Mommy Frock is Bulletproof

My Mother is a radics, a radical. When I was a little boy she wore tie-dye and batik dresses, African-themed garments and a soul-shouting Afro that was ’bout two or three sizes too big. She was a single mother pushing herself through school riding on a student visa, balancing an off-the-books job, with a little rug-rat clinging to her frock tail (that’s me). She didn’t have much, but she had a plan and a good head on her shoulders.
One day, right as she picked me up from school, some man was shooting somebody because of something right in front the school. The shots shocked me. But then Mommy tucked me into her hip, somehow, and we tear up that little side road. I’ll never forget thinking Mommy frock is bulletproof.
As I got older, I start turn wild. Two days before I took Common Entrance* I got sent home from school. My teacher did split the class into girls ‘gainst boys for a kind of trivia game. I kept throwing up my hand to answer before any of the Girls, but would Ms. Harper pick me? Hell no. So I gently stated, “You only tekking** up for them ca you a girl too!” You coulda hear a fly piss pon piece a cotton, ’cause by the way, Ms. Harper was also the Head Mistress of my Primary school. We marched to d’office where I pushed up my chest and declared, “I am not taking no caning!”
I plodded home with the fingers of the Wrath wrapped ’round mi throat, thinking I had a few hours to think before Mommy come home and tear off my rass. But she was there for lunch. Why God?
Two days before common entrance.
She pulled up her nurse’s whites, sprinted down into the yard and grab up a rod of correction. Beat me straight back to Ms. Harper- d’office.
It’s amazing how I carry her with me.

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