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If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
“Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.”
Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I would forever have power over it. But in my case of sacrificial effort I was thwarted.
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.
But Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.
“Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down.”
“I came to Jesus, as I was, worried, worn and sad, I found in Him a resting place and He has made me glad.”
“You be a good girl now. You hear? Don't you make people think I didn't raise you right. You hear?” She would have been more surprised than I had she taken me in her arms and wept at losing me. Her world was bordered on all sides with work, duty, religion and “her place.”
“God is love. Just worry about whether you're being a good girl, then He will love you.”
“Keep your legs closed, and don't let nobody see your pocketbook.”
The saying that people who have nothing to do become busybodies is not the only truth. Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always wondering where the next “fix” is coming from.
Although he looked harmless, I knew he was a dreadful angel counting out my many sins.
One lie surely wouldn't be worth a man's life. Bailey could have explained it all to me, but I didn't dare ask him. Obviously I had forfeited my place in heaven forever, and I was as gutless as the doll I had ripped to pieces ages ago. Even Christ Himself turned His back on Satan.
Just my breath, carrying my words out, might poison people and they'd curl up and die like the black fat slugs that only pretended.
When I refused to be the child they knew and accepted me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”
She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
“I came to Jesus, as I was, worried, wounded and sad, I found in Him a resting place, And He has made me glad.”
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense.
There was no “nobler in the mind” for Negroes because the world didn't think we had minds, and they let us know it.
“Lift ev'ry voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
“Stony the road we trod Bitter the chastening rod Felt in the days when hope, unborn, had died. Yet with a steady beat Have not our weary feet Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?”*
“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”
We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls.
I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.
“If you ask a Negro where he's been, he'll tell you where he's going.”
To understand this important information, it is necessary to know who uses this tactic and on whom it works. If an unaware person is told a part of the truth (it is imperative that the answer embody truth), he is satisfied that his query has been answered. If an aware person (one who himself uses the stratagem) is given an answer which is truthful but bears only slightly if at all on the question, he knows that the information he seeks is of a private nature and will not be handed to him willingly. Thus direct denial, lying and the revelation of personal affairs are avoided.
“I can't win, 'cause of the shape I'm in.”
The idea of spreading mercy, indiscriminately, or, to be more correct, spreading it on someone I really didn't care about, enraptured me. I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful. I stood in the center of the floor but Dolores never looked up.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
Life was cheap and death entirely free.
‘Can't do is like Don't Care.’ Neither of them have a home.” Translated, that meant there was nothing a person can't do, and there should be nothing a human being didn't care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for.
“Don't worry about it. You ask for what you want, and you pay for what you get. And I'm going to show you that it ain't no trouble when you pack double.”
Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. He must believe that for his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit.
