Page 50 of We Rip the World Apart

Then there be Chevelle. Sweet, sweet Chevelle. Me last baby, me change-o’-life baby, whose father thought me past all that—who such a wretch, I’d never speak his name except to spit it in the dirt. But Chevelle not like him. She never hurt a fly in she whole life. She take every spider, every roach even, outside the house to live they life. She so happy, just the sight of her make others happy. She a little simple. Not so good at taking care of herself—forgetting things she should remember. And it take her a long time to find a man. But then she do, she near have she own change-o’-life baby, and she so happy and trusting, she don’t even see her man a dog. Don’t even believe he give her the clap, that he, more than her advanced age, the reason the baby come early. He the reason her insides like they ’bout to come out. He the reason neither she nor that baby survive. The reason the last of me baby girls under the ground before me.

And me, who shoulda been at home on my island, a host of grandbabies around me, only visiting this cold country a few times a year, living here instead, watching me boy kill heself slow. Trying to stop it, but never quite figuring out how.

Me boy, who I thought be the one to outlast me, who stolen away from me, then had so much of heself stolen, too, so that me one remaining grandbaby got no song to the way she talk, the way she walk. She go to my island, she be a stranger.

But she is who she is.

I is who I is.

That just life. Things get stolen. People get stolen. Along with the parts of us that never should.

And we all make mistakes, cause hurts. I got a lot wrong, despite trying to do right, to protect me babies—the ones I birthed and the ones I didn’t.

But there no point dwelling on the shoulda woulda couldas.

That life.

And now I gotta do what I can to protect these ones I have left. The daughters not born through me, but still of me.

Do what I can to help them heal.