Don't ask me

Don’t ask me

Mercedes Loveless

If you ask me why, I’ll despise you.  There is no good answer for why I did that.  For getting caught into devil grips of rage.  How was I supposed to know he was coming?  How was I supposed to protect my lucid soul from hell?  If you ask me to recall my head in that moment, I’ll kill you too.  

It’s cold where I sit, and my feet are without shoes.  An advantage the holy white man ignores.  This holy white man has a long blonde beard and tiny crimson eyes that hate every inch of my being.  He’s tapping the end of his pen off the metal desk to annoy my ears.  But they’re not annoyed, theyre frozen.  Along with the rest of me in this cold dark room where they placed me. I try to make my eyes as stiff as my body. I want to propell the image of a scary impalpable man but its warring with my mortality.  What I want to be is always held back by who I am.

“Mr. Cleary,” he says spilling bitter judgements out of his mouth. “Why did you kill Mr. Shames?”

When Mr. Shames came up to my door Tuesday night, he wanted ownership.  He was a greedy little man and the burning liquor in his stomach was telling him that I was a good target.  He had claimed once before, on one of his flushed spells, that his ancestors owned mine.   It’s true that his family over 50 years ago had slaves, and was a wealthy family, but I moved here from Mississippi.  So there was really no logical way that our past could be related.  But his thick skull didn’t care about reason, he just wanted to torment. That night was one of those nights.

He waddled right up to my doorstep that night and pounded his chubby little fist against my weak wooden door.  I just put my shelly to bed and kissed her forehead when I heard Mama’s voice start to argue.  This wasn’t the first he’s showed up like this so I’m ready for him.  I move down the short hall and step in front to hide her from his poisoned breath.  

“We don’t need no trouble here tonight.” I say, making my voice boom.  He starts to sway a little and his drooped eyelids cover his glassy whites.  He peers up at me and for a second, I think he’s questioning himself but then he regains his parsimonious mind and pushes his foot into my closing door.  

“You don’t deserve this.  None of yous do.  This is down right resulting.  You’re not even grateful for what we did for you! what we gave you!”

“Mr.Shames, get off my property.”

“Your property?  You think you can order me around like roles have been switched?  How vulgar!  How pathetic of you to think you could compare to us!”

“I am not the pathetic one Mr. Shames.”

“You,” he went on, “sitting in your little house. That WE provided. living with your others mimicking our steps.  It’s an insult.  You and your dreggy little family does nothing but cause nausea to everyone!” I then let the door slam into his nose blocking his putrid face from my feeble home.  The walls vibrated and my forehead beat like a drum.  Black spots were forming in front of me and all I could see was my unnerving imagination race.  I see Mama reach for my hand but I don’t feel it.  I tell her to go to bed and wait for me.  God would want us to be better, and to ignore his crude drunk talk.  He’s just a small man with a small opinion.  He’s nothing to us. I wind my fingers tightly into a fist making my knuckles white.  Just stay above, I keep telling myself.  

“I should burn down this corrupt household!” I hear him yell through my thin wooden door. “Do the community a service.  Get that black juvenile out of my daughters class for good!”  He was talking about my Shelly. The Shelly I just warned of bed bugs and nightmares.  He threatened to kill her.  

I don’t think. My feet move themselves over to the kitchen cupboard.  My hands rip the door from it’s hinges without my consent.  My fingers spill over my cold unused shotgun.  I don’t remember deciding to put the bullets in the carriage.  I don’t remember deciding to place my finger over the trigger and the prop the back on my tense shoulder.  It was there though, and I was bursting through my front door and running off my small porch I made with my hands.  My teeth clenched tight, I found the back of him calmly stumbling out of my yard.  My head and palms were lost in sweat.  I hurt all over but couldn’t feel a thing.  

The street light shone on him in the dark as if giving me the permission.  The consent of justice to push my gun into his skull.  I know now, that that was no pure light shining by lamp that night.  The heels of my boots didn’t realize this though.  They pounded on the dead november grass as Mr. Shames leaned over looking at the flowers.  He then puked, and fell into it. The side of his face coated in his own rotten life.  Once I was hovering over him, my gun positioned itself over his head.  He laid still but I was anything but.  My insides were swimming with rage and my mind was forgotten back at the door.  He looked pathetic.  He talked to me about my worthiness, and my undeserving.  I could of dealt with such foolishness but such a man coming up to me and saying things about hurting my Shelly, would end him.

My teeth rubbed together and made a harsh screeching noise.  He was now below me as I stood above.  I was the higher one now.  I had all the power and he had none.  I couldn’t tell you why I let my finger squeeze the trigger, but when that load pop exploded and hit my ears, I could see again. I could think again.  Mr. Shames was dead.  My head hurt from the aftermath of adrenaline and there was blood in Mamas flower garden.  He died right there on my lawn.  The same lawn he thought I didn’t deserve.  

So instead of answering this cretinous man’s question I stay silent still.  From that night till I die I will stay silent. Because a man who kills another, deserves jail.  But to be ridiculed by a white man for being a black man, I do not deserve.  I will not tolerate.