They’ve grown on me, these dusty boys. They work my nerves and make me laugh in spite of myself all in a day.  Plucking my patience every moment they get. Sometimes I slip and get weak and let them get me flustered.  Today was one of those days. It started out
like any other, with mumbles and grumbles early in the morning and quickly turned
into the foul-mouthed barbershop pool hall, with Jaquan leading the charge
making me nuts.

“Jaquan will you PLEASE sit down and stop all that
talking and do some work!? Will you? Just, just for a change, try something
different, like doing some work for the sake of changing your routine, doing
something different, for change, why don’t ya, huh?”

I was being sarcastic and he knew it. Some of the Bosses laughed at my snarky attitude prompting Jaquan to ignore me and continue talking to his buddies. Plucking my nerves at 8:30am, I yelled, “Jaquan!”

He snapped, “Miss P! Relax!”

In a split second, quickly reading my, oh-no-you-didn’t,  look on my face,
he changed his tone and followed up with,  “Miss P, you know you love me, you like saying
my name don’t you? Matter fact, you probly tell your husband, ‘Baby, I’m so
tired dealing with them kids all day, especially that boy Jaquan’. Miss P, you probly talk
about me so much that your husband be like ‘if I hear that Jaquan Jackson’s
name one more time, I’m leaving you’. That’s probly what he be saying while
he’s rubbing your feet, right Miss P?”

He had the class’s attention, making them laugh as they looked at me for the comeback. I was in his crosshairs; show time. It was too godamn early for a fight and all I could come up with was, “You know what!? …Don’t play with me today.  Y’all are getting on my nerves already…acting like a bunch of…”

I paused quickly searching my mind for the perfect noun. They paused laughing and momentarily stared, wondering what insult I was about to hurl. Their faces asked would it be fun or a fight, and then I finally blurted out, “acting like a bunch of Rug Rats!”

They fell out laughing hysterically, slapping knees, pounding desks, caught off guard at the absurdity of my Nickelodeon reference; part tickled at the term of endearment, part
relieved I didn’t hurl fighting words like they’re used to receiving.

“Yo Miss P, you crazy!” Jamel said wiping the tears from his eyes while nudging Malachi.  “Yo, son, she straight called us Rug Rats!”

Ron G leaned back in his seat, cocking his head to the side, slowly revealing a sly grin exposing his perfect beautiful teeth, “But I’m your favorite Rug Rat, right Miss P?”

I sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes making him laugh loud, “Yeah, see that son, I’m her favorite rug rat, she just can’t admit it in front of y’all fools.”

“Nigga shut up, you muthafucking Stewey, nigga” Jaquan quipped.

The class is officially in hysterics, in a good mood. I let it rock for a little bit, since they could use some laughter therapy. Hell, so could I.

“Watch that word,” I said with my back turned writing on the board.

“Aight, I got you Miss P, my bad,” Jaquan said, to my surprise. That term of endearment must have definitely won him over…for the moment, at least. I’ll take it, moment to moment.

My Rug Rat roll call reads like a ghetto farce and a cruel joke on me. I have three Dayshawns, each one spelled differently; (Deshawn, Dayshawn, Daeshaun), a Dayquan, a Jaquan, a Sean, and an Antoinne.

One kid, Paris, I nicknamed Peanut. A short skinny kid with a little peanut shaped head and beady eyes too small for his face; he was always bouncing around,  hyper, never sat still, always dancing, and always moving like a jumping bean.  One day, frustrated at his dancing antics, I blurted out, “Peanut!” yelling at him to sit down. The name just jumped in my head and out of my mouth… and it stuck; even the other kids call him that now.

Despite the fact Peanut does absolutely NO work at all, I like the kid, there’s something endearing about his sneaky little ass.  Maybe it’s because when I yell at him to do work he’ll smile at me sheepishly and respond, “Yes, my Black Queen Sister…Imma do my work Nubian
Queen,” forcing a smile from me, falling for it every time.

Today he walked into class with two white plastic forks sticking out from his short-cropped
afro.  He takes one fork and begins to pick out his hair.

“See what jail do to you Miss P? I gotta use a fork to comb my hair. Aint that a damn shame?”

“What’s a damn shame is you flicking your peas all on my floor, sit down Peanut,” I jokingly said. Peanut was a good sport.

“Aww, Miss P, wait till I go to the barbershop, you gonna see my waves then, imma be spinning, watch.” And he did the Harlem Shake, a popular, look-like-your-going-into convulsions dance, before he sat in his seat to do no work.

“Boy, sit down!” I said through a smile, shaking my head. Peanut knew how to melt my icy front.

Then there’s Antoinne, a bonified comedian with an old soul. Reminds me of Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, the way he walks and talks like a corny 1970’s dusty pimp. He’s got this high-pitched voice and does this exaggerated, slow motion, slide-dip walk. He’s a
clown, putting on a show without even opening his mouth. But when he does,
everything is fo’ sheezy this, or fo’sheezy that. Today, like everyday, he walks
into class making an entrance with his funkadelik pimp-dip, talking ’bout, “Fo’sheezy Miss P, check this out, when get back on the town I wanna take my girl to restaurants where you
have to dress up, where you have to wear tuxedos, ya hear me? Imma expose her
to a high quality of life ‘cause imam different kinda nigga Miss P…fo’sheezy!”

“Watch that word Antoine.”

“Fo’sheezy.”

Walking the rows passing out work I hear Jaquan whisper to Malachi, “Yo Kai, don’t she look a lil’ thicker today? You can see her shape more…she look more thicker.”

Jaquan then proceeds to ask me, “Ms. P you ever heard of a restaurant called Juniors in Brooklyn?”

“Yes Jaquan,” I responded, with a tone of annoyance

He continued, “You ever eat there?”

“Food is too greasy, No I don’t eat there Jaquan, what’s with the 20 questions about Juniors?”

“Naw it just look like you went to Juniors over the weekend, had some of that
cheesecake.”

He’s such a smart ass. He managed to draw snickers from Malachi and a couple random rug rats in earshot.  I really can’t stand Jaquan.
He’s the king of the clowns, the rug rat supreme, also known as lil Rumbles, (his jailhouse name) who’s hell bent on fucking with me every gotdamn day I see him.

But he was right; the observant big-mouthed dusty rascal noticed that my jeans
were in fact a tad bit more snug than normal because I did laundry the night
before making my jeans a little tighter.
Later, I would catch him staring at me with a glazed look in his eye
and suddenly realized that my nemesis was crushing, which can only make matters
worse. Great.

I am an artist. A poet.  A playwright.
An actress. A creator. A dreamer.
A teacher.  A thinker, feeler, empath.   An antennae. A storyteller.

I live in New York City. Rents are abusive.
Inspiration is everywhere. New York will either grind you down or shine you up.
The energy is seductive. The game level is high, sexy. The art is raw. The subway is daily moving theater.

Artists struggle. Most do not have health care.
Some have figured it out and support themselves solely with their art… I marvel
and salute them. Some days I cry. It’s tough. I chose this path.  I love my art. My art does not support me (yet).  I teach teenagers. They inspire me. They get on my nerves. They make me laugh. They make me think. They keep me honest. They are narcissistic energy bandits. I love them. I reach them. I believe in them. They have become my life’s purpose.

My art is my passion, my other life’s purpose. It is a struggle
to serve one purpose without neglecting the other. This is a story of pursuing
passion and stumbling upon purpose. Pursuing a recalcitrant dream and
discovering light in a dark place. Navigating love between barbed wire while
having the soul of a nightingale and the skin of a rhinoceros. Walking a
tightrope of passion, purpose and survival. I chose this path.

I am a healer, wounded and gorgeous with a story to tell.

One hot summer Brooklyn night, after a heavy rain downpour earlier that day, I see a waterbug in my living room who had clearly wandered in from my balcony. Since I had graduated from the big sneaker to Raid, I quickly grabbed my pink garden fresh scent can and Bam…waterbug dead! I blew the smoking spray from the pistol of Raid and swaggered my confident ass back
into the kitchen to finish cooking my dinner. Phobia is waning, damn near gone, and I’m proud of myself for that.  Standing at the stove cooking, out the corner of my eye, I see something flying. I jump and I swat at it thinking it’s a brown moth, but I thought the sound of its fluttering wings was odd and loud for a moth, and Lord have mercy on my soul I discover that it’s a huge flying cockroach!!  I run out of the kitchen screaming like a white lady in the horror movies in full panic. Oh sweet Jesus I have never, in my entire Black life seen a flying cockroach. The muthafuckers are HUGE, and they got wings…I can’t!  I’ve heard about them in Florida, Texas, Mexico, the Amazon, the Philippines, faraway places like that, but not Brooklyn! Fuck outta here! Screaming hysterical I call my BFF, Sun Singleton, who lives around the corner.

Panting and breathing fast, I can barely speak, “Gurl, please, please I need your help, I hate to bother you…please don’t laugh at me but…oh my GOD there it goes again (scream)!”

Sun has no idea what is going on, “Liza, Liza! Calm down, take deep breaths…breathe deep gurl…Liza, Tell me what’s going on?!”

Still panting and hopping on my tippy toes I begged, “Girl…please don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not going to laugh, just tell me what happened?” Sun said in a calm reassuring voice.

“There is a huge flying cockroach in my kitchen…gurl it has wings, the mutherfucker is flying and you already know my phobia with waterbugs and I been doing pretty good with them…but girl, (scream) there it is (scream) it’s flying it’s flying…OH MY GOD please help me, I can’t, I can’t, I (scream) !!!”

Sun immediately goes into healer mode, “First I need you to breathe 10 deep breaths…let me hear you, come on let me hear that breath.”

I couldn’t make it to the third breath before I began screaming at the sight of this alien monstrosity flying around in my kitchen as I stood way the fuck outa range in the living room.

This time Sun tried army general tactic, “Liza! YOU ARE A HUNTRESS! I want you to pull that inner huntress out, you are a warrior, it’s way more afraid of you than you are of it…do not let a bug run you out of your palace, you work too hard and pay too much godamn rent to be run out of your beautiful apartment over a damn bug you CAN AND WILL KILL, you are a warrior
huntress!”

She continued as she tried to put a battery in my back, “Let me hear that bass in your voice, let me hear it girl, put the bass back in your voice,” she demanded.

I whimpered “ok, ok yeah, you right, yeah.”

Sun barked, “Let me hear that bass, that aint bass gurl, let me hear it!”

I tried to muster some gravity in my voice but it came out a deeper whimper, “I can do this ok, ok, ok, I can do this, fuck that muthafucker.”

At this point the flying waterbug had flown into my bedroom, so with Sun’s battery in my back I walked into my room to confront this thing that is just a bug, just a bug… just a bug that I’m way bigger than. Shoulders so tightly hunched I am in actual physical pain. With my entire body gripped in fear I entered my bedroom with Raid clenched in hand, finger on the
trigger.  It was crawling on the wall and as I went to spray it, it flew, I jumped and screamed and then saw something moving in the corner of my bedroom window screen…a fucking waterbug on my screen. Without thinking twice I aimed and sprayed the screen which made 3 more on the
outside of the screen come into view and scramble across the window screen.

Already jumping and screaming while buck spraying the first muthafucking one, I went
into full hysteria- flight mode and screamed in a fever pitch, “There’s four of them! OH MY GOD! No No NOOOO FUCK THAT, Fuck that!!!” I shrieked as I flung myself out of my apartment building like when Dianne Carroll (in the film Claudine) was beating her daughter in the bathroom with a brush and her daughter did an academy award fling out of the bathroom, crying with snot running out her nose.
Always keeping it cinematic I flung myself out of my apartment and down the steps outside while gasping and sobbing, wearing a pink wife beater, with a pink bra, black leggings holding onto my pink can of garden fresh scented Raid (insert Charlie Sheen’s voice) “Matching.”

I called Sun back weeping, broke down, and defeated, “I can’t, I just can’t, they win, I can’t gurl…there were 4 of them, four of them do you understand!?! And they fly!  I can’t live like this, I just can’t live like this, I can’t take it no more!”

Sobbing hard, standing on the corner of Kingston and St.Marks, headed to I don’t even know where, I paced the corner dazed and confused and disoriented. Just then two of my male neighbors came speed walking with concern across the street towards me. They heard me screaming, “It’s four of them,” while running out the building and they thought there were four men in
my apartment attacking me.

The first neighbor asked, “Neighbor, what’s wrong, I heard you screaming and then I saw you running out your house, are you ok, what happened?”

In that moment when I realized I had alarmed the entire block, I felt silly and embarrassed to tell them what the hysteria was really about. I looked at them shaking my head, “I feel so stupid now that I’m out here…oh God please don’t laugh at me, I feel so silly.”

The other neighbor, Antoine, who is enamored with me and always tries to engage me in conversation when he sees me, asking me 20 questions, (nice guy but it aint happening bro), sees this as a gift from hook-me-up heaven and goes into rescue the Brooklyn Damsel in distress mode.

“No my dear” he said in his thick West Indian voice, “It’s not silly, just tell me, it’s ok, no
one’s laughing, what happened dear?”

I told my two concerned neighbors about my phobia with waterbugs and that there are 4 flying ones in my apartment and I am so terrified of them that they actually ran me out of my apartment. Antoine shakes his head yes with compassionate understanding and says, “Yup, yup, you’re just like my mother, my mother is the same way so I know what you’re going through, I had to
kill them for my mother and she would scream and she’s a very strong woman. I understand dear…come.”

Antoine was ‘going in’ with rescue mission and sent the other neighbor to get him a pack of cigarettes (to get rid of him) while he escorted me to the other bodega and bought me a big black can of Raid. He comes to my house and sprays my entire apartment, all the baseboards, windows and radiators killing 5 in total. My Brooklyn Terminator to the rescue.  By this time Sun had come over and she and I follow behind Antoine as he sprays while Sun puts the dead waterbug carcasses
in a plastic bag; pure team work. Sun finally acknowledges, “Damn gurl, they are big, I thought you were screaming about the little ones, but these jokers are big! I understand gurl, aww I really understand.” I took comfort in knowing that my un-warrior-like screaming hysteria was warranted and someone else witnessed the girth of the flying demons and understood my surrender.

Antoine just had to, couln’t resist, but had to try and move in on my raw vulnerability, “I have an air mattress you can sleep on at my place, it’s really ok.”

Picking up on his chivalry turning to slime, Sun chimed in, “that’s ok, she can stay with me, I live right around the corner, but thank you.”I stayed the night with Sun, able to lie in a bed and close my eyes and actually sleep that fretful night.

I haven’t seen a flying cockroach since, nor any live waterbugs; found two dead from Antoine’s successful extermination a few weeks later though.  My nerves been real bad and I still hunch up when I enter the kitchen still carrying my pistol of Raid in hand. I suppose my nerves will normalize over time.

Please feel free to share your flying cockroach stories so I don’t feel so alone.

 Liza Jessie Peterson 8/2011 ©

What? Round one? They gotta be kidding me? As the two lady scrappers and the surrounding
audience of 15 or so rascals moved in front of the beautiful Brooklyn Children’s
Museum, which resembles a bright yellow submarine with colorful windows full of
children’s décor, both of the girls’ loud mouthing wolf tickets turned into round two in a split second, only this time it spilled out into the middle of the street. “Ooooohhhh!” the kids yelled as the fat little red shirt promoter jumped with adrenaline-filled joy and exclaimed, “Yeah, round two, round two y’all, yeah boy!”

I thought to myself, this is going to go on until the cops come and one of these lil’ gremlins get arrested or seriously hurt.  They looked to be young adolescents, no more than 14 and not a day older; pre-pubescent Brooklyn scrappers.  The oncoming beeping cars slowly swerved around the sloppy human boxing ring which prompted lil’ don king to exclaim, “Move out the street, y’all!” and subsequently interrupted round two. Thank God!  At this point I am mentally juggling with: do I go down there now?  I damn sure don’t feel like putting on my Sista Liza teacher cape, shit I’m
depressed, it’s all about me now! All of this ran through my mind while I secretly
hoped they would get tired and just stop; Stop acting up and fighting in the street so I don’t have to do what my spirit was pulling on me to do, dammit. Then I heard the ringleader exclaim “Round three, let’s go, round three!”  Damn these fucking rug rat baad ass kids, shit! I fussed to myself as I ran out the apartment with just a rag on my head, a musty aint-took-a-shower-yet t-shirt (no bra), lint and cat haired raggedy leggings and threw on my silver crystal Stuart Weitzman Dorothy-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz ballerina slippers only because they provided the fastest access. I looked
crazy indeed, but my shoes were fabulous (sidebar).  I took my keys and tucked them into my waistband but by the time I ran down two flights of stairs and hustled my ass outside, the keys had slipped down to my ankles. Keys be damned, my cape was on and I was in full throttle Sista Liza mode.

I swiftly walked directly into the middle of the cheering audience of teenage mutant Beybey’s kids, who quickly looked at me with big saucer “who’s this lady” eyes. The speed and intention with my gait caught them off guard, since several other adults had previously walked by, ignoring the un-ignorable, merely shaking their heads in disgust. I walked towards the pack of chuck-e-cheese children like I knew them, ALL eyes on me.

The two girls scrapping had the claw clamp on each other’s weave with their heads down
and both arms stretched out with a two fisted grip on their opponents sewn-in synthetic hair. They weren’t swinging, they couldn’t; they were grip-locked, turning in a circle like two Siamese twins conjoined by the head moving like a windmill.

“No No, we not gonna have this,” I said walking directly into the hornet’s nest, “Y’all
too pretty to be out here fighting, no no.” I said this as I gently put my hand on their backs and began to slowly rub while repeating, “Ya’ll too pretty for this, let her hair go baby, come on, let her hair go.”

The dusty lil’ promoter, outdone that his tournament and show was being foiled, yelled, “Let ‘em
fight miss!”

“I most certainly am not, no no,” I sternly replied as I continued to rub their backs and tried to gently grab the fingers of one of the girls to loosen her grip. Just then two little girls in the audience came to my assistance and began helping me unclench their grip.  They saw I wasn’t an enemy; I came with loving authority instead of abrasive confrontation, and they responded by
following my lead…and listened. Whew!
The two scrappers became unhinged but not without one of the scrappers pulling the shirt halfway off of the other scrapper exposing her bra…the ultimate diss and highlight for the boys to hopefully get to see a little titty.  As she fixed her bra and pulled her shirt down I followed her over on the side walk where she stood by herself, back facing the raucous crowd. She was clearly the outsider.  The other scrapper walked away with much of the crowd following her while they recounted the details of the fight, replaying the highlights as if she wasn’t there. She was clearly the crowd
favorite.

“Baby, you are too pretty to be out here fighting, look at you, pretty as you wanna be,” I said attempting to gain entry to calm this  child down and see her to safety. I continued, “Don’t be the entertainment for the crowd, them lil’ boys might as well have been watching a basketball game, and you and that girl was nothing but their entertainment.  I bet y’all might not have even been fighting if there wasn’t a crowd.”

Her eyes had a look of relief; a look of feeling somewhat safe with me nearby, “We was gonna stop after the first time but they kept saying round two and stuff so we had to keep fighting,” she said as her eyes went from looking at me to looking back at the crowd, to looking at me, eyes
unsettled.  Just then a few of the chuck-e-cheesers came over to me and the unidentified scrapper, curious about what we were talking about and to see just who the hell I was. Two little girls and two little boys including lil’ don king, came sniffing around. I went into teacher mode and raised my tone just under yelling, “Y’all out here fighting is not good, all ya’ll pretty little girls need to settle y’alls beef one-on-one without a crowd, cause all y’all doing is providing entertainment for the group,” and I glared at lil’ don king, “and you were the main one egging them on, instigating, and that’s not right, brotha, that’s not right.”

As if he was in school getting chastised by the principal, he immediately got defensive and exposed his little boy self as he sucked his teeth and exclaimed, “It wasn’t just me! Everybody was saying stuff! See there, why you saying it was just me when it was everybody!”

“Because you were the main one I heard, talking bout round one, round two, I heard you,”
I shot back.

“So! It wasn’t just me though! See there, that’s not right miss! Why you blaming me?”

“All y’all is wrong for letting them fight, everybody out here is wrong,” I said to avoid getting into a one-on-one debate with the promoter who clearly wanted special attention.

Just then little boy number two, the promoters hype man, chimed in, “If they want to fight we gonna let them fight, we can’t stop that.”

I turned to the girls, “See, what I’m talking about? Whoever hypes y’all up is not your friend, they just want a show to be entertained for the afternoon. Friends don’t let friends fight.”

Smarty pants hype boy retorts, “Miss we don’t want to hear all that preaching!”

I snapped on his little dusty butt, “Well go on down the street with your friends, but imma say what I want to say because I’m an adult and if you don’t want to hear what I have to say you certainly don’t have to stand here.”

He scooted off mumbling something inaudible like, “Forget her man, come on,” to lil’ don king, who rolled his eyes and walked away.

The remaining two little girls, wearing plaid skirts, attempted to console the lil’ scrapper, “You alright girl? I was standing right there making sure nobody else jumped in.”

Seeing right through their disingenuous and absurd attempt to make it seem like they were her friends and on her side, lil’ miss scrapper sucked her teeth and barked, “Whatever.”  Homegirl was not feeling them. The phoney girls looked offended that lil’ scapper didn’t play along and they scoffed, “Fine, we was trynna be nice, whatever then”, and they sucked their teeth and twisted off.

By this time a cop car and patty wagon pulled up; someone on the block must have called. I told the little girls not to run and they calmly walked away, but the lil’ rug rat boys immediately ran upon seeing the cop car for it clearly triggered their Black Boys in America survival instinct. The
po-po cruised down the block, slowing down in front of me. I looked at them, they looked at me, and I continued talking to the lil’ scrapper, silently indicating to the cops that things were under control, a reasonable adult was on the scene. That seemed to suffice as they pulled off.

“See”, I said, “the cops were coming to lock all y’all up and trust me you don’t want to go to
Rikers, I work there sweetheart and you do not want to be up in that place, trust me when I tell you.”

Like a child trying to argue the absurd she naively said, “Well they wouldn’t have got all of us because we woulda ran.”

“All they need is a couple, and you would have been one of them, trust me sweetheart,” I assured her as I cocked my head to the side for emphasis.

I noticed the group lingering at the corner not quite sure where to go since they were hyped up with excitement and not sure what to do now, since the fight-show ended early.  I told lil’ scrapper to walk in the opposite direction of the crowd gathered down at the corner of St. Marks and Brooklyn.
“But that’s the direction I need to get home” she pleaded, not making any logical sense.

“Well today you’re taking a different route because I don’t want you walking in the same direction of trouble.”

“But that’s the long way and imma get in trouble if I get home late,” she nonsensically pleaded.

I said, “So call your mother and let me speak to her and I’ll tell her why you’re going to be a little late”. Like an obedient child in the principal’s office she dialed
her mother on the cell phone.  “Mommy… I got into a fight…over on St. Marks…but ma…” and she passed me the phone mid-sentence to avoid her mother’s tongue lashing for the moment.

I took the phone, “Hi, my name is Ms. Peterson and I live on the block, over here on St. Marks, and your daughter was out here fighting and I broke it up and told her to walk in the
opposite direction of the other kids, so she might get home a lil’ later because I told her to take the long way…….I don’t know who she was fighting Miss, in fact I don’t even know your daughter,
I just happen to live on the block and heard the kids out here screaming and carrying on, so I came running out the house to break up the fight because I can’t stand to see kids fight……you’re quite welcome,” I said as I handed lil’ scrapper back to her mother.                                                           Though her mother was inaudible and sounded like the grown-ups on Charlie Brown, just by
the tone I knew mother was laying her daughter out.  Lil’ scrapper desperately tried to get a word in “We fought three rounds, I won one and she won two, but ma…see there, but I didn’t start
it, ma (sucks teeth), this was my first time over here all summer, but ma…alright alright I’m coming now, bye.”

As I told lil’ scrapper I was going to walk her back to Fulton street, she seemed hesitant and confused, not sure if she should be escorted less she be seen as a punk, “but wait I have to make a phone call,” she said making no sense, again.

“You can walk and talk at the same time, come on let’s go,” I said and to my surprise she followed.

“So what was the beef about anyway, why were y’all out here fighting in the first place?” I inquired attempting to engage her in dialogue.

Eager to plead her case she went in, “Well I used to live over here that’s how come I know her and everybody, and well, she violated me on Facebook, then I violated her back and we was even, but then I had given my best friend Aisha my passcode for Facebook and she violated the girl some more but the girl thought it was me but it wasn’t, but I had to say something back because of what she had said.”

“Well why does Aisha have your passcode in the first place? Why doesn’t she have her own Facebook account? Why she all up on your page?” I asked.

“Because her mother won’t let her have a Facebook page,” she said sheepishly, hearing herself for the first time and realizing in that moment that she fucked up.

“What?!” I snapped like I was her mother, “Oh so because her momma won’t let her have a Facebook page she gonna come all up on your page starting trouble popping off at the mouth. Don’t ever give anybody your passcode, you hear? You learned your lesson this time, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said holding her head down then quickly changed the subject, “I gotta get a scarf right away miss, my hair, I can’t walk home looking like this.”

In my girlfriend homegirl-to-homegirl tone I exclaimed, “Chile look how I ran out the house, I’m the one who look crazy, not you. Aint nobody looking at your hair and it aint like you got tracks missing, plus we’ll just walk real fast,” I paused, then I asked, “How old are you?” trying to divert her attention away from her hair which was only a bit rumpled but understanding her Black girls’ hyper-preoccupation with appearance (which I too, do suffer from at times). She never told me her age but answered with her grade, “I’m in the seventh grade.”

“Are you getting good grades?” I inquired

“Yeah,” she said with a Brooklyn attitude and tone, yet not disrespectful.

I followed up, “Like A’s and B’s, or B’s and C’s?”

“A’s and B’s…but I failed gym, I got a 65.”

Without skipping a beat I asked, “Well what did you get in English?”

“I got a 90,” she said looking at me for approval

“Go head gurl!” I exclaimed in a high pitch sister-girl tone of excitement, “now that’s what I’m talking ‘bout!”

She grinned from ear to ear as we strolled down Kingston Avenue. As we approached the
laundry mat there was a young boy, no more than 12 or 13 years old, was sitting on a milk crate outside the laundry mat watching his baby brother. I didn’t even notice him until he asked, “I heard you and Kita was fighting, what was y’all fighting ‘bout?”

Without missing a beat or breaking stride I shot back, “They squashed it!” Lil’ scrapper never said a word, happy that I intervened.  When we got out of earshot from Jr. nosey neighbor she grunted, “Uuugh, I can’t believe it! Out of all the people for me to see, why him?!”

Ignorant to the hood politics she clearly was involved in, I asked, “Why baby, who was that?”

“Miss, he’s got the biggest mouth ever. Now it’s gonna be all over Facebook. Oh my God!”

“Well, why don’t you close your Facebook account for two weeks until school starts, take a
little break from the Facebook drama,” I naively said, clearly out of touch with that critical piece of youth culture. She looked at me like I was an alien and I immediately knew I had asked her to offer a limb and bear a cross too much for her seventh grade spirit to endure, “I’m pushing it huh?” I asked rhetorically as I laughed.  She joined me in laughter, “Mmhmmh, you already know,” and we chuckled some more.  At least she was laughing and the ice was melting.

“We’ve been walking and talking and I don’t even know your name, baby, what’s your name?”

“Jewel, and my sister’s name is Diamond.”

“Your mother named you Jewel? Like a precious jewel? Well, baby that confirms it; you are
too precious to be out here fighting especially with a name like Jewel…no baby, not you,” I said emphatically pouring as much confidence and self-esteem into her as I could with two blocks to go before we reached Fulton Street, my drop off point.

As we fast approached our departure from each other, I wanted to leave her with a nugget
of wisdom, something for her to contemplate, so I asked, “Jewel, if a pig and a
jaguar were fighting in the mud, who do you think would come out looking
better?”

With confidence she said, “The jaguar.”

Trynna be all Yoda-like I said, “Neither because they are both soiled in mud so you can’t
tell the difference. Jewel, you are like a jaguar, don’t roll in the mud with pigs because once you are in the mud, no one can tell the difference.”  It didn’t come out as Yoda swami-like as I
had intended, but I had good intentions as I  gave her my mangled version of an Art of
War-esque proverb.  “Get home safe,” I added as she crossed Fulton Street and disappeared into the bustle of the busy strip.  There were no good byes, no thank you miss, no touching finale, just a dusty rug rat adolescent evaporating into the hood.  As I headed back home I suddenly became hyper self-conscious of what I unwittingly ran out of the house wearing.  But, I also realized in that
moment that I love bad ass kids and I needed those rug rats that day as much as they needed me.   I needed to be pulled out of my depressed dark funk, and they instantly reminded me of my purpose and passion, and those little girls needed and wanted someone to stop them…especially
the Jewel.

Liza Jessie Peterson © 9/2011

Sista,  you’re on my mind

Sista,  you’re one of a kind

Sista, I  Love You So Much

Leslie  Leslie Leslie. Thank You!

~~~~~

My sister Leslie was the bomb…let’s just start there, ok?

Funky fresh fierce. West Philly’s Foxy Brown in the hood in my house, 4829 mothership headquarters. We were both raised for greatness, because our parents poured rich values into us. Our mother was compassionate and fair, a wise, gentle healer who listened closely and
counseled without judgment, and our father was a stone cold trip—a spectacular
storyteller. Masterful and funny, prophetic with uncut straight-no-chaser in
your face, clutch-the-pearls truth that would have you testifying and rolling
with laughter. Our kitchen was the situation room where Daddy held court and
our grasshopper training took place. Mommy cooked while Daddy  sat perched up on the sink like a king holding court. He was our Dewars and water-sipping griot, deconstructing each scenario with precision and comedy. We laughed loud and we laughed a lot. My sister
Leslie was the first to grab the sword from the stone, Mommy and Daddy’s first-born Jedi. I watched her, looked up to her, was in awe of her,  wanted to be just like her, begged her to please
please please Leslie please cut my long, fat- ribboned-pigtail plats so I could rock an afro just like you. And she cut ‘em to my mother’s horror and got punished something awful.

Leslie took licks for me, stood up for me, marched around the corner
and told them boys they better stop picking on me. My sister was always taking
up for someone, fighting for someone who was being bullied and unable to stand
up for themselves because she had a passion for fairness and justice. Her
compassion and empathy was tremendous and extended to the animal kingdom too. Our
house was like Doctor Doolittle’s. We had hamsters, snakes, mice, gerbils,
birds, fish, and dogs, and it seemed like the wounded ghetto birds always found
their way to our garage, where Leslie was fixing ‘em back to health. A healer,
always helping, working to make people and animals feel loved and good about
themselves.

My sister was born December 11^th, (11 being a master number for y’all numerologists) and her Sagittarius fire was no joke because if you crossed her, or if you pissed her off for a
transgression against Leslie’s book of integrity, Lord have mercy on your soul
and butt because Leslie was coming for you with the tongue of fury to read you
the riot act and make what was wrong right again. She would be all up in your
face like, “What!?”

It wouldn’t be long before I would start flexing my young Jedi muscle and challenge Leslie, my idol, my sensei, my  sister…especially since we were now physically eye-to-eye and she technically wasn’t bigger than me no more.  Salt-n-Pepper vs. Chaka Kahn, Public Enemy vs. Parliament, hip hop versus the funk. Our fight scene had a dope soundtrack. See, what had happened was, our
dog Gina had pooped on the floor. I was the first to come downstairs and see it, but being the typical obnoxious teenager that I was, I stepped over the poop, went into the kitchen, ate my cereal and left it for someone else to clean up.  Leslie comes downstairs, sees the poop, sees me in the kitchen, and demands that I clean it up since I saw it first. The challenge was on. I barked at her, “Girl you better git out my face, you clean it up if it means so much to you — you git on my nerves!” And I rolled my eyes hard like, “What!?”
Leslie simply paused, cocked her head to the side, and then “Whap!” “Who you think you talking to?” she yelled as she slapped the taste out my mouth.

Why she have to hit me, son?  Boom Boom Bap! It went down crazy wild style like that. We went at it so gangsta that we broke the spicket off the faucet, and water from the busted sink was spraying everywhere. My mother heard the dishes crashing, came downstairs and screamed “Pete,
the girls are fighting!” It was the Battle of the Amazons; the situation room definitely
had a situation that morning. Daddy pulled us apart and cussed us out good. I rolled
my eyes and sucked my teeth as I laced up my powder blue shell-toe Adidas and
headed off to Girls High with bruises on my face, while Leslie straightened her
navy blue pinstripe suit with pearls and headed to Xerox Corporation with a cut
lip. Nostrils flaring, we went to our separate corners glaring, nodding our
heads in silent agreement: “Imma see you when you get home… this aint over B.”
And it wasn’t.  She barged in my room one night, in a sneak attack ninja move, and started swinging. Mommy commenced to screaming again. Daddy pulled us apart, cussing us out again. This last Dukes of Hazard rodeo round was the last straw for Leslie and she proclaimed to my
parents that she could no longer live in the same house with this brat (she used another B word).

When Leslie moved out of 4829, it broke my recalcitrant hip hop heart and I folded. I bought her
a key chain with a mini boxing glove on it and wrote on the glove,

“You the Champ. You win. I’m sorry … miss you, smiley face!”  From that day forward, our bond got stronger, deeper, wiser, and it matured as we did. We was tight, thick as thieves. She
was my sister, my gurl, my bestie best friend. When our mom died, we were both fumbling
through dark days, swimming in muddy waters, scared and in shock. I was still
in high school, and my sister stepped in, stepped up, filled real big shoes and
raised me up, sister-mom style. She said it wasn’t fair that I missed out on so much with mommy gone so soon; Leslie always said I was robbed of a mom more than she was, because she was older and got to have more years with mommy than I did. Being the giver, healer, righter
of wrongs that she was, Leslie went out of her way to be there for me like a mom.
She was my Champ, always fighting for fairness. She went overboard to make me,
her baby sister, feel whole and loved even while she herself was broken.

~~~~

My sister loved Black people, loved art and mysticism, loved to learn and laugh and
give, and her greatest love of all was her family—she loved her family tremendously and unconditionally. You could call her up at any time of night and get her deep insight. I called it “swami advice” on all aspects regarding life,
but she would also call you up and call you out if your stuff was raggedy, out
of order and not right, and then turn around, hug you up good at her frequent
and consistently infamous family gatherings in the hood. She would pull you to
the side and slip you her latest book, then send you out the door with plastic
bags full of leftover food she deliciously cooked. My champ, still giving, still loving.

Every Black family has a Big Momma, and Leslie was handed that invisible baton from several previous Big Mommas in the family who had passed it onto her. She would fuss to me, “Gurl
why I gotta be the matriarch, why I gotta be Big Momma, sis, I didn’t sign up for this…but girl, let me tell you what I’m cooking. Come on through, chica, cause you know I got a room for you
upstairs on the third floor and we gonna have big fun, gurl.”  My sister’s house always had food; the freezer and refrigerator was jam-packed so good, it was “bomb shelter” ready. Zip lock bags were her staple, and she’d fight you if you tried to throw one out. “Naw girl, that’s good plastic!” Just like our Aunties, it was in her DNA, no doubt.

A wounded healer, a warrior of light, a compassionate soul sista, lover-of-life; Creative,
brilliant and out of her Black mind, always huffin’ and puffin’ on a never-ending
deadline. My sister, my champ wrote over 44 books, introduced America’s first Black
Commander-in-Chief because she’s Presidential and off-the-hook. She was like Speed
Racer, pedal to the medal, driving fast going far. She turned a mystical corner,
and the driver left the car. Poof, gone, out of physical sight, her spirit
expanded and took divine flight. She wrote about these ancient-futuristic
cosmic dimensions; love, light and truth was always her intention.  Always an overachiever, looking for something new to learn and investigate, Swami ain’t really gone…she just went through the Stargate.
Take your consciousness to a higher level, that’s what she’d want us to do. CELEBRATE
her life and make sure you celebrate yours, too.  Share with each other some of the many funny
things she said, so when the tears fall, you can trade ‘em in for laughter
instead. Strive to walk with integrity, laughter and charity in your heart, for
that is her legacy — Leslie’s work of art. My sister, my bookey, my swami, my champ…                    Go ‘head girl with your baaad self!!!!! SALUTE!

Sista, you’re on my mind

Sista, you’re one of a kind

Sista, I Love You So Much

Leslie Leslie Leslie. Thank You!