MEAN IS SURVIVAL

Anaya Frazier

12th Grade • Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep

On Green Street They still tell stories about my mean old Great Grandma Maybell Say she didn’t come here

Wrapped in hospital blankets Instead she picked herself Off of hell’s floor, walked right up to the devil & demanded his horns

Hid them under her wig before her arrival In the middle of making love to Grandpa Author Her wig slowly begins to lift

She burst through their bedroom Clothed only in sweat Rushes right out the front door & Yells to the whole block

443

“Who tryna hit, cus this nigga can’t”

Grandpa swears he done seen the devil Says it lives under his roof & that they are in love Her mean makes them both feel alive.

Grandpa Loved her so much he gave her more mean That’s how Grandma Dede came about

Dede, the darkest of her siblings When she was younger every trip down South

She got to kick her feet up on the back porch Eat mooncake & laugh A laugh as long as the Mississippi River As she’d watch her lighter siblings work in the sun

Grew up and inherited the ability of putting niggas in they place, without having to ask.

Mean is what was there for the women in my family

444

When No was not sharp enough to cut. When survival was a slippery fish Hard to hold on to.

To me Grandma Dede was one of the hood’s sweetest & they say on grandma Maybell’s deathbed She was as she looked; a sweet old lady

Mama says when I met them both They were already in the business of dying Death, It has a way of draining whole bodies

When the women in my family are dying

The mean leaks out, they get softer & sleep more

I like to think I am not as mean as the women I come from

Though it doesn't take much for me to get there

This one time

445

The blood snuck its way into my bathroom

& I could only hear muffled version of my own breaths

I thought I saw the end inching closer

So, I got mean, real mean, because I knew I had more living to do.

446