Memoir

The Book I Wish I Had Written
Open Mic Piece August 8, 2010

South Central Los Angeles was a marginalized part of L.A. It was at least 1 hour away Venice Beach by car. There were palm trees on the blocks in South Central, but there were also liquor stores, break-ins, drive-bys, and a neighborhood high school made famous by the movie Lean on Me for being a broken down, depressing, violent place where learning and teaching were hard.

I didn’t spend much time on South Central L.A. streets. In the morning, I walked them from my house to the school bus stop about 7 blocks away; and then walked them on my way back home from school. I walked a lot with a book in my hand. The book served a dual purpose: it helped me to escape those streets into worlds that I would rather have been in; and it helped to hide my face a little bit from groups of kids standing around idling on the sidewalk. Multiple times, as a teenager, on those streets in transition between my home and someplace else, my face was noticed and folks said things like, “Damn she’s ugly”; or “Dag, she has a big nose!.” I had hoped when I approached a group of kids on the sidewalk, that I could get past them without hearing those comments. But when they were made, it was like a big sack of bricks had been thrown at my insides. A grey pale fell over the world; and not even the book in my hand could help me get out of the funk that I felt; because the book I had didn’t talk about ugliness.

I don’t remember any of the books I ever read talking about ugliness, except for books about kids who were overweight. The books about overweight kids, though, didn’t count to me, because I looked at that socially unacceptable appearance as one that could be changed a lot easier than my big nose: cut down on food, do some exercise, throw up everyday, maybe. I understand that those things are easier said than done. Many folks go for years struggling with trying to lose weight. But at least there is some hope. Me and my nose at 13, though, what could I do? My only option was to save enough money for a nose job. Until then, I could only hope that glasses, make-up tips to make my nose look skinnier from Teen magazine, sucking the sides of my nose in, and walking with my head down and a book in front of my face would make my big nose less obvious.

In my pink-walled bedroom, I felt safer. I could close the two doors to my room, lay on my bed with a good book and escape beyond those South Central L.A. anchored pink walls to another world and not have to worry about someone shooting a reminder of my ugliness through the bubble of that imaginary world, busting it open, and ruining my day.

When it happened on the South Central L.A. streets"when I came into that pink-walled bedroom after being told by someone that I was ugly"the bed was used to cry on and then to sleep the pain off. I could not read. The books would only make me feel sadder because there were no ugly characters in there like me.

I hoped to grow out of my big nose. My dream was to become a famous investigative reporter that would bop from one part of the world to another in high-heeled knee-high boots, a white fur coat, Fleetwood Mac-like skirts, and long flowing black hair. Jane Kennedy was what I hoped to become one day, when I got older and God answered my prayers.

That didn’t happen. But I walk like it did most times on a normal day. People say I have a bop to my walk, that I have a confident strut when I walk through the world. My face did change, but my feeling of being on the outside of life; of being different; so different that my story is not written did not change. My dream is to write that story for the little girl who I once was, who sleeps through her sadness rather than reading through it. I will write the book that she can escape through, that will remind her of her beauty and make her feel like she has a space in the world.