Growing Up X by Ilyasah Shabazz

Author:Ilyasah Shabazz [Shabazz, Ilyasah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-52913-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2002-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R S E V E N

Hustle Queen

As a child, I often dreamt of my father. Sometimes these were flickering images: his face, his smile, his hand passing me an oatmeal cookie. Other times the dreams were long and complex, whole movies of my father in my mind. When I was ten I dreamt I walked out the back door of our house, down the stairs, past the grapevines, into the yard, and saw him sitting on the patio with the awning overhead and trees on the side. He sat in a huge chair, one that gleamed and glistened like a throne. I was so excited to see him, so happy I could not contain myself. “Daddy! Daddy!” I yelled, running toward him. He grinned that beautiful, full-face grin the world seldom saw but which those who knew my father basked in. Suddenly, he opened his arms wide. “Daddy!” I ran and ran and ran, but I could never get close enough to touch him. As soon as I did, something would happen and I would find myself back on those stairs again.

Months later I told my best friends Lisa Anthony and Kim Brown about the dream. We were having a sleepover at Lisa's house, a very special occasion because my mother did not allow us to spend the night at the home of anyone but relatives. But this time Mommy was in Africa and Aunt Ruth was in charge; for all her old-world disciplinary habits, Aunt Ruth was a pushover in certain areas. She bought the three little ones and me our first, unauthorized pairs of platform shoes from Abraham & Straus. And she let me sleep over at Lisa's house.

Lisa and I became fast friends on the first day of school at St. Joseph Montessori. She was beautiful, a golden, sun-kissed girl with big, doll eyes and thick black eyelashes. Her gorgeous black hair was so long and so thick she could pull it into a bun on top of her head and leave it that way for a week, brushing only the outside before going out each day. She lived in a huge house in New Rochelle with her father, who was from St. Kitts and owned his own business; her mother, who taught school; and her three sisters. I thought they were the perfect family, and they treated me like another daughter.

It was the Anthonys who stepped in one time when I was thirteen and Qubilah and I were feuding furiously. Like many closely spaced siblings, Qubilah and I were both the best of friends and the fiercest of enemies. As a child she tended to blame me for anything that wasn't good in her life, perhaps because I came along when she was only nineteen months old and gobbled up attention in the ways that babies do. She loved me and if anyone outside the family tried to hurt me Qubilah was there as my protector, but inside the house she tortured me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.