Excerpt from: Loosing Sancheeta

"Shortly before I died at fourteen, I watched my first pornographic video but the things is, I don't remember if I'm living, lived or died because that is just how I feel after what happened to me. It all seemed like two years ago or son, please, bare with me. My sister, baby, was jut twelve then. As soon as I saw the video, I started getting all excited, not where I was making a complete fool of myself, jumping all out of my seat but, inside. That's where I was excited most. I know I shouldn't have but I couldn't help myself. What girl in her right mind can control her raging hormones at that age? I know for a fact that I couldn't. I could just imagine what my sister was going through."

"I had already started my premenstrual cycles back when I was eleven so, my hormones were very aware of just how to react to sexual desires and certain situations that require those desires, even though I hadn't had any sex until that night."

"At first, I thought maybe it was all an experiment. Why else would a mother be showing a full-fledged pornographic cum-de-la video to her young daughters, right? I Know. Was she preparing us for prostitution? That was my first question because of her shaky past. I don't know the full extent of her past but I heard it is shaky and I'm talking shake rattle and roll all over everything."

"My mom smokes those Salem Lights cigarettes. She sent me to the store plenty of times to pick some up for her so, I should know. She actually sat me and baby down one day then gave each of us a lit cigarette. I guess to see which one of us, if no the both of us, would turn out to be a smoke like her and her mother. My grandmother smokes those L & M's.

"Even thought things were super hard on my family for generations, with my great-great grandmother being born just before they outlawed liquor and alcohol. I could imagine her sneaking off to hand roll her own cigarette, then my grandmother, who was born after the Government realized there was a ton of money to be made selling alcohol, ratified their previous law and started selling he stuff themselves. Their claim was that they were recovering taxes for the country from the sale of alcohol."

"My grandmother took up her own collection. She started holding weekend Gin Rummy games in her kitchen. She was serving, drinking and smoking cigarettes and making money, legally."

"Then, my mom came through a heavy dose of racism, not that her mom and grandmother didn't. All three of the women spent uncountable hours in the cotton fields as early as four years old, working ten-hour days, then care for their families. I guess that was enough to drive anybody to drink and smoke."

"I can't stand cigarette smoke, let alone cigarettes. I'm glad my sister doesn't smoke either but, to go from cigarettes and alcohol are hardly the mixture of ingredients to showing your kids porn. Unfortunately, I would have to pay for that experience with my life."

"I watched the video, even enjoyed it, a lot but I also watched my mom out of the corner of my eye watching me. At first, it did no bother me but when my internal hormones started taking over my body, it shook and hiccupped something terrible. I started grinding the couch cushion."

"Cheetah, will you stop moving, dang?" Baby asked as she elbowed me in the side.

"I was embarrassed. I hoped she didn't catch what I was doing. I really didn't realize I was moving so much but I guess I did get into it. I glanced over at my mom when Baby elbowed me and it seemed like she was lusting, not at the video but at me. The way she had that smirk on her face and her eyes squinted, I thought she would leap out of her seat at me. I mean I was covered in my pajama's besides, my mom wouldn't jump on me."

"Our two bedroom apartment was kind of small. Baby and me shared a room and my mom and dad shared the other. We had a living room and a kitchen and have course a bathroom. I didn't know what to make of it, me, Baby, my mom and her friend watching a video of people having sex and my mom watching me more than she was watching the video. That was strange itself but what was even stranger was that, my mom had one of her neighbors over instead of watching the video with my dad, especially when she would repeat to me and Baby, "keep my business in my house."

"Earlier that day, before my dad went to work, I just knew I had the best of both worlds. I had both of my parents living at home when not even a handful of other kids in my neighborhood had that privilege plus, I had my sister with me. I mean, don't get me wrong, even though my dad worked two jobs and our family was still poor and I couldn't figure out how my mom bought the machine to play the video on, it was great because our family was together."

"I was not a bad girl, not in the lest and definitely not dumb and stupid, excuse you if you thought so. I got good grades. Not the ones my mom wanted me to get but they were good. I even use to like boys, liked this one boy named Goober from my school. They called him Goober because he has big buckteeth. His hair was also nappy but he was cool, always nice to me, even though we use to get into real fights."

"One time, this girls at school came right out in front of everybody and said I was wearing dingy clothes, which I was but, she didn't have to remind me. I get enough of that from other people. All of the other kids just walked off laughing at me. I told her; you don't want to mess with me right now, Gwendolyn. She stood there and actually had the nerve to question me like I wouldn't pop her but."

"Why, because your family is on welfare?"

"I swear I wanted to pop her butt as soon as those words came out of her mouth. I looked around because I didn't want anymore bad reports about me coming to my house from the school. Nobody was around as far as I could tell so I popped Gwendolyn right on her lips. It made a smack sound and everything."

"Your dumb but family is on welfare too, you live right across the hall from me, in the same apartment building so stop acting like you aint poor and for your information, my dad works two jobs and we have a video projector too. Why I told he that last part is beyond me but I knew I would regret that too. I pushed right on by Gwendolyn's old selfish butt and went to my next class, class, not period."

"In my time, you didn't have periods, you had class, something that I tried really hard to maintain. That is until my world came crashing down around me at a high rate of immeasurable speed but you know, just about everybody these days had a period. I don't care what it is or what it was about, everyone has one men do too. They cry, even though most times they cry in the closet, that's their period, period."

"Anyway, after I got around that I popped pop bottle eye glass wearing Gwendolyn and she told everybody I saw that pornographic picture, everyone started calling me negative Nesbitt. After a while, I couldn't stand to go to school anymore. I was too embarrassed. I couldn't even go take a pee or go to the cafeteria or to a pep-rally without somebody calling me nasty negative Nesbitt, all because I smacked deafness in Gwendolyn's left ear and I know for sure some of them watched porno before. I mean they were calling me names and don't even know what happened to me and what I had to go through after watching that video."

"After that, my attitude went from excellent when dad was home to, I don't even know how to explain it now and I actually did run away from home. I got right on a Greyhound bus but after listening to a guy and a girl not much older than me, talk about how much pain he was in because he left his two kid's because he didn't want to be with their mom anymore, then two other guys were talking about the same thing. Hearing those two conversations made me thing about my family. I didn't want to but I had to because Baby was back there and I didn't want to just run off and leave her for good; going back was just something else that was a contributing factor to me losing my life."

My mom, she is totally responsible for my shift in attitude. You see, she jumped on me that night we watched the pornographic movie, her and her friend. When I told her I was going to tell dad on her for what she did to me, she beat my naked body to a pulp then pushed me up against the scalding hot radiator pole that shot up through the floor of the bathroom and went straight up to the ceiling and that was all after what she did to me. The radiator left a scar across my butt so bad that I couldn't even sit down on the toilet for a whole two weeks."

"All of that happened two short years ago, long before my daddyo because he's been in jail ever since. I had to go through a lot of therapy with my mom after it took place. I am glad about one thing though, my sister don't even remember every detail of the incidents that occurred and I could never bring myself to telling her exactly what happened. We were supposed to keep the therapy sessions from my sister because the Doctor lady said it would mess with her thought pattern if she knew about it."

"After some kids in the neighborhood heard what happened to me , that's when they started calling me nasty along with the negative Nesbitt name. Some of them pushed me away, kept me out of their little circle. Some taunted me for no other reason than to be mean to me. Thanks to Goober and Gwendolyn for putting the name out there in the first place."

"When my dad left, was taken away, my mom tried her best to comfort me with her version of generosity but I couldn't bring myself to accept it. I couldn't stop crying. I love my dad. He is my sunshine but it didn't take long after he was gone for her to show her true colors about how she really felt about me."

My mom did not bother my sister, which I was grateful for but she flipped on me like a brand new pair of flip-flops. She yelled at me the minute my dad was out the door."

"Girl, you better stop that damn crying right now. Yo' damn daddy aint dead. he only goin' to jail."

"That's when I looked at her, actually stared at her and wanted to slap her. She always talked bad about my dad behind his back and acted like the good little wife when he was around, especially when she wanted some of his money."

"Mom, how can you say that about my dad?"

"Please, Sancheeta, you act like yo' daddy the only nigga been dragged off to jail, as if he didn't deserve it with his funky ass."