Chapter 12: You Are Going To Be In So Much Trouble…

I hate school! I thought as I walked back to my house. I hate 1982, and I hate being the focus of hate. I gritted my teeth and narrowed my eyes. This shit has got to end.

I walked into the house and went straight to my mother's closet where she had all the cool clothes. Ha! She had a dress made of jersey material and an oversized belt. I checked out a sleeveless sundress with an A line that flared out around my knees. Yep, and she had suede gauchos while she bought me that cheap polyester crap. My mama had a closet full of hip clothes. I put everything back into place, but I was going to raid that closet.

I made dinner, which was frozen fish sticks, a box of Kraft mac 'n' cheese, and a can of doctored up string beans. Yeah, mama needed to let me go to the grocery store, and I was going to hook her up. I knew how to shop on a budget. I could buy one chicken and we could have roast chicken on day one, chicken salad on day two, and chicken soup on day three. I knew how to squeeze every ounce out of a dollar.

When Nubia got home, she looked at me suspiciously. "You are going to be in so much trouble for cutting your hair."

I scowled. "This is an improvement. Besides, Mama has been wanting us to stay natural to our roots for years."

"Yeah, but she never said that you're allowed to cut your own hair. And why are you cooking dinner?"

I pulled out a box of Pop-Tarts and gave her one, and she accepted it suspiciously. "Because Mama works hard every single day."

"We do, too," she said while going to the refrigerator and pouring herself a big glass of milk. "Did you do something bad, Kenya, and you're trying to suck up? Because it ain't going to work with Mama."

"I didn't do anything bad. Now tell me about school. Did you make friends with that new girl?"

Nubia smiled. "Yeah. I like her. She doesn't know anybody, so I'm introducing her to the nice girls."

"You should make her a friendship bracelet like the one I gave you," I suggested.

"Why?" She swallowed the last bite of Pop-Tart. "So that she can think that I'm a lesbo?"

"Uh, what?" I replied in surprise.

"The world ain't going to end just because I said lesbo." Nubia placed her glass in the sink. "I'm going outside to play." Frowning, I wondered if I had just taught her something bad. Damnit, another strike against the new me.

When Mama got home, she kicked off her shoes. "What's that I smell?" she called out as she hung up her jacket.

I poked my head from around the kitchen corner with a smile. "Dinner is almost ready. I made fish sticks—"

The smile fell off her face as she caught sight of my hair. "What happened to your hair, Kenya?"

"I-" I patted my Afro nervously. "I cut it into an Afro."

She stormed toward me, and although I have never been smacked in the face by my mother, I feared it at that moment.

"What in the hell possessed you to shave off your hair?"

My eyes grew big. I could not have imagined that she would react so strongly to such a small thing as me cutting my hair. She wore an Afro and soon she would dread her hair, a style that she would sport for the next thirty years. She said that it kept her in touch with her roots. How could my natural be so bad in her eyes?

"I ought to tan your hide for doing that to your head! Who gave you permission to make the decision to just cut off your hair?" She waited for an answer.

"Nobody," I whispered.

"Then why did you do it?"

I looked into her eyes. "It's my hair."

"Oh?" Her voice rose an octave. Wrong answer. "So you think you're grown around here?"

I did think I was grown but wisely answered the opposite. "No."

"Because you're sure walking around here acting like you are, cooking dinner without asking me first what I want you to cook, skipping school, cutting off your hair. Kenya if I find out that you're on drugs…"

I don't remember crying, only the feel of hot tears as they dripped from my eyes. I couldn't look at this woman who was so impossible to please. And now I knew why there was a distance between us. She was playing the role of a mother, and I was supposed to play the role of a teenager who needed to be molded, reprimanded, and held at a distance.

Had this been my world? Had I gone to school trying to avoid conflict, burying my head in the sand, taking my frustrations out on my sister and then letting my children grow up with no sense of right or wrong? Is this why I was a twisted mass of flesh?

"Kenya…"

I had forgotten about my mother standing there watching me. I wanted to look at anything but her, but my eyes rose and locked with hers.

She put her hands on my face and shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry." She blinked back her own tears. "I'm sorry, baby. I'm just so…" I saw her throat work. "I'm so scared. I am so scared."

I stared at her in surprise. I wasn't the only one? "Mama, what are you scared of?"

"I…" She swallowed back her tears and looked away. "It's just hard being a single mother." She gave me a shaky smile.

"I know, Mama."

"But you are a good girl." She dropped her hands from my face, and I felt as if we were about to lose something. I couldn't allow that to happen so I blurted out the next words before I could stop myself.

"Mama, something happened. I'm not the same Kenya that you remembered. I'm a woman who has come from the future."

She looked at me for a long time, trying to puzzle through my words.

I continued a little slower. "Yesterday I went to bed as a fifty-one-year-old woman, and I woke up a sixteen-year-old-girl. Mom, I'm from the future."

She grounded me. Luckily for me I barely avoided getting a whupping, and honestly, I didn't think I had been hit with a belt since I was thirteen years old and I first got my period. My mother seemed to have forgotten she told me that because I was a woman I didn't have to lie down for a whupping anymore. However that proclamation has not stopped her from threatening me with it at every possible opportunity.

I was not allowed to leave my room, watch television, listen to the radio, or do anything but go to school.

Fine. She could clean her own house and cook dinner herself.

After I confessed to being from the future, my mother started screaming again, accusing me of taking drugs. She was going to make an appointment for me to go to a doctor where I would be given a drug test. And if I failed, then she was going to whup the black off my hide. Fine. When she saw me pass the drug test, then we could resume this conversation.

"I told you that you were going to get into big trouble for cutting your hair," Nubia said while plopping down on her bed later that night.

She hadn't heard the argument between Mama and me because she had been outside playing and had no idea that I was from the future. I wasn't keen on telling her. Things weren't actually turning out the way I thought they might. In fact, things were pretty damned bad.

I quickly finished my homework and then turned in. Maybe I had done enough today to grant me the freedom to return to my real life. I had learned a lot about myself and the people in my family. Hopefully it would be enough.