You Were Born Of… – Part Six

Short Story

Why all the intrigue?

What was all the dying for?

What was it all about?

Where were all of my people?

Why did the Spoilers pick the hitribe  and not others?

Why me?

The relentless questions, the awful self blaming resulted in my brooding about things that I had no control over.

My lose and my lack of coping skills produced a fearfulness,  listlessness and a depression.

Maybe because of fear, I don’t know I began seeing shadows crossing the brows and faces of everyone so I scuntized my visitors .

I focused on their  facial expression for clues to whether they might be friend or foe.

It happened that the hospital , the doctors, the nurses, someone must have noticed or been attuned to this pyscho pattern because a hospital worker named Casteneda intoduced herself to me  one afternoon.

Bristling at her many prying questions, I retaliated against her seeming aggression by often pointing out her overt and obvious faults.

My private thoughts were “Who are you to intrude into my misery?

Can’t I even have misery without somebody wanting to take that from me as well?

Haven ‘t I been through enough?

Leave me alone,  I never asked for your judgement or your so called help!”

Then at the  beginnjng of each session, I ‘d promptly forget her name and innocently ask,”What’s your name, again?”

Some times I messed with her,” You’re

Casino. Castaway, no  Castanodda,

right?”

I’d say things like,”You don’t look like a real therapist!”

To which she asked,”What does a real therapist look like?”

Her questions really didn’t derail or affect me but I always responded with,”You know , like a nice dress, some pumps maybe a white jacket with, something girly or even a writing

pad, perhaps?”

Being a tomboy by wearing cutoff jeans, tennis shoes and pulled back braids was my style but Casteneda took tom to a different level.

She resembled a middle aged man but when she spoke, she was very female.

There was about her a certain, true kindness that was unfamilar to me.

Often when she spoke I closed my eyes and listen for her true, still strengh.

There was about her, a quiet knowing that calmed me out of my own pain filled troubles.

Slowly and patiently she befriended me.

When she first contacted me, I thought that she and the hospital staff  were deliberately trying to deceive me, for some kind of preverse, unknown purpose.

She always wore  the same penny loafers, baggy khaki pants, khaki tailed men’s shirts and a tiny fad- afro.

Back then with my people, we never ever

knew or even discussed the possiblities

that someone would want sex with a person of the same gender.

We would have thought it was impossible to do.

Lesbians, fem or butch, gay, transgender or homosexuals were hidden. taboo  subjjects so I  kept my ignorant thoughts inside.

I had questions that I wanted answered by Casteneda  concerning her style of dress but I was taught manners , a respect for authority and that one never, ever rudely asked personal questions so I remained silent during most of these sessions

Most times she asked,”What are you thinking? and I so wanted to loudly

say,” That’s my business , why don’t you go out and find some business of your own?”

I never said any of those things but still she’d  ask, “How do you feel?”

I wouldn’t respond and she’d finally ask,”Why won’t you talk to me?”

Maybe, the pain was  in my eyes I am not

certain but all I know is that Casteneda continued to visit me and really tried to help me to resolve the bottled up anger

and depression.

There were days when the drugs that I was given for pain, would force me to sleep.

I’d try to  hold me eyes open but many days I fell asleep during Casteneda’s session so she began adjusting the drug dosage and timing.

As the adjustments were made I became more lucid and less drowsy.

On some occasions I lashed out against her constant, dailey unwanted and endless, probing questions.

Each session  lead to more questions that I didn’t want asked or answered mainly because I didn’t know how to discern truth from illusive lies.

For a time, I thought I had the answers but those knowings were as false starts, to me because the truth still lay far ahead of me.

My world and my thoughts were framed by the ‘if’s!”

If I wasn’t so stupid…

If I had just gone back with Genise and the other girls…

My  ‘if I’d ‘s’  most finished me.

Every little detail was examined and reviewed thousands of times and scrutinized for mistakes and faults and errors until depression seeped into the fibers of my skin.

One day, I lay in my bed listening to the portableable radio that someone had brought for me, I  heard  Ton loc’s  ,’Funky Cold, Medina.’

When the tune first hit the airwaves, the beat was jumping and everyone was repeating the rhymes but later when I reread the verses, I thought of prestidigitation was just a slight of song.

Funky Cold Medina, a song about a guy wanting sex so he goes to a club.

At the club he becomes envious of a guy who seemingly is getting all the  women.

He asked the dude how he could get sex from them  as well.

The guy tells him that he slips Medina into their drinks and that it makes them freaky.

The idiot puts the Medina, Mickey into his dog’s bowl.

After the dog downs the Medina, he humps his master’s leg.

The song is about  the singer’s attempts to get girls to have sex with him by drugging them.

The thought of Mickey brought up too many sorrowful memories of what started the downfall  of my  whole world.

Was Robert Brown, a figment of a young girls imagination, or was he the ultimate Deceiver?

Back then as it is today, things were not as they seemed  as the sole survivor  of my people, I had hard questions I needed answers.

Mulling over the song, it’s message and actually humming it, when Casteneda scrolled in.

She asked what I was listening to so I

told her.

I look backward now to see that she took

hold of that tune to pry me open.

previous: You Were Born Of… – Part Five

more by DEBRA BISHOP

photograph by Aurélie Jouan

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