It's not that serious

I hate me...

It’s11:15 pm on a Thursday. It’s raining. You are in the den playing World Of Warcraft, the cat’s licking her ass and I am sitting in a plush beige 3^rd hand recliner in the living room of a 2 story house nestled in a suburbia which exists on the fringes of a large city in California .

The living room has shag carpet that someone told me was once orange. It might have been 25 years ago but today is an unpleasant muddy green with splotches of moldy brown. The curtains are yellow and as old as the carpet. A bowflex sits in the middle of the floor, unused, unwanted and glaring ominously at any one who passes it by.

The room is flanked by 3 bookshelves all spilling over with binders of world maps, recipes, math and English assignments, craft instructions, etc. Two plaid couches (from the late 70s?) mercifully covered by bright red table clothes, hold up the rest of the walls.

The walls themselves are plastered with a concoction of African and African American collectables, oddities and art work which start off as museum worthy then hyper jump directly into the realm of offensive and tasteless. Example: Hand carved wooden mask from Nigeria next to a green, red and white hand stitched circular pot holder that portrays a black female child in classic red lipped, moon faced, darky, pickanninny style. This is the standard décor for the rest of the 2 and ½ bathroom, 4 bedroom house. To summarize it looks as if the 70’s a Costco/Sams ( or what ever local where house supply store your familiar with) size box of Reese’s pieces, a teaching supply store and the Black Power movement got together for one wicked foursome and heaved all over the place.

The art, the carpet, the furniture, the room, the house all belong to my possibly- future -mother-in-law and is a physical manifestation of the mental and emotional abuse she endures from her husband. I used to feel sorry for her. I don't anymore. She stayed. She stayed here. She constructed her tomb. She chose to accept. I want to grab her and shake her. I want to wrap my hands around my neck and wake her up. Sometimes I even want to blame her for how my life is. If she would have demanded more of her husband and for herself you wouldn't be the person you are today right... right? That has to be the reason for it. Your father is an ass, your mother his tool and you a cross between them both.

I’m hungry. I want to stuff the hollow space within with something heavy and solid. just to pretend I'm whole. The emptiness is something food could never truly fill... but right now its close enough. I open the door to the refrigerator and look inside. It is just like the walls, just like the house, just like your mother, just like me… full of useless odds and ends, going off and in need of cleaning, in serious want of catharsis. I close the door to that little pocket of insanity and tragedy so viciously that I can hear clank of 8 13 month old salad dressings bottle cry out against eachother. Although I wonder if I have broken something I am quite certain that I do not care.

I feel destructive. This isn't good. My minds not well. I should go upstairs, sleep off or through this storm.

I might as well take a Valerian root and go to bed. I say this out loud. But the only one who hears me is the cat. Who is busily content at the moment so she could care less. I repeat my plans for retirement again, louder. And I hear you say "Go ahead I will be right up."

It's 2am before you actually comes to bed. Your feet which areicy cold from sitting in front of the window while running your latest "instance", brush against the soles of mine. I feign sleep and roll away from you but you snuggle closer and suddenly the cal king size bed isn't nearly large enough. You place your hand around my waist and slowly, slowly inches your fingers up until you are cupping my breast. Warming your frigid fingers from my body heat. I know you don't mean to be a pain. I know you just want to be close to me. But I want to cringe, I want to push you off, but I don't want to explain why.

So I lay there and I wait for your breath which comes in deep sighs to even out. I wait for you to stop your slow and gentle grinding into my back. I wait for you to sleep. And when you do I un-twine myself and push away. I'm colder than before.

I'm wide awake now.

And I'm pissed because I have to get up at 6 and go to work then leave work and go to class until 10pm and you don't have to do that.

I want to shake you. And tell you to get it together, get a real job so we can get out of this house. Get in school, get a life so I can get some respect for you. Get it together... so we can get together. Because I am so damn tired of holding our world up. So tired of being here, in this house, in this place, in this state of mind.

I want to tell you that you are killing me. That you have been killing me for five years! I want you to stop it!

But I don't. I pull the covers closer and force myself to fall asleep. In the morning I'm cuddled up next to you. It's warm, comfortable, familiar... the curve of your side against mine and the cadence of your breath, the beat of your heart.

And for five minutes right before you open your eyes, before you say good morning, I love you. I wonder if this is how your mother feels and I hate myself for it.

I hate this house

I hate the walls

I sometimes hate you

but most of all

I hate me

for continuing to be

here

In this house

within its walls

it's rotten, it's crumbling

it's going to fall.

Before that happen I'll come awake

I'll grab me and slap me, I'ma give me a shake

Just for now I'll sleep and grieve

But one day soon I find the strength to leave.

My city is drowning

I turn on the tv. I want to know what is happening. I don't know how to feel . . . what to feel. I see. My city drowning. I see my people black and bruised and begging and screaming and dying. The faces are all familiar. Voices all heard before. There is violence and desperation.
"I hear they are looting for food, and water and passing it out to other people" someone says.
The pretty blonde news anchor scoffs at the remark "Makes them sound like modern day Robin hoods . . . right."
A tiny laugh.
She shakes her head, her stomach full, her clothes clean, her environment air-conditioned, her bathroom works.
News continues. Looters. Anarchy. My people are shown plastered against the screen. Violence shooting black bodies baked by the sun. The camera zooms in the sound cuts out, like some damned discovery channel special. But we are people, humans we are beings. I can see them cry. My youngest sister is trapped in the once proud convention center. People are dying all around her. A mother gives birth. A three month old is starving. The mother mal nourished and sick cannot produce the mil to feed her child A diabetic goes into shock an old woman faints the smell of shit and rot stifles the hot humid air. A woman sits besides the body of her dead lover wrapped in a white sheet. Still, clinging to the past despite the one-hundred and five degree heat.
And she cries
-and i cry
And she screams
-and i scream
Help us!
-i am helpless

I call. Circuits are down, signal busy. I cannot get through
so I wait
for the phone to ring
endless hours
days
tick tock
loudly by
And finally Mother calls from Baton Rouge. She is safe and with family. Everything lost. Everything is gone. This woman who raised my brother and me on her own, this woman who shed tears of blood and sweet to own her own piece of land to make a life, a better world for her children, my hero, my Saint, lost everything. She doesn't cry. No tears are left
So I cry instead.
She tells me of a woman whom I've known since birth. "She was screaming because the glass was breaking all around her. I told her to get into the bathroom. She was screaming just screaming.
She tells me of the man who called her early in the morning to tell her to get out. He didn't leave himself.
"The water is rising in the house," he says his island accent strong
"Get out," she cries
"The water is rising in the house"
"Get out. Get to the roof. Get out"
"It's to late for me to leave the water rises."
That is the last she has heard.

She is 56 she has to begin again
Everything is lost
but she is lucky
she is blessed
she is alive

Finally Brother calls. A friend made it out but his grand mother stays behind.

I see the view from above. I know the street. I've walked it. I know how the streets run with water in the gentle rains and how it flows like a river in the heavy storms. I know the roofs of the houses barely visible swallowed by water.

Big Sister calls. The man whom we share as a father made it . . . he had to be dragged away from his business. It was the world to him. It was his life. I wonder if he will recover.

PaRaine calls. "I don't know where my daughter is, her husband the grandchildren?"
"Did they stay behind?" I ask in tears.
"Yes"
The answer is simple
solid
stark
stressing
"I've heard nothing"

I make a list that grows longer and l o n g e r.

Where are they? Did they make it?
On the news I watch them spray painting Ds and Xs over housed. The dead are here - do not enter.
But are they alive? Did they make it?
Dead bloated bodies tied to stop signs. People walk past trying not to see, trying not to stop.

A best friend calls. Her mother. My second mother makes it out of the hospital after walking through raw sewage and shit and rot through a river of death and decay she makes it out

The phone stops ringing.
Night falls
another day begins
I watch.
The president denies the aid of other countries
I seethe, I cry, I scream
I watch
rape and death and birth

"Where are you?" they cry to God and Country "Help us! Help us!"
Goddess, God, Lord and Lady help them I cry help them!
Where is their Home Security now?! Are they left to die because they are poor and black . . . like me? Are they to be washed away and forgotten? The rich sit on leather couches watching HD tv screens, shaking their head, sipping their cocktails. "What a shame. " Remember you once came to play in my city you walked my streets of magick and mystery and now it drowns and where are you
Where am I?
Curled inside a bottle trying to forget trying to hide trying to run.
At least for a little while.

I turn off the television
I go to get a drink of water to clear my head but as soon as it touches my lips I am full of guilt for those who have not this luxury.
I can't sleep in my bed because there are those that have not this luxury
I turn out the light

They scream
I scream

"Where are you my Country," They scream
Where are you Aunt Grace, Uncle Robert, Troy, Ms Miles, Ms Oubre, Aunt Diane, Alethea, Susie, Mrs. Guevara, Sondra, Angela, Dawn, Katie, McClain, Cathy, Mike, Ashley? The list goes on and on, rolling out adding more and more
Help Us
Help Us
Help US
Help them!
My city drowns
My people die
Some say we can never go back
But I will
I will stand on the ashes.
I will touch the wreckage of what was once my home.
I will make my peace
and honor the dead
My city will live in me