no alibi


Unkindness is a serial killer.

Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Every time I hear it, I think to myself: that’s a lie. You can dodge a rock, but you can’t unhear a word. You can’t undo the intentional damage that some words have on your mind, body, and spirit.

Especially a word like ugly.

There is a funny way that some people interact with those they deem physically unattractive. Usually, they stare for about a half a beat too long. When they are noticed, they smile a small, guiltily fading smile. Then their eyes dart away and their posture falls into an unsettling mix of toddler and chimpanzee, as if they don’t know where to move next. Suddenly, they are fascinated by the nothingness over your shoulder.

I know this act all too well and have seen it so often that I can spot it in the split second it takes to pass a stranger on the street. I can read the slight readjustments as discomfort churns through their body. There is just a millisecond of disgust, sometimes offset by embarrassment, and then—if confronted by my brief, unrelenting stare—guilt.

I know this because I’m ugly. At least that’s what the world finds new ways to tell me every day.

As a very young girl, I thought I was just as cute as any other little Brown girl on my block. I was wrong. I remember when I first found that out. I was standing in line at the pharmacy, talking to this lovely father and his beautiful daughter. The little girl talked to me the whole time we were in line. Her father was engaged too. When they completed their purchase, the girl said goodbye and so did her dad.

They started to walk off and I moved up in line, but something made them stop within earshot. Perhaps he was counting his change or making sure he had everything before leaving. Whatever it was, I heard the little girl say, “Daddy, that girl looks like Amaya, right?”

Her father’s tone, which had been so warm and friendly, was sharp and laced with hostility when he responded. It was a tone I would hear so many times over the next few decades. “No! She’s too ugly to look like Amaya. You see how big her nose was? That girl is ugg-ly.” And then he laughed.

The cut took time to register. Was he talking about me? I paid for my purchase and walked back home feeling numb and dazed. I was embarrassed.

Was I ugly?

When I got to my room, I pulled out a small photo album my mother had bought me and looked at the few pictures I had tucked away in the side flaps. There was one of me posing and smiling at the camera, like how I thought a model would. It was in a set of black-and-white pictures my mother’s photographer friend snapped randomly one night. I studied and studied it. What did ugly even mean? No one had ever called me that before. I was tall and skinny and brown-skinned, with full lips and what my nana called a “bell pepper nose.” I had been teased about each feature, but put together they had never equaled ugly. I didn’t understand, and I wanted to. I desperately wanted to. But the man and his beautiful girl were gone. They had left me to figure it out on my own. I ran over every part of our interaction, from the moment I stepped in the line to the last words I heard from his mouth. I ran it over and over, and I came to the same conclusion every time: I just didn’t know. But the word was lodged in the back of my mind, and it reared its head with every bit of evidence it collected.

In the pharmacy, I remembered wondering if the dad would think I was some kind of troublemaker. I had made small talk to show him that I was a good girl. I was extra polite. I was extra kind to his daughter. I was a good girl. But I was still ugly to him, and ugly is like a disease to some people. They act as if they might catch your ugly if you get too close. They stare with resentment, like it’s your fault they have to see your face. It’s like you are forcing them to share in the shame they imparted upon you in the first place.

This unkindness creates a particular kind of vulnerability. It makes the recipient ashamed, coercing us to be participants in our own torment. Somehow the world convinces us that its unkindness is the cost of admission for sharing space with the attractive—and we believe it. We don’t just believe it, we welcome it, but in degrees. Not usually with a grin and wink—though sometimes we do—but mostly with a scowl, sometimes a foul word, sometimes an attitude, or even a few tears. But there is a small part of us that also feels alive and seen and grateful for that barely there acknowledgment. The flip side is being invisible, unseen, which is equally painful. And the thing is, either one will kill your spirit over time.

* * *

This new ugly “identity,” this albatross around my neck, made me angry. Very angry. Like some weird version of Stockholm syndrome, I embraced my station in life as ugly. By high school, with a face full of acne and not enough money to be a Fly Girl, I created a new persona. I decided that if I wasn’t to be beautiful or cute, then I would lean into what God left me with. I was smart and athletic and funny and outspoken. For those who insisted on reminding me of the burden I carried above my neck, I borrowed some of that unkindness, balled it up, and hurled it right back. I was mean. You could call me a name or try to make me the butt of your jokes—at your own risk. Most didn’t try, and life was tolerable. Occasionally someone wouldn’t notice I had bacdafucup etched across my forehead and rolled the dice.

It never ended well.

I was all too glad to unleash some of the fury I kept in the center of my chest. The truth of what I was, and the place I would always be relegated to, was my ever-present reality. It overwhelmed me. It was the thing I couldn’t wish away, pray away, or fight away.

I once unleashed some of that fury on a guy on the subway. He got on the train with a rowdy bunch of friends, immediately drawing my attention. The way I was standing didn’t allow for these dudes to see my face, but they could see my ass. As an athletic teenager who loved to dance, I had the kind of body Black boys my age apparently craved, and I had—all too many times—seen the disappointment, and experienced the danger, once I turned to face them. I had learned to travel in this body, with this face, in specific ways to ensure I made it to my destination safely. I tried not to wear form-fitting clothes, but my track body—medium frame, small waist, thick thighs, and large derriere—was hard to conceal. I immediately started looking for a seat where I could put my head down and hide.

I always tried to avoid eye contact and keep it moving, but that day I was slipping. Before I could slink into one of the small seats at the end of the train, I heard one guy say, “Damn, shorty thick!” My heart stopped. I knew what was coming next. I didn’t have a hat on. My hair was pulled back from my face. I was on full display. As the dude approached me, with all of his friends watching, my heart started racing. I braced myself. The guy was about twenty feet away when I turned and gave him a full look. He stopped in his tracks and his face twisted into the look I had seen so many times before. He promptly spun on his heels and started walking back in the direction of his crew. I counted slowly in my head as one of them asked him what happened. Exactly seven seconds passed before I heard the thunderous laughter. I looked in their direction just in time to be throttled by the stares coming my way.

Before I could contain myself, I heard the words leaping out of my mouth. “Yo, what the FUCK are y’all staring at?!” I knew it was dumb. I was traveling alone, and the train was about to go underground, but I couldn’t help it.

The dude who approached me got up and sneered. “You talking to me, bitch? I know you buggin’. You better keep that shit quiet, shorty.”

But I couldn’t. I never could. If I leave you alone, you should leave me alone. I thought I was doing everything right. I wasn’t enticing him. I wasn’t engaging him. I was standing quietly and minding my business. I knew my place. I was following the rules. Don’t stir me up. Leave me alone. But he didn’t, so I couldn’t.

“Or else what?” I threw back at him, now staring directly in his face. I knew what I was risking, and it wasn’t even the possible physical fight—I welcomed that more than the verbal jousting. I was nice with my hands, but I had only a small arsenal of comebacks.

“You got a lotta mouth for an ugly bitch.”

And there it was. I instantly fell silent and stood frozen in my spot, as if standing perfectly still would somehow transport me through a portal into the twilight zone where ugly meant pretty and vice versa. But, as it had many, many times before, my stillness betrayed me. I had stepped out too far into the sunlight to suddenly wish for an eclipse to render me invisible. The crowd of guys that gathered behind him started oohing and cackling. The other passengers shifted uncomfortably, waiting for my retort.

It was just a moment before I shouted back, “Fuck you! You stupid bitch,” but it seemed like it lasted an eternity, as if the milliseconds were conspiring against me. In that small window of time, I had begun breaking down inside. I was crying uncontrollably somewhere deep in my spirit. I was screaming “Leave me alone!” like a frightened child. I was begging for mercy. But all that could come out was nastiness to try and match his. He started a barrage of horrible insults, so I jumped up and hopped off the train as soon as we pulled into the next station.

I stayed on the platform for a while. I must have let at least three more trains pass by. I scolded myself for not being able to control my temper. I went over the incident again and again, wishing I had said and done things differently. I reimagined the whole scenario as it would have played out if he had thought I was cute.

And then I cried, knowing that the weight of this bitter, vitriolic unkindness and the all-consuming shame it brought was going to kill me eventually. It was a part of the death sentence I had received at seven years old in the moment I first realized I was alone. I used to pray to God, Why me? But not anymore. I got my answer that day in the pharmacy when I was twelve with one word: I was ugly. Everything in my life after that validated what I believed was going to happen—and that I deserved it. Knowing when or how it would all end didn’t matter, because this was a slow death and it was my cross to bear.

Alone.


me too


In the winter after I turned seven years old, while playing outside with friends, one of the “big boys” in my small, close-knit neighborhood took me by the hand, walked me to a dark, secluded corner in our adjoined apartment buildings, and raped me.

He never let his tight grip loosen as he searched for an area where no one would see what he was doing. I was nervous because it was getting dark, and I knew I was too far away from where my mother said I should be—but I didn’t utter a word.

My apartment building was connected to two other buildings. He first pulled me into the courtyard of one of the adjoining buildings and checked out the outside stairwell, but seemed to change his mind. My fear was growing as he continued to pull me farther down the block to the other building. Us little kids didn’t venture into that building. It was partially abandoned, and its unlit areas were terrifying at night. He checked this outside stairwell and then quickly hurried me up the flight of stairs. I was quiet, mostly out of fear and confusion. Where was he taking me? And why?

When he told me to lie down on the cold stone steps, I complied. He leaned his body over mine while I laid there, stiff as a board and scared to death. He opened my coat and pulled my pants down past my knees, and then he opened my legs. He first penetrated me with his fingers and then tried to put his penis inside of me. I was frozen with fear. I remember the feeling of pressure against my small body. I remember him pushing and pushing. He finally stopped and stood up. He put his hand on his penis and began pulling on it before he ejaculated on me. I cried. I didn’t know what ejaculation was, so for years I thought that he was peeing on me—like the way dogs peed on fire hydrants or random piles of garbage.

I had no real grasp of the gravity of what was happening, but I knew it wasn’t right. It made me feel nasty and dirty and wrong, not realizing that he was wrong and that he was the culprit. I thought we were wrong.

He took my hand again and guided me back up the street toward my building, saying things to me that I can’t remember. Over the years I have tried to fill in the blanks, both consciously and unconsciously. I imagined him saying, this is what happens to ugly little girls. I needed it to all make sense in my mind. It’s unlikely he spoke those words. He probably said something that would have primed me to keep what was now our secret. Maybe he threatened me. Maybe he tried to bribe me.

The only clear memory I have is running through the litany of rules I had broken:

Never go off without permission.

Never be out of sight when you’re playing outside.

Never come upstairs late.

Stay away from the grown-up boys.

Never ever let anyone touch your private parts.

What I knew for certain was that I was in big trouble. I hardly ever broke rules, and certainly never this many.

The boy walked me to my building and put me on the elevator. By the time I got upstairs it had grown dark outside, and my mother and stepfather were yelling out the window for me. I came into the house crying.

My stepdad, who was in the middle of calling me, turned around and bellowed, “WHAT HAPPENED?”

My mother started asking me what was wrong and what happened over and over.

I managed to stammer out, “A boy was bothering me …,” and in that moment I saw my stepfather’s face change. It was a face I had seen before.

“WHO?” he yelled. “Who was bothering you?”

My stepdad, who I affectionately called Mr. Wes, was a six-four Caribbean man, born in Saint Croix and raised in Harlem. He was twenty years my mom’s senior, so when I was seven he was reaching fifty. He had a perpetual salt-and-pepper five o’clock shadow and a mustache with long sides that made his face feel scratchy when he gave me kisses. His voice was raspy, kind of like Harry Belafonte, but deeper, and he spoke loudly and with authority all the time. He wore a gold rope chain with his zodiac sign—Aquarius—and a gold pinky ring with a small diamond in the middle. He smoked his “smoke” and drank a fifth of Smirnoff every single day; he called it his medicine. Occasionally he would roll up a dollar bill when his friends gathered in the room with the door closed.

He was the sweetest, most loving gentle giant to me and the kids around the way, but he was scary when he was mad. I can recall him being mad at me only once in my life, but I had seen him mad at other people plenty of times. In our neighborhood—the block at 167th and Anderson just atop the now famous Highbridge steps—Mr. Wes and his group of friends loomed. There was Mr. Jimmie, who owned the bar downstairs from our apartment building; Mr. Kelly, who owned a bar in another neighborhood but stayed in ours; Mr. Rochelle, who worked for the post office and loved to gamble, and lose, according to my stepdad; Mr. Johnnie, Mr. Wes’s “Puerto Rican brother,” who was the happiest drunk in the crew and would often entertain us kids by playing his bongos in the alleyway; and Mr. Sam, who was the oldest. Like an informal commission, they watched over the neighborhood, and my stepfather was the leader. He was the neighborhood number runner, which was like a homegrown lottery in Black urban communities. Number runners were respected and essential community members, guaranteeing some occasional economic assistance. He operated out of a storefront where folks came to pick up the newspaper, play their numbers, shoot pool, gamble in the back, or hang out. He was the fun-loving, big-hearted guy who opened the pump so kids could get wet and cool off in the summer. He helped finance the annual block party and hosted bus rides with my mom to get families out of the neighborhood. He was also a cook in the army during the Korean War and would make mountains of food for the neighbors. Everyone knew if you were hungry, Mr. Wes would make sure you were fed. And if there was a problem in the neighborhood, before you called a cop, you called him.

Not too long before that night, I had seen Mr. Wes and his friends “take care” of a guy they had caught breaking into apartments. They paraded him down the alleyway that connected our three buildings and beat him—badly—in front of everyone who was crowded around. I was in the house as this was happening, but when my mom went to the window to watch, I was right up under her, peeking and trying to see what was going on. I watched as Mr. Wes and the others stripped the man down to his underwear and whaled on him, kicking and punching. When I made a sound and my mother realized I was watching, she quickly pulled me away, but it was too late. I saw it and would never forget it.

That was the memory that popped into my head when my stepdad demanded to know who had messed with me. I knew what would happen to that boy if I told—it would be worse than that man in the alley. And even more unsettling, I knew what could happen to Mr. Wes afterward. People in my neighborhood had gone away for less. So, at seven small years, I made a very adult decision to accept my fate and bury my secret.

I stammered a reply and stifled my tears. Mr. Wes eyed me skeptically, but I forced a smile and was excused. I didn’t want to cause trouble for Mr. Wes, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble. I began to put away the memory of what the boy had done to me because of what I thought it said about me. My insides strained to accommodate this new information, but they couldn’t. And so they split. In the place I’d tucked away from Mr. Wes and my mom was the real me, the bad me. On the outside I would pretend I was good.

I did my best to mirror and mimic what “good girls” did, but occasionally I gave in to what I thought my “true self” was. In the first grade, at Sacred Heart Primary School, I kissed a boy at the water fountain. I let a boy catch me while playing catch and kiss at recess. I snuck off to lift my skirt outside the cafeteria when one of the boys asked. In my mind, I owed these things to anyone who found me out.

When I was molested again at nine, the split felt more like a shattering. It was another neighborhood boy, probably seven or eight years my senior. This time we were playing a game at the insistence of another girl. She seemed to like it, but I have no way of knowing whether that was true. I hated it. And because I hated it, the boy found it amusing to force me. He made us touch him and put our mouths on him and each other. He would take pictures with his Polaroid camera and then make us chase him through the house and eventually force us to do it all over again to get the picture back. It went on for years, the threat of the pictures always making us come back.

Then, the summer before I turned twelve, I cracked. I had a cast on my leg from corrective surgery to fix my pronated feet. It meant that I wasn’t able to go away to camp like I usually did. He saw me outside on the block and asked me to come into his house for a minute so he could sign my cast. I knew what would happen, so I said I couldn’t. But like always, he pulled out one of his Polaroids and waved it at me. I started to feel sick inside—having a cast and being unable to move freely made me more scared than usual. I made my way to his door where he stood holding it open. He marched me to his room, pushing me along. When we got there, he told me to lie down on his bed. I stood stiff as a statue, but he came over and shoved me on the bottom bunk. He laid on top of me and started rubbing me. He smelled like sweaty, clammy skin and festering bacteria. I started to feel nauseous and tried to find something else to focus on. It was becoming clearer by the minute what he intended to do.

Until now he had made me do things to him, then he would rub his clammy hands anywhere he wanted on my developing body, but this was different. I felt him fiddling with my belt and started praying. The belt had a metal fastener that you had to slide and click into place. It was my favorite type of belt because it came in all sorts of bright colors, but when it got old, the roller ball would stick. I don’t remember the words I called out in prayer that day, but as I felt him struggle to loosen my belt, I knew God was answering my call. He yanked hard, causing him to stumble back and hit my cast. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I screamed the way I had always wanted to scream in that nasty, dark little room. I screamed for every moment he ever laid a hand on me. I screamed like I was jolted out of a nightmare. I screamed for seven-year-old me, who wouldn’t dare scream.


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