As I enter the sterile confines of work I’m greeted by 90 pre and post pubescent voices chiming endearments, “Mama Chula!� “Aute� “Curly Sue� and variations of my name “Mel� “Missy� “Lissa�.
My shift is sprinkled with sweetness the pobrecitos clinging to my skirt pleading for “dulces� and the young brothas begging for “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos�. Sometimes I can be suckered into distributing delicacies but for the most part I’m there to keep them safe. I walk through the halls with whispers of familiarities hailing behind me. Distributing scoldings, soap, bandages, and phonics.
Saturday nights there’s story time and Sunday mornings I wake them up with soft warm Krispy Kremes. Because consistency helps when stuck in the confines of chaos. Regardless of how much stability I try to bring forth there are days drenched in fights and fifis, c-walks and g-walks, and baby boys screaming battle talk.
Today it is clearer that I work in a sad place that stifles boy’s spirits and sunshine. Big metal cages and no animals in sight just boys gone wild socialized to be docile.
Sometimes there are artists in these cages tugging at my heart
Sometimes they’re basketball players on the yard converted to sex offenders making cat calls tugging at my belly.
I go to embrace them leaving my breasts at bay and slightly shifting my foot
Prepared to shove the man-child back in his cage.
What can I bring here? Equipped with words and wisdom but stifled by fear because my mind and my strength are buried under layers of femininity. Their struggles and ill-fate is something I am all too familiar with yet my own experiences are foreign to them.
Because how can this lighter skin and this pussy know the hatred, anger, and fright they now know? The difference here is that they were taught to conquer and I was taught to submit. Both transferring us into something other than human.
Children converted to cage dwelling numbers and some of these smaller cages are just holding tanks for the larger cages reserved for them in the future. This socialization of systemization is America’s modern day right of passage for those 9 out of 10 little boys that prefer guns to crayons. For the 7 out of 10 little boys that are fathered by the vatos and the o.g. muthafuckas in their neighborhoods other than the boychild before them that made his biological contribution, for those born with an addiction, and for those born without privilege.
The privilege to dream or say I love you, or thank you mama. And here I am screaming rhetoric and singing lullabies trying to ascertain my revised and more realistic goals. Just when I thought I had enough Tuesday morning I am told to line them all up and march them outside so these 90 adolescent boys who have been robbed of all their freedom and had all of their rights waived had to hold their hand across their chest and preach a speech that ends with “Liberty and Justice for all�
What the fuck? But it’s Tuesday. When I got off work I jumped into my car and hightailed it to a safe place to relax and laugh, be enlightened and be in the company of like minded people, just all around good folk… The poetry lounge.
Cozied into this beautiful colorful nest I watched as the young sistah gets up on stage and hurls her loaded question at me “What is a nigger?� Mortified I stutter out Webster’s words and was quickly lashed with her soothslayers spit. “If you think there’s a definition for the word nigger than YOU ARE A NIGGER!�
Well it’s my turn.. “Nigger is an archaic term used to oppress my ancestors. Nigger was the disturbing lump in my throat that heated up my skin and made my eyed swell with tears when the overweight tobacco toting waitress in Louisianna refused to serve me. Although my fair skin passed under your Asiatic glare 1/3 is all you need on that side of the Mason Dixie.�
So now I’m compelled to ask you. “What is a sistah?� Sisterhood to me is the mango in my hips and the sass in my lips, it’s violets and laughter… quilts and the fragrance of home-cooked meals, comfort and the endearments chimed to me at work “Aute, Mama Chula, or variations of my name. But more importantly it is a sense of security and strength not a tool to diminish each other’s confidence and wreak havoc on eachother’s spirit. For that I guess I should thank you because you sistah have fueled the fire to finally get this printed.
Melissa Chadburn is an activist in Los Angeles, CA and a member of the YCL National Council
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