Kamichi Jackson

It was a Friday afternoon. Late August. We’d spent the whole summer jumping double-dutch, and I had somehow managed to win the title of Double Dutch Block Champion. The time came for my victory jump, which I had to do while singing the official victory song one of the older girls had made up. I don’t remember many of the words anymore, but the chorus was easy: "K my name is Kendra, Kendra, Kendra, K my name is Kendra, starts with a K". I jumped and I sang and I jumped and I sang, and it was the happiest day of my life ever. I want to go back to that day. I want to go back to when my life was about jumping double-dutch in the middle of the parking lot, buying bomb pops from the ice cream truck with the wack music, plotting against the older kids because they ran us younger kids out of the big playground at the end of our street, and racing to be home by the time Mama stopped calling our names from the porch or else. I want to go back. I’m afraid to close my eyes when I go to bed now. I can’t get Uncle C.J.’s face out of my head, no matter how hard I try. I keep smelling him. I keep feeling his hand over my mouth and his hot breath in my ear. I keep hearing those words—those nasty words no grown man is supposed to say to a fifteen-year-old girl, especially when that girl is his niece. Those words that keep circling around and around and around in my head. I want them out. I want them out, but I can’t get them out, no matter how hard I try. I don’t want to feel anymore. I don’t want to remember anymore. I don’t want to cry anymore. I want to die.

 

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