Another story that hides itself on my drive - a bit tough on the more sensitive, but I suppose I've always been that way.
Anyway, here it is, hope you enjoy. And yes, it involves U2. Larry and possibly Adam will make appearances later on.
Again, the themes are not spiffy. They are not peachy keen. And they are not sugar sweet. If you can't handle them, stop now and look away.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m going to miss you...
There: I’d written it. Every sordid detail, every little thing I hadn’t wanted to face ever since I was too small to really articulate why I hated being around people. Even the parts I couldn’t remember too well; I just put down what I could remember about that day: The log house with the various toys, the faded red and tan tiles of the floor, the faint impression of emptiness, the distant voice of a teacher murmuring something I cannot remember.
And Keith.
He was a guy from the neighborhood. I cannot remember if my mother knew him before this or not; it’s all fuzzy, and since I was only five at the time, everything is all fuzzy. I just remember that I wanted to go home, very badly. I was bored. I was sick of waiting for my mother to come get me.
Deep down, I wondered if she had forgotten me. I feared she had, though she’d never forget my seven year old brother, oh no: he was – still is – the apple of her eye.
I wanted badly to go home. It was getting dark; the gangs started up after dark. Or maybe it was about to rain. Who knows? I certainly don’t.
At any rate, Keith took me by the hand and walked me home. I don’t remember much of that, either; I remember seeing the building, not knowing whether my mother would be home to let me in or not. And then I remember my mother yelling at me and hitting me for letting some guy walk me home instead of waiting for her. It would have done me no good to try and explain to her that I had gotten anxious and heartsick, waiting in that room, bored out of my skull. I was heartily sick of playing with toys. I wanted to go home and read some books, or something. It was deadly dull in that classroom.
My mother never would hear of it.
I learned then that nothing I said or did would ever matter one bit to her; my existence was a burden; I was to keep out of her way or work, work until I was too tired to even consider developing a personality that had nothing to do with her. I was to be loyal to the point of losing my own individuality.
She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don’t matter if its gone
While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes
I never learned to ride a bike; it only took me splitting my head open once to end that idea. I was fairly good at skating; however, I wasn’t allowed to do much of that, either. It would mean I could get away from her. I was rarely allowed true affection – just when I did everything she wanted me to – and even then, it wasn’t enough. I could never be good enough, or do enough. Mother hated me. I wasn’t supposed to be born. She never said it, but the way she always hit me, always yelled at me, never let me have friends, shamed me for bedwetting well into my teens – oh, I knew she didn’t value me. And I learned not to value myself.
She even threatened to tell everyone I still wet the bed if I didn’t stop. And the times where she would take after me with a coat hanger! I still have the scars to prove it. She even hit me in the face – I had a black eye for days, and had to go to school with it. No matter what I did, I was wrong, very wrong.
Don’t question why she needs to be so free
Shell tell you its the only way to be
She just cant be chained
To a life where nothings gained
And nothings lost
At such a cost
I couldn’t date – she claimed she didn’t want me getting pregnant and making the same mistakes she made as a child – or even so much as look at a boy. She hated the way I walked, always after me to stop trying to be fast. Forget about the fact that I no more liked the way my ass bounced than she did – though sometimes I thought it was cool, especially because none of the other girls in my class had an ass that bounced.
I was outcaste from them anyway, by virtue of my intelligence and gentleness. Teachers liked my meekness (really, fear of my mother beating me for some stupid thing that made her look bad) and hunger for knowledge, so gave me attention.
My worth was attached to what I could do; forget about the person I was back then; I was going to be a doctor , or something. I was too smart to “waste my time” on music or art or anything like that.
No one seemed to notice that I hated math – I was no good at it. Mostly because I didn’t want to be bothered with it, and somewhat because every time I tried to really study it, I had to stop to do chores and things. I could never be allowed to sit and study. As a female, I had to learn how to care for the house, to cook and clean and wash, while my brother was allowed to do what he wanted.
By the time I became a teenager, I had learned to bury my anguish in food. I was fat at fourteen – much fatter than I should have been. I was already a size twelve or fourteen. I hated the ugly clothes I had to wear. They stripped me of my own sense of beauty, both outer and inner.
No one knew how much I cried at night when no one could hear me. Nor how I would pretend to be a boy just so I could feel some sense of connection to the self I had lost at five (I suspect I had always been ambiguously sexed, even as a little child).
There’s no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Isn’t life unkind?
I was always made aware of my arrogance, my inability to be right, simply because I dared disagree with the life path set out for me by the adults in my life. They never seemed to get it; I wanted nothing to do with college or a ‘great career’ or anything like that. I wanted to be a rock guitarist. Or, failing that, I would, in my dreams, become a wildlife photographer and behaviorist. Both loners’ occupations, they would suit me perfectly. I felt so guilty for wanting to live a life separate from my mother, for wanted to do something that would allow me to make mistakes and mature. It always felt like I was years behind the train, behind the girls in my class. I was always forced to keep company with either adults far older than myself, or with a retarded girl who didn’t understand what being fourteen really meant. All this further bludgeoned any sense of self out of me. I got it, one day. I’m only allowed to parrot the ‘wisdom’ of my elders. That’s it. I had to accept that I don’t want children, because I’m not capable of taking care of any. I don’t want to live on my own, because I’m not capable of taking care of myself.
The moral has always been that I’m not capable enough. I don’t exist as a person. I must be loyal to and care for my mother, because she needs me . I should not want my own life. DO not dare to consider yourself ‘too good’ to take care of Mother’s needs. Your life must wait upon her whim, because she didn’t have to have you.
Why does any of this matter now?
I don’t know. I only know that I am angry because I was denied the basic human right to grow up, to be secure, to be loved for the person I was. I was killed that day Keith walked me home from school. Whether he molested me or not, I have no idea; I just know I did not like him. He made me feel – creepy. I’ve always stayed clear of him, as much as I could. He was a snake. I know it.
My father was another such snake: he lied, cheated, and stole. He told me my mother was a whore, and my brother wasn’t my brother, because alcohol stunts sperm count. It may, over time, this is true; but not within the same night. And, of course, he brought up my mother’s near-rape. All of this, he used to try and convince me that my mother was a liar. To what purpose? I don’t know. Perhaps he thought it would bring us closer together, since I tended to avoid being alone with him anytime I could get around it. I got tired of seeing his skinny little prick wrapped in a robe as though I didn’t know he wanted to screw my mother, who was stupid enough to let him, thinking it would make him want to visit the kids (us) more.
I could have told her by ten that it was failing, and he was just using her to get sex, and beer.
I was taught that people are not to be trusted. Those things mattered more than people: all I had, though, wasn’t mine, either. Who knew when it would be snatched away from me? MY mother always threw my stuff out because it was ‘too junky’ and cluttered up our shared room, while she got to keep everything she wanted to. My brother had his own room, so he got to keep his stuff too. I had nowhere to escape to when bedtime hit, and my father was there.
I’d hear them having sex, ironically worried that I’d wake up and see them at it. If only they knew how well I had learned to fake it. Since I had to be subject to their rutting, I may as well get a laugh out of fooling them. And I did. I got more of an education about sex than I should have.
So here I stand, at thirty: a person with no identity, no self; it’s all been taken from me.
Where do I go from here?
What do I do?
Who am I?
Why am I here?
I grieve for the lost Self, the Soul that withered on the vine ere it had a chance to mature. So why did I write it out? Because I want someone to know, to hear the story of the Lost Girls: those of us who are lost to the traditions of the Black community of suppression and slavery, of thieving, abuse, and smothering and killing of its own youth. We who carry the scars on our bodies and in our very souls must speak out. We must live. We must stop the violence our own culture is perpetuating on our own people. Because if we don’t, the very souls we need to survive will be gone on the winds of the violence we have inflicted on ourselves, in the name of maintaining the status quo.
We can no longer look to the outside to place blame. We must face the harsh reality that regardless of what the white community has done TO us, the greatest tragedy is that we perpetuate far greater genocides upon ourselves every time we force our girls to straighten their hair (remind me to explain the torture of the hot comb and the perm a later date), to forgo their own selves in order to be a ‘credit to the race’, the constant blaming of every white person that doesn’t bow down and kiss our dirty black asses and give us what we think we want Right Now. We want our history to be taught – and yet we don’t want to admit that we are the ones who are tearing ourselves down. The proverbial Evil White Man has to do nothing. We have done it for him.
Ask yourselves why the average Black child will not be able to understand what I write here. Not the meaning, the words . The answer is because education is looked upon as the vanillification of the Black race – forget about the fact that an ignorant person will not be able to fight properly.
But I digress. What I mean to tell you is simple: We are killing our future because we are afraid to assimilate, to lose the cultural hatred of anything that does not conform the narrow ideals of ‘Black Culture’: violence, drugs, sports, and generational stupidity.
But this is all just my opinion. See for yourselves, in time, if it doesn’t hold true.
I’m not perfect. I’m just angry and tired of carrying the burden of proving my Blackness.
Is it not writ on my skin for all to see?
How many scars must I bear before you understand that you cannot drown me?
I will rise, despite it all. Despite you, who try to drag me down into the pits of despair and self-hatred.
I have carried your burdens long enough, my mother and my father.
Anyway, here it is, hope you enjoy. And yes, it involves U2. Larry and possibly Adam will make appearances later on.
Again, the themes are not spiffy. They are not peachy keen. And they are not sugar sweet. If you can't handle them, stop now and look away.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m going to miss you...
There: I’d written it. Every sordid detail, every little thing I hadn’t wanted to face ever since I was too small to really articulate why I hated being around people. Even the parts I couldn’t remember too well; I just put down what I could remember about that day: The log house with the various toys, the faded red and tan tiles of the floor, the faint impression of emptiness, the distant voice of a teacher murmuring something I cannot remember.
And Keith.
He was a guy from the neighborhood. I cannot remember if my mother knew him before this or not; it’s all fuzzy, and since I was only five at the time, everything is all fuzzy. I just remember that I wanted to go home, very badly. I was bored. I was sick of waiting for my mother to come get me.
Deep down, I wondered if she had forgotten me. I feared she had, though she’d never forget my seven year old brother, oh no: he was – still is – the apple of her eye.
I wanted badly to go home. It was getting dark; the gangs started up after dark. Or maybe it was about to rain. Who knows? I certainly don’t.
At any rate, Keith took me by the hand and walked me home. I don’t remember much of that, either; I remember seeing the building, not knowing whether my mother would be home to let me in or not. And then I remember my mother yelling at me and hitting me for letting some guy walk me home instead of waiting for her. It would have done me no good to try and explain to her that I had gotten anxious and heartsick, waiting in that room, bored out of my skull. I was heartily sick of playing with toys. I wanted to go home and read some books, or something. It was deadly dull in that classroom.
My mother never would hear of it.
I learned then that nothing I said or did would ever matter one bit to her; my existence was a burden; I was to keep out of her way or work, work until I was too tired to even consider developing a personality that had nothing to do with her. I was to be loyal to the point of losing my own individuality.
She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don’t matter if its gone
While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes
I never learned to ride a bike; it only took me splitting my head open once to end that idea. I was fairly good at skating; however, I wasn’t allowed to do much of that, either. It would mean I could get away from her. I was rarely allowed true affection – just when I did everything she wanted me to – and even then, it wasn’t enough. I could never be good enough, or do enough. Mother hated me. I wasn’t supposed to be born. She never said it, but the way she always hit me, always yelled at me, never let me have friends, shamed me for bedwetting well into my teens – oh, I knew she didn’t value me. And I learned not to value myself.
She even threatened to tell everyone I still wet the bed if I didn’t stop. And the times where she would take after me with a coat hanger! I still have the scars to prove it. She even hit me in the face – I had a black eye for days, and had to go to school with it. No matter what I did, I was wrong, very wrong.
Don’t question why she needs to be so free
Shell tell you its the only way to be
She just cant be chained
To a life where nothings gained
And nothings lost
At such a cost
I couldn’t date – she claimed she didn’t want me getting pregnant and making the same mistakes she made as a child – or even so much as look at a boy. She hated the way I walked, always after me to stop trying to be fast. Forget about the fact that I no more liked the way my ass bounced than she did – though sometimes I thought it was cool, especially because none of the other girls in my class had an ass that bounced.
I was outcaste from them anyway, by virtue of my intelligence and gentleness. Teachers liked my meekness (really, fear of my mother beating me for some stupid thing that made her look bad) and hunger for knowledge, so gave me attention.
My worth was attached to what I could do; forget about the person I was back then; I was going to be a doctor , or something. I was too smart to “waste my time” on music or art or anything like that.
No one seemed to notice that I hated math – I was no good at it. Mostly because I didn’t want to be bothered with it, and somewhat because every time I tried to really study it, I had to stop to do chores and things. I could never be allowed to sit and study. As a female, I had to learn how to care for the house, to cook and clean and wash, while my brother was allowed to do what he wanted.
By the time I became a teenager, I had learned to bury my anguish in food. I was fat at fourteen – much fatter than I should have been. I was already a size twelve or fourteen. I hated the ugly clothes I had to wear. They stripped me of my own sense of beauty, both outer and inner.
No one knew how much I cried at night when no one could hear me. Nor how I would pretend to be a boy just so I could feel some sense of connection to the self I had lost at five (I suspect I had always been ambiguously sexed, even as a little child).
There’s no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Isn’t life unkind?
I was always made aware of my arrogance, my inability to be right, simply because I dared disagree with the life path set out for me by the adults in my life. They never seemed to get it; I wanted nothing to do with college or a ‘great career’ or anything like that. I wanted to be a rock guitarist. Or, failing that, I would, in my dreams, become a wildlife photographer and behaviorist. Both loners’ occupations, they would suit me perfectly. I felt so guilty for wanting to live a life separate from my mother, for wanted to do something that would allow me to make mistakes and mature. It always felt like I was years behind the train, behind the girls in my class. I was always forced to keep company with either adults far older than myself, or with a retarded girl who didn’t understand what being fourteen really meant. All this further bludgeoned any sense of self out of me. I got it, one day. I’m only allowed to parrot the ‘wisdom’ of my elders. That’s it. I had to accept that I don’t want children, because I’m not capable of taking care of any. I don’t want to live on my own, because I’m not capable of taking care of myself.
The moral has always been that I’m not capable enough. I don’t exist as a person. I must be loyal to and care for my mother, because she needs me . I should not want my own life. DO not dare to consider yourself ‘too good’ to take care of Mother’s needs. Your life must wait upon her whim, because she didn’t have to have you.
Why does any of this matter now?
I don’t know. I only know that I am angry because I was denied the basic human right to grow up, to be secure, to be loved for the person I was. I was killed that day Keith walked me home from school. Whether he molested me or not, I have no idea; I just know I did not like him. He made me feel – creepy. I’ve always stayed clear of him, as much as I could. He was a snake. I know it.
My father was another such snake: he lied, cheated, and stole. He told me my mother was a whore, and my brother wasn’t my brother, because alcohol stunts sperm count. It may, over time, this is true; but not within the same night. And, of course, he brought up my mother’s near-rape. All of this, he used to try and convince me that my mother was a liar. To what purpose? I don’t know. Perhaps he thought it would bring us closer together, since I tended to avoid being alone with him anytime I could get around it. I got tired of seeing his skinny little prick wrapped in a robe as though I didn’t know he wanted to screw my mother, who was stupid enough to let him, thinking it would make him want to visit the kids (us) more.
I could have told her by ten that it was failing, and he was just using her to get sex, and beer.
I was taught that people are not to be trusted. Those things mattered more than people: all I had, though, wasn’t mine, either. Who knew when it would be snatched away from me? MY mother always threw my stuff out because it was ‘too junky’ and cluttered up our shared room, while she got to keep everything she wanted to. My brother had his own room, so he got to keep his stuff too. I had nowhere to escape to when bedtime hit, and my father was there.
I’d hear them having sex, ironically worried that I’d wake up and see them at it. If only they knew how well I had learned to fake it. Since I had to be subject to their rutting, I may as well get a laugh out of fooling them. And I did. I got more of an education about sex than I should have.
So here I stand, at thirty: a person with no identity, no self; it’s all been taken from me.
Where do I go from here?
What do I do?
Who am I?
Why am I here?
I grieve for the lost Self, the Soul that withered on the vine ere it had a chance to mature. So why did I write it out? Because I want someone to know, to hear the story of the Lost Girls: those of us who are lost to the traditions of the Black community of suppression and slavery, of thieving, abuse, and smothering and killing of its own youth. We who carry the scars on our bodies and in our very souls must speak out. We must live. We must stop the violence our own culture is perpetuating on our own people. Because if we don’t, the very souls we need to survive will be gone on the winds of the violence we have inflicted on ourselves, in the name of maintaining the status quo.
We can no longer look to the outside to place blame. We must face the harsh reality that regardless of what the white community has done TO us, the greatest tragedy is that we perpetuate far greater genocides upon ourselves every time we force our girls to straighten their hair (remind me to explain the torture of the hot comb and the perm a later date), to forgo their own selves in order to be a ‘credit to the race’, the constant blaming of every white person that doesn’t bow down and kiss our dirty black asses and give us what we think we want Right Now. We want our history to be taught – and yet we don’t want to admit that we are the ones who are tearing ourselves down. The proverbial Evil White Man has to do nothing. We have done it for him.
Ask yourselves why the average Black child will not be able to understand what I write here. Not the meaning, the words . The answer is because education is looked upon as the vanillification of the Black race – forget about the fact that an ignorant person will not be able to fight properly.
But I digress. What I mean to tell you is simple: We are killing our future because we are afraid to assimilate, to lose the cultural hatred of anything that does not conform the narrow ideals of ‘Black Culture’: violence, drugs, sports, and generational stupidity.
But this is all just my opinion. See for yourselves, in time, if it doesn’t hold true.
I’m not perfect. I’m just angry and tired of carrying the burden of proving my Blackness.
Is it not writ on my skin for all to see?
How many scars must I bear before you understand that you cannot drown me?
I will rise, despite it all. Despite you, who try to drag me down into the pits of despair and self-hatred.
I have carried your burdens long enough, my mother and my father.
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