Sunday, August 2, 2009

my mother was a bruise-taker. she was a lightweight pro at the heavy blows. show her any ER on the west side and she'd show you every seat she'd ever sat in without my knowing. the day she left him was the day she stopped wearing make-up. when i was small, my mother posted our photos to the back of christmas cards like milk cartons. inside, descriptions of us, should we ever go missing. she was missing home and life before becoming a statistic. sidebar: did you know that black women are abused at a rate 35 percent higher than that of white women? fuck statistics. women are women and people who disrespect them are filthy. my mother discovered this when she came to my room after hearing my shrieking. i had thrown my puppy out of the window, convinced it could fly because i knew for sure that my mother could. my father was her launchpad. i'd never heard something so loud as sirens and the sounds of heart and jaw breaking simultaneously. i'm not a survivor. i learned to block shit out at an early age. my mother was a blindfolder. i could read fairy tales and bedtime stories before i could read evidence.


my grandmother could. my grandmother was a prayersayer. she was a champion of slinging her biblical weaponry in the face of danger and saying take. that. show her any page in the bible and she'd show you a verse that could save your fucking life. the day she felt my mother's features changing, she felt the impact before a hand was lifted. my grandmother took our last known address to her prayer circle warriors and praised up a beacon. she was no pacifist. she knew that some evils couldn't just be sung hymnals to so she gathered up the men in our family to front the artillery line of hope. they packed up a van to salvage what was left of my mother's scars. i am lucky. and thankful. that all that was taken from me was a stupid gold earring on the stupid seat of that rental.






i wasn't sure whether or not it was an exaggeration. but it was brought up at least once a year once i got old enough to deal with things.










© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved