Accused of being an “overly-attached girlfriend!”
That was the latest refrain slung at me from my soon-to-be fourteen-year old daughter who had decided somewhere after reaching twelve-years old that rewarding mom and dad with hugs and kisses was passé. Unlike Mantha’s dad, tussle with her each day or night for my quota of loving embraces and earned smooches.
Once upon a time, shunned and abhorred her icky, sloppy, wet kisses that drooled up and down my cosmetically-prepared face. Guess being thwart from getting “some love” is karma and my payback. Would have been much more tolerant of those “yucky” kisses had I known that asking for an ounce of her affectionate demonstrativeness would be akin to becoming decapitated!
As song goddess Barbara Streisand says, “Memories!”
Or, wonder if it is because of the residual effect from my rapid-fire “sermons” and from those “teachable moments” regarding incest and sexual exploitation. Over and over, made Mantha keenly aware of how relatives and strangers cleverly use requests for “kisses” as bait to lure unsuspecting children to them for sexual purposes and sexual manipulations.
Been there before!
Oddly, being characterized by Mantha as an “overly-attached girlfriend” conjured up a hodgepodge of word associations within my mind such as Zimmerman, Trayvon, and abortion!
According to the illustrious black novelist, James Baldwin, “Wherever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the tension of a silence filled with things unutterable. It is a sentimental error, therefore, to believe that the past is dead; it means nothing to say that it is all forgotten, that the Negro himself has forgotten it. It is not a question of memory. Oedipus did not remember the thongs that bound his feet; nevertheless the marks they left testified to that doom toward which his feet were leading him. The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and the darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that drives him wherever he thinks to take flight.”
Tis’ true that I am an “overly attached girlfriend” because as a Negroid mother the shadow of the Zimmermans leaves me with breathless anxiety that muffles my freakin’ world.
Fearful that Mantha’s life will someday be “aborted” from a proliferation of weapons—-weapons of hatred, weapons of bigotry, weapons of being considered insignificant, weapons of prejudicial paranoia, weapons of generational stereotyping, weapons of otherness, weapons of invisibility, weapons of suspiciousness, weapons of generalizations, weapons of images that belies unworthiness, weapons of conditioned animosity, weapons of attitudinal racism, weapons of racial perceptions, and weapons from any other euphemism that could be code words for being typecast as a cultural degenerate.
“Wherever the Negro face appears a tension is created…”
What Negroid mother can forget about James Byrd from Jasper, Texas who was hitched to the bumper of his car and dragged to pieces for the “thrill of it?”
What Negroid mother can forget about the sodomized Haitian immigrant who was beaten by a white New York City police officer?
What Negroid mother can forget about a black basketball coach who was killed by a white separatist in Chicago?
What Negroid mother can forget about three skinheads who kicked and beat a homeless man to death in Los Angeles simply because he was black?
What Negroid mother can forget about an African immigrant who was randomly gunned down in Denver by white men who wanted to start a “race war?”
What Negroid mother can forget about three white soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg who killed a black couple in order to earn a medal for killing blacks?
What Negroid mother can forget about the brutal mutilation of Emmett Till who was accused of whistling at a white woman?
“Wherever the Negro face appears a tension is created…”
Tis’ true that I am an “overly attached girlfriend” because as a Negroid mother I am aware that even if Mantha “tiptoes” she will still raise the ire and hostility of some ill-educated Zimmerman who will conveniently abandon his or her rationality in favor for a spontaneous abortion by “prematurely putting an end” to her life.
Just ask Trayvon!
Once upon a time, shunned and abhorred Mantha’s icky, sloppy, wet kisses that drooled up and down my cosmetically-prepared face.
Not anymore!
Like gravy on a smothered pork chop, suffocate her each and every day with heaps and heaps of motherly love, affection, and with an over abundance of praise and adulation.
Tis’ true that I have become an “overly attached girlfriend” because, as a Negroid mother, realized that some of the Zimmermans of the world believe that they have a “divine authority” to decide whether who should live and who should die.
Obviously, the monstrousness of that programmed belief and doctrine of white-Hispanic supremacy is misguided, borders in lunacy, and reflects spiritual decadence. Walking with Skittles and an Arizona tea, or in my daughter’s case, her school or library books and a movie script should not warrant suspicion, fear, militancy, and a damn casket!
Tragically, Mantha now realizes that wherever her Negroid “face appears a tension is created” and a Zimmerman will likely abort it!
Bang. Bang. Bang.
