Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 149301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Kage turned away. His head practically snapped. Even through his beard, she could see his jaw tightening. He started rubbing his hands over each other, like one would if one had a tick.
“Kage, you okay?”
“…I’m tryna breathe.” His voice was broken in half. Sawed off in the middle. “I got this heat flowin’ through me, like a fire. It started in my head, see, moved down my neck, into my chest, arms, torso, legs, and now my feet.” He turned to face her, his eyes glossy like drops of blue rain. “It’s like a bruised rage growin’. Spreadin’. A nuclear fungus. I…I…I can’t understand how some folks can be so evil towards children,” he stuttered. “I was done wrong in that hospital, but I was older than you. I could take it.”
“…But you were still a child.”
“I don’t want to trauma bond with you.” Her shoulders slumped. A feeling of unadulterated mortification consumed her, and she turned away. “I wanna trauma heal, with you.” He leaned in and kissed her, and the panic that had formed in her throat melted away. “Thank you for trustin’ me with this information, Poet. I know it’s hard for you to talk about.”
“Not hard to talk about… hard to discuss with someone I care about. That I’m fallin’ in love with. Why is that, you may wonder?” She threw up her hands in frustration. “Hard to explain. You make it so much easier though.”
“Glad to hear that. When did your aunt find out about what was really going on?” he asked. Anxiety tinged his tone, as if he needed a good ending or he’d explode.
“Later that same day. I was picked up and we went home. I didn’t say anything. Huni screamed when she took my clothes off to give me a bath that night. My aunt got on that phone and was cussin’ everybody. The teacher pretended to not know what happened, and then tried to blame it on another child, sayin’ he and I had been fightin’, and that must’ve been what led to it. The messed up part about this was me and that boy had been fightin’ earlier that same day. It was over a ball I believe, but he never took no belt to me, and even if he did, no little kid could have done the same damage she’d done. My aunt told her basically to go to hell, and that she was callin’ the police. She said she was a nurse, and she knows a beating when she sees one. She did just that. The police were called, and she filed a report, but nothing happened. Not from a legal standpoint.”
Kage seemed to be grinding his teeth now. They’d be powder if he wasn’t careful.
“Police said it was my aunt’s word against the teacher’s, and I wouldn’t cooperate because I was still scared to speak. I know now that it was more than that, though. This was an attractive White lady who was well respected in the community. She was being accused of an evil act against a little Black girl. She was worth a dollar, I was worth a penny. My mama was dead, I had no daddy, and this Asian lady, my sweet Huni, who sometimes forgot what English word she wanted to use when she was riled up, was trying to go up against a machine. A machine that wasn’t built for folks like us in mind.” Her eyes sheened over. She blinked the emotions away. “My uncle told Huni that we could file a lawsuit against the daycare center. He’d heard about such things from another trucker.
“Well, the daycare center called a meeting once they got served. All of a sudden, they wanted to work things out.” She rolled her eyes. “So, all of us went in there for this meeting, right? They told my Aunt that I could sit outside in the lobby, and she said no way. I was sittin’ right there. The teacher in question wasn’t there—conveniently. The excuse made was that she had to drop her son off for football camp, or somethin’ like that. She was ’fraid of my aunt at this point, and that was the real reason why she wasn’t there. So, they get to goin’ back and forth, right? Then they offered Huni some money, but she had to promise to keep this quiet and not say anything else negative about the daycare center.
“My aunt said no. She’d only agree to drop the charges if the teacher admitted to beating me, it be in her permanent vocational record, and then she’d be fired. That’s when I found some courage… I looked that daycare lady in the eye, and I told her, ‘Ms. Stamford beat me with a belt. She ran it under the sink first.’” Poet’s lower lip trembled ever so slightly as the words left her mouth. “I burst open like powder keg, and rattled off every thang she ever did to me! From A to Z!