I had seen her husband sitting on the front porch a few times. He was a rail-thin old man, rather fragile-looking, now that I think back on it, and he liked to sit outside and watch the people of the small town go strolling by. He would sit there with a grin on his face, smiling and waving at folks—at strangers that he didn’t even know. He seemed like a nice enough guy.
I wondered why his wife was in the backyard sharpening a knife. She was a little sturdier than her husband. Her arms had little coils of muscle that were formed with strength developed from years of labor in kitchens, laundry rooms, and other roles of servitude. Yeah, she looked quite comfortable, familiar with the feel and handle of a sharp blade. I noticed the way she held it like a hammer. No, not a hammer; more like Mjolnir, the God of Thunder’s hammer… with a two-handed grip. It meant something to her.
She paused and straightened up, wiping her brow with the back of her hand as she looked cautiously around the yard. I crouched down behind the slat of the fence as best I could when she looked in my direction. Their house stood on the corner of Front Street and Upwards Alley, a full, two-family home with a small-sized yard that stretched out behind it. I stood on the Upwards Alley side, a spot that was at the dead bottom end of the hill which stretched up, high toward the sky. Upwards was our getaway alley. We used to roll car tires down the curve of that hillside and watch them as they banged real hard into the doors of passing cars. The angry driver would emerge from his damaged car and spot us at the top of the hill before we would take off running. They would never catch us. It was too steep to sprint Upwards!
“Jessie Mae! Get in here, Woman!”
The old woman froze in place.
“Jessie Mae! Don’t make me come out there, Bitch! ’Cause if I do, I’ll have to run yo’ slut ass in that river down there! Get in here!”
The old woman turned, flung the back door open, and hurried inside. I could see them through the opened door as she ran over to her husband.
“What you want, Baby?” she stated in desperation when she stopped in front of him. He responded with a savage, straight right hand, a man-punch, to her face. She collapsed to the floor like a sack of meat. I heard her cry of pain from where I stood and then I watched him kick her in the ribs.
“What you doin’ back there? Huh?”
She coughed in pain before she groaned her reply, “Nuthin’.”
“How the fuck you gonna be outside doin’ nuthin’! Stupid bitch.”
He knelt down in front of her and crawled between her legs. He wedged his crotch in between her thighs and began a hard, dominant grind. I saw her body buck from the contact as he invaded her, and I could hear his animal grunts as he bucked up into her. His hips dipped and thrust into her with solid contact that pushed her legs further and further apart. She lay beneath him, unmoving until he pushed himself to his knees and slowly leaned back before barking out a command to her.
“Take it out!”
The old lady, tentatively, reached up and unbuckled his pants. She pulled his swollen dick free.
“Kiss it!” he barked. “Hurry up! Kiss it! Kiss it good!”
I saw the old lady’s head moving around in circular motions.
“That’s it, Baby.” His voice was gruff. “Give me head. Let me feel some suction.” His hands reached up and snaked around the back of her head. He pulled her head forcefully toward his pelvis, his hardness stabbing the back of her throat, gagging her. “Kiss it and then suck it! Head! Head!” His body bucked a few times and he gripped her head and pulled it one last time and held it there while he groaned with release.
“Damn!” he growled. “Yo’ lips be pullin’ on me like you gonna take the head right off my Willie Bobo. Yeah. You gonna take Willie Bobo’s head off, Baby? Huh? Kiss it one more time. Now, put it back.”
She deftly tucked his shrunken member in his pants and buckled him up.
“Now. Next time? See what you get!” He lashed out again and punched her in the chest. She collapsed to the side. “Next time, you better take Willie Bobo’s head off, dark bitch!”
He kicked her once again, turned, and walked back out the front door. He sat back in his chair on the front porch, laughing… her prone, beaten body a forgotten afterthought. I could see her through the back door and waited in silence for a moment. She didn’t lie there much longer than that. Then she was pulling herself to her feet. Jessie Mae rose silently, dealing with the pain and pushing it down into nowhere land, a place of yesterday, the ache fading, soon to be a distant thing. But Jessie Mae’s face wore a scowl, an angry determination mixed with an animosity that seemed to touch her soul and harden the dark light that shone from her eyes. She limped back out to the porch and brought herself up tall, gathering her strength and looking to the sky. As I watched her face, I wished that I was old enough to read emotions. Old enough to see the emotional pain… the psychological scars, the rape and torture of the old woman’s spirit and heart. I wished. But all I saw was the hard line of her tight lips, the fire in her eyes, and the hatred that radiated from her in darkness… and tears not shed. Everybody has those, though. Tears that don’t show.
Her face was swollen, bruised, and busted as her lips trembled and began to swell. A dark, red splat of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. It seemed to pulse to the time of a heartbeat. And then I saw sparkles in her eyes. A mad flame that spoke of bad things… her eyes burned. She bent over and firmly grasped the handle of the machete. Slowly, she turned and looked directly at me.
And I ran.
“He was sitting on the porch and she came out and she chopped his head off.” I finished the story. I left off the part about running, though.
My mother glared at me before she spoke. “That man’s head did not come off! You got to learn to stop imaginin’ shit all the time. That’s what you get!”
She still didn’t believe me. She would, eventually, when the news got around, so I didn’t even tell her all she had to do was look out of the window and she could see that the fire trucks were still there.
“For real, Ma. I ain’t lyin’!”
She looked at me hard. Not as if she really thought that I was too imaginary and whatnot. Her eyes were hard. Then I remembered that my stepfather had just got up off beating on her. She wasn’t in the mood for any type of talking.
“Did I say you was lyin’?” she growled.
Shit! I groaned. I just knew that there wasn’t a right answer to that question. I knew my mother. I knew her looks… and the current look was red hot. But, for once in my life, I didn’t care. I needed some “kid time” to think about shit. I needed space.
“I just said I ain’t lyin’,” I blurted out.
She slapped me. Straight to the cheekbone, nuthin’ but net! Which, alone, didn’t hurt that bad. My mother didn’t have bruising hand speed, but this time, Ma was rocking me with electric blows. My bruised skull was ringing savagely with each stinging contact that my face was taking. My vision blurred for a second… and then I went numb. I mean, by mind went blank. It hurt a little, but I could take it. See, my mother would whup my ass in short bursts… twenty, thirty seconds of pure fury, but if I could survive that? I consider that ass-whuppin’ a success! Then she slapped me again. And again. And again. In the midst of this assault, I began to notice my mother had developed a little more power—from somewhere! Her stamina was improving, too. She wasn’t stopping. Slap! Slap! Slap!
“Why you hittin’ me, Ma?!” Slap! “Why?!” Slap! “Go ahead, then!” Slap! “I can take it!” Slap! “I can take it!” Slap! “I look like my daddy, huh?!” Slap! “I am my daddy, huh?!” Slap! “Right?!” Slap! “I can take it!”
A lone tear welled up in my eyes, stinging but holding, refusing to creep down my face. She stopped with her hand paused in mid-air, the hatred in my stare burning with spite, me feeling like she wasn’t my mother; she couldn’t tell me she cared. She cried out incoherent words of pain that I couldn’t even begin to understand and I wouldn’t have understood them even
if I could understand them. She was the reason I was always utterly alone, with no one on my side, no one to turn to whenever my stepfather got abusive. I don’t know what it was. I never knew what it was, the total loneness; the disconnection between my mother and me. But, I knew she did not like me. By that, I mean that she couldn’t stand me. But, she still didn’t have to hit me.
I finally jumped up and ran out the front door. I limped around the house to the backyard, up the back steps, and hid on the back porch. I sat there quietly and listened. I could hear my mother through the window as she began to cry in pain and frustration. My face was still stinging from the force of her blows and all of my body’s aches and pains rushed through me. I still couldn’t find any vestiges of love for her… not in my heart. She knew that pain was wrong. She saw it up close and personal every day, and yet that was her gift to me. The long right hand of love. I wondered exactly how much of that torture was my mere existence costing her. I wished I could help her. But she still didn’t have to hit me.
A few days later, I took my mother down by Donnell Shunt’s house and showed her the grindstone. It had been moved over to the far corner of the yard, tucked, sinister in the darkness. I told my mother about the sparks and the sharp, shiny point of the blade. I told her about the strength Jessie Mae got from holding that powerful weapon in her hands. Even after her husband had held her down and violated her, she had found the control of her own destiny in the weighted heft of the knife.
Over the next three weeks, my stepfather rampaged on, beating on my mother constantly and my mother, in turn, found reasons to beat on me. But, now I understood my mother’s motivation and, more importantly, I shared the passion of her need for payback, for some sense of ultimate justice, for someone to hear her cry. Subsequently, after each of the many violent episodes in which my mother was beaten and she, in turn, would beat me, I began taking her to the grindstone. While we stood in the darkened yard, I began to plant the seeds of violent retribution in her mind. I began to give form and shape to the primal urges that lurk within the psyche of the abused until, one day, I noticed a strange gleam come into her eyes; another persona emerged as we became more and more comforted by the sight of the huge grindstone. Who knows, maybe she was having those dark matters dancing in the madness of her imagination.
One night, my stepfather came home late and pushed my mother straight to the edge of madness. He beat my sister.
Tamia was my youngest sister. She was still lost in her ignorance at times and she always managed to stay out of my stepfather’s way. I will give him credit; my stepfather usually left the girls alone, physically at least. He still stomped around them with terror in his stride, but usually that was all he would do to the girls and Tamia was still enough of a child to reap the benefits of being the youngest girl. She still had the ability to sing to my stepfather, still had the ability to soothe him, to bring his anger in to where he could look at it and let it die. “I like the taste of cann-dee. Sweetness is my pool. I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!”
I, for one, hated that freaking song. But it worked for her… so she sang for him whenever she saw bad trouble on my stepfather’s drunken radar. The big behemoth was bearing down on her now, his voice gruff and grating at the fears of his child, carrying a lifetime of trembling on its timbre.
“Didn’t I tell you to bring me some algae syrup, Gurl? My chil’ren is all so stupid. Didn’t I say algae syrup? Didn’t I?” He was on a rant. “All my dumb chil’ren.”
Tamia looked up at him with eyes widened in apprehension. Her daddy was chocolate thunder, dark lightning, and streaks of a painful storm. He was a black hulk, both dark and intimidating… the bare essence of a scary nightmare to a fragile, little girl. He bent over her, his bulk casting a huge shadow over her as he pointed a stubby finger in her direction.
“Girl, you so dumb. How you remember shit? You get it from yo’ mama, though. Yeah. She stupid, too. Be like a dumb slut sometimes. Now, have you ever seen me eat anything else but algae syrup? Have you?!” He was screaming at Tamia. Each harsh word pulled an anguished cry from her as she cowered from him, her eyes darting wildly, anxiously, searching for an avenue of escape. His temper was brewing like a big, black storm… and his dark cloud was heavy with his violent nature. She was going to be drenched in the fierce downpour. His very face was turbulent. A raw mixture of a blind rage and primitive urges wrapped in the guise of a man. We could only guess that violence had always been a part of his life. After all, he was turbulent; his very nature was based on intimidation as a means of control. A tool to terrify us with. Fear.
I lived the fear as I watched him tower over Tamia. I lived her moments of paralyzed anguish as I stood witness. We both knew his movements, knew when to prepare for serious episodes from him, and we saw it in the curl of his lips that were pulled back in a sneer. I wasn’t able to move as I watched him bend over my little sister and wrap his big hand around her throat. He lifted her up with no effort as she feebly kicked her legs, flailing, as he spit harsh words and spittle into her face.
“I want algae-muthafuckin’ syrup! You hear me?!”
And then he flung her at the living room wall. Tamia’s little body slammed face first into the wall and she shrieked in pain when she fell in a heap on the sofa. When she turned over, blood splashed from the corner of her mouth and the left side of her face was swollen and discolored with bruises. Tears streamed down her face as she pulled herself to her knees and looked up at her drunken daddy.
She began a mad singsong. “I like the taste of cann-dee. Sweetness is my pool. I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!” She sang haltingly; her voice strained around the pain that throbbed in her face. “I like the taste of cann-dee.” Tamia wiped the blood away from the corner of her mouth. “Sweetness is my pool.” My stepfather hesitated with his hand raised to strike her. “I like the taste of caann-dee. And I like you!”
I heard a piercing scream and turned to see my mother flash past me in a blur. She swung her fist and connected solidly with my stepfather’s face, rocking him backwards with the force of the blow. She attacked in a mad frenzy. She was throwing punches in bunches, scratches and straight rights that rained down, but didn’t move the heavy drunk and he began to shrug off her frenzied attack. He howled with rage and lashed out at my mother, catching her in the side of her head, stunning her, and then he rammed her with his shoulder, sending her body crashing into the wall.
I could tell that my mother was really hurt this time. Hurt badly. I heard her tortured breathing as she slid to the floor in a limp heap.
“Stupid whore.” My stepfather looked down at her and gingerly touched his swelling lip. Then he turned to me. “And you just a bastard.” I watched him. “Take your slut ass mammy in there and put her in the bed. Naw. Fuck that! Leave her ass right there.”
He turned and headed to another room. I waited until I heard the noise from the television before I moved over to my mother. She turned over and propped herself against the wall with her eyes closed. Tamia slid off the couch and was pulled into a tight embrace, her cries softer now as she sobbed in the comforting folds of my mother’s arms.
“And ya’ll both better shut up in there!” My stepfather’s voice boomed from the other room. “Um tired of hearing that noise! Ole bitch hit me in my mothafuckin’ lip! I oughta go in there and bust that ass right now! Shit!”
The moments dragged by as I sat and watched my mother and my sister. That was my lot in life, it seemed. To observe as life went by, as shit happened. My mother got up from the floor. She struggled to her feet, with Tamia hugged to her breasts, and staggered into the bedroom. My mother had really been hurt. She had a large swelling on the side of her head near her temple. She held her body sort of off to the left side, as if the force of my stepfather’s blows had broken something loose in her ribs. I had never seen her move with such obvious pain. She closed the bedroom door and left me outside, pondering the madness that had become my life, the everyday
that spelled such lunacy, the moment after moment I was forced to endure. Maybe, just maybe, I could make sense of it all, if it all could make sense. Sometimes life simply wasn’t fair at all.
I hated him. I hated that black muthafucka. I looked toward the family room, where he was sprawled out in front of the television, snoring. I hated his snore. I hated the sound of that nigga living! His very existence made me weak. Made me scared. Made me watch as he hit on my mother and sisters and brothers. Made me watch… and do nothing. At least my mother had taken a shot at him, though! She had stung him a little when she clocked him upside his head, rocked him when she had caught him by surprise with that first punch. Good to know that he could be hurt, too. I heard him rouse in the front room.
“Hey, Nigga! Get in here!” he growled at me. I ran to him and waited. “The world don’t owe you nuthin’, Nigga! Know that? World don’t owe you shit!” I waited some more. “Look at you! You ain’t shit, just like yo’ daddy. The apple knocka. Yo’ mama threw her legs up for him in the middle of one of them apple fields. He was… apple knockin’.”
I stopped listening to him. I fazed out and into my own world as he droned on. I had heard this story too many times before and I hated the son of a bitch anyway. I wished he would stop talking to me… or at me. I wished that I could reach inside of his throat and rip his neck out. He was still talking.
“One of them old, field hand niggas got up in yo’ momma’s panties. That’s why you got that little apple head you got! Shit! Ain’t got no sense in that mothafucka neither. Shit!”
Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! I glared at him. I would’ve been more than glad to hit him in the face with a brick as soon as he fell asleep. I should do it! I should!
“Boy!” my stepfather roared. “Why you lookin’ at me like that? Huh? You betta take some of that shit outta your eyes, Boy.”