I See You
The first time I saw her, she was homeless. At least that’s how she looked to me. Face like a rat, ink-black hair streaked with silver matted up in greasy clumps, wearing a filthy oversized coat that covered a threadbare red dress and several more mismatched layers of clothing. Plus she was pushing a grocery cart full of large black plastic bags and other belongings, which is standard for homeless folk. Or I guess the new and more politically correct term is ‘un-housed’, right? Personally, I don’t see the damned difference and I don’t see how being unhoused makes your life better than if you’re homeless; if you’re un-housed then your ass is homeless.
But whatever. It’s a gripe of mine, and I have more than a few. The point is the woman fit the description for being homeless here in Detroit, or pretty much anywhere else. You see them and you forget them, which may be the sad truth but it’s the truth. As I was about to pass by her on the street – I was taking a lunch break from where I work downtown – she was shambling along in that jerky rhythm so many of them do, talking to herself and grinning like a Halloween pumpkin. Subconsciously, I’m sure my mind was already preparing to erase her existence from my memory banks before that pitiful existence ever had a chance to register.
I got close enough to become annoyed by the squeaky wheels on her cart, and also to have my nostrils violated by her unpleasantness. Her unwashed funk, which was amplified by the heat and humidity of mid-summer when the smells of the city announce themselves at every turn, was like an assault. I squinted, coughed and turned my head slightly. Then I held my breath and picked up my pace, hoping that would get me upwind of the woman’s unusually foul odor. That’s when she took a sudden deliberate step in my direction. The rapid, unexpected motion drew my attention to her face, and that’s when I noticed the her eyes were spinning like pinwheels. I made a motion to jump back but she reached out and grabbed my arm with a vice grip that I swear could have crushed cement.
She was smiling, but the smile was gentle. Nothing like the Halloween pumpkin expression she wore on her face a few minutes ago. The warmth of expression, which contrasted so sharply with everything else, threw me off and made me confused.
“I see you,” she said, her voice sounding like a paper bag full of whispers.
I tried to snatch my arm away, but that only added an exclamation point to the pain as she squeezed harder while her nails dug into the fabric of my sportscoat. I glanced down as a reflex to see what the hell kind of nails this woman had and they didn’t look like anything that should belong on a human being. They were filthy, caked with what I thought was dirt but could have been something else, and they were at least an inch long. And they didn’t extend from the top of her fingers like what you see on folks. Instead, each finger and her thumb transformed from mottled brown flesh into a hard, sharpened claw.
“I see you, Marcellus James.”
This time it was my mother’s voice…
A Momma’s Boy
When I was a kid growing up on the west side of the city, my mother and I, we were really close. My Dad had passed away before I was able to form any memories of him, although there were pictures of his smiling, dark chocolate face all around the house. Always some expression of joy. My favorite caught him laughing at what had to have been the funniest thing he ever heard, his mouth wide, exposing a mouth full of beautiful white teeth. His head was tilted back, his eyes squeezed shut to where small stress lines stretched out from the corners.
“That one was taken all the way out in Aspen, Colorado, when we were with him at that conference. You probably don’t remember because you were just a baby back then,” she told me once when she noticed me staring at it on the mantle above the fireplace.
Mom told me she never wanted another man after my dad because “there isn’t a man alive who could ever measure up so it just wouldn’t be fair.” My mother was fair-skinned with reddish hair and freckles and let’s just say a full-figured Black woman’s body that left no doubt. I witnessed more than one poor guy thinking maybe he had cracked the code that would at least get him under those sheets if not into her heart. But Mom? She was a master at letting men down easy with that seductive smile and those greenish eyes while somehow managing to steer them away without bruising their pride - and before they tried to make her pay a price once they realized she was turning them down.
“Because that’s the way most men are,” she told me once. “They wanna make the woman pay for something that they tryin to steal. You hear what I’m saying? Not pay for; steal. Not your father, though. He was something special.”
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK AS THE STORY OF ‘THE WITCH’ CONTINUES…