I stopped listening to him. I fazed out and into my own world as he droned on. I had heard this story too many times before and I hated the son of a bitch anyway. I wished he would stop talking to me… or at me. I wished that I could reach inside of his throat and rip his neck out. He was still talking.
“One of them old, field hand niggas got up in yo’ momma’s panties. That’s why you got that little apple head you got! Shit! Ain’t got no sense in that mothafucka neither. Shit!”
Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! I glared at him. I would’ve been more than glad to hit him in the face with a brick as soon as he fell asleep. I should do it! I should!
“Boy!” my stepfather roared. “Why you lookin’ at me like that? Huh? You betta take some of that shit outta your eyes, Boy.”
I bowed my head and closed my eyes.
After a moment, my stepfather commanded me, “Turn the station on that TV.” I turned to a channel with a baseball game and he dismissed me. “Right there,” he said. “Now gone! Get out!”
I went back over to the couch and sat down. Moments later, my mother’s bedroom door crept open and she beckoned to me from the doorway. I quietly got up, peeked over at my stepfather, and then eased inside her bedroom.
“Is he sleep?” my mother asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “He sleep.”
“That nigga ain’t never gonna put his hands on my baby again. You hear me?”
“Ma, you got a big bump on your head.”
“I know. Ain’t nuthin’. That’s just gonna be my fuel. My energy I use to get this evil ass bastard. You see how hard he hit Tamia? He threw her! That’s a little girl! That nigga dead! He ain’t doing that no more.”
“We can go get a brick!” I supplied. “Or a rock maybe.”
Ma’s eyes glazed over before she spoke. “Or a grindstone.”
“The grindstone?” I tried to make sense of her reply.
“Yeah, the grindstone.” She turned to me. “Listen to me. I got a surprise for his ass. I got a couple of knives hid downstairs in the basement. They those long, heavy hunting knives. I got them real cheap at the flea market. I’m gonna get him myself. I’m gonna get him.” My mother held my hands tightly as she looked me in the eyes. “Tomorrow, we go to sharpen my shit… to make my point to that dog out there. We gonna grind.”
I was with her every step of the way… but I knew it was going to cost her. My stepfather was a big, strong, slave-tough nigga. He would have to be hit hard and quick and I knew that Ma would catch hell trying to get him. Even with a knife. But I’ll give her this; my mother was determined to take her husband off this earth. So, every night I took her down to the grindstone to sharpen her knife….and after she was done, I would sharpen mine.
Her knife was bigger than mine. The blade was wide and thick and it had a black rubber handle. It looked like a hunting knife, yet it held a deadly beauty; graceful but lethal. I only hoped it would inflict enough damage to finish the job. In comparison, my knife was like a kitchen knife, which I kept sharpened for those special occasions when Ma would go off into one of her stark raving fits.
I commiserated with my mother over the following weeks when we stood in the yard, late into the night, and watched the sparks shoot off into the darkness as we sharpened our knives. This was our moment… our time to bond closer, to learn to love and be loved, to find that commonality that would define our relationship for life… but my mother treated me like a red-headed stepchild.
My stepfather came home drunk one day and tried to hit my mother with a baseball bat. That night, while we stood in the dark at the grindstone, as we sharpened our knives, my mother would confirm her value of me.
She turned the grindstone. “That nigga always hittin’ me for nuthin’. Hittin’ on my babies.” Her eyes glared when she put the knife to the stone. “I had dem babies… not him! Fuck him and his stankin’-ass-ho-mama-ass! Shit!”
“We ever gonna leave him, Ma?” I asked.
She smirked at me… and suddenly the sparks from the grindstone began to fly. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “‘You ain’t no ‘we.’ You ain’t no part of ‘we’ and never will be. You are the biggest piece of shit that ever happened to me, Boy.” She paused to look me in the eyes. She saw right past the pain that her words inflicted on me… and she created even more. “You know how your black-ass stepdaddy, if you can call him that, you know how he keep on talking about your real daddy? Well, he don’t know shit about your real daddy. Truth is, I don’t know nuthin’ about the mothafucka myself. You know how I met your daddy? How I had you?”
I was speechless. I mean, my mother never talked to me about serious stuff. She usually just hit me.
She took my silence as assent. “When I was young, I was wild. I was out and about and I wasn’t thinkin’ about that black bastard up that hill with the baseball bat. I already had two babies by him but I was still young and still wanted to be free like I ain’t have no kids. So I was out at the clubs, partying, when I first saw your daddy. He had ‘nigga’ written all over his stank ass… and he was just what I needed. So when he came over to me, I was more than ready for him. We did a few jitterbugs and I checked out his rhythm just to see if he could swang. And then we did some slow grinds so I could check out his ‘rhythm’ and I knew he could swang. It was time to go. And I wanted him to be my lover.” She paused to look at me. “You know what a lover is?”
I nodded my head in astonished negative. She continued anyway.
“Well, your real daddy took me. He was savage with me. I looked up that word: savage. And that’s what he was… like a hungry, hard animal… and he growled as he took me. I tried to stop him but he started choking me. When I stopped fighting him, he still squeezed my neck so tight that I could hardly breathe. Then he looked me in my eyes as he took me. I still feel that look sometimes ’cause, to this day, I still wonder what he was looking for. It musta been pain he was lookin’ for ’cause that’s what he gave me. He was big… well, his manhood was real big, and he took me hard and vicious. That muthafucka raped me. Your muthafucking daddy!” She turned back to the grindstone and began to sharpen her knife. “I hate that muthafucka. I hate what he took. I hate what he hurt. And through him, I hated you.”
Tears welled up in my eyes and I desperately tried to catch them before they fell. My pain had no place to go but inward. My mother wanted to leave me alone. As a matter of fact, I had always been alone, with nothing but hope as my companion. My life was a fucking tragedy.
“And you look just like his ass,” my mother continued, grinding the stone. “Every time I look at you, I see that man. I see that man.”
My mother had her back to me so she didn’t see me walk up to her. I thought I saw a slight tremble in her frame as she recalled the horror of my conception and, instinctively, I reached out and touched her shoulder. She had been through more than enough pain.