I remember when I was about four years old. My father was one of the biggest drug dealers in this city. We had a cast of characters coming in and out of our house every weekend. Just like the children of the 80's could confess. Torn jeans with patches, that were too big and large gold cables around their necks and earrings larger than an apple. Hair cut uneven on one side, with lines in their hairline, purple lipstick and a Jeep outside waiting at the curb. Music blasting so loud that it shakes the front room window. I went through those classic years of Black folk renaissance of sorts, but my Daddy's friends were different. One time this woman came to our house, and she was a pretty woman. Brown skin, big expressive eyes, of average height, but with the most beautiful dashiki I had ever seen. It was red and gold, swirling with a tapestry of white and black. She moved so beautifully and the cloth moved with her, in unison. One thing about this woman who smelled of musk oil and Zest soap, she was completely bald. In the 70's things were so different, and people wore big hair and wide legged pants, but this woman looked like an alien. I spent the hour walking past my parents door, where she was "partying" to see her drool and cough with her bald head.
The cast of characters continued over the months. My mother always the dutiful wife, would cook for these people on Sunday's. All the biggest names in Pontiac were there. I was always glad to have the ribs, chicken, banana pudding, potato salad, baked beans, roast and dressing, sweet potato pie and peach cobbler. Even if there was never any left when everyone left for the next day. One Sunday, my father's friend Waymond bought his new girlfriend over. He had a girlfriend named Sue, but this was a new one and she was White, too. She wore a yellow suit with a pale lavender shell. Her hair was parted down the middle and her blond tresses flowed down her shoulders and over her back. She kept her moving her head back in a swift motion to get it out of her eyes without touching it. She didn't smell musky and strong, but like fresh picked flowers. My mother smelled like that and she had been my world up until then. This young girl was also beautiful and soft. When Waymond went in the room with my father to "do business" and get his complimentary works, she sat in the kitchen with my mother and me. Up until that day my mother was the only example of what true beauty was, and gave me a sense of what I wanted to be like. Now I had a new example of what a woman was.
Watching television as a child I didn't have many examples of Black woman to compare myself to. I watch, Bewitched, The Bionic Woman and Sonny and Cher on their regular night. I remember Carol Brady, Beaver's mother and Maude. The African-American women who were on TV weren't beautiful in my opinion. The Jeffersons had Louise, whose voice was husky and she was large, as was Florida the mother on Good Times. And we all remember the example we had on Roger's mother in What's Happening. She was morbidly obese and could barely walk up the sets stairs. I had no true examples of what a god looking Black woman could be, except from my neighborhood friends and close relations. I didn't get any examples their either, and the train of women coming in and out of our house was poor and drug addicted. So I held to the hope that Waymond would bring his new girlfriend back, and I would have a chance to see her again. He stuck with Sue and she was bitter and mean. She never wanted to be bothered, and her hair was brown and curly. I didn't like her much.
The same was true of the men that I saw. They were all either mean or weak. My father was the boss and he had a bunch of leaches. My father was strong, though, and he was the leader of the sorry crew. When I turned on the television back in those days, the men on the TV looked like he and his friends. They wore platformed shoes and processed hair, orange suits with wide brim hats. They drove Cadillacs and had plenty of money they had gotten the wrong way! Then there was Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, and his commanding ways. Although he was a White man he had a strong and disruptive a nature. He wasn't the normal White man I had seen on the TV before. He did things his own way, and broke all the rules when they didn't fit him and I fell in fast love with him. All the other men that I watched were cookie cutter men of all races. Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar man was cute, but he had problems with loving the bionic woman and always had to do what his boss said. George Jefferson was a business man, but a baffoon. James on Good Times was broke and couldn't make it, and I was poor and couldn't make it, too! James Evans was sexy, but sorry and George, well we know about Sherman Hemsley!
Not only was my biggest crush a White man that had me hiding the the knobs to the television. My sister liked that pig nosed Bewitched. I did not want to watch her wiggle her nose, when Captain Kirk was running the Enterprise and having affairs with alien women all over the universe. I would eventually throw them in the garbage one day, and that led us having to turn the TV with pliers. I was the youngest and rarely got my way. So I only got to watch him for 30 minutes and then my older sister would either watch Bewitched or beat me up and watch Bewitched. When I was older, I discovered him again playing TJ Hooker and would spend my Saturday nights glued to the television set. By then my sister had discovered books and no longer cared about the TV. So by the time I met Steve in the hallway at Webster, I had been set-up. I already knew I had the capacity to love things that didn't look like me and strive for things that were foreign and strange. When I looked into his eyes and they were green, I could appreciate the sparkle and glow of them. His skin wasn't any different from Captain Kirks and his demeanor was no different than my father's hot temper. I was in big trouble and had embarked on the taboo of being Black. Only my family knew the extent of this betrayal and now it was suddenly my reality.
This little bad ass White kid had captured my heart, with his irregular ways. He wasn't sugar and spice like Greg Brady or David Cassidy. All the other little White kids brought sack lunches, with brown bread and an apple. This little boy didn't and walked around with a chip on his shoulder, because to hang with the Black boys he had to fight every other day to prove his worth. Now I know he is special, because he never allowed that slight to make him angry with us forever. Not the way we are taught to hate them for their wanting to live with us. We let them in if they are druggies or homeless, and they only let us in if we are intelligent and rich. That tells me something about my peoples worth as a society. Most Black men see Steve as a threat, and won't let him into the fold willingly. If he was a drug addicted bum they would be more willing to talk to him. Only what does that say about how you value your own self-worth? Do you really believe that you are less than him to the point the only way you feel equal to a White man is if he is so much lesser than you are. Society may feel that way, but like I said, Where is your self-worth? So I was torn all my life and in general went with my friends and what they saw as beautiful, but mostly I agreed. All of my friends in school were everything. Sometimes, I hate the children of today don't have the mix that I grew up with. I would sing Run DMC walking down the street, but would return home and listen to the sweet soft sounds of Alan Almonds Pillow Talk. I would give little hints of my secret love for "White" music. My mother had introduced it to us when we were young. We kept a long running love for it over time. She doesn't want anyone to know, but she had a long running crush on Peter Jennings of ABC News. My father dealt with other races for money reasons. "Money has no color, but green", was his motto.
He would never allow us to listen to Elton John, Journey or KC and the Sunshine band. But my sisters and I found Stevie Nicks, Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond on our own. Plus, my mother would turn to those stations sometimes in the morning. I heard "Lights" by Journey when I was about eight, and that is still one of my favorite songs. When Steve began to play it for me, because he was away from me, he had no idea my history with that song. It's sounds and words that illuminated my soul as a child. His city is by a lake, but it's still where he is trying to get back to and to me! I have a new found love for him and that song whenever I hear it, I'm a little girl in love again. Although my father gave me the love for Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores, Al Green and Earth, Wind and Fire. It was my mother who opened me up to something new. Once he left I began a new journey in music, instead of spending the nights dancing to The Jackson 5, I spent it with Kenny Logins, James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac. Not their entire albums like the R&B groups, because after my father left there was o money for that. So we went to the radio, and their more popular songs that I know by heart today!
I think somewhere in my life, someone would know that I would fall in love with a particular man. One who loves and appreciates me for who and what I am. With me knowing and appreciating him and who and what he is, even if I didn't want any one to know. It was my father who actually had the White great-grandparents from both sides. His grandparents on his mother side were both bi-racial. One half Irish and the other half Jew. Back in the 70's that wasn't the thing to be, and he taught his children the same. My mother not so much and she knew what she liked, and although she didn't have many White friends, she shared the good and bad she experienced while growing up in the South. I guess I'm just mixed up. I know I love Steve and I can't stand that L. Brooks Patterson. I think I want to take life and people as they come. I want to be able to appreciate the good in people and loathe the evil in them, too. I guess it's like Don Henley says, "I guess I just wanna have it all." Although society won't except that as a whole and think I should chose. Either My mother or Waymond's girlfriend, George Jefferson or Captain Kirk, Lionel Ritchie or Elton John, The Commodores or Fleetwood Mac; I know I don't have to chose.
I can love them all collectively. When it comes to choosing a mate, however, I can not love collectively, but I must choose. For me at this point there is only one choice, and I selected from a cast of characters. I hear that it's a man's job to pick you, anyway. Since I have been chosen by one who is not like me in color, but like me in every other sense of alikeness, I pick him, too. We can sit at home and watch Steven Segal or Will Smith, The Real World or 106 & Park or listen to Tu Pac or Eminem, Christina or Pink or somebody else. We can live or lives with our love and our music. Fighting and loving all the way, because I believe that I was made to love him - we like Stevie Wonder, too - and everyday from this day has led to our forever. So for all those who remember me walking down the hall singing "Poppa don't preach." I have found myself a real Italian, like Madonna did and I ain't mad about it. He's strong and loving, although he's not as fierce as my father, he has the temperament he did. Just like my father, though, he loves me! (sigh)
No comments:
Post a Comment