A Man For All Seasons, 10/27/90, Age 19

A Man for All Seasons 10/27/90, age 19

Reg, you’re always by my side
And thanks for being there
Thanks for always “catching” me
And showing that you care
And even when we are apart
I know that we’re together
And I’ll always be your friend
No matter what the weather

Kelvin, I’ll never forget the day
That in spite of them
You showed us who you really were
And I’m so proud of him
“Fresh,” to me you were the baddest
“Alpha Chapter Man”
Always be true to yourself
And I know that you can

Terrence, I’m so proud of you
My brother and my friend,
Thanks for being who you are
And be him till the end.
Yes you are a “man of Morehouse”
You show me everyday
And being your friend is a joy
In every single way.

Reg, Chris, Carey, Henry, Charles,
My pals from yesterday
I’ll never forget the fun we had
Despite the rainy days
Thanks for always putting me
In a cheerful mood
You gave me hope because you were
The greatest at St. Jude

Chris, I’ve admired you
Since I was eleven
And I’ll never forget the ball
That night earth was heaven
I’m glad that you were in my life
Despite the rainy time
And that is why you are included
In this special rhyme

Charles, it is great to know you
Words cannot express
How great I thought you were at Jude
You ranked among the best
It’s always nice to see you now
I won’t forget you, Chuck
And I’m sure I’ll always wish you
Peace and joy and luck

Douglas, I have hope in you
Thank you for surviving
And if you want to be that man
You’ve got to keep on striving
Thanks for standing up that day
And saying you were wrong
Someday you will walk with us
‘Cause that’s where you belong

Kobi, thanks for pushing me
Closer to “the One”
I loved being your “Jude Girl”
We really did have fun
Without you I may not have been
The Riche’ of yesterday
And without her I wouldn’t be
The one I am today

And on that rainy day when I
Was really feeling down
You talked to me and you helped
To bring me back around
And although I could never say it
You really cast a spell
You were radical for me
So thank you, Rafael

Thank you, pals, from yesterday
And my friends today
For giving me the hope I needed
And showing me the way
And thank you, Malcolm X for being
A whole, radical man
And if I can’t have what you were
I’ll have to keep my hand

I really could not settle for
Winter, spring and fall
I want the summer days as well
I truly want it all
I thank the other men I’ve seen
Who were the heat and snow
They have helped to guide me, too
I know which way to go

I thank the Lord and all of you
You’ve given me the reasons
To strive to be with whom I want
“A Man for All Seasons.”

Winning the Award for "Most Outstanding Geometry Student" in 1987

Few things have ever been more gratifying to me in my life than winning the award for "Most Outstanding Geometry Student" at the end of my tenth grade year, which was announced among the other major competitive ones during the outing of the Math Club at Pizza Hut. That is because of the fun drama that went into the competition at so many levels. One of the main competitors for it was a guy who had been condescending and rude to me and arrogant about his math success in Algebra I the year before. My success and comeback in geometry was shocking and unsettling to him, and he became so desperate at one point that he did a complete turnabout and even tried to sweetalk me and started having lunch at my lunch table daily. No success or victory in life has ever given me a feeling compared to how I felt the day I got that award in Pizza Hut that day when I was 15, and it is one of the achievements that I have most valued in my life, honestly my all-time favorite. For years, I wondered why it was so important to me and why nothing else has ever come close to meaning as much. Even earning my Ph.D. and publishing my first book did not give me as much gratification and feeling of victory as winning this award.

The competition in that class, the smallest and most advanced geometry class that year, was stiff, but other than this guy, I counted the other students, three of whom were my male friends, as good friends and would have been glad if any one of them had won. I think I loved it in general because it was a fight to the finish. We'd go over the regular assigned homework in class, and then quickly rush to the "challenge problems," where we preferred spending class time. The competition was so stiff that although on test days, most students finished their tests about twenty minutes before the class period ended, we would keep our papers and go over them again and again (and again!) until the end of the period for one simple reason: no one wanted to be the first person to get up and turn in their paper. It might send the message of being a slacker. We turned in our completed tests at the same time at the end of class, when the bell rang. The quiet intensity during those twenty loose minutes at the end of every test day was palpable, as people looked over their papers and rechecked their answers again and again, and periodically, straight ahead at the clock. No one could have paid me to be the first person to turn my paper in on one of those days, or anyone else in the class.

I had all A's and one B on my tests for the entire year. The day the aforementioned guy got an A higher than my A, he was ecstatic, exclaiming, "I beat you, I beat you!" These were the first words that he had ever spoken to me directly in high school, from the time that ninth grade began, and we were now in tenth! I was both amused and surprised, for I didn't even know he'd been monitoring my progress or looking at my tests. I presumed I was totally invisible to him, and so had just ignored him, too. I was actually very happy for him and pleasantly surprised and gratified if defeating me had meant so much to him, since I didn't know I'd been in a contest with him in the first place. I had just been enjoying geometry all year.

And then, after I had absent for a day from school, and returned, he'd changed his seat to the one beside mine. He began asking me stupid and confusing questions like "If I come over to your lunch table, can I have some of your french fries?" He got my phone number and called me and asked at one point, "When you get your license, do you want to go skating?" I was astonished by all of this new attention from him and did not know what to think of it. It felt weird that I'd gone from being so hated by him to a skating invitation. I had stayed away from him and not said anything to him for all of ninth grade and up to that point in that class, because I felt that he disliked me vehemently. For example, in the first or second week of the year when the ninth grade English teacher used me as an example one day in a sentence by saying "Riche' is a pretty girl," he was sitting in a seat in the aisle across from me, and so I heard him clearly when he remarked contemptuously under his breath that "She looks like a cockroach," while giving me a dirty look in the process. He was held up as a kind of "great hope" from his Catholic elementary school, and my classmates from St. John had also invested a lot of confidence in me, and talked me up a lot around the school, so it seemed as if he was invested in tearing me down. He had the arrogance of Goliath and saw me as someone unworthy of his respect, someone to just gobble up, I guess. I also remember that during ninth grade retreat, while standing outside with some others, I saw him go off walking on a trail alone and thought to myself that I would never be caught in a woody area with him alone for I felt that he hated me enough to push me off a cliff.

The first day he came and sat at my lunch table was really perplexing. Most boys in my class sat at the table in the center of the lunch room, packed together like sardines with their trays, which is where he also sat ordinarily. The first day that he broke rank and came and sat across from me at the lunch table with my friends and me, I got the distinct feeling that I was being watched. I was. For when I looked up, every boy at that long table was looking straight back at him and me. Every one! The ones facing us were all motionless and looking at us. And the ones facing them at the table and with their backs turned to us were all looking back at us-and over the SAME shoulder. And worse, since we wore uniforms, they were also all dressed alike, in white shirts, ties and gray pants. It almost felt synchronized. I thought I was imagining things and, shocked by the intensity of their stares, instinctively looked down. Seconds later, when I, thinking that it was safe, furtively checked again, they were STILL immobilized, staring at us. This scene would have been a perfect and priceless to film for a movie. It was the last straw for me. I immediately took action.

That night, I called and asked a firend of mine who was sitting at that table what was up with that. He told me that "They think you all are 'talking.'" Talk about miscommunication! I guess they were as confused as I was by the attention that this guy was suddenly giving me. I was thinking, "Why are you being so nice? You hate me, rememember?" I was utterly surprised and confused and asked one of his friends why he'd changed so much. At one point, I sternly and suspiciously asked, "Is he trying to steal my academic secrets?" I worried if he was so desperate to beat me in geometry that he was actually planning to try to romance me or butter up to me do it. Well, I wasn't having it. He ate lunch at the table with us for the rest of the year.

I will say, tongue in cheek, that that whole experience may have been like the gratification that a hunter might get by the head of a moose on a wall. He didn't return to St. Jude the next year, and the fact is, maybe he couldn't. The memory of my winning the gold in geometry was too unbearable for him.

As scenes such as the one in the cafeteria that I mention suggest, this is a fun story with many twists, even more fun than some of those chronicled in "Don't Tell Me That You Love Me." I'll be sure to write this story in more detail when I get a chance.

"Sexy"

From Journal Entry of December 23, 1992 that I Will Label
“The Problem of Being Called ‘Sexy’”

I wrote this entry when home for the holidays and in response to thinking about the issue of teen pregnancy.

. . . “I wonder what can protect little black girls from premature exposure to sex. (Black boys need to be preserved until maturity, too). But black girls are the ones who have the capacity to be prematurely impregnated, while boys are not forced to be inextricably bound to another life inside the body. It is not enough to cry “stop teen pregnancy.” I’ve discovered that teen pregnancy is not the problem and stopping it is really only a band-aid solution. The real culprit is poverty and the crowded conditions that breed the availability of sex with young, unattended girls, often daughters of single mothers. Such conditions are promoting some freakish desires in black men. I’ll never forget a crying classmate at Spelman who stated that eight out of the ten little girls who she’s supervised had been sexually violated and abused.

I wish I could help to stop this craziness. Maybe I did help one girl abstain from premature sex. I was a volunteer at the local black YMCA during my last two years of high school. The group that I set up and supervised had kids, boys and girls, of all ages in it. Still, I refer to them as “my kids.” They were so beautiful. Two of the oldest girls were alone with me as the young kids enjoyed the game period that I allowed before lessons in black history, individual tutoring, and social graces. One girl, the one who was obviously contemplating sex, was thirteen. She asked me if I had a boyfriend. (At that time I was 16 and dating a handsome Lanier football player. We’d been going together for three months and had not kissed. We did not kiss until June of 1988 and I was seventeen when that happened). So naturally, this preteen was scaring the hell out of me. I acknowledged my boyfriend. She told me that a boy liked her and she was thinking about letting him . . . she never fully articulated her ambivalent intentions, although I sensed what they were. I, being cautious, explained that my boyfriend and I were getting to know each other and that we valued each other’s company. I stressed that he was my first one, at 16, ever in my life and that waiting for such a person was worth it. I also stressed that girls should demand the utmost respect from boys and should not allow themselves to be pressured. I caught a pensive vibe from her, so hopefully she abandoned the idea of sex. [A few weeks later, a few days after he came over to the Y to pick me up after one of my sessions, she and another girl, a little awestruck, told me how cute they thought he was and could not believe that he was a football player-at Lanier-when seeing his jacket; her seeing him, while coincidental, was the best thing that could have happened and hopefully convinced her that she would have plenty of time later on to think about boys].

Maybe my sheltered existence has protected me from boys, then men. Really, a combination of things have protected and preserved me. My family, although not strict, set a good conservative example for me. I never had a stepfather or any stray presence who could have potentially abused me. My neighborhood helped. The same families have always been here. In some black communities, full of boys, girls, and teenagers, sexual experimentation is rampant. I’ll never forget the day that I was visiting a cousin in my extended family. Her friend went bike-riding with us. My cousin was pulling me on the seat of her bike, and she was beside us. We were 11. Riding through the streets of Twin Gates (my Grandmother would have had a fit). We passed a house which she cited as the place where she and this boy had kissed. I was taken aback, for it was inconceivable to me that people that young would do such things. I had a crush on a boy in my class, but I delighted in his art and agility in P.E. My ultimate fantasy was for him to pass me a note. Today, my ultimate fantasy is to be honored in a poem, so not much has changed, except maybe my idea of the person who should do it. I thought they were “fast.” They used profanity, too. In my neighborhood, eyes and ears were all around. Even if I had tried to sneak around with boys, I would have been busted. Really, there were no boys, just a couple, and we rode bikes. “Doctor” and whatever else were not on the agenda.

In later years, my appearance has shielded me from the masses of men. Aesthetically, I have some of the things that brainwashed black guys would appreciate. I had some of the longest hair at St. Jude and a complexion that could stick around. Many times, I thought about how my life might have been under different circumstances, for the only obvious dividing line between those guys and me was my height. Men are conditioned to want superiority, and few men have the balls to stand a woman who could look them straight in the eye. They’d drop dead before having one who could look down on them. My uniqueness has therefore been a social detriment and a personal blessing at the same time. I doubt that I would have had the time to be as intelligent as I am now, because my entire experience and existence may have been totally different with a less intimidating presence.

It should be noted, though, that I still got bothered. Lustful juniors and seniors on the prowl for younger, vulnerable freshmen at St. Jude singled me out. My male friends thought it was funny. I thought that they would ruin my reputation. Every rainy day when they were in the lobby of the cafeteria and I walked out with my female associates, they would start. “Hey, Sexy!” They embarrassed me so, and I felt that I was being verbally gang-raped. At first, I thought they were making fun of me, but then I realized that their comments, however rude, reflected some kind of appreciation. To my understanding, from what my male friends overheard and told me, they thought that I was sexy because I didn’t try to be. I didn’t hang out, and my innocence turned them on. With my appearance in uniform (I was the only girl who wore ankle socks and penny loafers at St. Jude. I liked the preppy look and wore them as my style instead of stockings all through high school), they could tell that I was not consciously trying to be provocative like some of the other girls. Some actually told me, “You are going to really be something else when you get older," “You’re so sexy,” and “I like those tall girls with that long hair.” My female friends didn’t understand my alarm over their attention. They said that they would have liked it. My male friends enjoyed my paranoia. I’d say, “If they say I’m sexy, teachers may think I did something to make them think so.” “Evidently you’re doing something,” they’d say. “There’s nothing sexy about me!” I once retorted because of my paranoia. I wanted them to leave me alone. [So many of those rainy days walking out of the cafeteria, just when I’d think I’d gotten by safely and unnoticed, one would start it. I usually tuned them out and never looked in that direction, but one day when I was passing a group at school and one said “Hey, Sexy,” I accidentally looked and they got a big kick out of it. I never told my family about any of this, for I feared they might take me out of the school, and I wanted to stay]. However, I must admit that older guys who were still there when I ran for SGA vice-president at the end of 10th grade helped to make me a political machine. It took me a long time to ask for their support, but I knew that I needed it because there were more boys at St. Jude than girls and a girl I knew had lost a year earlier because she was one. “We’re voting for you, Sexy,” was the response when I finally approached their lunch table the last day of the campaign. I reminded them that they should vote for the best qualified candidate. “We don’t like him. We’re voting for you.”

I have certainly been lucky. Yet, I pity those girls who haven’t been. Active sexuality will be my choice. I was not a pregnant teen and am mentally and emotionally strong enough not to become a pregnant young adult. There is no man that I could conceive of making a baby with at this point in my life. There’s no man at all, but maybe the silence of being alone is better than hearing the pitter patter of little feet or the breaking of one’s heart. The right person will come along.

When Will You Be You Again, 7/30/90, By Riche' Richardson, Age 19

When Will You Be You Again, 7/30/90, By Riche’ Richardson, Age 19

When will the pain end?
When I die-completely
I say completely because
a part of me died a long time ago
centuries before I was born
and because sometimes I’m convinced that you really
do wish I’d die
or when we experience a rebirth
-a resurrection from our
seemingly perpetual nightmare?
When will my tears subside
When will I laugh again?
When will I watch my endless dream
Come to life, giving me life, becoming
my coveted reality?
When will I have social desirability
in keeping with your vision of
happiness and heaven on earth
-must I perish in a living hell?
When will you behold me as a
beautiful being again?
When will I not be a stumbling
block, secretly or unconsciously
Or overtly despised when I am in
your life, unsightly
in your eyes and unworthy
of your affection?
When will we have our time
together again?
Do I have to forever beg for and
borrow your time and be tolerated
and settled for as you inwardly
fantasize about your idealized
stepping stone
-An idealized stepping stone
Who will seemingly give you
security and freedom
and manhood that society
as a whole will not and
can not surrender
-only you can become the radical one
and set yourself free; you can only make
yourself yourself-a man for all seasons
When will you want me to be your mirror image again
-Must you deny that I am a reflection of who you are forever
When will you stop hating me for all that I am, in turn, hating
Yourself for all that you are?
When will you realize what we are?
When will you realize what I am-
that I am a woman-that I long
to be treated like a woman,
and that I want to be your woman
When will you want me again-as I am for
what I am?
When will my love be reciprocated
abundantly and willfully?
Do I have to be beaten and insulted and raped
and negated until the end of time-only because I can’t
stop hoping and praying that you’ll love me someday?
Do you really hate me for loving you?
Is this your way of showing me that you are hurting?
When will our reign as victims of ourselves and victims of
society end?
When will you be king again and when will I be queen?
Must we wait forever to perpetuate the legacy of our primal parents?
Must I always be the most despised, devalued, distressed woman
on earth?
When will I be free again?
When will I be free to be me again
Without the need or desire to celebrate the raping of my
foremothers; without the need or desire to glorify
borrowed beauty or bottled, borrowed beauty
-borrowed beauty, that makes me forget who I am-
where I am and where I’m from
borrowed beauty that reminds me that I am a remnant
of a broken home
borrowed beauty that I want you to love, yet hate
borrowed beauty that makes me wonder who I am
and who I want to be
-borrowed beauty that makes you celebrate and glorify the
raping of our foremothers
-borrowed beauty that outwardly gratifies me today
-borrowed beauty that makes me wonder what it was like
to have been born yesterday
-borrowed beauty that makes me wonder if there is really
hope for tomorrow
When will our beautiful brothers
and beautiful sisters unite again, knowing
that all of us are beautiful?
When will I be human again?
When can we join the world as
secure human beings
-human beings open to brotherhood and
sisterhood in terms of our global family
Because we have finally cultivated
unity and complete pride
in all aspects of our lives;
because we have our minds again
When will we realize and accept wholeheartedly
The magnitude of God’s love for everything that ever was
and for all that we are?
When will I know who I am again?
When will I know what you desire again?
When can I set your heart on fire again
and completely trust my heart in your hands
-knowing that you will not break it
-believing that it will remain intact
When will you kiss me again?
When will you hold me again?
When will you make love to me again
-loving me and giving me
all that is within you
planting the seeds of life
Must I be punished and doomed forever because
I am not what you dream about
Punished and doomed forever because I am not what you
Dream about being with and touching and
loving completely
Punished and doomed forever because I will not be forced into the
arms of another man?
Because I won’t be caressed by another man
Because I won’t be undressed by another man
Because I won’t be possessed by another man
I can’t be seduced by another man on earth
I really can’t concede
I want you to succeed
Must I celebrate celibacy forever?
Must I die a virgin
When can I trust you again?
When will I be free to shower
you with unmitigated respect
again
-free without external forces
that plot everyday
to dwarf you in all eyes, including
your own eyes, by trying to sever
the tenuous thread from which your
manhood is suspended?
When will you respect me again?
When will you stand for me again?
When will you stand by me again?
When will you talk to me again
and hold my hand
-must I forever harbor unfulfilled fantasies
of walking beside you as I walk and cry alone
My loving you can’t make you whole again;
yet, I give you my love anyway. When will it
be complete
Your loving you will only make you you again
Then you can love me again, completely,
without limitations, to the fullest extent
When will you love me again?
When will I be whole again, whole again, without
Limitations-as a woman to the fullest extent
When will you let me be me again?
When will you let me love me again?
completely-as a woman to the fullest extent?
When will you love you again?
And when will you be you again?

On Student Council Campaign Speeches and Elections

Before tenth grade year, I made a vow to myself that I would not go to bed at night until I had done my work to my satisfaction. That year, for first and second quarters, on the curve, and because of the quality of my leaf collection and research paper on circadian rhythms, I was 78 points ahead all sections in sophomore biology. In the advanced and smallest geometry class, I was also the top test scorer and at the end of the year, won the award for "Most Oustanding Geometry Student." I was inducted into the National Honor Society and also won the essay contest that it sponsored that year. All of these things made me want to be even better as a student, and gave me the confidence to set out into the sphere of student leadership. I organized a fun campaign and made a range of striking posters featuring popular figures from Janet Jackson to “Ernest” of “KnowhutI mean” fame. The Janet Jackson poster featured her face, and cascading black hair, and the earring hanging from her ear in the shape of a key was three-dimensional, and it said “If I am elected, you won’t have to wait a while for me to take control.” I also had signature buttons featuring slogans such as “Elect Riche and Make the Difference” and “Vote for Riche’, She Cares.” My campaign committee wrote and performed a rap and popularized slogans such as “Riche’, Riche, All the Way!” Standing at the podium, I boldly ended my speech by saying, “And finally, one more thing. Remember, that if I am elected, you won’t have to wait a while for me to take control. KnowhutImean? (quick wink at the audience). Thank you.” The student body went wild over the speech ending and the wink, which gave it a sultry edge. The wink was totally unscripted and spontaneous on my part but entirely stole the day, and many people complimented me on how great it was. People just seemed uplifted. This was especially true of the senior guys remaining among those who had harassed me outside the gym on rainy days as a ninth grader and given me the nickname “Sexy,” and some of them remarked that “We knew you had it in you!” A year later, I was elected student council president, a goal that I'd had even "before" I arrived at the high school, so it was a dream come true. As I ended my term as SGA president, and introduced the slate of candidates who were up for election, I chose to give a very bold and direct (even angry) speech that confronted a lot of what I felt was a lack of ambition among some in the student body, and ongoing problems like detention, saying things such as "You can't do what people at public schools do because you're different, you're you . . . and if you think soooo much of students at public schools, JOIN THEM!(pointing to the door of the gym)" I ended the speech with the words "Learn to work, learn to like it, and learn to love yourselves. Stay out of detention. Stop wasting your time. Then and only then, will you “take it to the top.” I got a standing ovation.

Radicals v. Commoners

Increasingly, as I took on student leadership roles, my close friends in student leadership and I began to formulate what we thought of as the "radical lifestyle." By the philosophy, there were three kinds of people, "radicals," like us, "commoners," the people who were not committed to achievement in school and to student leadership, and those "hopelessly suspended in the middle." We would spend hours discussing these differences, drawing on works like Richard Wright's novel Native Son. Some of my poetry addressed those perceived and sometimes confusing differences. We just couldn't understand or accept why some people were not doing their best. The poetry, in places, addresses the conflict with which I dealt as a student leader and my resolve to remain true to my own mission and goals in life.

The Eight “Its” of Success, 9/8/1986, Age 15

If you believe in a dream, live it
If you believe in love, give it
If you feel something, say it
If you have a problem, weigh it
If you have a journey, take it
If you have the will, make it
If you have the answer, find it
If you have your business, mind it

I’ll Take It to the Maximum 10/26/1987, Age 16

I’ll take it to the maximum
I’ll set the record straight
I’m going to reach the pinnacle,
Before it is too late
I don’t care what they do
The only thing that I’m concerned about
Is making my dreams come true
I’ll be the best, I’ll do my best
No matter what it takes
I’ll get exactly what I want
No matter what the stakes
I’ll step aside for no one
Never mind who it might be
The only thing I’m concerned about
Is making sure I’m free
Free from all the pressures
Of this warped world
Making sure I know the truth
Before it starts to unfurl
I can’t say I’m sorry for staying ahead
While others stay behind
But I can’t afford to care anymore
I’ll stick with my own kind.

War is Hell (Rap) 2/11/1988

They hate me-hate me for what I am
I used to care-now I don’t give a damn
I tried-tried hard to make them see
But now-all I care about is me
They put me on a pedestal-I’ll play the role
With all of my body, heart, mind and soul
I’ve cried-stained my face with tears for them
I learned a good lesson in that gym
I dare them-don’t ask me what I want to say
I’m a bona fide brand spankin’ new Riche’
I’ve been crossed and deceived in every fashion
I hate their ways with a crushing passion
Oh yes, I’l ltake it to the highest max
We’ll see if they’ll ever be able to relax
They put me through hell in all my classes
I’m back to stay and I’m kickin’ asses
They’ll see- oh yes! Just who I am
I’ll burn ‘em up in smoke –I don’t give a damn
I’m determined as ever –I will let them know
That in hell there will be ice and white snow
Before I let them do it to me
From now on I’ll have the victory
From fools I’ve taken my helping hand
For myself only will I stand.

The Enemy 5/2, 5/8, 6/8/1988, Age 16 and 17

The piercing eyes of a sadistic foe
Can make a person cry
The enemy wishes harm to you
And wishes you would die.

He tries his best to ruin you
And makes your life a hell
If you were in a field alone
He’d push you down a well

If you were on a mountain high
Though it is not fair
He’d surely push you off the edge
If you were standing there

If you would dare to turn your back
He’d pierce it with a knife
He hates you with a deadly passion
And wants to take your life

Stand your ground on all mountains
Plan to win the race
Don’t sell out to your enemy
Just keep him in his place

5/5/1988, Age 16

I hate being naughty sometimes
Sometimes I couldn’t care less
Sometimes my life is the ultimate
Sometimes it is a mess
Sometimes my associates treat me nicely
Sometimes they dog me out
Sometimes I want to be real naughty
And show them what it’s about
I won’t apologize for being myself
That’s who I really am
If they don’t like it I don’t care
I don’t give a damn
I’ll be the best and nothing less
That’s right I’ll never stop
I’ll do exactly what I want
And take it to the top
Some people have limited goals and dreams
They never want the stars
That is why they live their lives
Chained up behind “bars”
I’m am daring, a radical one
Adventure I won’t forsake it
I won’t stop until I get enough
Until then I will fake it

My Dreams 5/23/1988, Age 16

I don’t care how much it takes
Whatever I have to do
I will always try my best
And to myself be true
I won’t stop until I am the person
That I want to be
I will live life to the fullest
As God blesses me
He has a purpose for me here
I don’t know what it is
All I know is that I believe
That I am truly His
I don’t care how rich I’m not
Or how “rich” I will be
All I want is security
A happy family
I know that I am not perfect
Yet I am the best
That is because I don’t conform
And blend in with the rest
I want my life to be a challenge
A chance to love and live
I believe in helping others
Of myself I give
I never intend for my life to be
A hopeless perpetual bore
I will make it exciting and hopeful
Fun forevermore
I believe in truth with all my heart
My dreams I will fulfill
I wholeheartedly believe in me
And I always will

A Leader’s Follower 6/13, 7/10 and 7/13/1988, Age 17

The world is taken from his reach
The moment he takes a breath
He never makes an enemy-
Just “friends” until his death
He never has true finesse-
Just a little “charm”
He would never want adventure-
Wish a person “harm”
He would only live his life
as a commoner
A second-class citizen
A leader’s follower.

The Commoners 7/2/1988, Age 17

Won’t let me get an identity
Won’t let me be myself
They force me to be who they want me to be
A complaisant, hopeless elf
Better known as commoners
On the other side of the road
I will finally overthrow the crew
Get rid of this heavy load
I will assert my identity
And finally be myself
I will live out my own life
Forsaking whatever else

I Believe 8/28/1988, Age 17

I believe in nonconformism
I believe in mystery
I believe in faith and love
I believe in destiny
I believe in myself truly
I believe in being me
I believe in truth with all my mind
I believe in honesty

Positions Nevermind 10/10-10/11/1988, Age 17

I am so lonely I could cry
My life is so confusing
Sometimes I wish that I could die
It seems that I am losing
I need to know what elates me
Positions nevermind
Sometimes I’m blind-one day I’ll see
Fulfillment I shall find
I have so many hopes and dreams
My future I am chasing
Happiness is not always what it seems
With Destiny I’m racing

Wholeness 12/6/1988, Age 17

Whenever I become myself
(The day that I am whole)
Indeed I will be very grateful
To fortify my soul
I will feel that I am a woman
I will feel complete
I will become fully human
I’ll have few needs to meet
I will be a happy person
I will be fulfilled
I will be invincible
I will be strong-willed
I’ll wholeheartedly love myself
Myself indeed I’ll be
And I will be exuberant
Because of Destiny

Born to be Common 11/16/1988, Age 17

Commoners are apathetic
-can’t see the other hand
Always blindly sympathetic
They just can’t understand
They refuse to accept the truth
(They refute the other side)
Impeded by their perpetual youth
They always need a guide
They’re burdens on society
And victims of it too
They can’t stand variety
It’s sad that this is true
They were born not to know
And born to be the fools
They don’t know which way to go
And they can’t make the rules
They are hopelessly behind
Can never get ahead
It is sad that they are blind
They always must be led
One could never be a man
Or grow into a woman
They get by as best they can
Those born to be common.

She Never Gets Ahead 12/8/1988, Age 17

Of all the never!
Life treats her like a whore
It tells her what she does deserve
And gives her nothing more
It makes her feel like she is dirt
It really dogs her out
Her feelings are hopelessly hurt
And she’s always in doubt
She never uses life for gain
It uses her instead
Always standing in the rain
She never gets ahead
(The Common Girl)

Invisible Sadness 5/14/1989

When I look into a mirror
I see it in her eyes
But others cannot see it there
She keeps it in disguise
She has a silent cross to bear
It makes her feel such grief
Others just don’t seem to care
She hardly feels relief
She stands alone most of the time
And truly wears a mask
No one knows just what she feels
And they don’t care to ask
She possesses opaque eyes
No one can see through them
They keep secrets very well
If only people knew them
They would see that she is human
She's not invincible
The pain is such an endless storm
It is invisible

***Untitled 6/20/1989, Age 18

At last I’m feeling beautiful
And all my teeth are straight
My eyes are simply wonderful
I certainly feel great
My height is such a gift to me
My nails are getting stronger
My legs are shaping up so well
My hair is growing longer
Indeed, my voice sounds good to me
My skin is getting clear
I get better by the day
And wiser by the year
Slowly dreams are coming true
At times I still feel down
But I can’t wait to start anew
To leave this boring town
Atlanta will be so exciting
Spelman will be great
Morehouse will be just as nice
Can’t wait to get a date
Yes, I’m going to the top
In every way I can
I’ll do very well in school
I’ll have a Morehouse Man
At last I’m feeling beautiful
And all my teeth are straight
My eyes are simply wonderful
I certainly feel great

From the Radical Woman, to the Common Girl (written around Sophomore year at Spelman), Age 19

In spite of everything I am
In spite of what I do
One day I truly wished that I
Could trade places with you
Because, in essence, you are free
You answer to no one
You answer only to yourself
And you can have the fun
You have a foolish kind of freedom
That hurts your dignity
That always gives you what you want
With fake security
Whereas I must have the strength
To be what you are not
To do things that you’d never do
To show them what we’ve got
I have to know what you don’t know
So I’m the one who’s sad
Your ignorance gives you all the bliss
That really makes me mad
I have to face reality
I have to know the truth
And I have to be a woman
You can keep your youth
Sometimes I think that you hate me
Because of what I am
Sometimes I hate you twice as much
‘Cause you don’t give a damn
Now, even if I could
I wouldn’t try to be
Anything other than myself
The self I know as me
But, I know I love you, too
I want to set you free:
To show you what it’s really like
To be someone like me
To show you that you are somebody
To help you set you free
To take you with me to the top
To be all we can be

January 19, 1979: Remembering the Barbara Lamar Car Accident

January 19, 1979: Remembering the Barbara Lamar Car Accident

By Riché Deianne Richardson, written January 19, 2008

I have never forgotten this day, nor have I forgotten what happened on it and the name of the woman who hit us-though hit is not the right word for describing what to me to this day remains an illogical and inexplicable incident, or rather, accident. In fact, every year, every new year since then, after all of the celebration passes, I hold my breath some, and wait to get past this one mountain in the first month of every new year. Only after the anniversary passes can a new year really begin for me. Next year, I can’t believe that thirty years will have gone by since that cheery afternoon that my grandparents took me to McDonald’s to buy me the coloring book calendar that I had wanted and wanted, a perfect canvas for the Crayola 64 that had been one of my first grade dreams. It’s been like this since that afternoon of January 19, 1979, the year that I was seven and a second grader at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Montgomery, Alabama. It is one of the ways that I tell time and mark the passing of every year. The searing metal that day was doomed to sear that moment onto my mind, possibly, for the rest of my life. A few years ago, I was amazed that the anniversary once passed by without my remembering, and on January 20, proclaimed my freedom from the terrible memory forever. But then, the next year, it was back again. It is an incident that scared the living daylights out of me. Yet, I can’t say that it hurt me, or anyone else, at least not physically. On some level, I think that a part of me is still scared. I was scared even before then, and I think a part of me already hated and feared cars.

I loved cars growing up in the 1970s and knew more of their names than I know even now. I loved their shapes, their colors, and the kind that every person we knew drove. I also hated and feared them for a few specific reasons that loomed large in my childhood imagination. There are too many stories. Like the morning after her pleasant visit with my grandmother and me, I saw my Aunt Mae, a rare driver, try to make a three-point turn out in front of our house as a big orange garbage truck roared up the street. Like the tree falling on the car across the street in a storm, the same kind that destroyed the garage in our back yard. After that, my worst fear was that the one on our sidewalk would fall on our car. For nearly a year after that, I begged my grandfather daily to drive it all the way up in the driveway, out of reach of that tree. Every evening, I’d begin begging him to “put the car up.” To me, it is one of the definitions of love. I’d feel very relieved when I’d hear the motor start, and him making the short drive up into the driveway, to the place where he used to park the Pontiac before he junked it. And then, he’d come in, on his way back to the back, and ask, “Are you satisfied?”, and I’d say yes and know that I was in for a good night’s sleep. My grandfather probably knew that a tree was not going to hit our car. Yet he did that, every day, just to make me feel better. There is at least one lesson that I have learned from this that has served me in my life. Every girl should learn from her father figures that if a man loves you, really loves you, then he will never want to see you suffer, and will do what he has to do, just to make you feel better-even if he thinks it’s silly. It was terrifying to hear that my cousin’s stepfather who was not a licensed driver took his sister’s new car out, wrecked it, and that it was a total loss. And now, he was going to have to pay for it.

Then there were the stories of people I knew at school. Stories that we somehow learned on the playground at St. John, and held a collective hurt about. Children talk, more than adults might imagine. Like, why twin classmates in first grade (for they were there just one year) were being raised by their aunt, my mom’s friend, because their parents had died in a car accident. And another who was a grade ahead of us. How she alone survived the one that took her parents, and was being raised by her grandmother. A one-year old. Out in the cold dark night alone discovered as they had thrown her to safety. The girl we knew had been that child. Not child, but a baby, really. There was even an unwritten rule, it seemed, that with her, it was better to suffer peacefully. I’ve never been in a fight in my life, but something like the scratch I got from her on the playground one day at recess at the tetherball pole would certainly never have been grounds to provoke one. It never occurred to me to scratch her back. Always to us, no matter what she said or did, she was a blessing.

There was the day, when I was in first grade, that the seventh grade teacher ran over three lunch boxes. Her back tire was magnified 50,000 times as we watched before school in horror. We saw three of them bend up like aluminum foil as the back tire ran over them. Three lunch boxes!! And there were more that could have been gobbled up. The most prized possession of every student, like your book bag, was your lunch box. I had a Donny and Marie one that year. We felt so bad for whoever that was in third grade, and wondered how they would ever explain that. What would they eat that day? Could they get another lunch box? We always thought the seventh grade teacher was unstable after that. We knew nothing about her, and were too distant from the world of seventh and eighth grade in the classrooms above the church (she left a year or two later). In general, we were certain of some things in first grade, including that the bell at mass was rung by God in heaven. We’d look around in awe as we sat on the front pew at Mass, marveling at the power of God.

Every year, in the era before Happy Meals, the annual Ronald McDonald calendar was a big promotion at McDonald’s. For a few weeks, it was the stuff of my dreams. I think I wanted it more than any Christmas toy I got in 1978, such as baby dolls like the Dancerella ballerina doll and Baby That-A-Way, Fashion Plates, A Christie doll head for styling, and Lite Bright. Or I just don’t remember craving for anything at that time as much as I wanted that Calendar. Every day that went by in January 1979 made me think the new year might end up being too far gone and I would not get one after all, or maybe they’d run out before we could get over there to McDonald’s on Fairview Avenue to pick one up. All I know is that I was on top of the world the afternoon that my grandparents picked me up at St. John after school, and drove over and bought one for me. The coloring that I would do. To have in my hands, finally, that calendar, my very own, just like the ones that had been on TV. Black and white for me to fill in with color. My colors. My coloring. And not too many days in the new year had gone by. It was still January. I don’t even remember getting fast food that day, which was a nice treat from time to time. If I did, it would not have excited me as much as that calendar. It was like the cereal I wanted for the prizes. My grandfather would forbid me to dig my hand down in the cereal box to get the prize and told me that I should eat down to it. And in general, I had so many special rules in my childhood that no other kids around me seemed to have. Rules like don’t drink anything walking down the street. No running out in the street for candy like other children on the sidelines at the Christmas or Thanksgiving Parade. No dancing in public, ever. I could not do things at school like some other girls such as volunteer to wash the board or the desks because “You go to school to learn, you are not a maid.” In first grade, I had to stop picking up pecans with the other girls at recess once my grandparents learned that the sisters required us to turn them in at recess. I was told, at age five, “never to say, yes, ma’am to anyone, Riché, do you understand?” No riding my bike in sandals-shoes and socks at all times. And though we had the permission to come to school out of uniform, they wanted me to take my school day picture in third grade in uniform, because I should look like a Catholic school student. Always, I was envied for my toys, but could never take toys to school because “You go to school to learn, not to play.” When I was 12, the mother of my best friend (one of the two official ones I had at the time) asked if she could take me on a trip down to Panama beach with them; my grandparents let me go, but specified that “Riché is not to go near the water.” This was limiting to say the least, and by the end of the day, as I made myself busy looking for seashells, was thankful that she suggested I could wade a bit in the water as it rolled up on the beach, though it still wasn’t like how her daughter and another friend of hers who also came with us were splashing around a bit farther out in the water. Today, people often ask how I became so “different,” or wonder about the secret of what they perceive to be my success. A great education. A Ph.D. A book. Etc. But the truth is that from my earliest childhood, I was always different. Made to be different. Encouraged to be different. Ordered, even, to be different. Before I grew tall, even, I was always very different, very philosophical and always stood apart. The only child in second grade to stand up that day and spell “delicious” correctly. The only one in second to change a letter that we were supposed to begin with “Dear Mrs. Gadson, I love you very much” to “I like you very much” because I did not love her. She was perhaps the most beloved teacher at St. John, and thought to be so pretty with her golden skin, and soft black wavy ‘fro, and the baby hair framing her face. These were letters to say goodbye as she prepared to leave to have her baby. And our class got to miss Stations of the Cross one Friday for her going away party, where we had cupcakes. I remember thinking, “I like her, and she’s nice, but I love my grandparents, my mother, I can’t say I love her because I don’t and that would be a lie.” I have never been as embarrassed as I was the day when she read those letters aloud. To have my guilt over not loving the teacher, but insisting on just liking her, publicly revealed before the whole class. And then, in third grade, in a group at the board one day, I was the only one who was getting all my multiplication tables right. When the teacher arranged official reading groups and put me in “group two,” I didn’t like it, and I went home and had a fit, vowing that I would not be in group two under any circumstances and would not go to school if she did not put me in “group one,” because I could read better than most of the people she had put in it. She moved me. That year, I also wrestled for weeks when hearing that my mother’s boyfriend, Bernard, had a brother who was at “eternal rest,” because I knew that “Eternal means forever” and thought it meant he would never see the face of the Lord. I did not know that that was the name of a cemetery. By third grade, I had an intensely and even restlessly philosophical mind.

I remember the summer day that we went downtown with my grandfather to a car lot where he bought the white car. Me, and my cousins Lamar and Sharon, were there for some reason. I remember that the car lot was on the side of a hill, and that a train track ran below it. We saw the train, and it had a rhythm that we picked up and began to quietly tap our feet to, as we hit our hands on the beaded purses we’d gotten in one of those little grocery store packets where little girls get the necklace, the earrings, and the beaded purse. The white car was another Buick, my grandfather’s favorite car, and a replacement for the blue Buick, that had replaced the Pontiac. The brown seats that burned us that summer. It was a used car, but the newness was fun that summer.

We’d gotten the calendar and were back on our side of town again where my grandparents needed to run an errand. It was before typical afternoon traffic set in. The drive from West Fairview had led us to Adam’s street, with St. Margaret’s Hospital, where I was born, nearby. It was less than half a block away. We stopped at a traffic light. It was a stop like any other. The light seemed to be holding longer than usual. Long enough, in fact, for me to see a woman open the door to her car and get in, a car that was parallel parked in one of the spaces alongside the traffic lane we were in. There was nowhere to go but ahead. As I saw her put her keys in the ignition, a crazy thought entered my mind about that woman hitting us, but there’s no way that I imagined she would. It was just a silly fear. She saw the line of traffic. To start her car and move out would not make sense. It defied all rationality. My grandparents were talking to each other in the front seat and did not even notice her. But I did. I saw her start the car, and another surge of fear went through me. But this, too, I brushed off quickly. I imagined that she was just trying to get an early start, for when the line of traffic that we were in was gone. There was no way that she could move it. No way that she would attempt to drive it when even she seemed to be so tightly sandwiched between the cars parked in front and behind her. And even if she did, the light would change and we would be long gone before she did. Should I say something? And even if I did, there was nowhere for us to go. I felt so helpless. So trapped. Why was the light taking so long? Why wouldn’t it change? On any other day, it would have changed. It had to change. I became desperate for it to change. I was looking, in sheer terror, from the light, to her car, for what seemed like an endless time. The light was our ticket to freedom, our way out, and all it had to do was change. I was begging for it to change. I would have given every toy I owned, including that wretched calendar, for it to change. She had started the car, and then did the unthinkable, she began to move it. I couldn’t believe it. I was screaming out with everything in me for that light to change, and was utterly terrified. Why wouldn’t my grandparents look around at this crazy woman and see what she was doing. I wanted to scream and say what I was fearing most, that “That woman is going to hit us!” I saw her from the very beginning, from the instant she started her car. I saw the back left end of her car as it made the irrational move out of its space. I was petrified beyond belief as I saw her back that car out of the space. Why on earth didn’t she look back and see what she was doing? Then, the metal started to scrape as the left rear side of her car slowly stuck itself to our right front end. She just kept backing back. And now, for some insane reason, we were stuck to her. Stuck. I saw it every second as it stuck to us. Watched in horror as it stuck to us. And could not believe that it was sticking. This whole thing made no sense to me. It really did not. It should not have ever happened in the first place. She didn’t even hit us or anything. I felt nothing. No one got hurt. What she did would not have hurt us. It wasn’t that kind of accident. I think that for me, more than anything, the whole thing was absolutely irritating and senseless.

Sitting on that back seat that day was like being in the Twilight Zone. It was like the kinds of things that children see and perceive that adults around them do not. It only became real for my grandparents when they felt the cars. But I saw her, that woman, and what she was doing, what she was going to do, from the beginning. And yet, there was nothing that I felt I could do to stop it. She was like a phantom, like those cars that children imagine are following them. Once that year, I’d seen one, like that black one in the film The Car, that seemed to follow us all the way from Eastdale Mall. I was terrified, for Montgomery was close enough to Atlanta, where children were disappearing and in danger. I have never been as relieved as I was when it kept on down the Carter Hill Road and we made the turn onto our street. This was in the year when WSFA, before the news, would say, in a public service announcement, “It’s ten o’clock, do you know where your children are?”

My grandfather’s rule was always that no car should be moved until the police were called to the scene. I knew that this was not going to be a case where the white woman lied on him like one did Christmas Day in 1976 when we were on our way out to Uncle Frank’s. I saw her do it and she had no excuse. How would she ever blame him or anyone for her actions? They were purely her own. Through the back window, I watched the officer. He was on a motorcycle. The thing I remember most about him is that he had really red lips. Redder than most lips. Which stood out even more because of that helmet and those dark gold-rimmed shades he wore. His presence made me feel better. As if he had restored an order that had disintegrated in the moment that she actually stuck to us. He was like the officers I heard about at school. The policeman is your friend. Yes, today, this man was mine. He made me feel safe. Restored the safety that this woman took away.

It turned out that her name was Barbara, Barbara Lamar. Lamar like my cousin’s name Lamar. I’m not sure she ever saw me on the backseat, the little girl in the plaid Catholic school uniform. I don’t remember her face. I remember the officer’s better than hers. But I’ve never forgotten her name. Never. I bet that she has long forgotten this incident. I haven’t. She was a stranger, but that day, she became a part of my life and its temporality. Like her car stuck to ours, for we were still and not in motion, her name, and the memory of her, stuck to me.

I blamed myself. I think that a part of me has always blamed myself. If I hadn’t wanted that McDonald’s calendar, we would not have been there in that stupid place for that stupid accident, or whatever it was. I wonder why on earth I could not get the words out “That woman is going to hit us,” to warn my grandparents. Though even if I had, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. For the other traffic lane was full, and the light was red. We could not have moved out of the way. It was really a hopeless situation.

The incident turned my joyful afternoon upside down. The reason I remember so well that it was January 19 is that that calendar was my perverse reminder. When I heard, after her loss, that the singer Aaliyah had been born January 16 of that year, I pinpointed it to three days before this thing with Barbara Lamar. Even now, it seems, the year only begins, and the days can flow freely, when I am over that January 19 hump. Even before the official King holiday began, it became one way in which I measured the month of January. It probably always will be. A part of me, that child in me, is still scared. It may explain in part why I’ve never been interested in owning or driving a car myself. I don’t. Not yet anyway. I have taken lots of driving lessons, got my license (at 27), and with just a little more practice to could take to the road. It’s just never been a priority, or a passion of mine.

It’s interesting. The two terrible bike accidents I had in childhood, at 8 and 12, occasions that left me tangled on the pavement, should actually be more of a lasting memory. In the earlier one, shortly after I learned to ride, I was doing what I’d been told not to do, riding from the top of the driveway to the bottom up the street, when the bike fell over and I fell hard down the driveway and skinned my knee very badly; I soon began to complain of pain in my legs and for a while, the doctor put me on medicine for it (I sometimes wonder if that medicine, whatever it was, above and beyond genetics in my average-sized family on my mother’s side, also contributed to why I eventually grew tall, beginning around age 12 when I reached 5’9” and for the first time, stood out from other girls around me). The other was when I was 12, was to resolve a dispute with my best friend over racing, something I’d also been told not to do. The deal, in the race between her, my cousin Lamar and me, was to make ten laps back and forth up and down the street. He finished first and went and sat on the front porch. She was called away momentarily, and I finished, so was stunned when she got off her bike and started jumping up and down saying she won second place. I tried to get Lamar to vouch for me, and all he would say, perhaps because of a crush on her, was that “It was mighty close.” I proposed one more lap up and down the street to declare the second place winner. We went up and as we passed my house, were neck and neck. I lost control of my bike and ran into the tree in front of the house next door, and then I remember my arms flying up in the air and landing hard at the end of our driveway tangled in the bike.

But I am stunned that I have become a woman, and still, have not forgotten this. Amazed that next year will mean that this incident happened thirty years ago! Thirty years.
January 19, 2008.