what he used to do in Jamaica, break my dolly’s head or arm off. I mean something different now. He is the same size as me. I try to fight him. We sleep in same room. He wait until I am sleep. I awake Kimberton standing over me on top the bed naked as the day he born. Thing like a donkey’s. I don’t want it. My skin get bad. I don’t know if it’s from that. I get a lot of pounds on me. I’m always a quiet girl, I don’t say NOTHING now unless some one speak me.
I tell her again when I am 16. Kim-berton is fifteen but he skipped a grade in elementary school so he is in his second year of high school.
Going to be a doctor. “You going to be a doctor!”
my mother tell him, “What you think I’m working for, for you to be a god damn taxi driver!” the question I ask myself is, what am I working for.
“Ma. ”
“What!”
“Kimberton is … is molesting with me at night.” I don’t know how to say it. I can’t say rape, that’s not what brothers do to sisters.
“Molesting with you? What kinda talk is that?”
“You know-”
“No, I don’t know! Miss Fresh.”
“He come over my side of the room at night and intercourse me.”
She get quiet quiet. I smell the curry goat stewing, peas ‘n rice. I can see through the glass door of refrigerator bottles of ginger beer, 7UP, Cokes and maubey lined.
“Tell me what you talking about.”
I tell her.
She say get out my house now. I say but Ma!
Leave now she start screaming ‘bout what I done to her son. Filthy haint, night devil walker she call me. I am shocked. I think I am still in that shock sometimes.
But it’s like that sometime you know. I done found out over the years you just can’t guess how people is gonna react. You think common sense would make her come out on my side. You know, mother daughter, but it didn’t happen that way. She was screaming ‘bout how I was the oldest coulda shoulda stopped him. what I believe is she think Kimberton gonna be big doctor one day and retire her from working twenty-four seven. An* if someone got to go it not gonna be him.
part two MY GROWN UP YEARS
I’m twenty-four years old it’s been eight years since I “left” (I put it like that cause you know how I left) my mother’s house. Kimberton, he is dentist. Was a dentist, maybe he is, maybe he beat the case—he get charged by young girl’s parents of trying to stick his finger (and who knows what else) up her pussy while he spozed to be fixing teeth! Far out huh? Ma tell me this. I don’t go visit but I see her out on street when she doing her shopping. We talk like I’m her daughter that got married and move out or go away to nurse school or some such. I don’t know, I just go along with the program. Ma say it’s all lies, girl’s parents just trying to extort him. But what I think is he pull his shit on the wrong one. You can’t get away with eve
rything all the time with everybody.
The first couple of years on the street was the worst. From working under Ma, even though I do everything, I really did not know how to get a job, talk to social service—what’s that! So I was just out there! I would go with men to bars, drink, go home with them, hope I get to stay the night—
that they don’t tell me go after they come. After I do this with, oh, is it five or fifty or a hundred guys, I start dissolve. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m strong woman, if you was looking at me you could see this. Redbone, what Americans say, some color to her, Jamaicans would say. Five foot eight inches, heavy set, or fat some people would say. Kimberton (who is dark) say I look like a mutant, what ever that is.
But after the I don’t know how many mens I start to break into little pieces and the men look funny, like worms is growing out of their skins, worms that turn to little penises, till I am sick with the walking dicks of Harlem. Everywhere is a hand rubbing, a dick going psst psst come here come here.
I can’t stay in shelters. I just can’t, they is crazy people houses. So
I just wander the street, get little money here and there. I meet this one guy, give me enough to get a room at the Y for one week, tell me to go down to welfare. I check that out. They are so nasty to me, send me so many different places to get so many different papers, things I don’t have no way of getting! I don’t have no birth certificate unless my mother got it but I know where I was born—
Kingston, Jamaica. September 22, 1963. I say fuck the whole welfare thing. It’s crazy. I walk out office but not before I break one white woman’s nose. She send me to get a social security card. I tell her the number but she say got to have the card, go get a duplicate at downtown office. By the time I get back from downtown, where they tell me was an office I could go to on 125th Street, she got coat on talking ‘bout she through for the day, going home. You know just as breezy as she can be! Come back tomorrow and she help me right off. What she saying, and she know it, spend another night in. nowhere sleeping next to death. Git on that park bench, subway, rooftop—freeze, get stabbed, raped; I’m going home. I haul off and hit that bitch so hard whole room could hear her nose go CRUNCH.
At the Y this woman from Trinidad tell me about ol’ white bitch in Brighton Beach she taking care of but she gonna hafta quit cause she got something better on Upper West Side wheeling some doctor’s children to the park. Say she recommend me, don’t need no social security card and all that.
So I work for ol’ white woman with degenerative disease and mind to equal. HATE black people, always a “you people this” and “you people that.”
Call me to her daughter Swortkraus! “Swortkraus is a little slow today,” what kinda goddam shit is that. But you know she ol’ and helpless I forgive a lot. I think I could put a pillow over her face and no one know, no one care. But I would know, plus I be out of a job. I leave when she throw, try to, throw bed pan at me (end up spilling it on her self) cause she grandson, who she putting through NYU medical school did not come to see her when he say he would. She good and crazy.
I go back to welfare, this time I say to myself, some money or jail. All the Porta Ricans and American niggers can get something—white people is getting it too. Why can’t I?
The security guards get me while my thumbs is closing down on this white devil’s throat. Tell me cool down mama! I’m not your mama! Everything is red, I go end this cracker’s days! They pull me off, take four of ‘em. I don’t go to jail though. They get me job! One of the black guys, not even a desk to himself, hand me a three by five card with a name and address on it, tell me, go there.
I get position looking after ol’ white man, tubes all in him. He not so bad, but he nasty. Want me to wash his penis and carry on. On all the walls, I mean on every wall, is a picture, I mean a big picture of Michael Jordan. OK, 16 walls, you got it, 16 pictures of Michael Jordan.
But he pay me. I get room with bathroom, things looking up for awhile, you know. Then the ol’
mutherfucker die. After a while it’s pretty hard again. I get three day notice to pay or quit my room. What I’m gonna do? I’m a person don’t just like to sit there. Just sit there I be throw out for sure. I get couple of big big garbage bags and start going from trash can to trash can collecting aluminum cans. To fill the bags take awhile cause is some competition out on the Harlem streets for these bottles and cans. But I am strong and desperate. I’m looking like a beetle bug or something, hunched over with two huge black garbage bags on my back. I’m on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd which I usually avoid cause it’s where Ma’s restaurant. ROTI ‘N MORE Take Out or Eat In, is. But today I don’t care, I don’t wanna be homeless again. It happen again I might not get up from it. I gotta do something.
So I’m on the Avenue (which is also the Boulevard) near 134th Street moving, trash can by trash can, toward 133rd. I pass ROTI ‘N
MORE. I look up and see a FOR RENT sign in the window, and next to sign is Kimberton. Our eyes meet. His is shock, mine is like a kiss, my brother! Always my first thought of him is before he rape me then the memory roll in like fog. I see Kimberton’s mouth fall open at the horror of me bent over, hands gripped around the black bags.
I remember my hands grating coconut, washing rice, stirring peas, scrubbing pots in cold greasy water, pulling the catheter out the old man’s penis, scraping shit from old Mrs Feld’s age spot ass. I look back at him. I am not ashamed. I could be dead all these years. Rage hot fill me.
Kimberton ‘s eyes glowing like radioactive in my mind, his fly eyes, his hands pushing me down on the bed, years. Years. Kimberton comes to the door. He has on some clothes that cost a lot and should look great but he just look foreign and skinny and dark. He don’t look like American man like he want to. I stare. This a man fuck his sister and say so what. This a man go to dental school, graduate high school at sixteen. A credit to his family and race, Ma say. But I’m his family and race ain’t I?
“What do you want?” he say.
I don’t speak.
“Ma already buried. No one can find you to tell you.”
Ma dead? The fog like a coming down on me.
Kimberton step toward me, pull one hundred dollar bill from his wallet. To take it I would have to put the bags down. I look down at Kimberton’s orange colored leather shoes, stupid pointed toes, and up to his head which is beginning to bald.
I figure I better get moving ‘fore the fog is too thick to see my way out. Kimberton is walking behind me now saying stupid things. “We wondered about you.” It’s like some kinda dribble, his voice, that fall on top the fog. “You wanted it as much as I did!” he say. How could he say that. I keep walking, such a long way I have to go.
It’s a guy at the soup kitchen, Asian guy, advocate from Young and Homeless, find out I got a work history get me job cleaning office building over in East Harlem. I get me a room over on Convent Avenue from old light-skinned dude got one of those big old prewar apartments, renting out rooms. Tell me when his mother had the place she rent room to Marcus Garvey. My question is, did Marcus Garvey get heat? It’s at rooming place I meet Rita Romero, who is in class, who tell me about school which is how I get in this book.
the end, no the BEGINNING
HARLEM BUTCH by Jermaine Hicks
Why you wanna be a man?
Why you wanna be a man
man
man
why you wanna be
a man?
why you wanna be
a man
man
man?
Look it never occurred to me to dress like a man!
For Chrissake, what the fuck
is that? I was dressing like myself.
Myself.
I’m 7:
“Hurry up! Get dressed or you’ll be late for school!” my mother is shouting. The whole block can hear her for sure. She has a mouth like an express train. She has to be out the door by eight to make sure she’s not late for
the white woman she works for. My father is already gone by 6 a.m. Every morning. I look down from the top of the bunk beds to my brother’s empty unmade bed. The sheet is a gray tangle twisting out underneath dingy blue poly blankets. His brown corduroy pants are red flags signalling something in my 7 year old soul. I jump out the top bunk, pick up the pants and put them on. That was seventeen years ago. They were not my pants but I felt they should be. I, how to describe a feeling so deep it’s like a river? How can a river be wrong?
“Take off those pants!”
“No! ”
“Those are your brother’s pants.”
“Git me some.”
“They’re not lady like.”
“So what!”
“It’s wrong!”
“Why?”
How can a river be wrong
a river that engorges my clitoris
and fills me?
Ms Rain, rivers, what makes rivers
run?
“Huh?”
A river, what makes it go, run?
“Well, I don’t really know. I never studied rivers in college. I mean, I imagine some type of gravity, the
riverbed’s resistance to absorption; you know rainfall,
water running down hill—”
A river ever run wrong?
“What?”
Run wrong, a river ever run wrong?
“Well, they overflow—flood—”
she flailed.
Yes, that was the word, flailed,
flailed helplessly Ms. Rain did.
“In 1811, the Mississippi flowed backwards due to an earthquake.”
If I didn’t have a record I’d join
the Navy,
Be ON water, IN water all the time!
(I could have passed my G.E.D. test months, no a year ago. Ms Rain is
upset I won’t take it. Taking it
will mean I will have to leave the
class.)
I’m still 7:
a boy holds me down
under the stairwell
that smells like urine
