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.

The Throes of War: A Soldier Boy 5/23/88

The Throes of War: A Soldier Boy 5/23/88

By Riche’ Deianne Richardson, Age 16

My American history teacher in eleventh grade, David Langhorst, who’s now in politics, was a great inspiration. He treated my classmates and me as college students, once had us over at his house, and taught us history with passion and energy. From the Vietnam War to civil rights, he brought the sixties to life for us and made me wish that I’d been there. Though I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, my understanding of civil rights history expanded exponentially when he showed us segments of “Eyes on the Prize.” That’s where I first learned about the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, which I later wrote about in my first book as a scholar, and where I saw and was so impressed by the intelligence of the Little Rock Nine. He was also my advisor as student council vice-president that year. I dreamed of meeting a man someday even half as smart as he was when I grew up. He was a hero to so many of us. He was 29 then. He supported me and encouraged me as I ran for student council president at the end of that year. The day he told me, shortly after I won the election, that he wasn’t going to be coming back to teach there the next year, I cried when I got home, to be losing such a great teacher. I wrote the poem below, attempting to capture the voice and feelings of a young male soldier, I know, because of how my political consciousness expanded in his class on issues such as the Vietnam War and its continuing impact.

Before I had a chance to grow
A chance to be a man
I was held a prisoner
In a foreign land

Before I had a chance to live
A chance to love and grow
I had to face the enemy
War-my dreaded foe

Before I had a chance to learn
A chance to become myself
I had to fight for a worthless cause
A fight for someone else

I hardly had a chance to cry
A remote chance to survive
But all I ever truly wanted
Was to stay alive

On Being Called A "Cult of Personality"

My escort to the coronation ball at my school as a junior started calling me in the fall of senior year, shortly after my relationship with my first boyfriend ended. He'd asked for my number in the spring. When I asked why it took him so long to call, he said that I wouldn't have talked to him then. "You were surrounded by too many people." This was true. At school, I was usually with people or talking to my friends. Even at that point, given that I was the main student leader as student council president, a group of younger guys, some of whom had supported me during my campaign for office in the spring, would meet me at the door and walk me to my locker most mornings. It became a routine so natural that I never thought about it. I suppose he felt I was a bit more humble by this time, and more alone, since I no longer had my football player boyfriend from Lanier.

He started to call me on the phone now and then. When he tried to talk me into letting him be my escort to the debutante cotillion, I explained that that couldn't happen, because a friend of mine, and his family, understood that he and I were going to the ball together, and that it was out of the question to change that. He'd been the one I had always hoped to go to the ball with, since I was 11.

One time we were talking, he said that I was "just a cult of personality," I suppose, riffing on the popular song by "Living Colour." I guess he was trying to make fun of my seeming ubiquity and power as a student leader, or supporters, such as the aforementioned group of freshman and sophomore guys who met me at the door in the mornings and walked me to my locker. Maybe because I'd watched one too many soap operas, and mastered some of their theatrics, I may have surprised him and taken him off guard by agreeing with his disrespectful assessment. Quite calmly, and introspectively, I responded by saying that "You know, I think you're probably right. Because I really don't give people much of a choice. If they don't bow down, I knock them down. And if they don't say they're sorry, I make them sorry. Don't you EVER say anything like that to me again. And I mean it." That response, while not reflecting real actions or experiences, acknowledged the genuine respect that I was typically shown.

A couple of specific experiences may have also been on my mind at the time. In eighth grade at St. John, at school on rainy days, other girls went in pairs to monitor and play games with children in lower grades. As class president, my job was to sit up front at the teacher's desk and monitor my own classmates during recess as they did work; on those rainy days, our game period would be scheduled for later in the afternoon. On this day, one of my classmates refused to cooperate and listenend to his walkman, even popping his fingers and bopping his head because he was so into the music. I asked him to put the walkman away and he refused to do so. I went back to the desk.

Suddenly, I got an idea. I wrote a note outlining a plan that I passed to one person and that went from one member of the class to the other. When everybody was on board, I gave the nod to one classmate, who got up and went to his desk in the back of the classroom and tapped him on the shoulder to talk to him, moving her lips and gesturing as if to ask him something. He said he couldn't hear. She repeated it. All around the classroom, people were moving their lips and engaged in conversations that were totally inaudible to him. "I can't hear you!" "What's happening?" He got up and started going from one person to the next, and they pretended to talk to him, but were just moving their lips. "Say something. Somebody! Anything! Oh my goodness! I can't hear." He went from one classmate to another, in desperation, and they moved their lips. He had a great sense of humor and was always so funny in general; he constantly made people in our class laugh with his constant jokes. In fourth and fifth grades, maybe because he was the tallest boy in class, he was a guy that a lot of girls had a crush on, the one that a lot of them liked to talk to on the phone. I was never one of the girls who admired him in that way or to perceive him as "cool." He'd loved pinning signs on people's backs without them knowing, and once even pinned one on my back that said "I'm ugly but I'm proud." He was constantly playing jokes on people. He was just the perfect candidate for a joke like this, for how he exaggerated his panic and desperation was genuinely funny. He played the part in this scenario to a T, spinning desperately from person to person in class in a desperate attempt to hear something. He was hilarious with his exclamations and gestures. I looked on in amusement and quiet victory. What made the joke even better and more realistic was that the band was practicing in the library, which was across the hall from our classroom. The instruments would start and then stop suddenly. This went on for several minutes. He was affected deep puzzlement and would say, "Now, I can hear the band." "Why can't I hear anything else." We had him going for about ten minutes. And then finally, one guy said, "They're gaming you, man." He looked up at me, knowing I was behind this joke that had convinced him that he couldn't hear, and I smiled back.

In the back of my mind, I was also probably thinking of the time that this guy in our class who harassed some people when I was in ninth grade began to say disrespectful things to me one day. I told him to back off and underscored to him how ashamed of himself he should be going around picking on people. I told him that school was no place for that sort of thing. The next day in class, he called my name. I looked around at him, expecting him to say other rude things. Instead, he softly said, "I'm sorry." I said, "Then I'm sorry, too." He never bothered me again.

Don't Tell Me That You Love Me and a Walk in the Park with Debbie Gibson's Song "Foolish Beat"

Age 16, on the Gulf of Mexico Enroute to New Orleans on Spanish Club Trip

My high school boyfriend, at my house, age 16, in December 1987

Age 17, August, 1988, St. Jude Educational Institute Senior Picture

Age 17, from Photo Shoot with Clifford Hunter for Debutante Program booklet 

Age 17, night of Debutante cotillion on April 1, 1989; photography by Clifford Hunter 

Age 17, on Chesapeake Bay During Campus Visit to Hampton University

Age 17, in photo taken at River Country on St. Jude Educational Institute's senior class trip to Disney World 

Age 17, in photo taken on senior class trip of St. Jude Educational Institute to Grad Nite at Disney World in 1989

I actually got depressed when my boyfriend, K, my very first and a cute football player at a public school, first told me that he loved me. I finally wrote the following poem one night to attempt to capture my reaction.

Don’t Tell Me That You Love Me 7/7/1988, Age 17

When you are a happy person
When you are yourself
When you can forsake all others
Think of no one else
You can then assert the feelings
That you have for me
Tell me that I am so special
Tell me honestly
When you know just what love is
Only can you share
The beauty that a love creates
And makes you want to care
Until you remove all the obstacles
Until you really see
Until you isolate your feelings
Don’t tell me you love me.

In retrospect, I realize that I was over-thinking the situation. Maybe I should have just taken it for what it was and accepted and respected his feelings instead of trying to illustrate to him from a philosophical standpoint his lack of a true understanding of love as a concept, in the midst of writing my poems about “The One” I hoped to meet someday.

He is, I must admit, also the reason that to this day I am such a committed epistolary. Already I was into writing journal entries and poems, and had had pen pals such as a girl named Barbara Riley from Tuskegee whom I’d met in eighth grade on a riverboat field trip, and Sister Sheila Shanahan, my fifth grade teacher at St. John the Baptist Catholic School, once she returned to the Motherhouse for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bristol Pike, Pennsylvania; she died a few weeks after I graduated from eighth grade.

But he, more than anyone, helped me to commit myself to letter writing in high school by telling me one day that he had sent me one. I responded by asking “Why, I’m right here in town and we talk on the phone?” He said that he knew that, but just wanted to write me one to say some things. I waited for the mail for two days, somewhat nervously, wondering what he had to say that was so important it needed to be said in a letter. A few days later, despite feeling a little awkward about writing, I responded to him out of courtesy. From that point on, letter writing served as another important circuit of communication in our relationship.

We were introduced by friends and had started "talking" in December of 1987 as the holidays approached. It was fun. The night they came over for the introduction, his friend pulled his own girlfriend out on my front porch to sit in the swing in the December cold so that we could be alone in the living room. My cousin Lamar peeked in every now and then and served us water several times, but had me on pins and needles as he came in, for he thought it all was hilariously funny and really wanted to try to make me lose my composure in some way by pushing my buttons. Between Lamar and the friend who had introduced us and kept bursting in the front door to check up on how things were going, he and I managed to have a conversation that I could not remember today if someone paid me a million dollars. It must have been slightly less awkward than the one a few days ago on the phone. I had been in Tuscaloosa all day on a trip with my Federated Club members for our annual Winter Board Meeting, so this was also the end of a very long day.

My girl friend came in to thaw out and we were back in the kitchen at one point when the friend who had introduced us came back excitedly to tell me that "Riché, he likes you!" All of us then piled in the car and drove out to Turtles record store, which allowed us to continue to check each other out, and ended the evening by driving by to check out this house in my community that was drawing attention and carloads of spectators because of how lavishly it had been decorated for Christmas, a tradition that began that year and that was sustained for the next twenty-five years. Getting to know him in the ensuing days added to the fun and excitement of the holidays.

His friend who had introduced us called me the night that I officially became his girlfriend, December 19, to tell me that my new boyfriend had just left his house very happy and had recited a rap, when he asked what was up, that went:

Yo, man,
don't you understand?
Riché and I

are hand in hand."

In the days leading up to this, he had told me that every time he heard the Roger song "I Want to Be Your Man," he thought of me. I didn't even like the song before then, but after that, began to listen to it, and smiled to myself when I heard it.

Spring of 1988 was a happy and fun time during which we really enjoyed our relationship, as did the people around us. The news that I was dating a football player at a public school (“Who’s really cute!” they’d say), spread like wildfire at my school and people were curious about who he was. This was in part because of my profile as a “serious” student and student leader. He reported that several times, carloads of students from my school, the historic St. Jude Educational Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, which was best historically known as the final camping ground of the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers in 1965, drove over to his school after school to “check him out,” so to speak. Instantly recognizable by their gray and white uniforms, they would even get out of their cars and point him out. They also spoke to him at the mall by name, as if they knew him, he said. This was recognition that he got used to and even came to enjoy. At St. Jude, one guy in physics class, a senior, asked me, as word got around the school, and in words out very slowly “Soooo. . . what do you alllll dooo…liiiike… fooorrr…dates?” Then quickly, answering his own question, he said, “Go to museums?” He made this speculation while shaking his head resolutely, putting the answer to his question in my mouth as if that was absolutely the only possibility he could imagine. It reflected impressions of me that some people have had as a person who only enjoys “intellectual” activities.

I remember being nervous the first time that he came to a dance with me at my school, our first official activity there. I waited with him outside the gym for five minutes before I took a deep breath and finally built up the courage to open the door and go in with him. We passed the Coke machine in the lobby of the gym that I had recently had installed, which had outraged the coach. It was one of my many fund-raising projects as student council vice-president; I’d made building the treasury a priority. Proudly, I said, “Welcome to my world,” as we looked at the crowd inside. I knew that people would be curious and that we wouldn't have any privacy. We didn't. We took a seat up in the bleachers. Repeatedly, people climbed up to where we were to speak to us. I imagine that those who had missed the sight-seeing trips to his school wanted to make sure that they got a look at him up close when the opportunity presented itself. Some were bold enough to make themselves at home and sit down with us and chat. Some simply walked by down on the floor and looked up to see us, putting a hands over their eyes like visor brim to focus. When we went down to the floor and danced, it felt as if many eyes were on us. All evening, people came to check us out and introduced themselves to him. The most embarrassing thing that evening, though, was that my school's principal walked in, per her policy, and asked all the guys in the gym to take off their hats, which was embarrassing in front of people from public schools, including him, who happened to be wearing a baseball cap.

I was even more nervous when he invited me as his date to the Military Ball at his school. Beyond football, his main activity and obsession was ROTC. Repeatedly, he had learned from how they reacted when he told people he had a girlfriend at St. Jude that it was considered to be a very big deal by some. It’s like “an honor,” he said, to date a girl from there. He was taken aback by the big deal people always made of it. I became more nervous as he told me their speculations about me in the days leading up to the event. “She’ll probably be snobby.” “She probably won’t even speak.” He told me that they anticipated that I’d be “stuck up.” Even in college, when I was on a visit home from Spelman junior year, I was studying at Alabama State's library one day, I encountered someone with this impression. This guy, a student there, came up to me and introduced himself. When he found out that I was from Montgomery, he said, "You went to St. Jude, didn't you?" Taken aback, I said I had, and asked him how he knew that. His response to me was, "I just know..."  When I pressed him, he told me that "All St. Jude people look alike." I was too shocked by his claim to even be insulted. Historically, "Jude girls" have been stereotyped as having a certain look. In one of its greatest traditions, the senior pictures of most students who have ever attended line the walls in the hallways. Some families have attended for generations, and people can see pictures of their parents as they walk the halls. For me, the irony was that my hair was shorter by then, and I felt I looked absolutely nothing like the image associated with me at St. Jude and with some girls from there.

For the occasion, I wore a white Gunne Sax evening gown with a lace collar. I enjoyed the ball a lot, and the girls in ROTC looked pretty in their gowns, as all the guys in ROTC wore uniforms. It turned out that a girl who lived two doors down from me growing up and with whom I played as a child was the DJ for the evening, and I also saw her brother, who had taught me to ride my bike without training wheels at age 8. He had a talent for doing back flips, which he demonstrated in our front yard, and one Saturday, showed me how I should pedal. I couldn’t keep the bike balanced at first. Then, suddenly, next thing I knew, I was up the street with my grandfather, him, his sister, and their little sisters, all looking up in surprise as I turned around and returned. I was happy to see him and Laura, and proud to see what a talented rapper she had become and how deft she was on the turn tables. 

Here's the first part of the letter that I wrote him in thanks for the invitation to be his date:

"Dear K, I am writing to inform you of my gratitude for your invitation to the Military Ball.  Even though attendance was moderate, I honestly enjoyed the time that we spent together.  What a nice affair your school presented!  All of you guys really looked gallant in your uniforms . . . . . and you (second person singular) were simply charming.  I was overwhelmed when you were in your formation and noticed that your composure remained intact through the duration of your procedure.  You were drop-dead handsome and I mean it with all conceivable sincerity.  Again, thanks for the invitation and the beautiful corsage.  I was proud to support you in representing your school-I truly was . . . ."  

Otherwise, his best friend was the only other person I knew there. He was very proud to report after the event that the girls at the ball said they liked me and thought I was nice, and not at all "stuck up" like they imagined I'd be. That spring, he was also my escort to a cotillion, the Finer Womanhood presentation, my second on the path to the major debutante cotillion in which I'd be participating as a senior. Otherwise, we just had fun and focused on achieving our main goals, mine in student council and his in football.

To this day, that spring remains one of the happiest times in memory in my life, ever. The Saturday night before Valentine's, because it fell on a day when we would be in school, he and I paired up with our friends who were also dating and went to Godfather's Pizza to celebrate. He surprised me with a beautiful red satin heart-shaped pillow trimmed with lace and red and white ribbons made by a woman his mother knew. The very “heirloom” and “keepsake” thing that traditional high school girls have dreamed of getting for a hope chest, as illustrated in advertisements for Lanes classic cedar chests in my teen magazines, I literally got. I gave him a stuffed animal, which surprised him, too.

I had been on course for my student council presidential campaign. I did the art for a fundraising project called “Initiate Your Favorite Teacher Grinch” which was displayed in the school’s lobby and featured the Grinch in a cotton-trimmed Santa suit attached to his dog by a string on the opposite side of a Christmas tree, whose ornaments were falling off. I did a first-place prize-winning science fair project in which I built a model house to highlight the dangers of radon. Room to room, the house was built with lots of precision. I used medical tape to create baseboards from room to room, made a cloth ensemble complete with pillows for the bed, model cabinets for the kitchen, and miniature furniture. The fireplace in the living room was three-dimensional with a mantle and a screen. The garage featured a model car. I kept it top secret from my friends and competitors at school and he was the only one I allowed him to come see before I submitted it.

I served as commentator for the senior fashion show -the only junior invited to participate because “We like the way you sound.” I used the example of Shayla Simpson, whom I’d seen in the Ebony Fashion Fair a couple of times when it came to town, to write rhymes for the show, and then announced it from memory from beginning to end with verses like “Do you miss that summer sun? Well it’s time for some surfin’ summer fun!” My favorite one, for the marriage scene, for which I changed into a formal maroon tea-length gown, ended with my saying that “It’s locked in our memories, and sealed with a kiss, and it goes something, just like this.”

My campaign posters and speeches were a key project during this time as well. I had established a “portrait” style when running for the office of student council vice president the year before, which featured popular figures such as Janet Jackson and Ernest of “KnowhutImean” fame, that I revived. This time around, I used Oprah Winfrey, Ann Landers and Phil Donahue, and Max Headroom. I made five posters in all, and the signature heart-shaped campaign buttons with slogans such as “Elect Riché and Make the Difference,” “Vote for Riché, She Cares,” and the rallying cry that I established in a mock election for President of the United States in seventh grade and used the year before: “Riché Riché, All the Way!” I even obliged a friend I’d met the year before, who had tried to woo me by having a friend lie to me and say that he read encyclopedias as a hobby to impress me and get my attention, and used his recommended slogan, “Richardson Might Not Make You Rich, but Vote for Riché’ Anyway.”

I had exciting trips to places like New Orleans, Atlanta, and climbed Mt. Cheha, all 2,000 feet, with the Nature Club. On top of all of this stuff at school, I was enjoying things with him. A picture I took on the Gulf on the way to New Orleans captures the energy of this time, and so does the poem below that I wrote about him. His goal was to play his best football and I was focused on my dream of being elected student council president at St. Jude, a dream I’d had since ninth grade. These were things that we had supported each other in working toward in the spring.

I Adore You 3/18/88

Truly I adore your warmth and ever-present smile
For you I would climb a mountain and even walk a mile
You melt me with your simply charming beautiful brown eyes
I love it when we say hello and hate our sad good-byes
I’ll never forget our wonderful dance-
What a lovely event!
To be perfectly honest-
You were heaven-sent
I love the way you make me blush
When you say, “Oh, gee!”
My charming knight you are as kind
As kind could ever be
To you I shall now promise to
Always be true
For you I will always do whatever I can do
We’ve had so many special moments
We’ll have many more
You have an honesty that I can’t help but to adore
You deserve the hugs and kisses that make a life worth living
In you I will never cease my hope and willingful giving
I wish to you the blessings of our Great God above
May He protect you from all danger and shield you with His
Love
Perhaps on one day my feelings for you
Will mellow into more
In time I’ll shower you with kisses and tell you I Adore
For now let us grow and change
And become the best
And wish for love and peace and joy-
A world of happiness.

I lost my dog Dutchess on April 22, the very day that I found out I had been elected student council president. My Uncle Richard, who worked as a contractor in bricklaying, had gotten her as a puppy for my aunt and me on one of his jobs in Tallassee, Alabama, after he saw how happy Lady, the dog he got for his wife, our Aunt Mae, had made us. Lady and Dutchess were sisters and had brought me a lot of happiness in my childhood. Losing Dutchess hurt a lot, and I will never forget being in the vet and feeling so helpless. We were manipulated into thinking that she could be saved, just for him to get $75. And then he told us that we would not be able to take her home or bury her because she'd bitten one of the people who picked her up after they hit her and they needed to send her head off for examination. I resented the vet who did this and will never forget the image of her in so much pain in a cage where I could not touch her, and standing there telling her that I was so sorry about what had happened to her while I was dripping wet from the rain. This was the dog whom I had rocked as a puppy and to whom I'd sang lullabys.

When I was nine and the summer we got the dogs, we took Dutchess over to Aunt Mae and Uncle Richard’s to play, and left her in the backyard. I went back there. They had turned on the hose and were wringing wet with water and mud. Then they wrung themselves, and I ended up getting pretty wet, too. When the adults came to the back yard, I imagine that we were a sight to see. If there is a day that childhood reaches its very peak in a person’s life then that day was it for me. When I had every adult in my life who loved me, plus those pets I truly loved. One of the dreams that I have of heaven, in fact, along with being reunited with my lost loved ones again, is to have my dog jump into my arms. I loved her so much. The day I lost Dutchess, a part of me blamed myself because if I hadn't been so distracted by the euphoria of having been elected student council president at St. Jude, I might have heard her trying to get out, for she was very afraid of thunder and lightning, especially as she got older. I could never understand how she got all the way down to the Carter Hill Road. We had her from 1980 to 1988.

Later in the spring, I wrote the following poem out of frustration and uncertainty I'd begun to feel about the relationship, and in the midst of the friend who had originally introduced us suggesting that I break up with him the night that all of us went to the junior prom at my school

Lost Love 5/13/88

He used to say he loved me
He used to say he cared
I'll never forget the memories
The moments we have shared
He left me devasted
My gentle little dove
Our ties were just ill-fated
Can I get his love
He makes me scream and shout
He tears my heart apart
He fills my mind with doubt
He didn't at the start
I don't understand it
What changed the way I feel
This isn't how I planned it
Just what is the deal
I don't know what will happen
I guess it's come what may
But I will surely know
On our prom day

The prom brought us closer together and renewed my commitment. Our friends who were with us-for we did a lot of double dates-got out of the car and went in the restaurant, Sizzler, that night to eat. The presumption was that I'd take that time alone with him to break things off. Instead, we talked in the car all the while and never went in. Afterwards, all of us went to the park. I made sure to hold his hand as we walked along the paths, openly defying the pressures his friend put on me to leave him on prom night, which seemed horrible and cruel. By the end of the evening, we were as close as ever. Still, we hadn't kissed. I wanted to be sure the time and feeling were right.

My poem for his seventeenth birthday was written 5/17/88-two days
before his birthday-for which I bought him a T-shirt from Bennetton, and
it read:

Well at last the day has come
The day is truly here
This is a special birthday wish
And it is most sincere
Seventeen you are at last
Your precious day has arrived
It is a blessing from above
Remember-you survived
I won't make it long and wordy
I just want to say
I wish you lots of luck and
happiness
On this special day

I turned 17 myself on May 26. That summer was filled with excursions to the park, spending time with friends, or him just visiting me at my house and my tutoring his sister weekly.

We finally kissed for the first time- that June- six months after we’d started dating months earlier. I thought it was important to build true intimacy and get to know each other better before that happened, and he respected my wishes. I took my first kiss in life, which happened when I was 17 though we had started dating when I was 16, very seriously.

My standards and approaches in everything were set by my fantasies and goals for my future, which shaped my vision of love profoundly. Some of my poems revealed my perspective, especially the ones that had to do with my dreams of love and relationships.

The One 5/1/88

I'll love him more than my own life
I'll want to be his darling wife
To him I will be forever true
Anything for him I will do
I'll tell him my hopes
All of my fears
Our love will be fortified through the years
My feelings will deepen on each day
For his welfare I will pray
He'll be the reason that I try
I'll love him unconditionally until I die
I'll want him and trust him with all my might
In my life he'll be a light
I won't deceive him in any fashion
For him I'll have unyielding passion
My dream -the truest that I have known
Pervades me when I am all alone
My love-the One-who loves me, too,
Will be my dream 'till it comes true

One poem I later wrote in college, 1/29/90, is also characteristic of my poems in "The One" genre:

Because of Loving You

If I am spared by destiny
And if my dreams come true
I promise that we'll be together
And I'll always love you

Even if I have the answers
Or if I have no clue
I'll have undying faith in us
And I'll always love you

We will have a lot to share
I'll never make you blue
And my life will be twice as nice
Because of loving you

There was a part of me that looked intently into the future and thought far above the idea of a high school boyfriend. When a friend of mine signed my yearbook telling me to be sure to invite her to my wedding and baby shower, and put his name in parentheses, I was ticked off, saying to myself that "I'm not going to marry him." My body, my best in life, was for "the One" of the future, whoever that ended up being.

I once wrote a three-part poem series entitled "Black Wedding," "White Wedding," and "My Wedding" to remind myself of the type of woman I needed to be when I finally met “The One” and married him. And this is odd, for I usually refused to use imagery associating blackness with impurity and whiteness with purity. In the case of these poems I did for the sake of efficiency

6/15/88

Black Wedding

A sacred, wholesome wedding day
Because he stole her mind
Is forever locked away
Suspended far behind

She loves the one so hopelessly
Loves him more than life
He has to lift the blackest veil
When she becomes his wife

He longs for her so desperately
With all his strength and might
He surely has to learn the truth
On their wedding night

Standing shamefully dressed in white
She longs for chastity
She has to bear the cursed throes
Of lost virginity

I think I wrote that poem to scare myself into imagining how horrific it would be if I were to compromise my sexuality in high school. When I read this poem to my boyfriend, it slightly alarmed him, I think, for he asked, "What inspired that?"

White Wedding 7/24/88

A sacred wholesome wedding day
Fortified by love
Brings forth happiness and joy
The peace of a gentle dove

She loves the one so endlessly
More than her own life
And he will lift the whitest veil
When she becomes his wife

He longs for her so desperately
With all his heart and soul
He wants to give her joy and love
And make her truly whole

Standing proudly dressed in white
Vision of chastity
She is the one he truly loves
Sacred purity

Finally, I wrote the third poem in this trilogy, "My Wedding," 8/27/88, to describe my own philosophy and plan for the future

I'll have a sacred wedding day
Fortified by love
It will bring forth happiness
The peace of a gentle dove

I'll love the One so endlessly
(More than my own life)
And he will lift the whitest veil
When I become his wife

He'll long for me so desperately
With all of his heart and soul
He'll want to give me love and joy
And make me truly whole

I'll stand proudly dressed in white
A vision of chastity
I'll be the one he truly loves
Sacred purity

In general, I kept my focus on the big picture of my life and could never have imagined sex with a high school boyfriend because of it, or with anyone outside of marriage, for that matter. I was raised by my grandparents and a single mother in an extended family, and maintained high standards for my own life and sexuality. I have always set the standards and boundaries for the men in my life. However, many American women, in a world where so many people believe in casual dating and "hooking up," "f--- buddies" and "friends with benefits," make themselves available for the convenience and pleasure of every man they meet and expresses interest in them, and view sex as an entitlement and obligation for themselves and boyfriends. Growing up, it is sad that some have viewed losing their virginity as being as mundane and routine as getting a driver's license. But this is not the world in which I grew up and it is an ethos in which I do not believe and that I do not practice.

Notwithstanding all the stereotypes about black girls and women, I was certainly never in danger of becoming a teen mother in my youth. I would not have ever taken the risk of becoming one. Teen girls' mothers sometimes tend to watch very carefully when their daughters are menstruating, and my mother seemed nervous when my menstrual cycle was delayed a few days when I was 16. Inside, I burned with anger that she may have even been imagining that I was pregnant when the truth was that I'd never even kissed the boy at that point, and that I had never done so literally even after MONTHS of dating him. Coming of age as a black girl in the 1980s was a strong deterrent to teen pregnancy in light of all the social statistics surrounding this category. For me, it's been as simple as never opening myself and my life to the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy, and as time went on, mainly because of my love for God and obedience to His expectations and standards.

During that time, I was absolutely obsessive about not being associated with these stereotypes of black girls. Getting out of the car with my aunt and cousin Keri, I always distanced myself, and avoided contact with Keri in public lest she be presumed to be my child. In stores, I would stay out of her line of vision. When she first started to talk, she had the habit of calling all women in our family “Ma,” when asking for things that she needed. One day, she called me that in a store and I nearly dropped dead of embarrassment. I had steered clear of her when we were out in public since the day that, when holding her momentarily for my aunt in a store, a white woman had come and complimented me and said, “That’s such a pretty baby.” I said to her, “I’m only fifteen years old.” Sometimes, I’d say things to her or her sister Megan that a mother would not possibly say, just to establish my distance. When Keri and Megan were little girls, I never wanted to be the one holding their hand crossing the street, until they were five or six and out of what I perceived to be out of the “hot zone” and not presumed to be my kids.

In general, I would be very uncomfortable having a bond with the wrong man for the rest of my life through a child we mistakenly conceived. I would rather not have children at all than to have them the wrong way and out of the will of God. It is only at this point in life that I've realized that I have been playing with a very different deck of cards and living a life extremely different from many women and doing things in my life differently from the beginning, like never agreeing to "go with" any boy when I was asked in elementary school, having my first boyfriend at 16, and then insisting that we wait until the right time to kiss, which ended up being six months after we started dating. Many women underestimate the choices and the power that they have with men, but I never have. The idea of allowing any man to come into my life and "change it in a night" was unthinkable. In my own life, in spite of my shortcomings, I've always been more interested in pleasing God than man and have been able to focus on my goals and dreams because of that.

Growing up, it also definitely helped to get doses of wisdom in the Ann Landers column, including verses such as "When I met him, I liked him, when I liked him, I loved him, when I loved him, I let him, when I let him, I lost him." That would certainly never be me, I vowed. I also took the lyrics to Diana Ross's "Love Child" very seriously, a ballad and platform for pure and responsible sexuality if there ever was one that seems to have been all but forgotten in the contemporary era, as if these are words that people no longer believe in or want to hear. Aretha Franklin's video for the song "Jimmie Lee" is another useful example, especially with lines such as "He was the first one, he stole my heart, then he ran like a bandit, I don't understand it" and "won't you please, explain to me, why you left me behind you."

Girls at St. Jude were very popular and pursued by boys from other schools, who visited our campus many Friday evenings outside the gate in an attempt to meet them; I never circulated in that way socially because it just wasn't me; most evenings after school, I had club meetings or student council meeting, which was always crowded when I was student council vice-president as a junior because I helped to institute a charter system and charged each club $30 for membership, fined clubs and suspended charters when they lacked representation at student council meeting, put a Coke machine in the lobby of the gym and led bake sales two days a week to raise money for the student council's treasury. I was also always missing in action at that time because I was volunteering with the kids at the Y. Indeed, my boyfriend's visit to the Y one Friday evening to pick me up once had a strong impact on a younger female teen (13) who had asked me if I had a boyfriend and then suggested to me that she was thinking of becoming sexually active. I, being cautious, explained that he 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. I mentioned the importance of setting the standard high with boys and respecting oneself, and that I did not believe in sex before marriage. A few weeks later, he came over to the Y to pick me up after one of my sessions. A week later, she and another girl, a little awestruck, ran up to me when I arrived, told me how cute they thought he was and that they could not believe that he was a football player (he was wearing his school's lettered jacket); they saw through him that girls could attract cute boys who would respect them

For us, the summer of 1988 had begun with hilarious times like the afternoon we spent in Oak Park, one of our favorite places to go. He and I were sitting on a bench and a gardener, curious about what we were saying, over-watered a patch of flowers. After the gardener finally left, we went over to see the droopy flowers, and I said that their condition was our fault, and that he’d have to preach their funeral, and so he did. At a point, I interrupted his play sermon, and took off his hat, playfully hit him with it and gave it to him, and he put it against his chest as he spoke. One day when he got off his job at Taco Bell, I was sitting on the porch and looked up and saw him bring me a blueberry milkshake from Rax because he knew that was my favorite drink. The tension and anguish I felt as the summer progressed was totally opposite these moments.

I was immersed in preparations for a good start for the academic year, and so was he. By mid-summer, as the incoming SGA president, I spent my days diligently planning events like the program for the annual Mass of the Holy Spirit with Montgomery Catholic High School, which would be hosted by my school that year, getting it on the local news (thanks to the anchor Kim Davis, WSFA did end up coming over to film us releasing 200 white helium-filled balloons after the mass); a newsletter for SGA; how to get students out of uniform on birthdays and for the entire homecoming week; putting up bulletin boards to promote our athletics and the new letterman’s club that I’d supported the coach and another student in starting at our school and developed a plan for (in part because of inspiration from my own boyfriend's athleticism); and becoming newspaper editor at my school, another position that I really wanted.

I was shocked that in the midst of this busy summer, he proposed that I come over to his school daily to watch football practice. I responded by saying, “I know you don’t expect me to come over and stand out in that hot sun.” He replied, “The girlfriends of the other players come every day and watch practice.” I responded by saying “I’m not other girls.” I felt that we talked regularly, saw each other weekly, and that we also saw each other when he picked me up weekly to tutor his little sister in math at his house, something that I’d generously agreed to do when his mother asked me. But going to watch football practice, just to stand up and watch for the sake of watching when I had so much I needed to do day to day that summer, was unthinkable for me. I wondered what girls would actually go and spend hours every day just standing around cheering guys along on the sidelines?

Then, there was the day that he and his best friend wanted me to go to Tuskegee for the day to have lunch with his grandparents. From what I gathered, one of them or someone else in his family was linked to the new building recently dedicated on the campus. I had planned to go to lunch to meet them, but then asked my grandmother to call and cancel early on the morning we were scheduled to go because I was ill, with cramps. This is the kind of thing no girl wants to explain to a boyfriend. That evening, I suspected it had to be his best friend who convinced him to drop by my house unannounced and visit and who had given him suspicions that I was probably lying to him or seeing another guy, urging him to violate my requirement that he always call me first before dropping by. I was in no shape or mood to see him, and sent message to him through my grandmother that I'd call him later.  On the phone that night, he bragged about having met a "college woman" who told him he was cute, invited him to visit her, and he just went on and on about it. My response to his description of this doting older woman was that “If she can take you, she can have you.” 

 I'd also suspected it really was his best friend's idea to inflict what I considered to be the cruel and unusual proposition for me to stand by daily as an idle spectator at football practice. Tricks like this were increasingly getting under my skin, to the point that I felt that this best friend had “made my life a living hell.” The seeds for this conclusion were planted the day after we first met. The day after the friend who introduced us and his own girlfriend (who was a friend of mine) had come over and first introduced us and we'd all gone out on a double date, a Sunday afternoon, he brought his best friend to my house to meet me. He was also tall and happened to be extremely handsome. It was nice if surprising to see him again so soon. I was excited to have met a guy and his friend from a school whose boys I had always thought were cute as I saw them walking around the mall in their letterman's jackets as early as eighth grade. That December day at age 16, I felt on top of the world after they left. "At my house! Wow!"

But I was shocked beyond belief and jolted out of my euphoria and back into reality within an hour when the friend who introduced us called me to tell me that this other guy called when he got home and was upset with him. "How could you have introduced him to somebody LIKE THAT!" He wanted to know if I'd be his girlfriend instead of talking to his friend. He said he had a plan. I should pretend that I'd already known him before. He'd take care of the rest. He wanted to know if it was a deal. This didn't even make sense when it had been obvious that I'd just met him in my living room. I declined getting involved in this.

Months after we started dating, my close girlfriend confessed to me that her now ex-boyfriend, the one who had introduced us, did so mainly out of anger with his brother, for not getting home in the car they shared access to and taking him somewhere he needed to go, because he knew his brother liked me. "I'm going to get him good. I'm going to find Riché a boyfriend, and someone she's sure to like." He knew how his brother felt about me. She said that he got his yearbook, and decided to do some match-making, identified the perfect person, and the result was that double date. It all made sense. No wonder he had been so eager to see us get together that night! No wonder his brother was so rude to the both my boyfriend and me! We had hurt him, without any idea. Once I found out, I felt very bad about it.

All of this is how I really began to learn about how complicated men are, and how competitive they can be. It puzzled me that someone could deliberately set up a girl he knew his brother liked with another guy. It also mystified me that a guy's best friend who had known him since second grade could meet a strange girl and then compromise the lifelong friendship by attempting to take her from him, or rather, intercept her before he had a chance to get together with her. But both things happened to me as I was introduced to the world of dating and courtship in high school when I was 16. What was going on in my life all those months would have made a great teen soap opera. These riddles of my teen years are also part of the reason, even, that as an academic years later, I began to work on masculinity.

One day he got dehydrated and was taken to the hospital briefly but was out by the time I found out. He may have been hurt that I wasn’t very panicked or didn’t rush to see him, and told him that he should just drink more water. Then, as the date for school to start got closer, I learned that the first game at his school was the same night that St. Jude was having theirs. Once, when he'd asked me to wear his jacket, I declined, and told him that "That jacket is a reflection of your accomplishments, not mine." This was surprising to me, for I'd actually dreamed of something like that someday when I'd see guys from his school walking around the mall. But when the opportunity came, I begged off. In general, it was nice, though, that friends of mine said, from looking at his pictures, that if there were a poster to advertise the type, he'd be on it; with his smile, his baseball cap, his lettered jacket, he totally nailed and embodied the image, the fantasy. Tall with a muscled body, he was a model football player, the kind that also looked nice in an ROTC uniform. I agreed.

It was also always important to me back then to pay for my own food on dinner dates, like when we'd gone out with friends on double dates for Valentine's. The Monday after the prom, my male friends at school had joked to a girl friend and me in class, "Why do you all always like those muscle-bound guys with no brains." They mocked his deep voice as he shook their hands, an exchange that they imitated impromptu.

I promptly protested when he said his coach was encouraging him to attend trade school, and insisted that he think of college as an option. Coach this and coach that. I didn’t like it and it made me sick. He seemed to quote this man incessantly. I once even said, “You have a father, can’t you talk about him sometimes? You act like that coach is God.” He couldn’t seem to see through this man’s politics. On one of the evenings that we spent together, he brought me his school paper to see because I’d been so interested in becoming the editor of the one at my school. I got the flashlight and brought it outside, and it shone down on a Confederate flag in the middle of a center page. My face fell. “That would never happen at St. Jude.”

I felt that so many people, including this coach, were trying to tear us apart. I imagined him discouraging my boyfriend from "Having a ‘snooty’ girlfriend from St. Jude who wouldn't even take the time and come over to see you practice," for they had evidence on me every day I was absent.

In fact, I still remember the changes as a 16 and 17 year old girl in the South that all of those issues related to his athletic world took me through, even indirectly. I became the enemy whenever I spoke up about -and against-someone he so obviously believed in. My male friends actually used the Robin Givens/Mike Tyson relationship in imagining our relationship and who was in control. But as far as I was concerned, his friends and that coach were his main influences.

He didn't seem imaginative enough at times. One night on the phone, I encouraged him to fantasize. That night, it was so much fun to hear when he imagined himself as an executive, and then as an afterthought, add that he had "a secretary with nice legs." I loved it! The image of him, ordinarily so serious and reserved about things, taking a sly glance at her legs as his secretary turned and walked down the hall, was really funny, and I still laugh when I think about it. And he ended the scenarios by describing this fantasy about us, as a married couple.

One night, we rated people, which was a lot of fun. He gave me an 8 1/2 and I gave him a 9. I loved hearing about who else he thought was attractive, including this girl at his school; he came out of left field and surprised me again when he named this particular person and said he'd give her a "10-plus," which was a good on the spot vocabulary term to articulate his appreciation, and it impressed me. I also remember him telling me that he'd had just one girlfriend before me, when he was in ninth grade, but she started liking someone else; I was surprised when he told me her name. For I knew her and she was very attractive and popular the daughter of a minister, and someone I liked. It touched me, too, to hear him admit that he loved his best friend, whom he'd known since second grade, as a brother.

This was even after I called my friend Reginald one day and told him that I felt like the relationship was a stack of oranges at the grocery store. Every time they were aligned perfectly, this best friend would come and take one out and they'd tumble to the floor. I told him that I was at my wit's end and didn't know what to do. He responded that every time he does that, just shove the orange right back in. I never had a desire to change his life or come between his friendships, for it was important to me to leave him as I found him. However, I didn't like his coach and best friend having so much influence on him, and I imagined or was paranoid that they used it to undermine the relationship, though all of that in the end was not as important to me as achieving my goals as a student leader at school, and that is where I managed to keep my main focus during the summer.

Sometimes we even talked about the ideal way we should break up, which was to remain friends, and he insisted that we try to stay together until we graduated from high school. My fantasy break-up with him was like the one of Theo and Tonya on "The Cosby Show," who decided that their relationship had run its course, and she sweetly kissed him on the jaw before saying goodbye and moving on. That's the way I wanted it to be for us. A couple of times, I remember underscoring to him that he probably would not meet another girl like me and that his next girlfriend probably would not write poetry like me, or keep journals and that sort of thing, or even be tall like me, to at least prepare him for living in that cruel and harsh world out there without me someday. A couple of times I fell asleep talking to him on the phone, and that he hated. He accidentally fell asleep on me one night, too.

I felt that I was under pressure during summers where people wanted too much of my time when I wanted to do other things. The summer before, after tenth grade, when just I’d turned sixteen, friends thought I’d flipped out when I told them that I was going into “seclusion” and wouldn’t be talking on the phone. I developed a program for myself for academic development in a range of subjects, which also including vocabulary building and language study. I also developed a diet to try to gain weight, and tracked my calorie intake vigilantly. In retrospect, from old journal entries, I’ve understood this to have been what I’ve called “an eating disorder in reverse.” They called me to see how my seclusion was going. Finally, I compromised, and talked on the phone party-line style with them on Saturday nights. The previous summer, friends had interrupted my seclusion repeatedly.

Now, a year later, I felt that my boyfriend and his best friend were pressuring me to give up time that I wanted to keep to do my own thing. In general, I think that this “aloof” consciousness was shaped by my identity as a black Southern girl with a lot of ambition and a strong determination and will to leave Montgomery and go away to college. All I knew was that I was leaving Montgomery. The mindset that I had back then reminds me of that of the character Stephanie in Grease 2, who sang about wanting a “cool rider,” her dream guy, and “a whole lot more than the boy next door.” The boys around her, like Johnnie and the other T-Birds, resented her independence and refusal to go with the flow. Symbolically, she became the “enemy” for them. In some ways, she had outgrown the sphere around her, and was determined to achieve and live her dreams. So was I. And I couldn’t do that standing around at football practice every day or going on out of town excursions to Tuskegee when I had work to do. Being blamed or criticized for not cooperating got under my skin.

I’ve always identified with and loved this film character portrayed by Michelle Pheiffer, who embodies the quintessential “alpha female," because I feel that in a twist of fate, I could have also had the filling station part-time job she had, and it would have literally become the "position" from which I dreamed. For my great uncle Frank Jenkins owned a service station and car lot, where my aunt, then my mother, had worked on Saturdays. Had it been around by the time I was in high school, I may have ended up working there. The same "alpha female" consciousness and qualities and independent mindset that Stephanie has as a high school senior, I had as one, and all of this showed in how I dealt with my relationship. It was the part of me that dared to think and write a poem like "Don't Tell Me That You Love Me" and to remain somewhat indifferent instead of getting carried away and losing herself, among OTHER things, in the way that some other teen girls may have been tempted to do when a boy confessed his love to her. This is the part of me that could calmly tell him, without being uspet at all, that "If she can take you, then she can have you," when he bragged about how much the girl in college liked him. Stephanie's dream of meeting the “cool rider” was more important to her than any guys around her. “The One,” and later, “a man for all seasons,” was like that for me. No man I knew could measure up to him, and I was not about to let those around me distract me or derail me. As nice as it was to have a boyfriend as a teen, and a cute football player who was a hunk at that, to “love too hard” where he was concerned was not an option. I was never going to derail my broader plans and goals for my life for him or any other guy. I enjoyed my high school social life and activities but kept it all in perspective.

They say that a woman is always running toward or away from something. When I left Montgomery, this social world and its pressures and expectations is the world that I was running from and escaping, at least in a symbolic sense. I wanted freedom to just be myself. I think I started talking about breaking up that summer, as the school year approached, because I was concerned about managing my time effectively and efficiently. I didn’t feel I had much time to devote to going with a guy and fulfilling my obligations as student council president at St. Jude, a position I’d dreamed of having even before beginning to attend the school in ninth grade, and that I’d made a range of strategic choices in as a student from as early as ninth grade on to position myself to be elected to someday. I remember that at a retreat with some seniors that year, a senior officer heard some of my responses in a session, detected my leadership abilities and said, “You’re going to be student council president at St. Jude someday, aren’t you?” I jokingly said “I would be.” I was finally there. It was a dream come true.

In tenth grade at age 15, I'd won the award for "Most Outstanding Geometry Student," been 78 points ahead of all tenth grade sections on the curve for two quarters in biology and made perfect scores on my leaf collection and term paper, had been inducted into the national honor society and had also won first place in their essay contest the day of the induction, and was elected student council vice-president at the end of that academic year. Looking back on this time, I feel that timing for meeting him was no accident. By then, some people, including those in public, constantly told me I looked like a fashion model and had what it took to become one. As I would shop at Montgomery Mall, groups of boys from public schools would always follow me around; this was a way of life. Sometimes they waited outside stores until I came out and went on to the next one; I ignored them and just did my shopping. The look I had at the time and a range of academic achievements built my confidence, which advanced me socially and enabled me to "go to the line" and meet a boyfriend who was an athlete at a public school, something that I took for granted and didn't think or care that much about at the time. Public school athletes played at Crampton Bowl in the city, whereas our games were played at a junior high school field, so that's what was cool about him to people I knew at my school.

I've realized that I still think like this. Keep my focus and achieve my important goals as a professional (i.e. tenure), and then use that foundation as a basis to achieve goals in other areas, both personally and professionally. It's how men think. I'm not the kind of person who will ever settle in marriage. I will marry when I am sure that I am in the best possible position to do so, and am able to meet the best possible man.

In general, I was unhappy that he wasn’t more of a student leader, like my closest guy friends at my school. I was also feeling down as my closest friend, Reginald, was preparing to leave for college. I think I felt too much pressure and wanted to be able to focus on what I needed to do. In retrospect, I could have probably compromised some, perhaps by doing my student council work at my school but promising to go to his first game in the fall. I have always found it to be so ironic that we cheered on supported each other's goals, and we achieved them, but managing them was the very thing that began to cause tension and was what eventually tore us apart. The treasury was so loaded because of my constant fund-raising initiatives in the spring that we were able to pay cash for our side of the funding for the school's upcoming coronation ball to crown Miss St. Jude and other courts.

I began to take acne antibiotics (2 pills daily for a week, 4, then 8) that would incrementally break out my skin and bring all the impurities to the surface. I warned him of this, and before I began the treatment, he came over and we had one last hurrah. I was touched when he came to see me after I'd started to take the pills and told me that "It's not that bad," which made me feel better and was sweet of him to say. One of the most fun days we had, too, was when he took my girl friend and me to have our St. Jude senior pictures taken, and then we kind of hung out with friends for the rest of the day. The traces of that treatment are very visible on my forehead on my high school senior picture. He was genuinely sweet and good to me, and I am thankful, in retrospect, to have had a genuine “high school sweetheart,” as the saying goes.

The bottom line in all of this, again, is that he helped me to develop an interest in letters. Of mine, one day he told me that his cousin said, “She’s so formal.” I was like, “You let him read my letters?”

I’ll never forget how the letter from him below reached out to me across time and space one day, as an adult woman in my thirties, in my office as an assistant professor at UC Davis, when I finally took the time to go through some of the old things from home in the bottom drawer of my desk that my mother had sent me. In the midst of a white-centered and alienating environment, reading things like how he loved me and that he couldn’t focus on football practice sometimes because he was thinking about me gave me perspective on life when I needed it and reminded me of who I truly am and have always been.



8/15/88

Dear Riché

First of all, what’s up girl. I’m writing because I haven’t written to you in a while. I am also just writing.

Riché, this past week, we were discussing breaking up because of all that you have to do during school. But you see, things absolutely do not have to end that way. I mean like, the things I have to do will not keep me away from you. No matter what, I am still going to like you.

Everything I say to you is the truth and that’s powerful, too. For instance, if I say a certain thing to you I’m for real. I wonder if it’s the same with you. After you told me that Reg was leaving and you wouldn’t have anyone to turn to, I wished it could be me because if you gave me the one chance to understand you, I think I can.

Another thing I notice a lot is how if you’re sitting and looking away I know something’s up. It’s me half the time. If it’s me, why don’t you just say so, ok.

Riché, you say, well, I guess this is it. No, sweetie, I don’t think so. You know why? Because deep down inside, I know it’s not. I really don’t think you will give it up just like that. And the good times that we’ve had, it can still be that way. It can, so don’t tell me that’s it.

We haven’t really gone out on a date just by ourselves or things of that nature. And I enjoyed the dances and I would like to enjoy more. I know at times you understand. Deep inside I know that you do. I also know that you really care a lot more than you show but inside it’s more to it than that right?

Riché you really have to know that though you say I’m going to regret what I say I don’t care; it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters right now is wanting you and loving you. After Saturday night and being around, I really began to see that I loved you but after what you said last week what I felt kind of faded away. I think I couldn’t hold it back any longer. And I think that I really can understand you. Personally I think that. If I can turn you on with my certain words and with, last but not least, the bricks in the right place, it’s building for you to see. And Riché, you mean so-ooo much that I get miserable because you mean so much. So please understand me because if I lose you I will just cry. At least stick it out until we graduate from high school and until the next summer comes. There will be times that we will have weekends together.

You know every time I see you and dream of you a big bright smile comes upon my face. Honest to God.

Sometimes I can’t practice because I see your face. And I don’t care that much about football. I mean, I like it. You know what I really like is you. You are my sweet and lovely girlfriend and that’s hard to find these days. You are lucky and so am I. Very.

So please Riché, if you want to stay and I hope so very dearly that you do, no other girl could turn me on as you do. I mean no other, ok.

I mean, I really love you. In ways I’ve shown you. So again, understand.

Love always

K

P.S. What a relief. It’s off my chest. It’s not over. We’ve only just begun. You just have to understand and trust me on this one. So call me. Please Riché. Or write me back. Your choice. If you still like me you would.

I'm not sure I read this letter carefully enough back then or took it as seriously as I should have. It was a very mature thing for him to do, and it took courage.

I meticulously orchestrated projects for the first football game at St. Jude, including finding a student artist to make a giant hoop illustrated with football players that our team would break through as they ran out onto the football field. My friend Chris took on the assignment.  I'd set it up for football players to wear their jerseys and cheerleaders to wear their uniforms on game days. Yet, after all this work, and in the midst of all the fanfare, I didn't go to the first game and asked the other officers how all of our special effects came off. It seemed that he and I were becoming more alienated from each other, and the feeling was gloomy. I remember that when I listened to a radio broadcast of his team playing, I felt so good for him, and yet, so alienated from him, when the announcer mentioned that he'd just gone onto the field and into the game.

We broke up in September. It wasn't pretty. On a whim, when I felt that he was being manipulated by one of his other guy friends, and thought he was pursuing another girl and felt distance growing between us, I ended it, by saying, "I have just one more thing to say to you. You can kiss G's ass for the rest of your life while he kicks yours. But as far as I'm concerned, the both of you can kiss mine. And don't you ever say anything to me again!" And I hung up in his face.

This definitely was not the Theo-Tonya plan, from which I totally had flown the coop. That he was pursuing another girl turned out not to be true, a point that this friend, the one who had introduced us in the first place, clarified as he supported me once things ended. I wrote a letter in the aftermath, but then regretted doing so, and he asked me if I wanted him to go get it out of the mailbox before my now-ex could read it. I declined. My friend Vicki said, in disbelief, "Riché, you told him to kiss your ass?"

Debbie Gibson's song "Foolish Beat" captured the feeling of this whole season for me. One day later that fall, I was in the park for a club picnic and stepped away and walked over to that section of the park where we liked to go, and saw that patch of flowers. The song came on in someone's car. I started crying as I walked through this area. I wrote the poem below the day we broke up.

Just to Say Goodbye 9/11/88

If you need me, I'll be there
Remember that I'll always care
Although things are not the same
Never will I forget your name
Still you mean the world to me
In my heart you'll always be
Anything for you I will do
To yourself be forever true
I care so much -you'll never know
How much it hurts to let you go
Now it's time to say good-bye
Spread your wings, you're free to fly

If I Could Talk to You Right Now 10/26/88

If I could talk to you right now
My feelings I would share
Yes, I cherish what we had
And yes, I really care
If I could have you as a friend
I'd never let you go
I'd stick by you until the end
I'd never be your foe
I'd thank you for the joy you brought me
That's what I would say
You'll never know how much you taught me
I miss you everyday
I'd tell you that I'll never leave you
I'll be by your side
And if you need me I'll be there
to comfort, help and guide
Even though you did hurt me
That hurt I don't regret
And for it I've forgive you
Although I can't forget
I'd tell you that I don't blame you
You are not the reason
A person whom you would not suspect
Is guilty of the treason
At first I thought that you were wrong
And guilty of a crime
But you did not conceive of this
I understood in time
I'd never ask why you were blind
Why you could not see
I'd apologize for having been unkind
The day I set you free
It hurts that you're my enemy
That you couldn't deny
To you a stranger I would be
That makes me want to cry
If I could reverse the hands of time
I would not omit the pain
It has made me so much stronger
And that I would make plain . . .
Unfortunately it seems
That I will never see
The guy that you were in my dreams
He meant so much to me
If I would talk to you again
To who you really are
I would be myself as well
I'd be a shining star
If I could be with you again
I'd want to hold your hand
And let you know that I'm your friend
I'd make you understand
I'd tell you that I miss you so
That's what I would do
That's what I would let you know
If I could talk to you

From Journal Entry Dated December 31, 1988

I didn’t love him, but I adored him so completely. It’s kind of paradoxical. I was just looking through my old journal. Ultimately, I looked at the last letter that he wrote me. I cried. I’m still crying after all this time. It makes me feel so sad and empty because in a way, we shared a lot.

One of my Christmas wishes was for him to call. He did-last Monday. That was my best present of all. The conversation was short because his mom had to use the phone. I treasured every moment. That same night, Reg was there to support me. He doesn’t think that I should allow K to just walk back into my life like that because I would be left vulnerable. He’s so right. I’m going to have to talk to him sooner or later about what happened between the two of us. I simply don’t know how to bring it up. I don’t even know when. I know that I won’t call him. . . I won’ t risk my emotional stability. Maybe I’m not being fair, but I’m scared of getting hurt.

I’m sure that I don’t want to be his girlfriend again-I think. It would be stupid, and that’s highly unlikely. I guess I just want the two of us to be “friends.” I don’t think that’s asking too much. Things will never be the same again, and I’ll never see him as the same, but we didn’t have to throw it all away.

I’d longed to see him at the Bobby Brown concert, the highlight of my senior year, which I attended with my girl friends from school. We were in the parking lot, and my friend Vicki tapped me on the shoulder just as I put my hand on the car door to get in and said, “There’s your friend." I looked up and he and his brother and sister were coming toward us. He spoke, and I responded, “Hi, how are you?” It was kind of like Gunfight at the OK Corral for me. He told me eventually that he got upset that I talked to his siblings and barely spoke to him. He called me the very night of my debutante cotillion when word got back how great I’d looked and how extraordinary my dress had been ("I heard that Chris escorted you"), and again the next day, which was also Easter Sunday. His parents had attended the ball and brought me a gift.

Communication opened up between us again the night I graduated from high school. The St. Jude party was a big draw, and was held in a club house out by Montgomery Mall. The parents of my classmates were all there and had decorated the tables beautifully, which seemed too much really. He came to my graduation and the party after it. We were sitting downstairs with some others, and I was sitting in his lap, when another guy whom he thought I liked walked in, spoke to me, then went upstairs. The music was great and the party was really off to a good start. Then, the police broke it up over an alleged noise complaint. Five carloads. Which seemed excessive. The music was very low.  Our parents were there! Seeing the St. Jude party, of all parties, broken up like this is the most obviously racist thing that I experienced in my youth in Montgomery. It had been sedate. My mother was taking down the decorations, and in the midst of all the chaos, he offered to drive me home and he and I left together. The ride home was quiet as we processed the insanity of what had just happened, against lingering feelings for each other. He asked me, when we were almost to my house, if I’d really liked that other guy. He had been convinced that I was involved with him. He told me that the whole time that this guy had been walking up the stairs at the party, "He was looking down at you."

This whole thing started in the spring of 1988 the year before, and I actually think our relationship started to unravel when I went to a party my cousin gave as a fundraiser, without him, a party that this guy had attended. I was bored and wanted to get out of the house, but he claimed he didn't want to go, and so I went alone. I'd danced with someone there after he pulled me onto the floor, and as things go for me, he happened to be a student at my boyfriend's school and to be sitting at the lunch table the following Monday describing me and trying to figure out, along with his friends, who I was and the school that I attended. My boyfriend knew about the party and figured that it had to be me. "He was describing a tall girl with long black hair. How many people look like that? "He was wondering what your phone number was and I started to go give it to him!" My boyfriend said that this other guy in question was at the table and could have easily told that guy I'd danced with who I was, because he knew, but did not for some reason, and just quietly ate his lunch as that group talked. He presumed that "The real reason he didn't speak up is that he wants you for himself." He also convinced me that the guy with whom I had danced at the party was married and had a baby, which seemed extreme and is now hilarious, though I later found out this was due to his panic that I might develop an interest in him. He became convinced increasingly that something was going on with the other guy, like Othello, and made it a self-fulfilling thing. Ironically, I did eventually develop a huge crush on this guy in question, but not for the reasons that my boyfriend imagined back then; he just happened to be someone I had an interesting conversation with one evening and I began to like him more as time went on.

I met this guy when I was 15 on trip to Disney World sponsored by my federated club. I’d boarded the van to Orlando in the middle of the night, and slept like most of the passengers. When I awoke as day broke, I realized that I'd fallen asleep on someone's shoulder.  I looked up in his face and he was looking down at me. On the trip, he came into the girls’ room with one of his friends to hang out, and as the evening wore on, announced that he was spending the night.  He had been lying on the bed talking to one of my club sisters, the same one I was supposed to sleep in with her, but I refused to sleep in the bed with him (the very idea was unseemly for a girl my age! The nerve of him!).  When it was clear he wasn't leaving, I snatched off some covers and slept on the floor as he lay up in the bed above talking to one of the club members late into the night, some about me as they thought I was sleeping. The next day, out in the pool, he looked carefree splashing around in the water with the others. I just sat on the deck of the pool and looked. How dare he be the reason that I ended up sleeping on the hard floor the night before!  A year and a half later, at a party at the Y where we saw each other, the first one I attended with my boyfriend, we looked at each other and didn’t speak; I was still feeling angry and bitter about how he had humiliated me on that trip. And then that night, dancing on the floor with that guy, he was actually dancing by himself and coming in our direction. As I had danced with that guy, he'd danced by himself in the dark and toward me, getting closer and closer, and my heart pounded in panic. Then just like that, the lights came on and the music stopped altogether, and life returned to reality.  After having spent most of it up front talking to my aunt.  Dancing so carefree again on a practically empty dance floor. So carefree. The nerve of him! Always, such nerve. And, I was caught up in the dancing and feeling like the ultimate rebel in this moment myself. And then the suddenly lights came on and the party ended. I wasn't thinking about him or noticing him consciously then. When I talked to him months later, was the turning point for me.

10/28/88

Last night I talked to R. That really excited me. . . We talked about college. He’s thinking about Fisk, Morehouse, A&M, and University of Alabama. He wants to be a dentist. Gosh, I really do want to get to know him better. He made me forget my problems. I like him for who he is. He is different. He has a distinct personality. That’s what I like. People really say crazy stuff about him. For instance, once he got a pass from class to get lint off his sweater. He keeps his playing gear in a garment bag. When they play basketball, he ensures that his socks and other articles are looking all right. Some people think he’s snobby. I think that he’s a great person. I’m meticulous about certain things, too. In some ways, he is like me. I want to get to know him better. He really impressed me last night.

11/10/88

I’m crazy about him! R is something else. He is such a level-minded person. I’m just so impressed with his level of maturity. I just talked to him. Now I believe that heaven is a place on earth. That’s certainly how I feel right now. We talked about Vietnam, communism, the anti-establishment movement, the election, talk shows, sports, goals, concerts, music, camping and school. He is an extraordinary guy. It feels great knowing that such an interesting, smart guy exists.

11/19/88

I’m home-and I feel so lonely. I’m just thinking about R. I’ve been thinking about him all day. He is such an incredible person, and I enjoy talking to him so much. It’s truly heaven on earth. He is so level-headed-that’s what I like. If only he could know me for who I really am. Gosh, I bet he thinks that I’m a hopeless geek-just a brain. And it hurts because that’s not true. The trouble comes in where convincing him of it is concerned. I want him to know me for who I am as a person. If he were to give me half the chance to prove myself, I’d be most appreciative.

 
I’ve liked him as a person for so long. Recently, I got the courage to talk to him. He has the sexiest voice East of the Mississipppi. I could listen to him for hours. I want to be with him, to be around him. He’d probably laugh at the idea of spending time with me. That is, the me he thinks he knows. I do like him. I want to get to know him as a friend first. There’s got to be a way to prove to him that I’m not a weird bookworm of a geek. I simply have to find it. If only he would meet me half way and let me know that it’s okay to be myself. I even wrote a poem about him. He’d flip out if he heard it. It tells how I really feel. He is such a social chameleon. I like the fashion in which he maintains his personalities. He is a mirror image of me. The ironic thing is that I like him for the things that a lot of people can’t stand him for. At least he’s consistent. He believes in himself, and he lets it show. I admire that. If only he would give the two of us a chance to become better acquainted. I don’t want to put a ball and chain on him –but there’s no denying that I like him in a profound way. I wouldn't mind if he magnified his other side. The other side of his personality MAKES me like him! In fact, he could bring out the other side of MY personality. I’ve given him the key. If only he’d use it to unlock the door and unleash the real me.

10/29/88 I Like You, R

I’ve liked you for so very long
Indeed you’ve cast a spell
My feelings for you are so strong
I want you, R
My eyes would never yield a clue
They would never tell
How much I truly value you
Come to me, R
You inspire mystery
I like that about you
I like your personality
Why must I live without you
If you opened up your eyes
Maybe you could tell
That my feelings are on the rise
I like you, R

3/29/89 The Prize Unclaimed

If only you would take the time
To notice that I’m real
I would tell you everything
Exactly how I feel
You are such a mystery
And I want to unfold you
I’d like to hear your voice again
I want so much to hold you
We’d have such a nice romance
I’ve liked you for so long
But you won’t give me half a chance
What am I doing wrong
Each time that I see your face
You send me to the sky
And I nestle in “cloud 9”
Whenever you say “hi”
It hurts because I have to keep
My feelings locked inside
But if I told you how I feel
I’d have to lose my pride
I am scared to say a word
Because you might reject me
And because I am unheard
At least you do respect me
I bet you see me as a girl
Who simply wants to tame you
I would never hold you back
I’d never want to maim you
At first I’d like to be your friend
For I would like to show you
That I am not the girl you see
I so much want to know you
When I look at you I see
An image of myself
And another guy won’t do
For you’re like no one else
It hurts me to the bone you see
Because deep down I know
That I will never be with you
You’ll never be my beau
And even now I do have hope
I hope that I am wrong
I hope that I can be with you
I’ve liked you for so long
You’ll never claim my adoration
Regardless of its size
I’ll have to lock this prize away
And keep it in disguise
The safest place is in this rhyme
I’ll seal it with a kiss
But I do think I’ll always hope
That someday you’ll know this
I still want you to look at me
And notice that I’m real
So I can tell you everything
Exactly how I feel

I read the latter poem to the friend who had introduced me to my boyfriend, and was shocked when his only response was, "You mean to tell me that you wrote that beautiful poem about old black tail R?" I said, "Yeah, G." Alluding to our respective roles at our schools, he joked about how you all would be all right "If he weren't king for a day," then added, "-and you weren't queen. They make you queen everyday at St. Jude.

Yeah. That was it. If I weren't queen for a day, in the sense of the Thompson Twins, and could be free of all the trappings of leadership and the expectations that came along with it, then maybe we could get together. My ultimate fantasy as a senior in high school was not to be queen for a day, whatever that meant. I felt like Patty Simcox in Grease to his Danny Zuko, or like the Sandy. It didn't help that his sister, who was in a club with me, turned her attention to me asked me out of the blue and in a genuinely curious way the next morning while we were sitting in the kitchen with some of the other girls in the kitchen, after I'd spent the night at a their house at a slumber party, "Riché, how does it feel to be perfect?" She was someone I truly liked and had always had fun with when we saw each other because of her great sense of humor. I underscored that I'm not perfect, that I was "only human" and made mistakes like everyone else. On the spot to answer this cute and out of the blue question, I riffed on the "Human League" to explain that I was made of flesh and blood like everyone else. She didn't seem convinced, in that "you could have fooled me" way. I was almost sure that back in his room that morning, he may have been eavesdropping and overheard this exchange about my alleged "perfection" as a person, and that it doomed my chances with him even more.

My friend to whom I had read my "The Prize Unclaimed" poem also jokingly threatened one night that he'd tell a girl we knew about my crush, for "She'll put it all over St. Jude AND [his school]." I nearly dropped dead and made him promise not to. The threat sent chills up my spine; I liked her more genuinely than I ever did anyone at my school, and I knew that she would never have spread gossip about me in a malicious way, and I remembered how enthusiastic and faithful she and her friends were as supporters in helping as I had campaigned for SGA president. But I knew that she might not hesitate to try to "help" me along. Her past attempt at helping me and attempting to matchmake flashed through my mind from tenth grade.

I'd liked a certain guy at my school. A friend in ninth grade and I were out to a basketball game at Alabama State with her mother, who didn't know her boyfriend was a senior. He came up to say hello in the bleachers, and nearly stumbled, for he had been drinking. It was hilarious as she tried to play it off and get rid of him before her mother noticed. After that, we went down on the floor. She was like, you thought it was so funny, I'm going to go tell so and so that you like him." And she did.

He came right over and sat down next to me. "You wanna rap?" My eyes widenend in absolute shock and fear. "You wanna be my girrrlfriend?"

Oh gosh! I nearly died. I couldn't bring myself to say anything. By then, it got back to this aforementioned friend in question, and she got busy with her girlfriends trying to match-make and help us get together, in much the same way that they had helped support my campaign. I told her that it wasn't true. I didn't like him. And I was surprised to learn who his girlfiend was at school. She said that she thought I was nicer and prettier, but I forgot him after I learned that he was involved with someone. To make a long story short, I definitely didn't need her to get a hold of this information about R.

I eventually heard through the grapevine that R's girlfriend was actually Miss 10-plus. So all of my feelings had been futile and I'd spent months thinking about a guy who wasn't even available. I remember having an offhand and funny fantasy thought of how nice it would be to see her with my ex since he thought she was so hot, and to have my crush. But he was best admired from afar.

It was nice to bump into him from time to time when I was in college, and the last time I saw him was when I was out with my three guy friends at a club the night before I moved to begin graduate school at Duke; he came over to our table, a courageous act for any guy given the scene, to say hello to me, getting my attention by coming up beside the stool where I was sitting and pinching me on my side on the waist. Only he would get someone's attention in this sexy way. As always, the nerve. I was surprised to look up and see that it was him and got up and hugged him, and then he said hello to everyone and we promised to keep in touch.

How good God was to enable this chance encounter before I went off to begin anew at Duke, with someone whom I had so much genuinely liked and admired! A girl friend of mine would tell me whenever she saw him around town, which was always nice to hear. She'd report everything he was wearing. I got upset and stopped trusting her when I felt that she deliberately waited two weeks after he got married to tell me about it, to try to hurt me, because she knew I'd liked him years earlier. She could have said something, knowing how I'd once felt about him. I mean, it wasn't as if I'd go and do the Vesta Williams kind of thing portrayed in the video "Congratulations." I'd never even been his girlfriend or dated him, and he wasn't close enough to even regard as a friend. But I resented being robbed of the fun of the fantasy. A warning would have been nice, instead of her telling me the way that she did, almost gloating about it, it seemed, for she'd seen the announcement in the paper before the wedding. I never trusted her again after that, and I think that that planted the seed that led to the dissolution of the friendship several years later. I was not amused by that little scheme of hers, designed just so that she could drop the bomb on me that "He's married now and you can never have him." It was one thing that ultimately cost her my friendship. Though my crush was long gone by then, it was just the principle of the thing. I remember the day in graduate school at Duke that I said to myself, "I know I'm truly a Christian," when he left a message for me on my answering machine, and I felt it would be improper for me to call his home, even as a friend, because he now had a wife.

Similarly, I had been very hurt when a close girlfriend, after my boyfriend and I broke up, said that "She likes someone else and did not care anything about him," because she knew how I felt about a certain guy at our school for a while. This break-up broke my heart, and I resented her saying something like that. I never got over it, especially after I had supported her so much in her relationship and other things. I withdrew and did not trust having close female friendships in general for a long time after that, preferring, throughout college, to hang out with my male friends, to whom I referred as my "brotherhood."

The song “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb literally came on the car radio on the drive home from the party after my high school graduation. I had thought of him whenever I heard Natalie Cole's "Miss You Like Crazy." Sitting on the porch, it seemed as if we were back to the summer a year ago, and as if no time and distance had ever separated us. And we finally faced each other for the first time and talked honestly, and admitted that we missed each other. I asked him when he’d last kissed a girl. His response was, “The last time I kissed you.” What a turn-on that was. And then, we kissed each other and held each other for a long time, more deeply and intimately and passionately than we ever had when we dated. Only the headlights and seeing my mother outside coming home brought us back to reality and to what had just happened at the party. She came up on the porch and spoke, then unlocked the door and went inside.

I stood up and we embraced goodbye for a long time. I'll never forget the feeling of that final hug that night, for I began to notice that it felt different from the ones one on those summer nights the year before, and even kind of funny. My eyes widened and suddenly I realized why; in the course of those months, I'd actually, literally, outgrown him. I was now taller than he was. That hug that night I graduated from high school was how and where I realized that I wasn't 5'11 3/4 anymore, my height through most of high school. How and when did this happen, I wondered? My debutante dress the month before had been perfect for my body and everyone talked about how beautifully it fit, but I did not imagine that it was now on an even more statuesque body. This revelation that that intimacy revealed, standing and embracing someone with whom I fit so well before, was an unexpected turn of events. He didn't seem to notice. It may have been an unconscious choice and instinct, from a developmental and "evolutionary" biology perspective, as I was literally if unknowingly growing taller, to give up my relationship with a football player at Lanier, and to begin to think about and idealize, in my own mind, one of its most popular basketball players.

A few days later, I attended his high school graduation. The next day, my aunt took me over to drop off a gift I’d bought for him, in part because his parents had given me one as a debutante. He wasn’t there. I was stunned to see a picture of him and his prom date on the living room table. I felt that I was far more attractive than that girl whom he barely knew, had tutored his sister for a whole summer in math, and yet, already, someone was enshrined there when there were three different events that we had attended and taken photos, including the Finer Womanhood Ball, the junior prom and the Military Ball. Standing in the living room that day, at age 18, I vowed that “I will never like or trust another man’s mother again in my life.” I was a totally different person when I got in my aunt’s car. And I was feeling angry with myself and guilty and regretful for kissing him a few days earlier so many months post-breakup, and for how intimate it was, though at least it made me feel a sense of closure. I'd turned him into an enemy and phantom in my mind for months, but that evening, I could just look into his eyes and hear his voice again and get the truth I was seeking.

Seeing that picture, though, was the main thing on my mind, and it made me angry. It really hurt me and changed me and destroyed my ability to trust at that level. Though it had nothing to do with him per se.

I also hesitate to let men get to know my family. For he was well liked by my family, and would stay and have good visits with them even when I wasn’t home. When we broke up, I felt like there was no escape, and our breakup seemed to inconvenience everyone around us, from his mother, who had arranged for me to tutor his sister in math, to my cousin, who was just enjoying rides home with him and his best friend from football practice as a rookie player. My first cousin played football with him and liked him, and it seemed that I became the enemy when this relationship ended, and he assured him that a certain guy he was worried I liked and was interested in seeing (R, the aforementioned one) would never set foot in the house to see me. His name was one of the first ones that my toddler cousin learned, and in the spring of that year, remembering him, she’d actually walked out into the living room and called a guy from AUM by it who had come to visit me in place of going out on the date to the movies and pizza that he’d originally proposed, for I wasn’t in the mood to do that.

In spite of everything, because we were intimate to begin with, we always seemed to feel comfortable with each other whenever I saw him after that, like when we got together at 19 and went to the movies one night, or when he’d call me sometimes when I was home from college visiting.

On one of those first calls, after my freshman year, he told me that he'd "do it all again if I could." My silence foreclosed that possibility, because by then I was thinking about a guy at Morehouse. I felt honored nevertheless. I also knew that I could get over any guy when I was a college senior and he met up one night at a club with my three guy friends and me, as their guest, which was a gesture they made when they had bumped into him, in part because of guilt over how they'd joked about him in high school by doing things like mocking his handshake and deep voice in front of me. He had always wanted to get to know my guy friends from high school because he told me that "you come to life with them." He always enjoyed the way I laughed with them and wanted to be able to make me laugh like that, too, I guess.

They were at the center of my social life by college when I went home and were the people with whom I got together on weekends went out with to clubs, the park, to the movies, or at home. That night at the club, I felt very glamourous and confident as I wore this black dress and my hair in a long straight style, and sat at the table talking to him and others in our group. He and I were having a conversation as this woman was sitting in his lap, and it didn't bother me in the least. I liked her and was glad to see him, and the hug goodbye later on that night felt familiar but was a just a genuine hug of friendship and nothing else.

That night at 19 when we went to the movies to see "A Rage in Harlem," I found it ironic because we'd never actually gone to the movies on a date in high school. So it was nice to at least see how that felt with him. It didn't feel so good, though, when he said, simply, "You look . . . different." Wearing my hair in a bob and glasses made me look very different from how he had remembered me, I'm sure, and I no longer had the quality he loved, and always described as "long black hair." My friends Reginald and Chris and I had planned to go the very next night, an outing that the latter was coordinating, and when I told Reginald I would go that evening and would just go again with them the next night, he said that Chris would be very upset if he found out and I made him promise to keep it a secret. He joked with me all the next day that when we got to the movies, I'd say things like, this feels like dejavu and "Hmmmm, this looks familiar." It turned out that they were late as usual, so we didn't make it in time, and went out to eat. Chris never knew, and Reginald joked with me about how I'd gotten off the hook that time.

In hindsight, I feel that I should have accepted K as he was and enjoyed the moment and not felt so cheated because he wasn't in student leadership like me or friends of mine. Early in high school, my ideal boyfriend was a guy from his school and life actually brought one to me when I was 16, straight to my living room. I remember looking at those guys walking sometime in little groups in the mall wearing those unique jackets, which seemed to be the best in town, and that's what I wanted.

When I think of our ironic estrangement senior year when he'd tried to do everything to ensure that we stayed together, and how things came apart anyway that Debbie Gibson song always comes to mind (i.e. "I will never love again, the way I loved you; I will never cry again, like I did when I left you... Didn't know I was wrong. Never meant to hurt you now you're gone... And when we said goodbye, the look in your eyes, just left me beside myself without your heart; I will never love again, now that we're apart.") Here's a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyiNML_VfWQ . Those high notes at the end would always get me. I honestly had to stop listening to that song senior year because it hurt so much to hear it and it seemed so true to my own life and circumstances. As a seventeen year old senior in high school, I literally went through the very kind of break-up chronicled in this heart-wrenching, chart-topping song, and well understood and identified with every word because of it. I truly felt all of the complex emotions that it describes line by line. Nevermind my poetry. Debbie Gibson really said it best for me back then. Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was another popular song my senior year. To this day, I'm honored to have been his girlfriend, for how much he respected and valued me, and that what we had when we had it shows some of the greatest and rarest possibilities for teen relationships that I wish many more girls and boys would give themselves a chance to discover, instead of trying to grow up too fast. We had fun and lots to do, in spite of waiting six months for our first kiss. He was not "the One," but as I have looked back, I've understood that he was definitely not ordinary or the boy next door either. I wish the media represented guys like him more frequently than all the familiar stereotypes, for I'm sure that many more black teen boys are also as thoughtful, loving, respectful and caring as he was when I was his girlfriend, give sweet gifts, and write the kinds of heartfelt letters that he wrote me, including the one included in this essay. His picture in that lettered jacket and cap is one that I will always keep among my private and deepest treasures, as a memory of the beauty and happiness that we managed to capture, in spite of the pain in the end. I last saw him when I was 21.