Beyoncé Knowles
2009
My mama always said that she knew I'd be the one to uplift others; help others be heard; speak my truth; be the type to bring everything that needed to be in the light, to the light.
I was roughly 10 years old. I was in fifth grade when I first spoke up and nearly got my ass expelled. (Although, in my opinion I feel like school staff were doing a bit too much).
I had a very lackluster teacher she was an old saggy bitch who walked like she was trying to touch the floor, while being hungover and having half of her body rotting off the bone. The woman barely taught us a thing after the first two weeks of school. After that it was her complaining about her dead ex husband and why she felt she should've been put in his will. Anecdotes about how the real world was so hard and how we had it so easy. She bullied every one of us in the class which just made her look sad as hell. Overall just a shitty teacher and to this day, I'd you asked me about Mrs. Salson I could give you a roster full of stories.
However this particular day she was mad about a bad turnout on a unit test, we'd all flunked hard and she went on a speech about how we all needed to take things serious or else we'd be held back. Kelly, my cousin, and I were laughing in the back because we couldn't believe that she was attempts to care to teach us about a month before the end of the school year.
She made Kelly stand up and the woman walked up to her standing tall and proud with her crusty makeup and all and screamed in Kelly's face about how she'd be nothing in the world except for another face in a jail cell. Ontop of that she went the extra mile and mentioned Kelly's brother who passed away in the army a bit earlier in the school year and asked her if her brother would be any proud of her. She got some tears out of Kelly and smirked at my cousin who just buried herself by my side.
She didn't say much to me though, just that I needed to "choose friends wisely".
I was so pissed that I had compiled all of this woman's information and printed it out and put it in a file folder. I had my mom drop me off at school at the earliest hour that students were allowed in and I handed it to the principal in her hands proudly. The man looked at me both amazed and horrified, that I at such a young age was so enraged to do such a thing.
That was the very story I'd use in the essay portions of college applications and my mama would tell it for me to make me sound like some sort of heroine.
The years walking by Kelly provided me with so much material that in my free time to escape from what was going on at home, I'd written a saga. I'd used a different name for a character that was supposed to be inspired by me, Sasha, and I chose a different name for a character modeled after Kelly.
Everytime the characters had to fight someone off or solve some sort of quest it was usually a reflection of the chaos going on within the home.
Of course as I grew up I outgrew doing comics and began to move on to writing short stories, poems and novels. As a matter of fact that was how I connected with my first love, Costia. That's how I connected with a lot of people actually.
Mama always told me that I had a way with words. And it took me about 4 years for it to finally register until I landed a job with the New York Times. Mama and Solo were beyond happy for me and my sister made mama watch Julez so we could go out and drink it up with some friends and cousins.
