“Bring your behind on, Lilly!” and she stopped to grab hold of my wrist. “Ouch!” I whined, as she walked briskly, yanking at my arm. With each tug, the pain I felt in my bicep seemed to grow worse. She slugged me real good last night. It was blackish-greenish-purple when I pulled my shirt over my head in the bathroom this morning. I exhaled my grief as I examined myself in the vanity mirror. “Thirteen days,” I said to my reflection as I compared the fresh injury to the others. That’s about how long it takes for the blows I take to the arms to fade.

“Mommy, please!” but I caught my tone after she halted to give me an eye. I knew better. Pain or not, raising my voice at Glendale or Tora never ended in my favor. She made a sudden movement and I flinched in panic, “I, I, I’m sorry Mommy! I didn’t mean to…Uh, I was trying to…” Tears began to swell in my eyes and quickly, I palmed my mouth with my free hand and inhaled a bracing breath. I opened my eyes and let out an air of relief, as she didn’t strike me that time. Often, the fear of the impending jab is worse than the jab itself.

“Is everything alright?” a stranger in passing asked us, as we were at a stand still on the corner of Victor and 3rd Streets. “Everything’s fine!” Tora snarled at the corporately suited man. Tora waited a couple seconds, after he nodded and walked off, and then turned to me, “ Look Lilly, I don’t have the patience for no sassing child this morning. I’ll give you something to whine about this evening if you make me late to drop you off at this damn school!”

I hated when she cussed at me. her words were like daggers to the heart. But what could I do other than nod, “Yes, Mommy. I’m sorry. My arm just hurts really bad today.”

She didn’t comfort me. She never does. At least not anymore, not since she married Glendale. My tears seemed to provoke a lack of compassion in her now-a-days. Well, you know better than to call your stepfather, “Glendale”. He’s your daddy now and so, it’s only respectful that you call him, “Daddy”.

“But, he’s not my…”

“Shut it up!” and I did as she said, only with a pout. I hated this woman my mother had become. “Fix your face!” Tora warned me. “I ain’t got no time to be explaining them crocodile tears to them nosey ass teachers in that school!”

I nodded again and with my free hand, I sopped the wet from my face with my coat sleeve.

We continued walking to the school building, and Tora continued ranting, about what, I don’t know. I stopped taking in her words to look up at the gray clouds darkening above me, and I thought, where is the sun? Then I remembered something my real father, Thomas, said to me once before Tora left him for Glendale. “Lilly,” he said and kissed me on my nose, “no matter what happens in life, keep faith that God has commanded the angels to look after you in your ways, for all your days.” The memory made me smile through my sadness, but as I began to again tune into bits and pieces of Tora’s clamour, I found myself mumbling, “Yeah Daddy, but where are you now?”

Tora paused her hustle, and mine, then poked me with her index finger in the shoulder, “Do you hear me talking to you Lilly?”

I didn’t know what she had been saying but I figured it was best to just nod, yes. After I did so, she pulled hold of me again and we continued on towards the school, Tora, still cussing and fussing. I looked at the sky again and whimpered, “Daddy, if what you say is true, behind all those clouds, I don’t think my angels can see me in the mess I’m in to help me. How do I get God to clear the clouds away?”

“I know you aren’t speaking against me under your breath, Lillian Normandy?”

“No, Mommy,” and I picked up my pace as I had slacked a bit behind hers.
We crossed over the corner of 7th Street, and about midway down the block, I saw it on our right, like I see it every morning I’m forced to take this tread with Tora or Glendale, which ever of the two are the least hung over, the statue of the robed woman holding her hands out to me.

In front of that place Glendale forbids anyone in his household to go, it stands so high I have to lift my head to see the face. But, out the corner of my eye, as Tora pulled me hastily past the building, New Covenant Baptist Church seemed to shout for my attention with its gold steeple, thick ancient looking, mahogany entry doors, and its botanically landscaped lawn, ornamented with a myriad of cemented angelic statues.

Funny, as I walked past the front of the church, the pain of Tora’s tugs left me and I felt like I wasn’t really being led to school by her, but rather, somehow I felt as if I was in a peaceful place within myself. The feeling was weird and good at the same time.

That short lived sense of tranquility left me with an insatiable yearning, a longing to know what goes on inside church, that church.

Once we crossed the corner of 8th Street, no longer in view of the church, but in front of PS 373, the pain of my bruises and likewise, the reality of what is my life, returned to me. “If your daddy,” she was referring to Glendale, “ain’t here to pick you up at the end of the day, just start walking home alone.”

I nodded then and stood there looking at her, waiting for any further instructions.

“Well, don’t stand there like a bump on a log! Go on over to your teacher!”

I nodded again, and then sulked over to the schoolyard fence where I lined up with the other children in Mrs. Applesami’s class.

Today, like any other morning at PS-373, none of my classmates spoke to me so I prepared myself for the uncertainty of the day with comforting words. I closed my eyes and whispered, “It’s okay Lilly. Don’t be nervous. It’s only because you’re not like them. A friend will come around soon”. I opened my eyes. Uh, oh. I mumbled too loud. That girl, I forget her name, the one that looks at me from time to time, she caught me again, talking to myself. Sometimes, I think she wants to talk to me. I get a little glimmer of excitement every time I catch her looking at me, but I’m afraid to be the first one to speak. I think, maybe she’ll laugh at the way I speak. Sometimes I say, “Totally,” “ Dude,” and “Like,” tends to precede every other word I express. Maybe she avoids me because I’m different, and the others like her might turn on her if she grows to like me, but then again, no talks to her much either. Something about her, I wish I could remember her name, tells me she’s different too. Not looks different, like me, but different like…special.

“They are the ones that are different, not you!” Glendale calls them niggers under his breath. I’ve never spoken to him of my feelings about my new school or the awkwardness I suffer amongst my new peers. He made the comment after reading a passage I wrote in my diary last week. It’s clear he doesn’t care for “their kind,” as he often refers to them, but he told Tora he’d rather me send me to learn amongst “them,” in a public school environment, rather than have me attend the private school my real dad sends money for me to go to; money that Glendale and Tora pocket for themselves. “No Tora!” Glendale objected when my father called out of the blue one day, when he still had most of his mind, to inform my mother that he wanted me to attend St. Mark’s Evangelist Parochial School and that he would be sending extra money from his disability check to cover the tuition. “I don’t want that child coming in this house filled with a bunch of religious hoopla!” Tora goes along with everything Glendale says, so I’m at PS 373.

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