Shakira
(Read the previous post. This is a series)
Chapter 2
She’s the most beautiful girl in my world. When we met It was my first day of primary school. I was walking with the other kids from my community in my home country, Barbados. A bunch of kids met at the end of the road everyday and walked to school together. Most of the kids were family, relatives, cousins or all from the same tenement yard. I walked with two of my cousins and some others from the same yard. We passed her house along the way and her mom picked me out in the crowd. She waved at me, called me to the gate put Shakira’s hand in mine and told me to take her to school. Since then and to this day I still feel responsible for her pretty little face and the innocence that it exudes then and now.
Of all the kids her mom trusted me the most but the reasons aren’t completely pure. Her mom is a Puerto Rican divorcee who was very colorist and racist. She bred for a black man in the community and they quickly divorced. She took out her scorn for her ex husband on the entire black race, even though she lived in a predominantly black country and black, poor neighborhood. She didn’t work, she lived off the support of her rich ex husband but she wasn’t at the level of wealth she aspired to be. We wouldn’t have met if she was, so I’m glad. Kira’s mom liked me despite knowing my story of mulatto girl born from teenage black mother by white man. She was one of the few people in the community whom were nice to me and I was the only child she allowed to come to her house and play with Kira. Of course I was too young to understand that reality of it so I went along with her and enjoyed the attention she gave me and I loved playing with beautiful little Kira.
I was six years old and Kira was five. I’ve loved her since that first day when her mom put her hand in mine. I’ve never been so careful walking anywhere before. I felt so important and responsible. She barely talked, she was very shy. I talked non stop. “is she your mom?” “I like your lunch kit” “you like power rangers?” she didn’t answer any question but I kept on blabbing because that was the kind of child I was. When we got to school, we were placed in the same class and that made me happy. When I found out her name I daydreamed about it. Shakira it sounded so ethereal to me. I had a very imaginative brain. I day dreamed a lot. I can remember only some of the things I dreamt and Shakira was an important part of it. I saw her as the sister I didn’t have as I was very lonely. I was the outcast among the kids in my yard due to my mixed race and the stigma attached to my mom being the one of the first teen moms from that little community. Some kids played with me but I didn’t like playing the games they played. I liked playing things like pretending I’m a teacher or a doctor and they’re all my students or patients. The games I liked to play, I was always in charge and looked up to. I craved that a lot. I craved being powerful and leader to the others. I’m not sure where that came from but those were mainly the things I dreamt about. Being powerful, being famous, being important, being above everyone, being responsible for everyone, being loved and adored by everyone, everyone looking to me for their needs. I might have been narcissistic. Is that capable of being manifested at such a young age?
Many times at school I was called out for it. For bossing kids around, making followers and minions out of the other kids. Some even compared me to being a bully, but I never bullied anyone or hurt anyone or forced anyone to follow me around. They just did because I did the things they wanted to do, I was fun and I ensured they needed me. Those were the first signs of me being very manipulative. Kira was my number one follower. But I never saw her that way though everybody else did. She was the mastermind behind many of the mischievous things we got up to but her innocent little face was never blamed. She was always merely doing my bidding to the teachers and other students. In reality she was a little genius to me and our connection was indescribable. I spent days, nights, weekends at her house. Her mom fed me, clothed me and took me out wherever she took Kira. I was the white passing daughter she wanted so badly. Kira looked mostly like her father. Her skin was a deep caramel color. Still considered lighter than the average kid in my neighborhood but not white enough for her mother. She compared us a lot and often put down Kira in the process. She compared our hair and shamed Kira for having thicker, kinkier hair. While telling me constantly how nice my hair was. Despite that, Kira was the pretty one to me and I wished I looked like her. As we got older and Kira gained weight her mom shamed her some more for that and is the source of the eating disorder she still has. My mom was glad to have Kira’s mom taking me in. She felt free like she didn’t have a child she didn’t want. She went on sleeping around and even worked as a bar girl at a sleazy nude bar when she was 21. The relationship between her and her father deteriorated and they had heated confrontations where the police were called on some occasions. He called her names, he was disgraced by her lifestyle and he wanted her out of his house. Luckily I missed many of these fights because I spent my days with Kira.
Kira was very creative, she always had something cooking in her brain. Something new, something fun, something I wanted to be a part of. While I was the one that directed her ideas to life. I took charge, laid out and materialized her ideas. At school you would never see one without the other. We had the same boy crushes and spent nights in bed talking about them. We talked about all the boys lining up and bowing down to us adoringly because we were beautiful princesses. (Mostly my narcissism at play here again). Our sexualities developed at a later stage. Nearer to when we were split up when I moved to Jamaica at 10. We had quite a few sexual moments then, discovering our bodies and becoming more self aware.
The news that I would be leaving Barbados cut me up into a million little pieces. I was minced. I was devastated. There wasn’t even time to process it properly in my ten year old brain. It was February, one month after I had turned 10. I walked home from Kira’s house to my house and heard yelling and saw a little crowd gathered at my gate. When I got closer, there were clothes and toys and books strewn everywhere in the yard. Upon closer inspection, I realized they belonged to me and my mother. I recognized my dolls. I had more than twenty dolls. Out of all my other toys I loved them the most because they fit better into the things I imagined and dreamt about. I collected dolls. I saw uniqueness in every doll or doll caricature of an animal. I found them beautiful and I could sit and imagine their beautiful faces loving me and admiring me and depending on me to love and care for them and I did take very good care of them. I never saw myself as their mothers as some other kids saw them. I didn’t like that concept. I didn’t like playing house with them. I saw myself as their owners or creators. I was their queen, they loved and admired me and depended on me for everything. (possibly narcissism again). I spent most of my lunch money for school on dolls or saving up to buy dolls. I even made some of them on my own using stuffing and Kira’s mom had taught me how to sew with my hands. I saw her doing it and was fascinated. Each doll had a unique personality and a different form of adoration for me. The rag dolls I made with my hands were the dumb ones, they can’t think for themselves they looked to me for their every thought. To explain how exactly my little brain conceptualized this idea is not something I currently have the words to express. But I did. The barbie dolls were the beautiful ones who needed me to wash their hair and dress them up. They valued my sense of style and beauty. The teddy bears and stuffed animals wanted to know more about me, snuggle with me and keep me safe. They cared more about my emotions than any of my other dolls. I had an imaginary army of dolls that loved and adored me.
To walk home and see my entire army strewn helplessly on the ground outside among my clothes and books had me shook. (for lack of a better word). I started crying and ran to pick up each one. I never thought that I was homeless until the last minute. It was an after thought that dawned on me at night in bed. At the forefront of my mind at the time was that my dolls were homeless, they needed me and I had let them down.
My grandfather was at his wits end with my mom. He kicked her and me out. He threw all our stuff out into the yard. My mom was 25 and she wasn’t contributing to the household enough. She was out at odd hours, she was fucking everyone in the community and was not contributing to the bills and upkeep of the tenement yard house we shared with many others. He accused her of being lazy, worthless, unambitious, everything that was bad. That evening they were locked into a vicious battle of words. He called her harlot, whore, slut all the names that existed and she called him an evil despicable, dead dog. She called her mother on the phone and her obnoxious mother was glad to add her contribution to the cursing of her baby daddy in her Jamaican style that was unique to me at the time. Eventually we packed all our belongings and went back into the house. But it was set, we were leaving for Jamaica in two weeks. Two weeks were all I had. I would leave the only home I ever knew and leave the only love I ever knew, Shakira.
I cried day and night for those two weeks. I barely ate anything Kira’s mom gave me to eat and neither did Kira. She was feeling as hurt as I was. We hugged each other and cried at nights and in the daytime we tried to do everything we had planned to do together. It was never enough time however and the two weeks wind down to only two hours. My mom had to come to Kira’s house all packed up and ready for the airport, to get me. I didn’t get to pack my own stuff or to carry any of my dolls with me. I didn’t look back at them. I felt more hurt about leaving Kira. I cried to the airport, I cried on the plane, I don’t remember anything else but crying then waking up in a new place.
Ps. I am not a writer. English isn’t my first language and I have poor vocabulary. I am basic don’t read my shit.
