Sarah Sheppeck – Writers Resist

My Black Ass Is Resting

By Sarah Sheppeck

“I want to hear all of you.”

“Do I have to tell it in order?”

“However you’d like.” She takes a cigarette, lights it, hands me the pack. “The only condition is that you have to tell it all.”

“Okay.” I exhale a thick plume of smoke. “All right. Here goes.”

•

It’s Saturday, so I wash and oil my hair. It’s spiritual, sensual, the way the curls alternately clutch my fingers and yield to their touch. I exit the washroom a goddess, the very image of Oshun. The white woman who lives here points at my head and asks me what happened, says she’s never understood African hair.

“At least,” she says proudly, “I have never felt inclined to touch it.”

•

The white man to my left at the bar asks if I’ve ever been with a white man. I drink my wine. He continues, “I was raised not to see color. I just see a soul.” I sip. Another Black woman enters and sits three stool down. He takes the empty one beside her.

The white man to my right says he’s not usually attracted to Black girls, but I am beautiful. “What are you mixed with?” he asks.

“Blood and skin,” I say.

He laughs, but, “No, really,” he says, “you look good in black. Actual Black people don’t look good in Black.” He continues, “Your nose isn’t wide like Other Black People’s.”

My wine ends up in his face. The bar kicks me out.

•

My first love has left me. My replacement is small and thin and blonde and very, very white. I comb through his email, look for clues that he still loves me. He has written her that he will never date a Black woman again. She replied, “She’s not even Black. She’s almost as white as me.”

I do not check his email again.

•

After my first rape, I go back to work. I am writing for a white woman, a memoir for which she will receive all the credit. She says something that reminds me of It, and I begin to weep. She insists I tell her everything, so I do. She lays her hand on my hair and tells me I am well spoken even in distress.

When the memoir is published, my story is a part of it, but now it is hers. She is a star now. She does interviews and tells the story of her tumult, tells of the pride she feels in the help she has been able to provide other survivors. She is rich. I have stopped writing.

•

I stub out my cigarette. I stare at her, expectantly I suppose, though I couldn’t say what it is I’m expecting.

“So that’s it,” I say. I look for something for my hands to do. Always aware, always in tune, she takes them.

“Oh, baby,” she says, motheringly, “Never give a white woman anything you aren’t prepared for them to steal. That includes your trauma.”

Sarah Sheppeck is a graduate of U.C. Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. She earned her B.A. from the University of Rochester and her Master’s in Secondary Education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born and raised in upstate New York with stints in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and the woods of northern Maine, she is now kicking it in Brooklyn with her beloved nephew and her dog, Chloe. Find her on Twitter @EpicSheppeck if you like thirst traps and loud opinions.

Photo by Daniele Fotia on Unsplash.

Yes, All

By Sarah Sheppeck

Car break-ins were frequent in the city. Insurance only covered the damage if I produced a police report, so when I left work to find another window smashed, I simply left for the precinct.

It was already dark. Trying to avoid traffic, I stayed on side roads and in residential neighborhoods. Two miles from the station, whoop. My arm hair straightened, as did my spine.

They never even approached my window.

Exit your vehicle, said the megaphone.

I just got pulled over, I texted my friend.

Are you OK??? she asked. I opened my door, certain she’d never receive an answer.

Stand on the sidewalk, said the megaphone. Place your hands on your head.

I did.

I wept, ugly and loud, and when two large men exited their vehicle to approach me, I prayed that the first bullet would hit my head so that I wouldn’t feel the rest.

Even though I sat in the passenger’s seat the officer looked at me first. Then he noticed my friend’s quivering lip, the smooth expanse of pale freckled skin extending from beneath her romper.

He asked her to approach his cruiser.

In the rearview, I watched him direct her into the passenger seat. She sat, leaving her door ajar. He signaled to her, and her eyes turned forward. I met her gaze in the rearview. She swallowed. She closed the door.

I watched for nearly ten minutes. He advanced as she receded.

She returned to her driver’s seat. He drove away, and she cried.

“The next time that happens, call Mommy. Just leave me on the line, so I can hear if …” My mother choked.

“I will,” I said.

I knew I was going to be pulled over.

I didn’t know there was a cop behind me, but I knew, the way you know that you’re going to be sick, or that the man who just sat next to you at the bar is bad news.

It was two a.m., my partner beside me as I drove. We were out of town, we’d missed turns, I was frustrated. I chose to ignore the NO U-TURN sign on the otherwise empty street, and the red and blue lights blinded me from behind.

My partner, a white man, said something calming.

The cop, a Black woman, knocked on his window.

“Where are you headed? Where are you coming from?” she asked him, while watching me.

Then she saw it, the cardboard carrier containing six empty bottles we’d drained the day prior, stupidly, so stupidly left on the passenger side floor mat. She retreated, returned with her reporting officer, also a white man. This time, they approached my window.

I wasn’t drunk, and neither was my partner, the white officer determined after six sobriety tests.

The bottles were a mistake, my partner explained. We’d meant to recycle them and hadn’t thought to move them to the backseat. The white officer nodded. The black officer fidgeted.

“It’s your call,” he said to her.

She looked at him. Looked at me. Wrote a citation for violating the state’s open carry law. Left.

In the motel, I dreamt of sirens.

Sarah Sheppeck is a graduate of U.C. Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Rochester and her Master’s in Secondary Education and Curriculum from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born and raised in upstate New York, with stints in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, she now lives in the woods of northern Maine, where she pays the bills by ghostwriting for motivational speakers. Follow her on Twitter @EpicSheppeck.

Photo credit: Raffi Asdourian via a Creative Commons license.