Star Cocooned in Mediocrity
by
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from Chapter One We Just Were
"Estherqueenie and I were inseparable during our years at Woodrow Wilson Junior High, which all of us referred to merely as “Woodrow” – as though we were somehow entitled to call our twenty-eighth president by his middle name. It’s odd, but I don’t remember us ever actually meeting – we just were. With every other friend I had ever made, the initial coming together was easily replayed in my mind. The most memorable being how Lydia Jones and I became thick as thieves in the third grade; only after she had come up behind me at the water fountain, tapped me on the shoulder, stared coldly into my eyes and spurted, “I’m going to fight you after school. Meet me at the merry-go-round.”
Although I was basically a quiet child who didn’t go searching for trouble, I accepted her challenge, never raising the question why she wanted to fight me nor the fact that I had no earthly idea who she even was. My mother’s voice echoed into my consciousness. Though my mama was a teacher, she tossed her formal education aside in a heartbeat and gave impromptu street lessons on how to deal with bullies. “Don’t ever let me hear that any child of mine let somebody just beat them up,” Mama said matter-of-factly one day while cooking greens and frying chicken for supper. “There’s no such thing as a fair fight if it means getting your butt kicked. You better pick up something if you have to and knock the mess out of ‘em!” Confident that I wouldn’t get into trouble for this impending brawl with this girl whose name I didn’t even know at the time, I lagged behind and let my brother Prince and sister Ann walk home
“They’re gonna try to jump me!” The thought crashed against my brain, denying my only seconds ago euphoria from languishing further. Fleeing was not an option. I stood my ground, body braced, fists clenched for the imminent assault. “If they do try to jump me,” I conjured in my mind, sizing up each girl approaching on the horizon, “I’ll knock the mess out of the first girl and make sure she goes down. The other two are just tag-alongs; they’ll back down . . . I hope.” The challenger was now within a few feet. Not wanting to be perceived as chicken, I sauntered towards the trio, ready to throw down. I was now face-to-face with my opponent. We stared each other down, each waiting for the other to make the fi rst move. Though she had most of my attention, I still kept an eye out for her partners – a lesson typically learned early by inner-city kids whose street smarts schooled them about how to recognize the sure-fire signs of a set-up to avoid being sucker-punched. All of a sudden, with just as little precursor as Lydia’s decision to scrap with me, the girl grinned, patted me on the shoulder and said, “I don’t want to fight you. Let’s be friends.” It’s amazing how stupidly forgiving kids can be. My stance softened and my face returned to its normal demureness. “Okay,” I answered – again not questioning why. We all turned around, picked up our books that had been heaped next to the sparring ground, and walked home together, chattering about everything and anything the whole way.
--Some portions skipped--
So
I don’t mean to imply that Estherqueenie’s family physically mistreated her. Her abuse was more subtle and unassuming. Her brother Trent, though a mere year older than she, was a cruel warden over his charge. “Queenie!” he would snap whenever we lagged behind [opting to cut off the only part her parents had blessed her with that made her a luminous being.] “Hurry up, now!” Even when Prince and I were mad at each other, he still would never talk to me like that. I soon grew to hate Trent – not for how he treated me, but out of empathy for how he was to my friend. Through my biased eyes, he was the ugliest thing I had seen in my thirteen years. His inward hatefulness spawned a vile, hideous smirk that smugly laid across his face, making him horrid to me. I abhorred him for how he arrogantly said her very name. “Come here, Queenie,” as a master would summon an unusual yapping dog!
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About the Book
"Be ye in the world but not of it": A simply stated paradox at the source of looming religious confusion. SCIM is truly an extremely religious text, in which Shebaad manages to keep her audience engaged with her skillfully-crafted mix of knee-slap humor combined with moments of tear-jerking sentimentality. She parallels the upbringing of the narrator and her friend, a young girl reared in an oppressively religious household in the small Southeast Texas refinery town Port Arthur.
Shebaad insists that this story was written as a tribute to those girls forced into piety -- the ones who must so often hear, "No you can't . . ."
"Can’t females be staunch Christians, highly-active sorors, leaders in their communities/schools, and upwardly mobile managers on their jobs – all while being sexy as hell?”
The author notes that Abraham was the father of God's nation and that women should look to Sarah as an example of feminine godliness.
“News flash, even as an aged woman, Sarah was so drop-dead gorgeous that Abraham had to lie and say that he was her brother because he knew that some man would be willing to kill him just to get to Sarah!" the author asserts. "Nevertheless, Abraham valued not only Sarah's beauty but also her wise counsel. After all, when Sarah put her foot down and demanded that Hagar and her son be sent away, her husband heeded her words, which are recorded in Genesis 21:10."
Shebaad insists that this is why it's such a contradiction that some holier-than-thou men try to depreciate women so, insisting that they not be seen and not be heard.
"Abraham never attempted to eclipse his wife's splendor; he let her beauty and intelligence shine! Why then do clumsy men try to trounce on their women? Follow Abraham's lead!"
About the Author
Shebaad was born in Galveston but grew up in Port Arthur, a Texas city that freely boasted We Oil the World!
“The safety of growing up in a small town is the greatest gift parents can offer children." She soon reflected on the positives and negatives of being in a place where everybody knew you. “Even if an adult didn’t recognize you, they would ask, “Girl, who your people?” Soon, they’d link me to my older siblings or my parents or grandparents.”
Shebaad moved to Houston soon after graduating in 1983. During her 13 year tenure working night shift at the Houston Police Department, Shebaad earned her BA at the University of Houston where she majored in Journalism and Radio-Televison; and minored in African American Studies. She returned to UH and earned her teaching certification in English. At the time of novel's release, Shebaad was in her seventh year of teaching high school English. It is because of her commitment to her students that the novel even began to form."Knowing that we'd typically have the sophomores write personal narratives as their first assignment, I decided to be proactive and write one of my own to use as a model for my students," Shebaad says. "The students were so receptive when I read the nine-page narrative aloud to them during that first week of school. I was surprisingly encouraged by their reactions to the text. Slowly throughout the school year, I expanded on the narrative . . . adding a little here and there until a novel actually began to take shape -- pulling from my Southeast Texas roots, SCIM took on a Creole-African-Choctaw flavoring all its own."