What I Learned From My Black Girlfriends

Sharon (age 5, Gingerbread House Preschool) - She taught me the word "Honeychild." Although, you don't say it pronouncing the "d" you say it more like "Honeychile." She used to call me that ALL the time. She'd say, "C'mon Honeychile, let's go play in the sand box." Or "Honeychile I'monna swing le's go." However, Sharon didn't appreciate my trying her word on for size and let me know with this little ditty:

"I ain't your honey, and I ain't your child, I'm just your friend to make you smile."

I didn't call her Honeychile anymore. I laughed more inside than outside. I tried that one on for size too the next time that she called me "Honeychile." She just looked at me and sucked her teeth like the black girls always did, rolled her eyes like "you poor dumb white girl" and grabbed my hand. We ran together onto the next thing. She called me "Honeychile" all the way through kindegarten in Mrs. Dorstewitz's class. Once we went to first grade, we enrolled in different schools. I never saw Sharon again. If I did, I would give her a big hug. I'll never forget how she used to play with me faithfully everyday, the huge blister she would get under her nose from wiping her snot filled nose when she got a cold, the beautiful beads in her hair, how she always looked after her little sister who was much younger than we were but attended the same preschool.

Tamu (Third Grade Pilgrim Elementary School) - Tamu was in my class. Our teacher was Mrs. Rodgers. She was a religious nut and made us sing songs of praise to the Lord in school which she later got fired for. She also made a Muslim child stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance with us even though he wasn't supposed to because of the words "Indivisible, Under God." Anyways, Tamu was an exotic looking black girl. She was big for her age. She wore a head rag like the African women wound around her hair that was braided beneath it. She had big almond shaped eyes, a wide nose and thick full lips. She taught me how to do those hand clapping games. I am not sure what they are called. Hand jive? But they are the ones where you have a partner and you clap each others hands in rhythm with a song like, "See see my playmate." Only, she taught me other ones...cooler ones that were faster. Like this one:

"Twee lee lee, Twee lee lee,
Twee lee lee, Twee lee lee,
Twee lee lee, Twee lee lee,
Tweet Baby, Tweet Baby,
Your breath stinks.

We rock in the treetop all day long
Hoppin' and a boppin' and singin' our song
All the little birds on Jaybird Street
Love to hear the robbin go tweet tweet tweet

Rockin' Robbin Tweet tweet tweet
Rockin' Robbin tweet tweet tweet
Go rockin'Robbin 'cause we're really gonna rock tonight

Daddy's upstairs shootin' that dice,
Mamma's in the kitchen stirrin' that rice
Brother's in jail
Raisin' all hell
Sister's on the corner sellin' fruit, cock, tail
(hand motions were (fruit=hand to the chest, cock=hand to gentital region, tale=hand to the rear)

Rockin' Robbin Tweet tweet tweet
Rockin' Robbin tweet tweet tweet
Go rockin'Robbin 'cause we're really gonna rok tonight"

I had no idea what the meaning was here. Not until I taught my cousin' this hand jive and we performed proudly for our mothers. Afterwards, their jaws slack and eyes bulging slightly from their heads they asked us not to sing that anymore, and then emphasized, "I mean NEVER AGAIN DO YOU HEAR ME?" "Yes."

But it was so cool to get a group of us, four, going at the same time. We would stand in a square. Two of us facing each other. Then we would do our hand moves utilizing the person across from us and on each side of us. Tamu choreographed it all and it was beautiful man, I tell you beautiful.

One morning when she was walkin' to our ghetto school, a man approached her. She didn't come to school that day. But the principal made an announcement over the loud speaker for all children and teachers to look out for a man in a red car hanging around the school grounds. When Tamu came back to school, she told me she had to go to the doctor. She asked me if I had ever had to go to the doctor and let them check inside me "down there." I frowned confused and said "no." She said that she did and it was really weird and embarrassing. Then we sang "Rockin' Robbin" and played our hand jive games again.

Vanette Middleton (Fourth Grade Maize Road Elementary) - Vanette was as tall as she was skinny. She and I were obviously going to be friends. We had each others backs when the skinny and tall insults would start flyin' around. Somehow, if you had someone else that was like you, you could form your own little group that made you feel confident that those others singing the insults were the real losers. They called us names of basketball players we didn't even know like "Too Tall Jones." To which we would reply, "Shut up fool."

Vanette taught me several things. She taught me how to jump and turn Double Dutch. She cured me of my double handedness and taught me to turn the rope so well I was accepted in with any black girls jumping Double Dutch even when Vanette wasn't with me. You see, the black girls would suck their teeth at you and send you away if you were double handed. God how I miss Double Dutch.

Vanette taught me the art of eye rolling. She was so tall and so skinny. When she rolled her eyes at somebody, and put her neck into it the way she did, it looked like a snake that someone had snapped the end real quick causing the other end to jerk. She worked with me on this until I got it right.

She also taught me to suck my teeth with an attitude.

Sometimes we talked about our home lives. Her parent's were divorced and she didn't see her "real Daddy." My home life was so miserable at this time, I used to lie and tell her that my parents were getting a divorce. I wanted her to believe it. I thought she was lucky. My parents did get divorced eventually. She used to tell me about her Mom tying her and her sister up in the basement and giving her a whoopin' with an extension cord. I wonder if she was lying to me the way I was lying to her. The thing is, I never thought about telling anyone. It was like grown ups could do whatever they wanted because they were grown ups. They were always right. It was just that some were better than others. I couldn't wait to be a grown up too.

Leslie Barksdale (Brookhaven High School) - Leslie was "mixed" or more appropriately, biracial. She identified herself as African American. She used to say that speaking "jive" and speaking proper English made her bilingual. She was very proud of being able to switch back and forth as she needed to. She was crazy about the color red. She wore blue eye shadow, blue mascara and bold, bright red lip stick. Because she was light skinned and wore all of this color on a pallid face, the black girls nicknamed her "Red, White and Blue."

She was my best friend all through High School. We used to hang out all the time. We were on National Honor Society together. We became friends when we found out one of the guys she was dating was good friends with a guy I was dating who did not go to our school. We were both college prep students and ended up in many of the same classes together. It was Lesie who first spoke to me about going to college. "Melissa, you have to go to college. You want to be somebody. You want to get up outta here." She was so right! I latched on to her vision and found a vision of my own. We knew we were better than where we were.

Once we snuck wine coolers into senior homeroom in DQ cups and had a buzz before first period. There was another time we were cutting class and hanging out in the hallway by the back parking lot with all the other class cutters, trying to decide how to leave and where to go. A teacher did a sweep through the hall and took everyone with him to the office but the two of us. We marveled at our new found SUPAPOWA of INVISIBILITY! This gave us confidence enough to just walk out to my car and drive off school grounds. We went to DQ and got some burgers, fries and a peanut buster parfait. Then we took a nap.

Leslie was also the first one to tell me that I should date, my now husband, Paul. "Ah Melissa, you guys would make a cute couple. You should go out with him." "Nah, he's too much of a geek." Little did I know that it was in the cards.

I remember her telling me that you should save oral sex for when you were married. LOL! That is so funny to me now. But she meant it and I kind of did too. This at a time when we wore our virginity like scarlet letters and were both joyous to see it go - to someone we loved though. That was important to both of us. That was what separated us from the hoes in our school. We were in love when we had sex and we were saving oral sex for our husbands. I mean, there had to be some order to the chaos. We were civilized freaks at least.

Leslie and I both went off to college after graduation. She went to OU and I went to CCAD on a scholarship. I went to visit her while I was on break and fell in love with OU. CCAD wasn't offering much in the way of academics, so I transferred to OU my sophmore year. Our friendship became really strained. I don't know why, but she told me when we were moving into our dorms that just because we were both at OU I couldn't call her all the time to hang out and that I needed my own friends. That was cool with me. But, what I didn't understand, that I later caught onto was the strange looks I got from her friends when I would stop by her dorm. I think now, that because OU is located in a southern Ohio town in Appalachia, that the black students felt more vulnerable as minorities than in a larger city like Columbus. The black student populas was small. Maybe they felt they needed to band together. That bond that was more vital than her one white friend. She was biracial and really needed to prove herself to fit in even among Afican Americans. I missed her. I have often wondered whatever became of her. I used to see her around the campus and she wouldn't even speak to me. It made me sad.

Leslie taught me many things. But I guess the most valuable of all of these would be a deeper understanding of the struggles of biracial people and more sensitivity to racism.


For all this and more, I thank my black girlfriends. Because of each and everyone of them, my life experience and the person I am today is richer and more three dimensional than it would have been otherwise.