“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a few ideas I have with all the things going on in our country,” Tarray messaged me yesterday while I was thinking about what I would write this week, knowing no white woman’s words could be as important as hers and theirs---my Touchstone girls, their poems and stories about violence and abuse in their black and brown lives, my passion to get them out into the bigger world. How I’d wanted the privileged milieu I inhabited to grasp what labeled these young women as delinquent—I wanted them to understand what led them to do the sometimes lawless stuff they did, the drug use and selling, the prostitution, the truancy, the assaults. That’s why I’d brought them to so many reading venues, started the joint group with The Hotchkiss School girls, tried so long and hard to get I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent published. And now, why I’m rejoicing that it has been, especially now.
I realized that what I needed to do was share some of the poems in the book with you. Let them speak what I could not. Tarray’s came first to mind:
SMOOTH PAIN
my pain you can’t touch
it’s untouchable
even I can’t touch it
I can only feel it
it’s a smooth feeling
smoother than a baby’s ass
smoother than teddy pendergrass
yes, but pain
pain when I walk
pain when I move
just smooth pain
sometimes people say
pain will heal
mine hasn’t yet
it feels like the pain
my ancestors went through
it feels like the pain of a starving child
in the middle of the street
the pain of an old man robbed
of everything even his socks
the pain of the world
more pain
less pain
smooth pain
The phone rang. It was Tarray. “Sharon, what’s happening now—it’s been my whole life. It’s just what I expect. The cops see me and stop me all the time for nothing.”
I felt the outrage in me getting out of hand again. “That is just so wrong, so wrong, so wrong.”
“Don’t worry Sharon, I can handle it.”
That’s what they always told me when I expressed horror at what they had to deal with.
“Tell me what happens when they stop you?”
“The cops in West Hartford especially bad. Out at Bishop’s Corner. I like the Marshall’s out there, so I pull in and park, notice the cop behind me. I walk into the store, then come out to my car, and sit there, texting someone before I get going, not wanting to do it while driving. The same cop comes over to the car, asks me what I’m doing. He’d been watching me. I show him the phone, tell him I’m texting. Ask why he’s asking me, anyway.”
“You have tinted windows,” he says.
“What?” I yell into the phone. “What’s that about?”
“They suspicious. He asks for my ID, runs it, sees nothing, maybe he’s disappointed. Sharon, it happens all the time. I’m used to it.”
“This is so outrageous. What would happen if I was with you, say in the car, or in a store?”
“Oh, they’d follow us, ask you if everything was okay, look at me when they said it. I can’t even go into J. Crew, or Brooks Brothers, I love that store! I’d be followed the whole time I was inside. (Tarray is a big, imposing black woman who loves fashion and style, has long dreads that stream from under her signature backwards baseball cap, dresses in Ralph Lauren men’s shorts and shirts, top of the line sneakers). The cops even follow me when I go to the Marshall’s out in Avon—they have better stuff out there, so my grandma and I used to go a lot and check it out. And Sharon, when I went down to live in Georgia to help my grandma when she was sick---oh, they were so much worse. I bet they followed me every time I went out.”
“Oh, Tarray. I love you.” Sometimes I just didn’t know what else to say.
Here’s another one of her poems from the book:
MY KITCHEN TABLE
my kitchen table is the hangout.
we don’t eat there but we express ourselves there
How many kids does so and so have?
How many times have the bill collectors called?
How much is the phone bill?
that’s the food on my kitchen table
we eat the gossip in the air
we eat our wisdom at the kitchen table
not the wisdom of books and school
but the wisdom of the projects,
welfare dick, fast cars, drug money--
our kitchen table is as well-rounded
as if the Mafia were there
fuck my kitchen table
there’s nothing there to eat
I’ve been eating the same shit there forever
I want different foods at my kitchen table
no gossip or shit from the streets
I want the food of books and school
how to make it
I want to digest the food at my kitchen table
let it move through my system
return again at the table
fuck the food at the projects, welfare dick,
fast cars and drug money
I want some new food at my kitchen table
There was a local protest for Black Lives Matter in my small Connecticut town a few days ago. One woman held up a sign, “WHITE PEOPLE, DO SOMETHING!”
Can they, will they, hear Tiffany’s words as a call to action?
PREJUDICE
Our blood is the same--
so are our tongues.
We all breathe the same air
and like to have fun.
So what makes you different?
What makes you dislike me for the way I look,
the way I dress, the color of my skin,
or the way my momma cooks?
Why can’t you see who I really am inside-
a person who loves, who hurts,
a person who gives, a person who cries.
All you seem to see is the color of my skin,
the size of my nose, the length of my hair.
When it comes to the weight of my heart
you really don’t care.
Our outer layer doesn’t really matter.
What’s important is what’s within.
Love your neighbor for what’s inside.
Be their true friend.
I want to believe they can and they will. We will listen, this time.
If you want to hear and read more about Tarray and Tiffany and the many other girls in I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, I will be in conversation about it with my friend Martha Toll on Zoom, June 18 at 7. You’ll be able to order a book then.
Follow this link to register for the Zoom event launching the publication of my book, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sharon-charde-i-am-not-a-juvenile-delinquent-tickets-106262802904
I am so grateful to all who respond to my blog, and ask forgiveness for not being able to respond to all of you in a timely manner.