Halle Berry's Dirty Internet Secret

I'm rather awkward and clumsy when I try talking about my self, I know a lot more about myself than most people could imagine, but don't like it. I was raised by the man who helped my mother to murder my father's girl friend and set the house on fire, he'd talk about it and he never once denied what he had done, but everyone else did. They'd plead with him not to talk like that and they'd ask him, "why are you trying to protect that boy?"

You'd think I was never loved before. But I don't have to tell you, the deeper the love, the deeper and more confusing the pain.

Where do I begin? No! How do I begin to couleur this portrait of controversy, which has become my life? It is as if to create a maquillage not of pastel nor euphonious, but textured by the tormenting of a soul whose pleadings are of innocence. Is this how my living is made complete?

I am boastfully accused of a crime that I never committed. Obsession, is to descend into madness, and madness the dregs of suicide wander my mind, as though to avail me from this anguish. So I stare in to its abyss, frightened by the dark of her confusion and the clamour of her accusers. I am spit upon. There, it happened again.

The carnival has come to town, and I am the attraction of their amusement. When the show is over, will the votaries cry with me to know what it is to be crushed and broken? Or will they turn and walk away, leaving the debris of their hatred at my feet?

I was born with a disease that is the exact opposite diabetes. The disease I have is a mutant gene that creates a protein related to Pyrin, the familial Mediterranean fever protein. And this protein is similar to the proteins in venom of the Gila monster, which is used in the treatment of diabetes. In some people that have this mutant gene, it causes fever just like the affects of venom of the Gila monster. The affect of the fever might also explain why I enjoy bathing in ice cold water. What this mutant gene does is produce the proteins that give me a high amount of hdl, which is a human hormone that attacks the foreign ldl cholesterol in the foods that I eat.

I never needed much attention, I enjoyed lazy days and a little peace of mind. I learned magic or words by watching and listening to actors speak. It was as if they were casting mystical incantations upon one another. And I loved it. I'd learn a new word and practice its incantation on anyone that I could find, who would listen. my favorite past time was curl up by the radio watch the people in my imagination as I'd fall to sleep listening to the BBC. And I did it so often that I had developed a British accent. But I didn't care for watching cartoons, so my Mother would let me listen to the radio. My Mother's world was filled with her adult friends doing adult things, she didn't have time for me but I didn't mind.

But as I got older, maybe I was about three years old, and I began to have a strange dream about something or somebody that seemed to be missing in my life. The hurt felt so bad that it was as if I had lost my mind somewhere in a numbing fong. I don't know why I should remember it like it were a Halloween night, and the feel of terror would tremble through my bones, as the monsters gather around me laying there in my bed the nightmare would begin. The vivid colors of dark red and cold gray black, mingled with orange, yellow and blue. The heat of their claws sereing my flesh as they'd tear into me, the pain consuming my dreams. I was so helpless and confused.

We had moved into a four family bungalow on Collingwood Street. We hadn't lived there very long, this was Ervin's home. I didn't know him very well, and I don't know how or why I was there in his home, but I knew his name was Ervin.

I began to sit and stare out the window as if waiting for someone come take me home again. I could sit there for hours, watching as the day became night only to see rising in the sky again. The words that were once so meaningful had lost themselves somewhere in my confusion. And I didn't want to talk to anyone anymore. Nothing seemed to matter anymore and I didn't know why.

Then one evening I was set in a chair, watching as Baba stood at the kitchen table feeding Renee, and instructing me on how to eat my food. She didn't seem to mind, she'd tell us that we were her babies. But then as she broke apart a piece of baked chicken, I stared fixated by the steam that gushed from its supple flesh. I couldn't look away from the open wound, a rush of panic had poured over me like mixture of cold concrete batter. And I was frozen there, as the heavy putrid air crush it's way down into my gasping lungs, all I could do is scream.

"What’s wrong in there?" "Boy what the hell is wrong with you?" "Shut up that noise before I beat your ass." "Boy!" "Do you hear me talking to you?" I never noticed when he walked into the room . . . and with a slap on the face I was knocked from my chair onto the kitchen floor. Ervin stood over me, poised to kick and stomp me.

"Boy shut up." "What in the fuck is wrong with you." But still I kept crying, as I angrily stood up . . . pushing him on his leg. Then grabbing me by my arm. "Boy!" "You've got to be out of your mind!" "I'll kill you, boy." My arm grappled in his clutching grasp . . . he dragged me down the hallway, pulling me to the bedroom.

A blood curdling shriek burst from Baba's throat. "No!" Running behind us . . . crying, when she got to us, nervously jumping up and down . . . her young mind obviously in a state of panic. "Don't kill my little brother." "Please!"

Then the stranger's rage became silent as his baby daughter Renee began to cry her tiny voice chimed in with ours, bringing this giant to a halt from his preoccupation with me.

Then tossing me onto the bed, he left out the room as Baba covered me and begged me not to cry anymore.

I don't know why. But all I could do is cry. And although Baba tried, there was nothing she could do to stop the tears from grappling with my mind. "Boy" "Shut up that crying in there."

"Mommy, mommy!" "I want my mommy." "Where are you mommy!" "I love you mommy!" "I want my mommy!" "I want my mommy!" The dusk of evening gathered dark upon the walls of the room. I can see the stars up in the nights sky from where I lay, but their fascination has lost their sparkle through the clouds of my eyes, and their twinkle doesn't mean that much to me anymore. I want to see her face but somehow I know I'll never see her again.

Then form this prison that is my anguish, much to my embarrassment I am granted a reprieve upon hearing the sound of a woman's voice. "I'm here Charlie!" "Everything's all right Baby!" "I'll talk to you in the morning."

My heart flutter only to quickly sink down to the bottom of my stomach. My mommy never spoke without telling me that she loves me. And the tears that on my face are replaced with emptiness that has become my life.

It seems as quickly as I've closed my eyes it was morning. the strangeness of this room doesn't seem to matter anymore. Eagerly I spring up from my bed . . . fiddling with the knob. I am lock behind this immense door, and begin to slap and bang until it decides to release me from with inside the room. "Mommy, mommy." The echo of the woman's voice answers back sounding less familiar and the door is opened to my disappointment. Her name was Marylou . . . Ervin found her at some bar down the street.

Everything in my world has changed. And I don't care anymore. Left to wonder about my new home, I am locked away in the silence of memories that refuse to reveal themselves to me.

Siting here in the living room, me, Baba, Renee and Renee's Dad. I give a vagrant stare at the television, while my sisters eat their pop corn, and gulp on their cool aid, there's really nothing there that I want to see. "Look, at that fool." "Ha, ha, ah, isn't that funny." "Boy why ain't you laughing?" But without a word, I hunch my shoulders cause I don't understand what was so funny.

"Can I have some?"

"Boy!" "What did you say to me?"

"Can I have some?"

Some what . . . you want some pop corn?" Rattling the aluminum pot full of pop corn at me, he sifted down for the burnt and un-popped kernels of corn. "Here you go, son!" "Let me know if you want some more."

I couldn't figure out what my sisters found so enjoyable about this stuff, it didn't seem like much to me.

"You want some more, boy?"

"No, sir."

"Now get the hell out of my face." "Go to your room before I whop your ass."

Sitting on the porch of our new home, watching the sun set, the caress of the evening cooling upon my flesh. The sky looked so beautiful, the sparrows would fly up to me. And from upon her father's lap Renee would grown for me to make the small birds come to her. Sometimes they would but most times they wouldn't and Baba would laugh because Renee was scaring em away.

Watching the night comfortably set upon the band of orange far off in the distance a light twinkling of stars caught in deep blue, the beauty of the sky is disturbed by the chimes of an ice cream truck. Although Renee's just begun to walk, she knows how to churn her way from her father's lap and wobble to that ice cream truck, and as she begins her regimen of bounces upon her Father's knee . . . vigorously pointing at the truck. I vaguely remember the look upon my own Father's face, and wonder did I do the same thing when I was that little. I just can't remember ever being that helpless and whiny. And I couldn't figure out why she say anything that made a bit of sense. "You want some ice cream?" "Baba go get me a strawberry short cake, and get yourself a pop-sickle."

"Do you want me to get something for Charlie?"

"What did I say?" "Naw!" That boy don't need anything!" "And if you ever give that damned boy anything without my permission . . . I'll punish your black ass right along with his!" "You understand me?"

Whatever pop-sickle Renee wanted that meant that Baba got the other, and I wasn't worried about Ervin. If he got embarrassed enough he'd buy me a pop-sickle. And that would usually happen because his daughter Renee, would offer me some of her gooey baby drool drenched pop-sickle. I can't tell you how wonderful it made me feel, sucking on her nasty baby slob. Why not just vomit in my mouth?

I can't say, I didn't like Ervin or that I did like him, he never seemed to matter much to me. To me he was as dumb as his daughter Renee. I guess I looked at him like just another one of those kids who'd do what they want because they were bigger than me. And if things got to frightening I knew how to run away, I was fast enough that the big kids never bothered me. For the most part Ervin and me, we'd usually ignored each other. Neither me nor Mr. Boozer were very sentimental men, but it was something that we both enjoyed in the people we surround ourselves with. Needless to say every once in a while he'd do something to try to get me to get me sentimental, and I'd look at him like he was crazy and go somewhere, so I didn't have to be bothered with his nonsense. And I'd do the same to him, but my sarcasm usually gave me away, and when he'd catch me playing his heart strings he'd get mad and put me on punishment, and I'd have a good laugh about it, as if I cared.

I had a little girlfriend Jo Ann, and when it was just us kids outside, she'd take me into the back yard. She taught me how to climb my first fence and she'd still a kiss. But Ervin didn't like it much when one of the neighbors told him that he caught us playing married in the dog house.

We moved quite a few times. And when we move into a real house on Livernoise and Web Street, I'd peer into the kitchen and watch as Ervin would teach his kids Renee and Baba how to read and write. It took me a while, but I taught myself how to do these things.

By the time we moved to Navahoe Street I had learned my own way around. Looking for pennies on the sidewalk and in the street, I'd buy my own candy. Looking for old beat up and broken bicycles in the ally, I'd take what pieces I could and build my own bike.

Ervin was all right as a father, he fed me fish oil on the couple of occasions that I had contracted worms to keep his daughter from getting worms. To be honest he was probably better than most kid's Dad's in the neighborhood. Every once in a while he'd get in a mood to buy me a gift. And I'd have to wonder what in hell was he thinking when he did that. I was one of those kids with expensive taste, and although I tried to be, I wasn't very good at being polite and when I didn't like something. If I couldn't have what I wanted, I'd rather do without. I was about nine years old when I had figured out that Ervin loved to show boat for the public, that was this big bad gangster's weakness. Always talking trash getting embarrassed about it, and then having to lie about something they'd said or done, grown up didn't make much sense to me. And the more I'd listen to grown ups talk, it just didn't seem like they made much sense to me or each other either. It may seem crazy as hell to say this, but although I didn't like Ervin Walter Boozer very much. I was actually safer being raise by this serial killer, than I was being raised around my own white brothers. And outside of our family, I even dated some of Mr. Boozer's daughters, it took years for us to get know each other, but when they did they were the sweetest little girls that I had ever known.

But still with each day's passing, my life began to whirl by in a blur of uneventful memories . . . I felt like a I had become a voice speaking but muffled in the howling winds. A lot of times I just wanted to be alone and I found my refuge in the solitude of dark and empty room.

It seemed like one day me and my sisters were having a pretty good time and the next day I woke and somehow the sisters I thought at least cared for me had become.

I barely remembered having a mother, we had Marylou, she'd tend to us but we all had pretty much gone in our own directions. For the most part my bedroom was either in the basement or in the attic, and a lot of times when I was sent to bed they'd all go out on the town. And when we moved to Cruise and Keeler Street this white woman came to our home and said she was our mother. She stared me straight in the face and didn't know who the hell I was. I had heard her voice from my bed room a few times before, I had even seen my Brothers, Richard and Benson when they had dropped by before, but I guess it was one of those embarrassing moments because she was there to give me my birth certificate cause the State had started a new program to track runaway and missing children and I needed a birth certificate to get into Henry Ford High School. But Richard Gilberg senior is the old man with the money and he was the man who called the shots in our household. And I hate the white bastard, like most of the Gilbergs, he was the kind of man who'd smile in your face and with a hardy laugh he'd slap you on your back, all while plotting your death. And Laverl was the typical white woman who would do anything for a dollar, watching her put on her motherly performance was pretty disgusting sight.

I don't know what my sister and brothers would say about me, and I don't think I'd give a damn. They've known a life that I had to learn to do without. Most times when we were together watching television, they'd watch the tears run down my face.

I enjoyed the tranquil quiet I found in loneliness. Shrouded in the dark I could listen to the world, and it was an amazing symphony of sound.

My sisters believe that I had a hard life because of what they don't understand about Ervin and my relationship. I'd sit on the floor watching Shirley Temple, and look at her life and how grand it was for her to be surrounded by a loving family, and I'd cry. Then I'd go outside and play . . . I'd climb the apple trees and eat apples. I'd climb the plumb trees and eat plumbs. I'd pick mulberries and raspberries from the bush. I had fun, then I'd sit down on the floor and watch Shirley Temple and cry. Then I'd go outside and look in the alley for a bicycle, and I'd fix it up, and sometimes I'd find two and three bicycles to work on. And I'd spend the whole day riding, and one day it hit me. I actually had more fun without a family. Wait a minute . . . I don't want a family. No I don't want a family if I can't have fun with em, cause I'm having a pretty good time all by myself.

Anyway. When I was about fourteen, Ervin threatened me and told me I'd have to kill him. I paid Ervin enough attention to know that it was time for me to leave home, cause this stuff was stupid. I was fourteen and horny as hell . . . and the little girls in high school were showing an interest in me, and all I could think about was sex. I would have fucked elephant cunt if I could have found some. Then there was my English teacher Ms. DeShields. Beautiful and black . . . oh god . . . every time I'd look at her, it would make me angry, I wanted her so bad. I wanted to fuck her like a little whore, and she knew it. There was nothing I could do to hide the huge bulge that was trying to burst through my pants. It was weird how we'd be in the classroom and she'd sit on the edge of her desk teaching a lesson and sarcastically say something to piss me off. And I'd study the curves of her black flesh, watching her nipples swell until they'd pop. She'd calm down and she'd laugh and pet me, which did nothing for my frustrated swollen cock. I was thoroughly intoxicated by her presents, and her smell. We even did a couple of plays together. I'd watch her dance, pumping her vagina until she'd cum and run off the stage. And when the frustration from working with her would cause me to snap at her she'd laugh, and I'd smirk at her for being such a silly little girl. As goofy as I was. I could not, not treat her like my woman, and when she'd speak to me. I would allow her to talk to me like a child. My solution for every problem that arose between me and her, was that I should fuck her little black ass. Women had become an intoxicating drug for me, and they seemed to love how I couldn't get enough of watching em play with my cock.

Then he accused me . . . Marylou, passed out on the basement floor and Ervin accused me of boinking the bitch. He knew that lying I was inflamed. I thought about it and decided if he were going to lie on me I'd tell a lie on him. If you want to kill your self then kill yourself but don't pick a fight with me, cause you want to take the cowards way out. The memories I've had to live with had become his need to apologize, and although I'm a little confused about my life. At least I've got enough sense to know there's nothing anyone can do about yesterday. So I'd rather do nothing rather than to live in regret.

Yesterday. It was morning, and in my fascination with each new day I want to go outside to play. Yesterday, it was just yesterday when I discovered it. I know where they live these funny chirping sounds. Outside my window you can her them gossip and call to one and other. Well, actually it was my friend who notice em first. It was right there behind me, and when I turned around to see who it was it hopped into the air. Up, and up, and up, it didn't stop. No! It kept right on going, way into the sky. We laughed, and laughed, it was so funny how it did that. We could still hear the voices of the little creatures chirping as we searched the sky . . . but we didn't see em any more. Then without a sound there it was again right beside me.

In the morning as I spring from the bed in a raucous . . . clumsily trying to dress myself, my thoughts race hysterically in wonder of what awaited my day. It was all so exciting. "Maybe today it wants to play, and we can hop in to the air and go way up into the sky." "They say God lives up there with the Angels." "Maybe we'll get to see him too."

"Naw-awn!"

"Yeah, you're right. I would miss my Mommy too."

Gerald never spoke much. My Mommy says that's cause he's a Baby. Instead he sits and grunts a lot. And sometimes when he grunts he makes a terrible smell, that's when my Mommy says it's time for him to go home cause he's got something in his pants. I tried to look and see what it was but my Mommy laughed and made me stop pulling on his pants. Gerald's got a mom and she's really huge, and she’s nice too . . . she likes to give us cookies, and she make Gerald share his cookies with me cause he's stingy.

When ever I go over to Gerald's house his big brother stares at me. Sometimes he sneaks up and hits me on my arm. I saw his sister kick him for hitting me, and then I kicked him too. I don't know what made him think I was playing with him, but after I kicked him, he laughed and laughed then he began chasing me around the yard . . . boy was I scared but he wasn't going to catch me. God he's weird. I like Gerald's big sister. She says I'm her honey! She likes to kiss me too and I like it. She like to give me candy but it always has spit on it but I don't mind cause it tastes like she does when we kiss, she taste's like kool-aid. And she likes eating my candy too, cause I'm delicious. Sometimes my Mommy gives Gerald's big brother money to buy us candy to share, even when I don't want her too . . . but she says that's to keep me out of trouble? I don't know what she means by that, but I guess its Ok.

When I'd come home from playing in the yard my Mommy would investigate my face and hands for traces of dirt, always prepared with rag and a strange look of terror that used to make me laugh if saw a little bug crawling around on my clothes, cause she'd dance around back and forth, grimacing while she'd force her trembling hands to wipe me clean, that's when I knew its was time to get a bath. Bath time usually meant it was time for bed, but sometimes it didn't . . . but I got in the habit checking for bugs before I'd come into the house just in case. After coaxing me into the bathtub with my clothes still on and dousing me with a couple pots of water she promised she'd try to be braver. "Oh Baby! I'm so sorry . . . do you forgive Mommy. It's just that I'm so afraid of those bugs." "That's Ok!" "Awh Baby, I love you so much." "I love you too Mommy . . . but I think my clothes are wet!" "Awh Baby! You know what, tomorrow I'm going to go outside with you . . . and you can show me your little bug friends . . . and I promise I'm going to be brave."

I was a moody child and not everybody liked that about me, but my Mommy seemed to love everything about me, and she taught me to love every feeling I had. I'd tell my Mommy my moody stories about my moody day and we'd laugh. Even when I was trying to be serious she'd laugh . . . then she'd smile and give me kisses and tickles, and a slice of orange or tangerine. I'm not sure if I like 'em, but she sure makes 'em seem delicious. She even kisses the juices off my face and hands. Then she picks me up and blows on my stomach, and it makes me laugh. We like fried okra too, but not that snotty boiled kind . . . yeee uk! That's disgusting, but my Dad likes it, and we laugh at him too, she's so funny. He doesn't say much he just calls us children, then later on he gives Mommy a spanking for talking about him . . . she likes it but it makes me afraid. When my Mommy's happy she laughs, when she's sad, she's never to proud to cry, she always tells me just how she feels and she expects me to respect her feelings too, and I do. But she always makes me laugh, and she likes to sing just to get me to sing and then she laughs and says it's cute, its so fun just being around her! She says I make her happy . . . but sometimes when she says it, she gets a little sad . . . I don't like to make her sad. I told Mommy that Gerald's sister like to kiss me, but I don't know if I like it . . . she says that because Gerald's sister is still a little girl.

Sometimes my Mommy just sits in my bed and watches me sleep. Then when I wake up she's sitting in the living room on the couch.

"Good morning Ahly! How's my little man?" I was the man of the house when my father wasn't home. I don't know how she always does it . . . but my Mommy always knows when I'm ready to play.

Just then the doorbell rings and there's a holler from the hallway. "Janice?" "Its me!" "OK." "Charlie its Laverl. Oh no it's the baby sitter. I don't like her she like's my Dad . . . she likes everybody's Dad! I don't like the way she puts her face against me forehead. She only does that to pretend like she's lovie dovie. She likes to tell everybody what to do while she talks on the telephone . . . and she always wants a coca cola. when she talks about her boyfriend Ervin and uses our telephone.

"Son would you get your Mother a coca cola from the refrigerator?" She says she's my Mother and that I should act like a child . . . but I don't know what she's talking about. My Mommy has to remind "Mother" that I'm not allowed to play in the kitchen. While she does, I strategically climb up onto my Mommy's lap and lay my head against her breast in an attempt to drive the baby sitter away. "That's all right." Laverl lifts herself out of the chair . . . and off to the kitchen she goes.

Sometimes I've got stay at "Mother's" house, cause she says I have family there. Renee and Baba live there but most times when I'm at Laverl's home, Laverl's not there. The only thing I know about this woman who keeps calling herself my Mother, is that she has three white sons, and when I was two years old, they took me out on top of the roof put a rope around my neck and made me jump. And this woman called Mother was so embarrassed that she made me wear that damned red cowboy hat and tell her friends that I love cowboys. My throat is bleeding from a rope burn, the taste of blood still fresh in my mouth from the force of the noose whipping into my neck causing me to bite down on my own tongue, and this fool wants me to tell these people that I love cowboys.

She told her Negro friends that the bloody gash on my throat from me strangling myself on my brother Benson's cowboy hat while playing cowboys and Indian's with em. But the neighbors saw what happened. And Laverl couldn't move out of that neighborhood fast enough. And I hate playing cowboys with Richard, Michael and Benson, they make people lay down and won't let em move cause the cowboys are bigger than me and they've got guns. So what turned my mother and brothers against me? Nothing.

I was two years old when my three white brothers used to feed me raw meat and call me an animal to entertain some of their white friends. Even Erva, Ervin's black child got into the act, cause she had a crush on Richard. I guess they knew it was dangerous, but when some their friends told them that eating raw meat could kill me, my thirteen year old brother Benson got curious and started asking me all sorts of questions about the raw meat, how it taste, how did it make me feel. In hindsight I'd have to guess that in his eyes I had become like the blond haired carnivorous creature which white boys love celebrate for its magnificence, I had become the lion, and out of vanity Benson ate a piece of raw meat. And as I stood there listening to my brother's belly aching from a small piece the same food that he had fed me, this mighty Goliath was brought down to my size, and all that talk about, "you do it because I'm bigger than you" it didn't mean a thing anymore, and he had to be hospitalized.

After that incident Laverl hated me. Her beloved son Benson almost died, she could not let it go, and although I reveled in my new found strength Laverl saw me as less than a dog. She and my three older white brothers had become terrified of me, and my mother even tried to have me exorcised by a Catholic Priest and tried to convince me that there was something wrong with me, but I didn't care, I loved what I had become. I had become the lion among the lambs. And true to the nature of sheep Laverl's sons sought to kick me every chance they saw I was down. They hated my father too, but hated him long before they hated me, they said it was because they hate having a nigger around the house telling them what to do. And Laverl always loved it when her white sons would hug her, and whine about my negro father preaching to them. They'd tell her, "if he wants to preach, let him do it in that nigger church."

But her boyfriend Ervin was a nigger too, and they love him, cowardly Jewish kids have always had this love affair with criminals, and they get to do stuff with him that they'd never otherwise experience in their mundane life. And at the age of fourteen, with a height of 6' my brother Richard Gilberg was pretty tall for his age, and that meant he could get into the clubs and bars to hangout with Ervin as well as quite a few well known black celebrities. It was one of those perks that made the little Jew boys feel like somebody in their white neighborhood. And that's what you'd get hanging out with a black gangster, and for some reason the black entertainers seemed to gravitate to these white boys when they'd see them hanging out with black folk. I guess it meant that they had found acceptance from the white community, or something like that. And although my last name is Gilberg it was my brother Richard Gilberg who signed my birth certificate.

I guess some people would theorize that because of how I was mistreated as a child that I'd have issues of trust, but I don't have any issues of trust. I've never had anyone there to protect me when I was a child, and grewing up I had to protect myself, that's all. I learned to act naive, and its kinda like watching a lion eat straw along with the ox, I know what I am, but when people are out to harm you they always attack you where they believe you are the most vulnerable. Everything I do, I do to protect myself because I know that no one else will. And I've had to live like something other than what I am all of my life, but I am proud of my own magnificence as a human being. With all the lame promises that Caesar could pour out in tokens of generosity, you will never have another human creation like me.

Laverl's boyfriend has got three Negro daughters, Aldene, Erva and Connie, and when Laverl wasn't home his daughters baby sit me, but I watch em like I were watching television or I'd get bored and play by myself, while they eat popcorn and talk to boys. Watching em talk to boys didn't seem like much fun to me. To me my brother's and sister's life is a life of tokenism and they are proud of awards that could never mean anything to me. But if this is what makes them proud, then I'm proud for them too. But for me Paradise is nothing more than an exercise, and looking at them I could see that Paradise is something that I could easily lose if I were to try to be like someone that I'm not. Maybe I should feel hurt that they don't love me, but hell they don't love themselves and that cup of love is empty, and a token of love is a piss poor excuse for the real thing. And maybe it would give meaning to my brother's life if they could tell the world that I hate them, but the insult is that I am a lion among the lamb, and the lamb don't mean anything to me. The majesty that they worship in the lion is the thing that my brothers hate in me.

Laverl said it best when she called me an animal, cause it meant that I would never be socially acceptable. And in Laverl's eyes if you accepted me, you had become unacceptable to her, and there was a lot of strife in our household, so my father moved me in with him.

Ervin's daughter Aldene baby sat me the most. And Aldene's best girlfriend was my father's girlfriend. Aldene is an exceptionally beautiful black girl and her girlfriend is an equally beautiful biracial little girl with long soft hair, she and Aldene adored my father, and Aldene's best friend loved it when I'd call her Mommy. And although I didn't know my father very well, I never once doubted nor did it ever occur to me to considered whether or not my father loved me. I knew I was loved. And whenever I was with my Mommy, I knew without a doubt that I was loved. I could never get enough of my Mommy, my Mommy was my very best friend in all the world, she was amazingly attentive, and maybe a little bit needy, and I enjoyed every moment I'd spend with her.

"I'm hungry Mommy."

"What would you like to eat?" "Oh, Laverl we have to go to the store." "I have to get some milk for the baby."

"Jan you have milk." "Does Charlie eat cereal?" "I can fix it for him."

"We do? . . . Are you sure?" "We'll go to the store after you eat your breakfast, all right Charlie?"

"Awe right!"

I drag myself to the kitchen, and wrestle with the chair for a seat. Then patting me on the head Laverl leaves out the kitchen. I gawk at the soda-drenched cereal then take a taste . . . its nasty, but just sweet enough to palate. My Mom enjoyed feeding me, and I never really paid much attention to what we ate . . . sometimes my Dad soul say I was getting to big for that, and then he'd look at my Mom and smile. It always made him happy to see her happy, and that made me happy too.

"Hello?" "Hello?" A scholarly voice echoes in the hallway at the entrance to our apartment, accompanied by the clunking of footsteps.

"Oh!" "Jan, that's my boyfriend, Ervin." "You met him."

"Well! . . . You could have told me."

They say that Ervin's a gangster, but my Mommy doesn't trust him. Laverl's son Richard even showed his friends Ervin's gun, and now all the kids in their neighborhood hang out at Richard's house so they can look at the Gangster. Ervin likes being a gangster, because people don't believe it, but they're afraid of him too. But I don't like him cause he acts like he's cute and like everything that comes out of his mouth is what everybody wants to hear, and he always wants me to do what he says . . . he's not my Dad.

My Dad, they said he was handsome, they say I inherited my Dad's rusty butt too. I don't know . . . all I know is he enjoyed himself a good cowboy movie. And on the weekends when he didn't have to go out of town to work, we'd sit around and watch television. He never said much, but there was this rodeo show that came on the television, and we sit there watching, and laughing at the rodeo clowns. I didn't understand too much about cowboys and stuff. But I enjoyed the rodeo clowns they were running, and at first they'd chase the bull, and then the bull would chase after them and the clown would jump into the barrel, . . . and then the bull would push the barrel around until another clown came. It was amazing how they did that, it was so funny.

From behind the kitchen chair I watch frustrated, as the tall dark figure enters our home. Laverl pops up form my father's armchair like a puppy eager to meet it's master. I a gesture of obedience she offers him a kiss on the lips. Undaunted by her touch . . . he stands there preoccupied fixated staring at my Mom and with his right hand inside his suit pocket. As he turns stepping toward the couch where my mother sat . . . I lose sight of him, but I can hear everything he and my Mommy are saying. "Hi Ervin! . . . We weren't expecting guests this early." "Stop!" "What are you doing?" "Laverl?" "Help me!" "Please!" "Stop it!"

From the kitchen I can see Laverl clutching onto her stomach . . . crouching to the floor on her knees, she begins to moan. "Oh God!" "Oh God please!"

Hurdling myself to the floor . . . "My Mommy!" . . . racing into the living room . . . I am halted by confusion. The tall dark figure has turned angrily to Laverl. "Shut up bitch!" "You wanna be next?"

Rocking back and forth on her knees as if she's about to vomit. "No, no, no!" "I don't want to die!" "Please." "Oh, Ervin please!"

Over by the couch my Mommy is standing there, her body slightly crouched, and leaning forward . . . steadying herself to keep from loosing her balance . . . she lifts her hand to her chest where it rests just beneath her breast. The sparkling diamond ring upon her finger sustains my attention as blood crosses over it trickling down her delicate hand. There's blood on Ervin's clinched fist and on the shiny silver object in his hand.

Glancing in my direction, and then staring back into Ervin's face . . . "I'm all right Charlie." "Don't let my baby see me like this." "Go outside and play Charlie." "Ok?"

Then breathless she drops to the couch, quietly sitting there. And as I watch the tears fall from her eyes, and I can't understand why she's crying . . . I can't leave her . . . I can only watch as my Mommy lays back against the cushions, struggling to draw breath into her lungs. Then her breath becomes a whimpering of little hiccups, and silently, motionlessly she drifts off to sleep. I guess Ervin had been there studying me trying to figure out reaction . . . I don't know what he expected to see me do, but seeing me look at the door, he laughs. "Hold him . . . Don't let him move." Folding the shinny object into its slender black case . . . he places his fingers against my mother's throat. And with a single bound he lunges toward the door locking it shut. He walks in the bathroom where he studies his face in the cabinet mirror, as if wondering what he felt . . . you could see it in his eyes, he was trying to figure out if he felt anything at all . . . quietly washing his hands in the face bowl. Why didn't the blood he rinsed from his hands mean anything to him? I saw him talk to my Mommy before . . . he liked the slender biracial woman, but not enough to stop him from doing what he'd just done.

Startled by a clunking sound coming from within the hallway . . . Ervin quietly sneaks across the room to the door, where he patiently listens to the noise. I can tell from the sound of the footsteps that its Gerald, his two-year-old body has been trapped by the height of the stairs. Once he's made his way up the steps usually my Mommy has to carry him back down. Its funny because Gerald never had a problem backing down the last three steps to our house, and sometime he could be quite insistent on trying to climb down the steps on his own . . . but we fell down the stairs once before, and after that my Mommy always carried him down to the last three steps. She said I was to big to carry that far, so she'd hold my hand and walk me down.

With his hand once again reaching inside his suit pocket Ervin waits . . . then abruptly flings the door open and with the demeanor of a car salesman greeting a perspective client . . . he looks down into the face of the small black child . . . curiously he study's the boys face as if to ask why the child why are you here . . . you've got to know that you don't belong here with these folk. "Hey son!" "Come here!" Tenderly lifting the boy into his arms. "Let me show you something." Without a whimper the small child lets Ervin carry him into our home. "Yeah, there you go!" Ervin was stunned by how disarming his charm was to children . . . and adults alike. As Gerald's eyes study over Ervin's face, seeking emotions for reassurance . . . the man who looks like him smiles, and then turns his attention to the room . . . looking around preoccupied with thought. "Hey son! You want to play? Let’s bounce on the bed." "Laverl, take the boy in the kitchen."

"Which one?"

"Well I'll be damned? Your son!" "What the hell do you think?"

Lifting me up in her arms . . . for the first time that I could remember in my short life, her hand tenderly press my head against her shoulder. "What do you want me to do with him?"

"Let him play with some matches." With a smirk he "Sorry, Charlie!"

Once again the water is running in the bathroom, while the woman who told me to call her Mother is focused impatiently rambling through the kitchen drawers . . . thinking and rethinking, as if confronting herself . . . asking herself why she can't make a decision . . . and then the words burst from her lips. "I can't find any." "Oh, I found them."

"Show him how to light them!"

Fumbling pushing open the wooden package, its set before me on the white flamica table, where once again I'm seated. In a nervous presentation, one of the sticks is taken out and scratched against the side of the box. It ignites, hissing at me as it burns. "Here now you try." My Mommy lied to me, she's never lied to me before. She's not all right!

"My Mommy's bleeding."

The tiny wooden crate slips from within her trembling grasp, crashing to the table then bouncing off, it tumbles down to the floor, spilling out its contents.

"God damn, won't you just shut up!" "Your Mommy is all right!" "She said so, remember?" That's all she'd ever do is yell and lie . . . she didn't like me . . . she wanted me to be more like my "brother" Richard. But Richard's friends didn't like me cause they said I was a nigger.

"No!" "I saw it." "My Mommy's bleeding!"

"Hey Laverl, get the kid a damned band aid." "That's all right . . . I got 'em." Ervin enters the kitchen wearing my father's black suit, and carrying a tin of bandages. "Here you are." Sticking my had out . . . "Now!" "You get these after you light a match."

"Ok!" Then he retreats back into the living room. And although I agreed to the exchange, my three year old dexterity cannot comprehend how to manipulate the cumbersome twigs to get them to make a light, but I've gotten pretty good at breaking them.

Entering the kitchen again . . . "What!" "You still haven't lit one." "Ok son!" "I'll give you one more chance." Pointing at the stove . . . "All you have to do is turn that knob, right there." "Can you do that?"

"I can do that!" I take hold of the large button and turn, but it doesn't move, so I pretend as though it does. "There!"

"Damn! Boy!" "What can you do?" "Here, get out the way." Grabbing me by the head, guiding me out of his way . . . he stoups investigating the knobs, impatiently looking up at Laverl whose intently looking down at him, studying his every move. "Woman get outta here . . . and leave the boy right where he is."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Take the newspapers from that stand over there by the sofa . . . and spread em around on the floor."

"What?"

"You heard me!" With a smirk he smiles as if laughing to himself about a joke he just heard. "Boy, hand me a match."

I take one of the sticks from the floor, and turn toward the man standing at the kitchen stove. The blue flame is pouring up toward the ceiling. "Now put it in there." Directing me to put the match inside the fire. And as I do the red tip of the stick fizzles sprouting a yellow illumination that blackens the stick as it burns. "Put some more in there." "Is that all you can hold." "Put em in there." "Hurry up boy! You want those band aids don't you?" "I'll give em to you as soon as you get finished." "Let me know when you get finished" . . . he's gone . . . so pretending to take up all the matches from off the floor, with both hands I hurtle the imaginary objects onto the stove, then gallop into the living room. "All finished!"

"Is that right?"

"Yep!"

In the living room Laverl nervously stands there staring at Ervin rumbling through our house, tossing papers around on the living room floor. With a long paper torch in his hand Ervin hurriedly touches it's flame onto the curtains and wall paper. Then balling up a piece of news paper he tosses it to me. "Here, kick that around." Kicking the flaming paper ball back and forth on the floor. "What's the matter with you boy, you don't want to play with me."

Then leading me by the hand to the my bedroom door. "Hey Charlie!" " Where's your friend?" "I think he's hiding under the bed."

Standing behind me, he pushes to door open and I look inside. But the bedroom where I once played is glowing with fire. Its yellow flames have melted my box of toys . . . turning the wall and white curtain into billows of gray black ashes and smoke. Guiding me by the head, Ervin gives me a shove, and before my foot can take a step to enter the room, with a whoosh the door slams itself shut, pushing me out. "Mommy, mommy!" I race over to her side. But she's still asleep.

"Damn!" Ervin jerks his hand from the doorknob. Startled, his heart races in panic . . . and somewhat annoyed at his own fear, he reaches into the bathroom taking the tin of bandages from off the sink. Looking around, the smoke has driven Laverl onto the stars in the hallway where she whispers, calling Ervin's name. Without a word, looking at the couch as it slowly begins to burn, Ervin tosses the tin of bandages at me, and with a snarling click from the latch the hallway door bangs closed . . . they're gone.

even the stones cry out

I do not have the dumb luck of David. And David was a man who constantly did everything wrong, but because in his heart he meant to do well he prevailed. But even with God on his side eventually David lost everything, because his dumb luck was not enough.

And it is David's dumb luck that caused Solomon to constantly reflect upon and question his father's foolishness, and Solomon became the wisest of men. And how dumb was David, Solomon was working in the vineyard one day and it occurred to him just how foolish his father was.

Song of Solomon 1:6-7 Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me. My mother's children were angry with me. They made me the keeper of the vineyards. But mine own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth. Where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon. For why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions.

Anyone who knows me and my family can tell you that this is how I grew up, and this is the man I became.

John 19:26 "Woman behold thy son!"

Psalms 68:5 "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation."

Luke 2:47 "And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers."

Luke 2:48 "And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou dealt with us thusly? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."

Luke 2:49 "How is it that ye sought me?"

Matthew 16:18 "And I say also unto thee. That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."

Matthew 26:75 "And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him. Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly."

I guess you could say that hell will not prevail, because the devil loves tears.

And now you know why Mother Mary cries.