TRACK 2 The KKK Took My Baby Away

I had just finished reading The Bell Jar for the tenth time. I was so depressed I thought about eating the thirty-two codeines I’d been hoarding since junior high school when I’d broken my leg and had my wisdom teeth removed. It might sound nuts, but I’ve always blamed segregation for screwing up my brain chemistry. I was born in a segregated hospital in Prince George’s County, Maryland in 1960, off I-95, near the big Pepsi billboard, and was stuck in the white-babies-only room with all the other white babies shining in their cribs like light bulbs. You can’t tell by looking, but half of my genes are olive skinned. Being born is becoming who you are according to what they say you can be.

When I was five, we’d moved to a southern California town where there were hardly any black people at all, and it was here, as a young adult, that I wondered how Sylvia Plath had waited thirty long years to kill herself. The need for me to do so now seemed urgent, but something was sitting on my chest and preventing me from getting up, a physical force, born of anxiety, pushing me into the bed. Lying there, unable to move, I had an out-of-body experience. I saw myself float into the bathroom to retrieve my codeine pills. I watched myself pour them into my hand and get a Diet Coke to wash them down. I’d been suicidal and survived before, but this time I was afraid I was really going to kill myself.

“Jesus Christ,” the voice I recognized as Melissa’s suddenly demanded, “what kind of person kills herself with a Diet Coke? At least drink a regular Coke. It’s not like the sugar’s gonna kill you.” I felt Melissa’s presence in the room. I kept my eyes shut to see her better. She was wearing torn blue jeans and a fuzzy gray sweater. I swear I could feel her weight on the mattress as she sat beside me. “Don’t kill yourself, love. It’ll be alright.” When she put her cool, delusory hand on my forehead, the pain just stopped. When she left, I could sit up. The gargoyle pressing on my heart had gone. I felt a clear-headed, fragile happiness. I picked up my acoustic guitar and played for several hours. Then I fell into a deep, uncomplicated sleep.

I don’t know if you’d call that a religious experience, but when I woke up in hell again, I knew I was going to live through it. I got myself together enough to stay in school. Then I discovered that the one black woman in my Jane Austen seminar had been born on the same day in the same hospital as I had on the babies-of-color side. And here we were together, even though the whole of society had conspired to keep us apart. I wondered if I would ever meet the women in my head. Surely stranger things had happened.