Coming December 25, 2024 
Check out the Taboo Spot for more info!

I am what folks around here call slow. The word has been whispered behind my back since I was old enough to recognize it. The word was used so often that it became a part of me. It didn’t offend me or make me feel different. To me it was another descriptive word, like short or tall. Being called slow didn’t burn until I was old enough to understand what it meant. Folks enjoy whispering among themselves while watching me out of the corner of their beady, accusing eyes. They’ve been watching me sideways since before I was born. Momma isn’t a whore Like Margot’s momma. Or a drinker like Mildred and Caroline’s momma. Their momma drank when she was carrying them and ruined them both. They were born drunk, and it turned their minds to mush. My mind is solid. I was born quiet is all. Momma knew something was wrong with me when I didn’t cry after I was born. It scared her. She thought I was dead until the midwife laid me in her arms. Momma checked me over from crown to toes before she was convinced I wasn’t deformed. My eyes didn’t roll around in my head and looked fine. But I was too quiet. How was she supposed to know if something was wrong with her little baby if I never cried? Grammy said she was cursed for having a bastard. My mouth doesn’t slobber like Thelma’s boy. I never shit myself like Caroline, but I’m not quite right either. I never uttered a word or made a sound that wasn’t a grumble in my stomach or didn’t come out of my ass. The doctor told Momma that I suffer from mental retardation, and she should send me to an asylum. Momma thanked him for coming and showed him the door. When I was small, Momma would cry when she thought I was sleeping. I know she blames herself for whatever is wrong with me. Other folks whisper it too. They pity Momma for being my momma. Tongues loosen around me because they think I don't understand them. They feel free to speak their truth no matter how inappropriate or low-down it is because I am slow. Maybe it’s my white daddy’s fault for being a rapist. Maybe it isn’t. Life is too short to go beating up on myself or hating Momma for something that we can’t change. I’m not wasting time thinking about bastard babies and white daddy’s when I have better things to worry about. Like taking care of Momma. Not that Della needs taking care of. She was a schoolteacher before she had me. That says everything that anyone needs to know about her intelligence. Momma curses people behind their backs when they call me slow. She knows me better than they do. My brain thinks differently from other folks. My mind wanders and never settles on one thing. Miss Thelma says a wandering mind isn’t natural. You can’t run a house when you don’t have it in your head to sit still and do so. Being a wife and mother isn’t easy. What she said is true. This wandering head of mine would rather be walking in the woods collecting wildflowers to brighten a table than spend time scrubbing it. I enjoy finding a nice, soft place to hide and lose myself in a good book. I can lay in the same spot reading all day. I’ve been bashed in the face more times than many when I fell asleep with one in my hands. Nothing ruins a nap like the spine of Don Quixote blackening your eye. There was an uproar the first time I showed up with a black eye. Missus Jones fainted dead away. Folks got it I their heads that I’d been jumped by a white boy and formed a lynch mob. All except my tutor Missus Walker. She looked at me sideways and said, “You fell asleep reading again when you should be having your lessons. It serves you right, Miss Tuesday Dorthea.” That’s what she calls me. Miss Tuesday Dorthea. Most folks are convinced I like books for the pictures because they can’t read themselves. They pat my head when they walk past me while my mind is captivated by some adventure. I wave their hands away and keep reading. I don’t read all the time because Momma doesn’t let me. I prefer to be on the move anyway, seeing and learning with my hands. On Saturdays I sit outside the church when the choir is practicing. They make so sweet a sound that I know the angels in heaven listen with teary eyes. Except when they let Missus Lea lead a song. I would rather listen to cats fucking than hear her wailing for Jesus. On the days when Miss Lea leads the song, I make my way to the catfish pond. The croaks from the bullfrogs and chirping of the crickets is nature's choir. From time to time, a fat catfish splashes in the deep to show off for the smaller ones. There is nothing better than laying on a patch of shaded grass and staring up at a cloudy sky. Somedays I see faces of boys I think are handsome and animals. On cloudless days, I pretend it’s the big, blue sea and I am falling into it arms wide and eyes closed. This is why they call me slow. Because I am a daydreamer. What’s so slow about daydreaming? I know slow and I am not it. I don’t shit myself and screech all day, but folks treat me like I do. I am smart enough for them to pay me a quarter to keep an eye on their pissy children and extra to cook dinner when they are too drunk to feed them. Miss Tuesday is smart enough to mend fancy dresses and run to the store for a dime. I am smart enough for men to want to fuck me. But not smart enough to keep my own house? If I can polish a cock, I can polish a window, right? Folks might wonder what slow people think about. I think about lots of things. I think about what we are having for dinner. I think about how perfect my Momma is for her to be so unhappy. That part makes me sad. I think of ways that I can make her life easier. I hope that every quarter, nickel, or fifty-cent piece that I add to her savings takes away some of the weight that carrying me puts on her back. I know how heavy I am. I think about being a better daughter. To make momma’s life easier, I behave the way she expects me to behave. I do what she tells me to do, and I don’t do what she tells me not to. I keep myself tidy and I make sure she has fresh flowers in her vases. They aren’t much. Just colorful weeds that I pick them in the field, but she notices and thanks me. As I walk past a window and hear a woman and child screaming on the other side, I think about Mister Benton. He gets drunk and beats on his wife and kids every night. That’s their momma screaming for him to stop. I am thinking today might be the day when he finally kills one of them. I hate it when children die. Children are too young to die. Mister Benson should do the right thing and kill himself if his mind is set on killing something. It happens too often. White Paddy beat his son Lucas to death for asking for food after he hadn’t eaten in two days. Paddy spent the money his wife made on whiskey. Me and Lucas were the same age and friends of sorts. He was always skinny with bruises, but he was always nice to me and Polly. I offered Lucas food, but no matter how hungry he was, he refused because his daddy didn’t take charity from niggers. His fear of Paddy is what killed him. Lucas’s death was humbling. His was the first death that hurt. I cried into Momma’s skirt for three days, asking God how he could take a nice boy like Lucas away. Momma told me God rescued him from Paddy and he was in a better place. But I think she was hurt too seeing a dead boy all beat up and skinny the way Lucas was. Polly lost ten pounds after he was buried. I think about how sad and unloved a child must feel when they go to bed hungry. Or lay awake crying at night because of something their momma’s man did to them like Margot. Or something their real father does to them like Polly. Being a girl is tough when men treat you like a woman. As commonplace as it is, no one speaks out against it and many girls never tell in return. I supposed being considered slow protected me from the lion’s share of decent men. I think about stubborn Missus Walker with her fancy ways and fancy tea. The woman is worse than momma with her smothering. She won’t leave me be. The woman is always trying to teach me something new. Hasn’t she taught me enough? When will she understand that I don’t want to learn everything she knows? I already know what I need to know. The French lessons and etiquette classes are a waste. When will I ever speak French? Or need to know a water glass from a wine glass when you can drink either one out of both? Who needs a special spoon for dessert when a soup spoon gets the job done just as thoroughly? It seems silly to have so many things with the same use. As I walk past Ione and Tom fucking on the back stairs again, I think about my friend Margot and her thing for white men. It isn’t right, I tell her. We need husbands. Colored husbands. Margot has her mind made up that being with a white man will change her life. It seems to me that nothing changes except her drawers after they leave. She will die a spinster waiting on a white man to save her. The only white knight coming out here belongs to the local order of the KKK. The last time I told her so, we got into a slapping, punching, hair-pulling catfight. When it was over, her momma whooped her for knowing better than to fight with Sweets. Life is good when people think you don’t understand things. I avoid hard work and I am never in any hurry to get anywhere fast. In fact, I tend to show up to places when I feel like it. No one gets on me for being late to weddings or not attending birthday parties because they know I’m slow. Between us, I do whatever I want, and no one says a thing. They smile, pat my hand, and go back to whatever they were doing. God help the fool who says anything against me. There will be a room full of folks ready to fight for my honor. “Bet not nobody say nothin’ bad about our Sweets.” My tongue is tied, Momma figures, and doesn’t work normally, so I don’t know what normal feels like. I don’t think I am missing anything in my life until I get angry and want to scream at someone. I have a nice room, a good momma, and good folks around me who treat me like a baby. The only people who know better are Margot, Polly, Momma, and Missus Walker. Grammy treats me differently from everyone else. She treats me like she hates me. She calls me a curse when I change her out of her pissy clothes. Grammy tells me that I have the devil in me. Missus Walker said I have the devil in me because Grammy is the devil, and I was born of her blood. That damn near tickled me to death. Missus Walker is good at insulting folks polite-like so they don’t know they were insulted. She is smarter than most. Folks tried to fix me. The Reverend Charles started in on me when I was a baby. He tried to cast the evil spirit out of me when I was young. The hulking man stood over me all big and scary, yelling and breathing hard as he commanded the devil to, “Unbind this poor chile’s tongue and loosen her sweet voice. Help her, oh Lord!” Momma said that my soul was saved, but my tongue was never unbound, and my sweet voice was never heard. Being saved didn’t make me feel any different. It didn’t make me want to sit on that hard pew all day, smashed between plump women. If being saved meant I had to help scrub pots for a hundred people after the church dinner, I wanted no parts in it. I do enough scrubbing and dish washing for the Dearborns. When I am squashed on the pew with Momma, I watch the reverend’s face for signs that he wants to perform another exorcism on me. He enjoys calling me up to the front to beg for the same miracle. The reverend will look at me and I will look back at him. If he looks too many times, I get up and walk out in the middle of his sermon. “Get back here, Sweets!” Momma hisses at me, trying to hold me still. Other people smile at me and nod their heads hello as I leave. The preacher keeps right on preaching. And no one pays me any mind because I’m Della’s girl. (All Rights Reserved)