In you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.
Psalms 25:2, 3

Can you imagine what it was like when the first African woman in America took that historical stroll down the catwalk? Picture it, hundreds of people all lined up to see her. Pandemonium abounds. Men, woman, & children all there to see her black satin beauty. She wasn’t wearing Versace or Louis Vitton. Those garments would never accentuate her true essence. Instead she was rubbed down with slick oil and draped in heavy iron chains.

Did I mess up your vision of Tyra in pretty satin Victoria’s Secret panties? Did I strip down Iman’s luxurious Chanel garments? I’m sorry… I wanted to take you there. I mean really take you there. She was probably cold, quite possibly numb. By the time she had reached the American shores she was surely teetering above the pit of hysteria. Her child had been taken from her now leaking breasts. While her womb aches, her mind replays over and over again the image of her baby being tossed over the side of the ship, wailing from sickness and hunger. For the first time she felt naked. The strange looking albino demons were now shouting in what sounded like a demonic chant of words that made no sense. She felt herself not wishing for death but praying for death. Quick and horrific or slow and painfully, it really didn’t matter anymore.

The African American woman has been an object of so many things for so many people so very long; it’s hard to imagine that we are ¾ of a person. On the plantation she was the chief slave manufacture, the exotic erotic thang, and dear old mammy. Is it any wonder why she began to take possession of the objectification factor that the world at large seemed to have a patent on and fashioned it to her own liking. Whether right or wrong in theory, she wants a piece of action. Come; take a look beyond her eyes. Peek at her core.

You cut your eye at that young sistah sitting on the bus stop, wondering what in the world is she gonna do with those four little stair steps running too close to the curb. Did you ever take into account that her old spirit may be crying out for relief from her hundreds of years of grieving for her children? Her baby girl that was stillborn after that cowhide whip cracked across her pregnant stomach one too many times that hot Louisiana morning. The two little twin boys that were sold off like calves two states over, some where in Mississippi she thought she heard, just after they began to call her “Ma Ma”. The only child that survived with her stole away north one dark autumn night. She still don’t know if he made it or was killed along the way. That’s a lot of baggage to carry with you year after year after year. Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal all wounds, no matter if it’s 4 days, 4 months, or 400 years. Now you might understand why when you ask her “ How come you keep having those babies?” And she replies “ I don’t know?”

Now what do we have here? MTV & BET seem to be hoochie central these days don’t they? Lil Kim makes you just want to scream, right. The hair, the clothes (or lack there of), the brazen sexual moves and lyrics, yuck!!! You speak in disdain of the young black girls that don’t need to see that mess. You suck your teeth and roll your eyes at the men who believe that hip-hop fantasy. That’s with your man around or your girlfriends. When you’re home alone watching the little videos, your attitude goes in to an altered state. Your disgust takes a liberal left turn from the far right and move toward curiosity and awe. You still don’t like what she projects but it’s a certain air of power that comes across that screen. All she is doing is taking back that moment, no matter how twisted it may appear, that moment when that African goddess was demeaned on the auction block. If no more than for five minutes, she gyrates away the memories rough callous pale hands that raped her body and devoured her essence in the slave quarters in the wee hours of the night. Her scantly dressed body demystifies the image of Saartjie, a South African woman dubbed as “The Hottentot Venus”, that was put on display for all of Europe to marvel at her large, swollen buttock muscles and other unmentionable areas of interest to the masses.

Now you may not envision her as a champion for black woman rights but its something about her. You catch yourself tapping your feet or in better yet you doing your own Afro samba along with her singing “No matter what people say, I gonna keep moving on….” Isn’t it something liberating about her self-affirmation and inflated vision of self that makes that auction block a liar?

Aunt Agnes looks so tired these days doesn’t she? She bore 6 beautiful children in a rainbow that ranged from cinnamon to mahogany. Married twice, Herbert, her first husband died from working hard long hours that broke his heart down. Proctor, husband number two left in the middle of the night with a bleeding head in a drunken stupor after Aunt Agnes finally struck back with a hot iron after another night of beatings. The story goes that Aunt Agnes was pregnant with baby number 6 for her and baby number 4 for him & her. He had just got laid off at the steel mill and the pressure of 5 kids was already weighing on his back; the sixth one just broke his back in two, he never returned.

Fifteen cold winters have come and gone without Aunt Agnes sharing her love or her life with another. She filled her days with long hours in rich people’s houses and her nights trying to learn through her children. Of the six children, the eldest, a girl, graduated from Spelman and came home for one week after graduation never to return except in the form of money orders. Aunt Agnes blamed herself for her daughter’s black flight, being too poor, too tired and too ignorant to find her own way out years ago.

The other 5 had an assortment of problems that Aunt Agnes too blamed herself for. The twin boys (by her 1st husband) were each strung out on crack. The baby boy was now 14 and tired of taking ridolen and special ed classes. He dreamed of designing airplanes and but was told he would be lucky if could clean them. The sistah on the bus stop you saw, well, that was Aunt Agnes fourth born. Born angry and grew up angry. She hated going to the rich folk houses with her mother and vowed she’d never work in “them houses” like her mother, instead she’d go to college. By her senior year she was on baby number two and resigned to welfare and living in her mother’s small attic. Her dream was sucked out of her after the third baby, never to return after the fourth. Aunt Agnes‘s fifth child, a proud and handsome son, always saw the sun rise and set upon his mother’s face. Even as she grew older and tired he never was without a loving word. But he was so angry. Calling his eldest sister, cussing her out for never visiting, never hesitated to put the twins out when they were highed up, badgered his sister for always answering “I don’t know?” when she turn up pregnant again, telling his brother he could fly and them teachers were crazy and need ridolen their damn self. You see the military had changed him. All the while Aunt Agnes watches this big ball of confusion. Had she not fasted? Had she not been a good christen woman? Why was her lot so bloated over with pain? She worked and tried to live right? Her son in fits of anger would scream to her “ Where is your God?”.

Growing tired of reciting scriptures that seem to lose their meaning; as each new heartache appeared… she grew silent. Feeling like dear old mammy. Took care of big house. Nursing their babies through the day with only empty breast to offer her own children. Fixing big old meals while her children were lucky to get leftover scraps that the dog didn’t want. Lord, the pain. Old mammy children grew tired of watching their love whisked away when big house call. The eldest ran away north. Two drank potato liquor behind the shack until they drifted in to dreams of what freedom may be. One wanted freedom, saw freedom but was too scared to run. Her 2nd daughter was having baby after baby feeding her young to the carnivorous slave monster. Her fourth child, she watched day in day out get beaten for trying to be a man. Old mammy wondered why they were cursed children of Ham. Aunt Agnes wonders this, too. As Aunt Agnes grandbaby quietly reads her first book, she knows her hope and her faith was duly placed and duly noted, as old mammy knew when her grandbaby read the Lord’s prayer. Finally triumph over predisposed shame. And all God’s children said amen.