Chapters 1-3

Ms. Nia's Soulword Hive.  

CHAPTER 1

Ms. Nia's place is right off of Broad Street, on a small side street called Somerset.  It's painted purple with blue trim and has a big sign right above the two front windows that says, "Ms. Nia's Soulword Hive."  Ms. Nia is the queen bee. 

Early in the morning--like 6 or something--you could almost always catch her outside on the sidewalk in front of the spot sweeping, shoveling snow, watering her flowers, or cleaning the hive's windows.  The Soulword Hive is a cafe full of books and paintings; and passing by, depending on the day and time, you may catch whiffs of frying fish, barbecue tofu, tomato soup, bean pies, hot chocolate; hear the sounds of John Legend, the Diggable Planets, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, some house music, or maybe some old school jazz coming from the speakers on the walls inside.  

Ms. Nia is this short little thing with a grand mind.  What I mean by that is she has these big dreams.  And whenever one of those big dreams popped insider her head, made her stop whatever she was doing to watch it take shape inside her mind, and got her real excited and lit up just thinking about it, then she knew that she was going to hold on tight to that dream and try hard for a long time to make it come true.  That's what she told me one night when I was helping her clean dishes in the back of the cafe.  She was telling me about how the hive was one of those dreams that she felt like she had to make come true before she died.

My name is Tammy.  That's my government name--the name on my birth certificate.  But my grandmother on my mother's side calls me Spider, cuz she says since I was one year old, it seemed that if I was left alone long enough, I would always manage to get myself wound up into something.

Last summer, I got myself wound up with Ms. N and her hive.  I was walking past with my head down like I am almost always doing when I'm walking home.  Sometimes I just look down at the ground and at my feet; other times I'm reading a book--taking notice out of the corner of my eyes that I don't bump into anything.  Cuz I'm ugly.  That's why I do it.  My nose is too big.  So boys say.  Not all of them--I'm usually just ignored--but enough of them--three times in the last month so far--that I've come to believe it.  I'd be walking past a group of boys.  I'd just be in my own head, making plans, thinking about something cool that happened at school that week, imagining I was in some ABC Afterschool Special about my life as a detective or something; and then all of a sudden it was like I had fallen off the side of a cliff without knowing that it was about to happen, or someone had zapped me with a toxic energy gun and filled my insides with some heavy, gray-colored gunk that made my feet heavy and turned the whole world that was just a few seconds before alive and hopeful the same color gray as the toxic goop that had filled me up.  What had happened was somebody had just called me ugly.  The words of a group of boys I had just passed seeped inside of my head.  "Ugly......Big nose....Duck."  My world becomes suddenly gloomy, sad, pathetic.  And I was a loser in it--a loser whose cause no one would champion because I was the worst kind of social victim there was.  People don't fight for ugly people.  There are no ugly people movements.  I was alone because of it, and I hated being in my own skin.

Ms. N watched me walk by one day.  I saw her out of the corner of my eye watching me as I passed in front of her cafe with my head in a book.  I was reading a comic book about this white super heroine with long red hair.  The heroine would set things on fire just by staring and concentrating on them long enough.  She wore a red cape and zipped through the sky in the shape of a big flame ball.

"Hey, sweetheart," Ms. N. said standing in the doorway of her cafe.

"Hi," I said smiling shyly and checking her out.

She was short and stocky, had her hair in twists and pinned up in a messy kind of a bun on the top of her head, and had these brown eyes that made me think of a bull about to charge a matador.   She had several silver bangles around her right wrist and some colorful necklaces hanging down on the top part of a long purple cotton dress that fit her loosely.  She looked kind of like a gypsy.

"You like to read?" she asked me.  

"Mm hmm," I replied.

"Well, I got a whole bunch of books up in here," she said, gesturing with her head to the cafe.  "Lots of 'em.  All different types.  You'll probably find a lot in there that you'd like."

"Really?"  I asked, "Like what?"  

"A lot of stuff.  You got a minute?  Come in.  I'll show you."

Okay, I have to say, before I tell you about the inside of Ms. N's place, her spot was in the heart of North Philly--with its many homes that were abandoned, boarded up, sagging and leaning over; with its prostitute row on Old York Street and the dark dives where sleazy looking old men go in and out--like the Whoop There It Is Bar, Jackie's Shrimp Pit, the Exodus Lounge, and the Devil's Den--all within walking distance from one another; where many drive-by shootings have happened, and in particular, where this one 13-year old kid on a bike in a playground was walked up on and shot in the head point blank in broad daylight.  Where there are churches on every other corner it seemed like, but nothing really uplifting--at least out in the open--like they had down in Mount Airy or Chestnut Hill.  No tree-lined streets, no parks by the river where you can just sit and think about how grand and full of possibilities the world is.  There was none of that in North Philly.  But there was lots of all that ugly stuff I just mentioned.

Every now and then I got the urge to hop on my bike and find an old familiar cool place or look for a new one to hang out in for a while away from North Philly.  I'd be rolling around the city on my ten-speed bike with my portable CD player hooked on the hanger I'd pulled out of shape and wrapped around my handlebars, listening to inspiring stuff like this house singer singing about how "Dreams do come true.  You know you got to have them.  You know you got to be strooonng," I'd roll through Philly looking for cool spots to escape into when I need to be reminded that the world is worth living in.  Although, there are no bike trails in North Philly like there are in Mount Airy or the suburbs, you can take the regular streets out of it and get to a big park by the river in no time.  And once you're there, you feel like you're in another world, even though it might be only 30 minutes away from all the ugliness of North Philly.

Ms. N's Hive was like that too--a whole other world.  But I didn't have to travel thirty minutes on my bike to get to it.  It was a few blocks from my house.  It was amazing.  I followed her into the cafe.  There were beads hanging from doorways, colorful fabrics on the walls and vibrant rugs on the floors.  The smell of peppermint and spiced apples was in the air.  She had paintings hanging all around--one of Zora Neale Hurston with a funky hat on, one of James Baldwin with a piercing, tragic look in his eyes, and one of some Africans standing around in a circle looking like they're clapping as they watch this little girl in the middle with her arms lifted in the air, a leg raised above the ground, her eyes closed, her face in a frown and sweat pouring down it like she's in some trance.

"What kind of stuff do you like to read?" Ms.N asked.

"Um..."  I had to think a minute about that.  "Let's see.  Um...."  I looked down at the floor and remembered the comic book in my hands.

"I like comic books," I said, "Not like Superman or Batman.  For some reason I can't get into those.  But I like ones like this one."  I showed her my She-Flame comic book.  

"Ahhh.....," she said, nodding her head as she flipped through the pages.

"She's--She-Flame, the heroine--she's real tragic.  Superman and Batman are too, but she's different.  Superman and Batman have the beautiful girlfriends.  She's a loner.  She has no superhero boyfriend, she fights all her battles by herself, and she sleeps alone.  I really don't read these comics a whole lot.  But, it's the one I look for when I'm in a comic book store.  But...um..  I also like science fiction stuff like Robert Heinlein and Octavia Butler.  Oh, my favorite book by her is The Parable of the Sower."

"You're serious?"

I nodded my head.

"Really?....Cuz...." She starts walking backwards, "Come here.  You gotta see this."  She gestures me to follow.  In the back of the cafe, on the left of a large glass counter that was filled with little mini-pies and other types of pastries and lined with a whole bunch of different kinds of boxes of tea and different flavored hot chocolate--peppermint, raspberry, and white chocolate flavors--was a door with some more beads hanging in front of it.

She went in there and I followed behind her, thinking that maybe I shouldn't.  What if she's some nutcase and behind that door I will meet my death?

But I went and saw that behind that door was another room full of books.  All four walls were lined with shelves and shelves full of books.  And there was a desk sitting under a wooden loft bed that had a spread of different color shades of blue hanging a little bit off the bunk.  Attached to the underside of the bed's platform was a light blue--kind of turquiose--Japanese style boxy lampshade. 

"Look," Ms. N said.  She was standing next to a bookcase by the door and pointing to the bottom part of it.

It was full of books that--when I crouched down--could see were all by Octavia Butler.  

"I love Octavia, too.  I have all the books....Read them all,"  Ms. N said.

There were about two and a half shelves full of Octavia Butler books.  And that's when I realized she was cool and that I had found another cool spot in the world that would remind me of how magical life can be.  Cuz sometimes I forget.  

"Anyway, I just wanted to show you that.  See, I read a lot too."  

She looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if she had just realized that maybe she had revealed too much of herself and had become too vulnerable.

She moved the beaded drapes back with her hand so that I could pass through, and we went back out into the main area of the cafe.

"I just wanted to say 'hey' to you.  I see you a lot passing by here with a book in your hand.  Just thought you might appreciate this place.  Feel free to come by anytime you want if it's open and read cuz that's what it's for--for reading; for escaping--you know--if you need to."

"Okay, thanks," I said.

"Tell your friends...." she said as I was walking out of the door.

But I didn't cuz I didn't have any friends.  I'm not sure why that is.  I'm not good at all with making friends, or keeping them once I make them--I think I'm going a little looney because of it.  I mean, I spend so much time alone.  I'm not sure why I'm friendless.  It can't just be because I'm ugly, because I know some real ugly people who have friends.

Anyway, afterschool on the day that I met Ms. N for the first time, I went straight home, fell on my bed, and finished reading my She-Flame comic book.  At the end, She-Flame was trapped on the evil planet, Transer, in a block of ice.  Her eyes were shut tight so she couldn't burn her way through the ice with her eyes.  Boy, if I had that power to burn people up just by looking at them in a certain way, I'd be walking around like I thought I was all that.  But I have to remember that what I got is that inner strength that Ms. N. always tells me I need to tap into.

Before starting on my homework, I turned over on my back and just laid for awhile, looking up at the ceiling and thinking about a bunch of stuff, like, how Ms. N's spot stood out like a sight for sore eyes--my sore eyes--in the middle of North Philly with its filth and depression and stuck-in-the-funkness; Ms. N's bun of twisted hair--how long was it when she took it down?; Octavia Butler--I heard she lived a loner kind of life with her mother before she died; how much was Octavia Butler like me?; what it would be like if there was an all-black planet somewhere in the universe and Black folks here on Earth were really outerspace aliens with an undetected genetically-based drive to take over the Earth?  And what if Ms. N was the queen bee of the whole operation?

CHAPTER 2

At 7 AM the next morning, Ms. N was outside her hive watering what she told me later was her bed of sunflowers.  She had her hair pulled back in a big afro-puff in the back of her head and had some medium-sized dull gold hoop earrings in her ears.  She was wearing a long light blue short sleeve summer dress--a lot like the one she had on the day before, but this one was blue--and a pair of birkenstock-like sandals on that she told me she got from Payless Shoe Store for $10.99.

She gave me a big smile when she saw me.

"Hey, what's happening, Spider?"  

"Hi,"  I smiled back.  I was really happy to see her.  I stopped and stood next to her in front of her flower beds.  The door to the hive was open and I smelled what seemed to me like something spicy and sweet cooking inside.  She had flower beds made from tires on the sidewalk in front of her store and some wooden ones propped on the wall below the hive's two front left windows.

"So, you're heading to school?" she asked me.

"Yeah.  I try to get there by 7:30 every morning so I can get my breakfast, eat it, and get to the library before all the other kids show up."

"How come you don't like it when all the other kids show up?"

I just blurted it out: "Cuz, I don't want to get teased."  Tears started to well up in my eyes.  I was desperate for someone to confide in.  I had no one.

Ms. N. put her watering can down on the ground beside her and looked me straight in the eyes with a frown on her face.

"Teased about what?" she asked.

"My nose.  They say my nose is too big," I felt ashamed and the words fell out of my mouth clumsy and heavy.

"Hmmm.  Really?"  She said in this matter-of-fact, indignant tone.  "Ain't nothing wrong with your nose.  You hear me?  I'm looking at you and I'm telling you what I see.  Ain't nothing wrong with your dag-gone nose.  Nothing.  And I'm sorry folks got you thinking that there is cuz they got nothing better to do than be ugly.  You got too much beauty inside of you to be walking around in the world thinking you're too ugly to hold your head up.  I'm looking at you and I can see it.  I wish you could see what I see.  You glow with it.  Your beauty.  I wish you could see it...

"But, let me ask you this.  I'm curious: If you had the power to make yourself look anyway you'd like, what would you make yourself look like?"

I didn't have to think hard on it at all because I thought of that image so much.  Especially, when I'm lying in bed waiting to fall asleep at night.

"Kinda like Jayne Kennedy back in the day," I said, "but lighter.  You know, lighter skin.  And I'd have really long hair that would go all the way down the middle of my back and have big waves in it that would look like the waves of the ocean."

"Wow, very specific," Ms N. said, nodding her head.

"And, I--. Well, it's an image I think about a lot.  It just pops up every now and then when my mind's just kind of resting, you know.  When it has some free time to day-dream.  She's the woman that I hope I'll be some day.  She's tall and light-skinned and has long hair.  She wears a long white furcoat; and she's an investigative journalist and very busy and has all these men who want to be her boyfriend and stuff."

"Hmmm.  Sounds like a diva...Anyway...I know you got to go to school.  I hate hearing stuff like that," she said shaking her head frowning, "Will you stop in on your way home?  There's something that if I find it I want to give to you, okay?"

"Okay," I said, smiling softly and feeling kind of light and fluffy inside cuz it felt like I was making a friend, "Bye."

It was really early, but the sun was shining brightly and was already beginning to heat up the air around me.  As I walked to school, my mind wandered to the stuff I had learned the day before in class and the homework I had had to do last night.  Physics: kinetic and potential energy; chemical reaction equations;  James Joyce's Ullysses, which was so over my head; and differential equations in calculus.  When I opened up those books to do my homework, it was like I was entering different worlds.  Worlds that worked a lot differently than the world as I saw it normally everyday.  Worlds with different looking societies than the ones that I saw with my naked eye.  Societies of atoms and energy fields and forces; of Ireland and Irish folks and Irish culture; of hills within x and y axes, straight lines on top of hills, spheres, those weird looking ds, the strange way of communicating, and the strange rules of movement on paper: dfn|0 to 5=d...

They reminded me of how amazing the world was.  How complex, but systematic.  And exciting.  There was so much going on in the world.  I just wish that I could hurry up and get on out of the 'hood, dwelve into the world, and start living a life full of adventure like the people in some of the books I read.  But nobody in the books I've read have big noses like me.....  I don't fit the type.  Short, black girl detective with a big nose from North Philadelphia.

The lady--Ms. Jackson--who works Saturday's at the library on Van Ness Avenue knows me by name since, I guess, I go in there so much.  I get 20 books out at a time pretty much everytime I go.  I walk through the doors and the world opens up to me.  I looked in the window of the closed wooded double doors as I walked by that morning.  I saw a lit lamp on the front counter and a man standing next to it sorting through something.  He's the morning librarian.  I don't usually see him unless he's filling in for Ms. Jackson on weekends.

I wish I didn't have to go to school.  I wish I could just sit in the library all day and read in my favorite place in there: the desk that was behind the broken copy machine and under one of the library's only 3 windows, feeling the rays of the sun on my face and shoulders.  There I could escape into worlds much more exciting than my own.

Inspite of it all--the early-morning arrival, hiding out in the school library until the bell rang, getting to class as early as I could and sitting in the front so that almost everybody in the class would see my back and not my face--I was singled out, targetted, and called ugly again.  And my world sunk.  I felt like nothing, and I hated being in my skin.  It was Brian Jackson--a big time ninth grader.  He was hanging outside the front of the school as I was walking out.

"Damn she's ugly!" he said as I walked past.

He was one of those popular guys that always had folks wanting to hang out with him.  That day he was with Malik and Raymond just standing around the school steps idling.  A group of idling boys--that was the worst.  Malik was eating a bag a Cheetos. He was putting a cheeto in his mouth when his eyes caught mine.  I quickly looked down, but seconds later, as I walked past, I heard Brian Jackson's words about me, and my feet got real heavy thinking about having to lug my disgusting, ugly body all the way home.

Ms. N. was outside her cafe sitting at one of her patio tables reading a book when I approached.

"Hey, Spidergirl," she said when she looked up from her book.  "How you like that name?  Since you're all into superheroes and stuff.  But, you know, the problem is there's already a Spidergirl.  So, we got to tweek that name a little bit.  I was thinking a color thing.  Like you're black, so it could be 'Black Spidergirl.'  Or--what's your favorite color?"

"Blue."

"Hey, I like that!  Blue Spidergirl.  What do you think?"

I smiled, I did like it.  "Yeah, that's cool."  Ms. N. was lifting something off of me.  Just talking to her for those two minutes, she had lifted the funk a little bit.  I just wish I could fold myself into her and her spot and the books on her bookcases and stay there forever.  But knowing that I couldn't, made that visit with her bittersweet.

"You tell any friends about the spot?"  she asked.

"I don't have any friends," I said, feeling a heavy ball take shape in my insides.

"Oh, don't worry about that.  A lot of people are not going to get you.  The ones who do, though, are going to be really special.  Cuz you're deep inside yourself and you're in touch with spaces inside yourself that a lot of people aren't, I think.  I think people who read a lot usually are."

"I just don't want to be ugly.  I want to be normal.  Just blend into the world and not have people single me out for being ugly,"  I blurted out, and the tears came.

"Tch.  Dag-gone-it.  Aw, sweetheart, please don't cry."

I told her about Brian, that it's happened so many times before so it must be true, and that I felt so alone in the world because my mom's pretty, and my sister is too, and my dad's handsome, and I don't feel that anyone understands me and my pain.

That's when it began.  The moment I started to become Blue Spidergirl--a fierce super being who could fly inside my head above the ugliness that lived around me, move through the world like I was floating on beautiful billowing clouds, touch folks hearts, and change the world with the energy that I let loose when I dance and write and teach.  It started with the book of poetry Ms. N. gave me that day.  

"Here, I found it," she said pulling a small dusty brown book out of a pocket and sliding it to me across the patio table we were both sitting at outside her cafe.  "I am so glad I was able to find this.  It's a book of magic that will make you see the world a lot differently."

Before the book, my world was subject to turn gray and be contaminated at any moment by a mean word directed at me.  After I finished reading the whole book, I could care less.  No one could change my world like that anymore.

So the story of my transformation into Bluespidergirl began with me meeting Ms. N.  Here are the specifics of how Bluespidergirl begins....

Chapter 3.

My mom opened the door to my room and told me that dinner was ready.  She had made green peppers stuffed with ground beef and onions.  I had just finished my physics homework and was laying back on my bed looking up at the top bunk resting my brain.  My room is right off of the kitchen, and the smell of my mom's cooking was coming in under the closed door of my room.  It smelled good and I was hungry, but I was thinking about where I would go if I could fly away; I was in such a cool space inside myself at that moment, that I didn't want to get up just yet and go eat.  I was thinking  about a place far out in the middle of nowhere--like in that place in the movie Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger where the beautiful Asian woman woke up inside of a handsome stranger's hut.  I think it was Mongolia.  Outside there was so much open space, that when you saw the woman and the handsome stranger ride their horses, it looked like they could ride for hours.  And what would I do?  I would sit and meditate in an open field, with my eyes closed, feeling the center of my power, feeling how beautiful I am, and how wide open the world is to me.  Everything would be calm.  There'd be a gentle breeze that made a swishing sound as it passed through the tall blades of grass that surrounded me.  Somewhere, not too far from where I was sitting, there would be a hot meal waiting for me in a cozy one-room cabin.  When I was ready, I would walk back there--having made plans about something--having decided on something in the course of thinking in the open field with my eyes closed; feeling apart of this grand power in world; feeling like I was at the center of that grandness, and because of that, feeling safe and okay.

The meal in my mother's kitchen was lonely.  I sat by myself eating the stuffed peppers with white rice and a glass of orange juice.  My mom was washing dishes.  I didn't know where my sister was, and my dad, I guess, wasn't home yet.  He usually gets home about an hour or two later.  The lonliness was eating away at me.  I hate it.  I wish I could feel like I imagined I'd feel in that open field--wrapped up in something large--always.  But when my eyes opened, the feeling left--the sense of safety and contentment and power gone.  

I was supposed to help Ms. Nia at the cafe later on that evening.  There was a movie showing, and she wanted me to take money at the door.  I looked forward to hanging out there.  But I didn't like that I looked forward to it so much.  I didn't have too many cool things going on in my life.  I wanted more.  I wanted to feel apart of the world more.  It had been a week since Ms. Nia gave me that dusty brown book that she said would change the way I saw the world.  I read it everyday since I got it.  Nothing is really different, except when I remember its presence in the pocket of my backpack, I remember Ms. Nia's cafe, and I feel good....

When I walked into the cafe that evening, I smelled bean pies, hot chocolate, and popcorn.  I found out that bean pies and hot chocolate were Ms. Nia's favorite dessert; and she liked curling up with a cup of butterscotch hot chocolate, a bowl of popcorn with seasoned salt and brewer's yeast sprinkled on top of it, and a good book.  

Ms. Nia was bustling around behind the counter.  Mr. Pollick, a big dark-skinned man wearing some faded blue jeans speckled with different colored paints and a big plaid jacket was sitting at one of its booths talking in a loud booming voice to Ms. Nia as she scurried about.

"So, what I'm saying, Nia, is that the madness needs to stop.  Aren't you sick of it?  I know I am..."

"Yes, definitely.  I am very much sick of it.  I am 50 something years old, and still haven't figured out how people can commit such ugly acts, and continue to live with themselves--to get up every morning and function at some of what I would imagine the most demanding jobs out there.  I would be racked by guilt and depression so bad that I don't think I would be able to get myself out of bed."

"Naw, but that's the point," Mr. Pollick said, "Folks don't think about what they are doing. Or they surround themselves with all these yes-men that assure them that what they are doing is okay.  That's a whole 'nother world they are living in, Ms. Nia.  A whole 'nother world.  Neither you nor I can understand it...."

Mr. Pollick came in every now and then and would stay for an hour or two talking to Ms. Nia.  He had his own painting business. His office was up the street.  Every so often around lunchtime or about 5-ish after he finished his last job for the day, he dropped by Ms. Nia's spot to rap with her about stuff.  Mostly politics.  Mr. Pollick wasn't

I walked around to the back of the counter where Ms. Nia was.  

"Hey, girl," Ms. Nia said

"Hey, there young lady," Mr. Pollick said.

"Hi, y'all.  So what movie is showing tonight?  Mmm.  It smells really good in here."

"Yeah, I got some bean pies in the oven.  Do you think I should thaw out those apple pies I made last week?" 

"Yeah, maybe one or two, just in case," I said.

"Okay, get this," Ms. Nia said turning around from the sink where she had been scrubbing something, "I was thinking about starting this whole series of travel movies.  I mean, I think we all want to run away to somewhere relaxing and not have to worry about anything.  Not everyone can do that when they want to.  So, I thought that we could show a bunch of travel videos of places that seem really relaxing.  If people try real hard at pretending, maybe they can actually feel like they are there."

"But then the movie ends," I said, "It's always a big let down when you really want to be somewhere all the time, and you remember that you can't."  I was remembering what I felt like when it was time to go home from the Soulword Hive, and what it felt like to open my eyes in a crowded subway train to see jeans and tennis shoes and $10 skin tight outfits from Cool Girl Clothing Store--where many teenagers shop--after having just having imagined hanging out on a beach with the woman from Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger or talking to God on top of a tall blue mountain with blue grass.

"Well, to me, imagination, dreams are not just places to escape to.  They are things folks should use to get inspired to make the world into a place that's just as cool as what their imagination has cooked up," Ms. Nia said.

In my ideal world, I am tall and beautiful, and have men falling all over me.  I think that is going to take a lot of work to make the world into one where all that happens.  And where would I start?

All these people showed up for the movie.  Ms. Nia had been advertising it for weeks, but I just never paid attention to it.  She had an announcement written on the blackboard above the sink and had a couple of fliers up around the cafe.  She had also advertised in the City Paper and Philly Weekly for about 2 issues and had this young kid name Michael put some fliers out around town for $20.00.  The turn-out was really good--about 80 people showed up and she wound up needing the two extra pies I said she should take out of the freezer.  The travel videos took us to parts of Africa and Cuba and were made by three self-described "travelling black dykes," who claim to tell you the stuff you "really want to know" about a country.  

***quote from the travelling dykes travelling film****

"No one wants to sit for an hour listening to someone talk about 18th century frescos and stuffy colonial mansions that are now museums," one of the travelling dykes said at the beginning of one of the films.  "If they wanted that, they could get a history book from a library or take a history course at a community college.  We will tell you where the best places are to pick someone up, to get your groove on on the dance floor, to get a cheap meal, and to kick it with the hippest, coolest folks in a city's undergroud scene."  

Standing on a sidewalk outside of a cafe near a university in Nigeria wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans that looked like it's 3 sizes too big for her, and with her dreaded hair pulled back in a long ponytail, the travelling dyke tells us that African men, before heading off to America, are told to watch out for African American women because they are "...loud, have a lot of attitude, and are after your money."  Behind her are tables full of young intellectual looking African men eating, talking, drinking, and looking at the camera and at the black dyke from America.

In Cuba one of the best dance clubs is in Havana on Sundays, after a Santeria religious service.  At about 5pm, the Santeria temple transforms itself into a nightclub where the priest becomes a d-jay spinning songs 10 years old (which, you learn earlier in the video, is pretty common because it takes songs about 5 years to finally make their way from, say the United States, to a d-jay's turntables in Cuba).  The pulpit at the front of the one room church becomes the d-jay booth.  One of the other hosts--this one in baggy khaki pants with a lot of pockets and a green fitted t-shirt, tells us while standing outside the dance party at the Santeria temple, that the temple/nightclub stores a plug-in disco ball--like the ones you can get at Wal-Mart for $10--under a white sheet on the pulpit.  It's pulled out at around five o'clock, the cheap folding chairs are stacked against the wall, the lights are turned off, and the priest behind the pulpit in a long white robe, begins to spin the music at the turntables.

"Music touches the soul," the priest says in an interview with the black dyke in the green t-shirt.  He talks in Spanish, and his words are translated into English at the bottom of the page.  "It's one of God's gifts to us.  I know, I have had trances on the dance floor when I was younger.  And I have seen other folks seem to get possessed by God at clubs from, I believe, the beauty of the music.  Music to me is just another manifestation of God.  That's why I don't think it's out of place here at the temple."

I never thought about music and dancing like that before.  And I dance a lot...by myself in my pink room watching my silhouette on the pink walls as I spin and glide and move my feet so fast, trying to catch every beat, that my mom says I make her think of a dancing spider.  When I dance, I imagine that I am in a video, a movie, a television show.  All eyes are on me.  I am extraordinary.  I am beautiful and confident and cool, and the world looks up to me.  But I never thought about God when I danced.  Unless the song was all about sex or something and I was listening to it by myself.  Then I might feel dirty and think about God being disppointed and shaking his/her head.  (By the way, God is not just "he" or a "she" to me.  I am not sure what exactly God is, gender-wise.  I don't know if God even has a gender.  But since I don't know this particular aspect of the nature of God, and since I need to use some kind of pronouns to talk about God, I use he/she, her/him, etc.)

People stuck around until about 12 midnight, even though the video screening ended at around 11 pm.  They stood and sat around chatting and/or eating.  I helped Ms. Nia behind the counter serving up hot chocolate, coffee, and tea and the last pieces of pie and then helped her wash dishes and sweep. 

She cut the radio on and I listened to the BBC World News as I worked--imagining myself as the reporter interviewing the people whose voices I heard in the news stories.  I WANT TO SEE THE WORLD.  I stopped in the middle of floor in the front of the cafe where I had been sweeping and saying as I rested my hands on my chin on top of the broom stick, "Dag...I really want to see the world."  And I closed my eyes and imagined myself globetrotting, an investigative reporter chasing after stories, walking through the streets of big cities with bright lights in a trench coat, my long hair hanging down my back,.

I don't think I am any really hero or anything, but I think I saved somebody's life today.  This guy was sitting slumped down in a corner in the dingy off white hallway on the first floor of my school.  His shoulders were shaking and he was moaning.  It was really early in the morning--like 7:20am or something.  Usually there is hardly anyone here when I get here in the morning, and I have never seen him here before.  The hallway he was sitting in was the same hallway where the library is at.  I was making my way down the hallway towards the library when I saw him.  When I got close to him, (what was he wearing?) I bent down a little bit and asked him if he was alright.  I heard him sniffle.  His face was turned towards the wall.  I saw his hand rise to his face and he moved it like he was wiping tears away.  

He trembled a little and I heard him sniffle again. When he brought his hand down from his face, its nails gripped his arm and dug into the skin.  

I said, "Hey, you okay?  What's wrong?"

I bent down lower and put my hand softly on his shoulder.

He trembled under my hand and sniffled again.  

Firmly but choppily, with longer than usual spaces between the words, the boy said, "I-don't-want-to-be-here."

I asked him why.

"It hurts too much," he said.

I heard one of the heavy doors of the school open and close.  And then somebody walking heavily down the hallway.  I saw that is was one of the women who worked in the cafeteria.

"Honey, we're open now.  Come on in, get you something to eat."  The woman was standing over us.  She had this frown of concern on her face, looking at the boy next to me.

"Is is he alright?"  she asked, looking at me.

"I don't know.  I just saw him here like this when I was on my way to the library."

"Yeah, he was knocking at the cafeteria door about 30 minutes ago.  I told him we weren't open yet.  Come baby.  Get you some food."

The boy got up.

                        This movie sounds so out there.  We're going to show this movie about ;lIt's about this dancer--a popper--that Mr. Cinderfella."

"Okay, you can't say that I

a lot closer than a lot of people are to that spot where God lives inside you.  But those people who do get you, will be amazing folks, some powerful folks, who must be real tight with God be