Hope on a Tightrope by Cornel West
8 min on the bed, 1.15.13
It’s not her fault. She had to share everything until she could provide it for herself. There wasn’t one thing she ever had new before the age of nine. There were eight of them and she was the oops. She ingested her mother’s resentment in utero and her father’s absence for the first three years told her everything she could expect from him.
She knew the Huxtables were pure fiction, just look at the name, but it fed a fantasy she kept locked deep deep deep undercover. She kept it buried because anything that the light touched became a target. Her mother cursed her smiles and mocked her mouthful of teeth. She learned to keep her mouth pursed until the smiles didn’t come so easy any more. It was easy for things to harden without the smiles and laughter to soften the edges.
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