She was about an hour late and appeared to be taking her time.
I ran outside to meet her.
Her beautiful cocoa stained skin hidden by concealer yet melting away with tears.Asking what the problem was
She glared at me blankly.
Contemplating whether or not she should tell me the truth.
I remembered that stare from months ago. I had noticed that her moods were changing with the seasons and it was no coincidence that on gloomy days, her heart was most weighted.
I held her hand.
After all, I couldn’t expect a logical response from a young woman who has lived 50 years in 19 short ones. Venting about frustration and pain all the while circling back to the very moment she was touched. Not held consolingly when her mother was beat by her sister’s father.
This wasn’t her father.
Yet one day her mother needed a ride to the welfare office
It was raining.
She didn’t have enough car fare and
It was raining.
She saw a hack man and he offered her a ride.
And she accepted because
It was raining.
In exchange for the ride she offered him dinner. He gave her a baby and moved in.
Then his fits of anger could no longer be controlled when that liquor put him on
And everyone was in the danger zone.
At times home alone.
Vulnerable and victimized and all the while
touched.
Told to keep secrets
Thus, she was left grasping for a savior
While her mother took beatings
Her sister on her knee’s pleading and she
left curled in a ball with tears staining her cocoa skin.
It just be like that…
Then there was him.
A beautiful brown skinned boy whose skin looked as if the sun drifted from the sky simply to kiss his mother’s womb.
He was bronzed and a cursor.
A product of his environment
yet internally struggling with the more quieter side that held in the trauma.
At 19 he was working overnight.
Only to come home to clean up crack needles and pipes.
Cover his mother with a blanket and check for her pulse.
Kiss her goodnight.
She was an addict.
All his life she had been and not knowing the side of her that worked and took care of her children at one point perplexed him.
He often relayed instilled memories to me.
Ones foretold by his sisters, you see
His mother was an RN, worked in a hospital and they would go to the movies, share water ice, eat pretzels,
and laugh.
She was a mother.
She was a mother
That had become an addict.
After all, there is no way to actively be both
And she made the choice
He, at 19 was suffering with self induced amnesia
He could never remember the good parts,
Often wondered if there were any good parts.
And we sat in my office.
At times he’d stare into tomorrow trying to regain yesterday and
I’d tapped on the desk
It just be like that.
I silently cried when I heard it was true. I mean, I saw the story covered on the eleven o’clock news.
But who actually connects the photo of the robber to someone you’ve crossed in life
And besides the image was blurred.
But he had on a royal blue ball cap in the footage.
The same one he would ask he me to give him at the end of the school day.
He was 18 years old and had robbed a local corner store.
That night, he choose to take the life of a good Samaritan
Not realizing that in that instance he had just taken his own.
The last time I had seen him was in January.
It was cold that day and drizzling.
We chatted.
Said our goodbyes with a hug and a promise of a future complete with this part of his journey.
He would be finished school in June.
But, a few months had now passed and as I stared at his mug shot and the long list of offenses: criminal conspiracy, robbery…murder
I wondered if they had graduations in the federal penitentiary.
All of the emotions that were hidden released as I sat starting at the mug shot.
Finally accepting that in this world, horribly sometimes beautiful cocoa girls are victimized and allow them themselves to remain victims.
Sometimes, brown boys seek father figures in mothers who can’t bear the weight of one of the hardest jobs in the world times two. So they suffer silently.
And sometimes, no matter how much you talk to a person, a youth…they’ll do what they want.
And I realized that sometimes it just be like that though.