You know that feeling right before the train hits...where time seems to move a lil slower and for just like a split second you know that if you were to jump, yo ass just might make it? The idea of invincibility, of power. That feeling where regardless of the chains that shackle ya feet, if for just a moment you believe that you ain't just anotha nigga, that you worth somethin’ even death can’t steal...that ain’t nothin gon be able to drown that shit? Well me, I ain't never really felt that before. Not unless I'm real high or drunk, I guess. Intoxication man, God's greatest fuckin gift of isolation in my eyes. I ain't never really felt like I had the chance to think about chance. It was almost like a tradition in my family, to let go before you was ever really holdin’ onto somthin’. The way I saw it, we was all just here trying get through it. Fuck tryin’. Ain't nothin gon getchu thru watching ya moms die. Hearing your older sister’s scream through the backdoor before your boy down the block blow his brains out. Nothings gonna make you understand why Mrs. Jackson’s daughter was touchin on you like that. Why you ain't like it, even though she stay tellin you that you the only man who ever treat her right. And what she thinks “treat her right” be defined by, cause you ain't so refined neither. Ain't no such thing. You just gotta do what you gotta do. You just gotta get through it, man.
The gust of wind suddenly hit Saintsworth, pushing her into the sea of wanderers behind and it seemed that as much as she always expects it, she could never fully prepare herself for that feeling. The sky had opened up and given birth to a new season and with it came years of dilution. Days of yellow and blue seemed to come too far in between bleached wraths of winter’s scorn. She always seemed so full of rage against those who looked her in the eyes, and we always looked her in the eyes or never at all.
Saintsworth remained in a constant war between seclusion and vulnerability. A fight to isolate her body from the stories it spoke, a language of scars. A suicidal tendency to deprive herself of the intimacy embedded in human anatomy, or maybe it was that she never saw herself. The indoctrination of alienism. And what was a woman without man, a woman with and without womb?
She’d empty out her realities on those tracks and find a new way to jump across. But, into what? Pushing the tight coils of coconut curls away from her sun-Saharan face, Saintsworth stepped closer to the edge and looked out. She was keen to allow the outdated color-blocked Blackberry slip from her shivering hands onto the tracks as the warm depth enclosed in the tunnel’s passage rang with her grandmother’s hymns.
“Saintsworth?” A young woman of red, black, and green removed herself from the visions of white, grasping onto Saintsworth’s arm. “I knew that was you. What are you doing so close to that edge? I know things are hard back home but damn, don’t let go so quickly.” The woman, now coming into Saintsworth’s view, was no woman at all, but a young girl around the same age as her.
“Cleopatra, what are you doing on this side of town so early? Don’t you got school or something?” Saintsworth defensively unlatched her arm from Cleopatra’s grasp, turning away from the edge and pacing towards an empty bench at the end of the platform.
Cleopatra Living existed as a storm brewing in Saintsworth’s eyes. They had known each other since babies, as everyone in their neighborhood did, and had been close as children but as life became more real, expectations changed and so did each of them. Saintsworth always saw Cleopatra as a direct challenge to atheism. She seemed to exude such a strong presence of divinity that many girls in the hood lost with age. She never went unnoticed as her thick hips, passed down through the women in her family, swayed unintentionally to the beating of young boys’ hearts as they gawked with fascination. Her skin was akin to the sun’s mottled tears and her lips were overflowing. She was her mother’s child, a Queen, but surrounding her too was a thick cloak of invisibility.
“I got off of work at 4 AM, I was gonna go home but I forgot that my mom and dad got into it again last night… I didn’t want to be there for the aftermath, you know how he can get when he ain’t in the right headspace. I can’t go to school anyways, gotta babysit my lil’ brother again since Mrs. Jackson ain’t watching him no more til we pay up, fucking bitch… She knows how hard it is on my mom.” Saintsworth didn’t say a word as Cleopatra caught up with her, mumbling on about this guy she met at work last night.
“He said he could buy me real nice things and all. That he could help my mom out with the bills, it’d be a huge weight off her back since my dad ain’t got his working papers no more and I only really be making good money at the club on Fridays and Saturdays. What do you think? I mean, I wouldn’t have to do anything with him or nothing, just talking… maybe a little touching, but it’s not serious… My mom can really use the money. Saintsworth?”
Cleopatra worked at The Pyramid, a pimped out strip club that turned little girls into fantasies before they had a chance to stop dreaming. It wasn’t much, but it was big on poverty. Cleopatra technically should’ve been in school, but she’d always say “why would you want to go someplace that doesn’t pay shit, to give you an education that ain't gon get you shit, when you can strip for a couple hours everyday and make enough to cover a week's rent?” Saintsworth couldn’t judge, ‘cause hell, it wasn’t like she was in school those days either. “There can be a million different reasons, but you always gon’ get the same ending in the hood.”
Yo, you ever been with a girl so fine you just prayin’ ya moms don't bust in before you can bust in. Haha yeah, shits real when it's good. I ain't tryin to be nasty or nothin I'm just sayin. Everybody need that sometimes ya know. That lovin kinda shit. Where you real close and you can feel her heart beating against yours and her breath staggering while she whispering some shit you can't understand cause you just ain't never got so real. Ain't never felt so true. More than just sex, some next level kinda shit where it don't matter if you and your sister ain't eaten since they shut down the church on Jackson or that y'all ain't even seen ya pops in years you can't count since that shit happened with that little girl ain't nobody wanna talk about and even though you love ya moms and she loves you too you both still got tears for the man who left. Cause you want whatchu can't have and still don't understand why he didn't want you and ya moms in the first place and she won't never talk dirty bout him but you hear the shit ya auntie say and you, I guess sometimes just don't know how to feel. But when you in that love kinda shit with someone else all that other stuff, it don't matter as much. Cause you here with her and she with you and she wants to be you, she wants to be with you. She'll tell you to never leave her, that she wanna stay in this moment. In this haven where can't no outside shit get in. And you know she ain't lyin cause shit, ain't nothin good going for her out there neither. So, you both just stay in here full and she want it to be like that forever and you ain't never gon admit it but, so do you.
“You should talk to your mom about it, dude sounds sus anyways.” Saintsworth spoke softly as the two of them went to go sit on the frosted bench, “you can’t strip forever, Cleo, you one of the only one of us that got an actual chance of getting out of that place. Don’t waste it on chained money.” Saintsworth shyly slipped her hand from out of her jacket pocket into Cleopatra’s. She inched closer so that their thighs could touch and for a moment she held her breath. Cleopatra did something to her that she just couldn't understand.
“You say that, Saintsworth, but it ain’t so easy. I got family to take care of and unlike you I can’t just detach myself from the rest of the world, I can’t just pack up and go. I need stability, I need truth,” Cleopatra gasped, distancing herself from Saintsworth, unattaching their hands. “You say that shit about caring about me, about wanting better for me, but I don’t know shit about you. You’re so isolated and it ain’t easy out here, Saintsworth. I don’t want to be alone, and neither do you, but I can’t wait. All our clocks are ticking, and when the train comes you either gotta get on or not. I’m always ready, always waiting at your stop… but you’re never here. This ain’t a game to me, Aretha. You gotta get out of your own head and actually see me.”
I ain't never really learn about self love til I met Darian down on Peachtree. Darian ain't never love nobody as much as he love himself. He'd always sneak me through the backdoor during Sunday church services and teach me how to love myself too. He'd say shit like "You special Titan. You a fuckin king." Most of the time, it felt like he had found another world in the hood that I just couldn’t see. My mind was frozen in a state of constant repudiation, ain’t never seen myself as an idea that didn’t account for the money attached to my name. What good was a dream in this place anyway. Way I saw it, if you can't use it to get ahead ain't no use for it, ain’t no use for me. But then Darian would say some shit like “You going places, Titan. You're beautiful. You a fucking King”. And for a while I started shutting him out cause shit, it's easier to believe the bad and struggle off of that than to understand the good and make somethin outta yourself from it. I was just tryin’ to keep going. Ain’t no need to open my eyes, I saw the reality through my people. Just tryna keep going, cause shit ask White folks and they'll tell you, having hope in the hood is a dangerous motherfucka. Born Black Syndrome, man. But ain't no use pushin’ away peoples that care bout you, cause they always gon come back hard for you, man. So I guess I started taken in his words like they was some sermon type of shit. Started trying to apply it to my life. “I'm special, I'm going places, I'm beautiful, I'm a fuckin King”. And then he started saying some shit like...like that “I love you” kinda shit. The kinda shit I ain't hear too much and that kinda feeling that made me kinda wanna say I love you too. So I did. That self-love kinda shit. That love kinda shit.
Aretha Saintsworth looked Cleopatra Living in the eyes for what seemed like the first time in years and her colors weren't shining as bright as before. There was so much she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how anymore. She used to use her words to fill in the faded lines, but the rain had washed her out, too.
Saintsworth had worked hard to build up this barrier between her and the rest of the world. She had thought that she was always just present enough to never be seen. An illusion fabricated onto her eyes like a clouded veil in order to escape her surroundings. Saintsworth didn’t know if it was love that she felt for Cleopatra, but when she was with her, within her was another world, something like a better past. She didn’t feel any pain, any anger. Saintsworth had numbed herself to everything unrelated to Cleopatra, but Cleo existed in everything and so when she didn’t feel the world, she couldn’t feel her.
“Cleo, you know it’s not easy for me to understand myself. Sometimes, I just don’t know. So I push you away and I’m sorry cause it’s a reflex I wish I could escape and there’s a lot of things I want to run away from, but you’re not one of them. I don’t really know what love is and so I can’t tell you I love you without it sounding like I’m not there. But fuck, Cleopatra, if I’m anywhere it’s here… with you.” Aretha Saintsworth pulled Cleopatra Living’s body on top of hers, positioning the young girl’s hips to straddle her own. She slid down a little on the bench, as her hands began to run up the length of Cleopatra’s back. She could still feel specks of glitter attached to Cleopatra’s skin from the main stage floor. She leaned forward…
Born-Black Syndrome, all the people in my hood got it. Shit, I got it. Whether you mixed, Afro-Latino, straight up from the motherland or whatever, that shit don't matter. One drop of black blood in your veins and guaranteed you gon go through some fucked up shit in your life. It's like from the moment we born til the day we die, we in a constant state of struggle. Just trying to make it to the next stop but from every direction you got shit workin’ against you. Whether it's your job, your teachers, police, or shit sometimes yourself. You always fightin’. Fightin’ to be heard, fightin’ to be seen. Fightin to be alive, fightin’ to be ignored, fightin’ to keep a dream’. Fightin’ everybody, fightin’ us. And shit sometimes you get tired, that's where most of us fall off. Shackled from the conception, shackled to the grave so what's the point, right? Naw fuck that, cause most be thinking we was born chained but can't nobody tell me we out here dying for shit that's inevitable. You gotta keep your fists up. You gon keep fightin’ and yeah shits gon be mad hard if you dealing with this intersectional shit where you black, a woman, and gay or some shit like that. Where you dealing with all that shit at once but won't nobody acknowledge it because they only see black people one way and that's the box you check under race on those standardized tests that ain't shit about smarts and more about White upbringing, but fuck em’ man, you gon keep fightin. Cause shit, I'd rather be a fightin nigga than a nigga in chains. I ain’t never gon be a nigga in chains.
Saintsworth couldn’t care if anyone watched the two of them, for this is what she meant when she thought of Cleopatra Living as the exposement of another world. Here in this world on an MLK Street platform bench, they weren’t just two poor Black girls. Cleopatra didn’t work at The Pyramid. She didn’t skip school or lend her body to poverty, to overdue bills, and a father’s resentment. Here, little Black girls didn’t die in the system. Here, she was the Queen her mother intended for her to be. Here, her little brother, Titan, wasn’t a malnourished, over-exposed Black boy. Here, Black boys thrived. Here, Black girls thrived. Here, Black parents didn’t struggle. Here, we knew our history. We didn’t swallow oppression through unanswered prayers or neglect ourselves for the sake of our survival. Here, depression is confronted. Here, Black kids know that dreams extend beyond the underside of our bed sheets. Here, Saintsworth lives in the present. Here, she jumps train tracks and sings along with her grandmother’s hymns in the tunnels. Here, she knows what love is. Here, she knows who she is. Here, the train is coming. Here, she is not alone. Here, she gets on. Here, lies freedom.
But there are dreams not even money can buy. Dreams of my sister and Cleopatra were ones that would never bloom from cemented futures. Dreams exist for too few in my hood, and bloom for even less. In that moment, yeah, love seemed to prevail, but the world ain't made up of people in love. The world revolves around mobility, and that was something they couldn't have gotten no matter how far they ran. Realities don't change on surrounding, you an alien here then you an alien everywhere. All we can do is make choices to help us keep going. Choices for ourselves and choices for those who can't choose. Cleopatra chose stability, chose nights with lost men and unfulfilled purposes to ease her mom’s burdens. And in that moment she chose for Saintsworth as well. These days, Saintsworth visits rarely, she came to our mom’s funeral a couple years back and from time to time will send money anonymously to Cleopatra’s bank account. I can hear Cleo’s grief for the love she lost and I know that she'll live with regrets. I know that if she could do it over, she'd run as fast as she could away from this place, but that ain't her reality no more. And as for my sister, Aretha Saintsworth, she probably out there somewhere trying to find herself. But sometimes, I think I see her at the edge of MLK Street platform, jumping across unchained tracks.
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