Creston Village Retirement Home

          We stood silently as the elevator doors shut us in and I felt compelled to reveal something to her.  "Do you smoke weed?" I asked breaking the silence. She looked at me unexpectedly and then smiled. "I just moved here. I don't have any good connections." That was my chance. I suggested she come with me sometimes after work and get high with my boyfriend and his friend. I was getting bored of the threesome we'd become, spending every day driving the back roads to find a good spot to park and get high. I didn't have any friends of my own and I missed having a girlfriend to talk to. As we got off the elevator, I waved goodbye and headed the opposite direction. Steven and Steve were waiting for me in his car. Steve respectively got out of the front seat and let me sit up front with Steven. 
         I kissed him hello and told him excitedly that I think I'd found a new friend. I pointed her out as she walked across the street and he pointed out that she was hot. I confided that I thought she was a lesbian or bisexual in the very least and expressed my confidence in having a menage et toi. Although, truth be told, I did not want to share Steven with anyone. He was the hottest guy I'd ever seen and I didn't want him to get bored of  me. I spent the rest of the day not excited about my new job but excited with the concept of having a girlfriend. It had been 2 years since I had a female friend. My last 3 boyfriends, including Steven were all I had in the way of friends and I was ready for some girl talk.
       The next day, I greeted Andrea's smiling face with great enthusiasm, appreciating the fact that we were both wearing shades of purple eye shadow. I was even wearing purple capris that day although they weren't exactly regulation scrubs, no one mentioned it. It was a long day familurizing myself with the different wings of the retirement home, getting to know the residents and trying to get into a routine. The job itself could be downright disgusting, as a CNA I was doing all the stuff beneath the nurses such as changing clients clothing, helping them bathe and cleaning up their quarters, but Andrea and I formed a partnership and we worked well together making the day pass quickly.
        After our shift, she followed me to Steven's car and he drove the block to her apartment. When we walked in the door, I was assaulted with the sparseness and dinginess of her home. The living room consisted of 2 very old discolored couches and a small television perched on a shaky table. Only one wall decor hung and it was the well known art of the dogs playing poker game on a woven tapestry. I didn't appreciate it at the time, I just thought it was strange. Her brother sat on one couch, lanky and grungy but friendly. I liked him immediately. Steven I could see was uncomfortable in the environment where they smoked cigarettes freely in the home and walked barefoot across a greasy thread bare carpet I didn't want my shoes to make contact with. Little did I know it would become my home for the next two years.


  

Stupid Girl

      I'd never driven a stick before but I'd been in the car with people that had done it 1000 times. How hard could it be? I used my flashlight to look at the top handle of the gear shift to see the diagram imprinted on it. Reverse was down the the far right. I pumped the clutch like I'd seen my dad do and tried to pull the shifter to where reverse seemed to be. The old Toyota truck lurched forward and died. Again. And again. And by some miracle, it finally popped into reverse and I started backing slowly down the steep drive that bordered an even steeper embankment that dropped off 30 feet to a dry creek bed. I was so thankful for the full moon since I couldn't risk turning the lights on- it was a miracle my my dad and Connie hadn't woken to the loud grinding of the gears and the repeatedly starting/dying engine noise. Once I was far enough down to back into the community road, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. But as I started into what I hoped was 1st gear the engine died. I started the truck and played the game a little longer until finally I forced the gear and it begrudgingly moved ahead. I gave up on changing the gears, giving it one last knock into whay must have been third gear. I could stop and start in first gear, just not on any hills.

       I and careened down the road, feeling the tension between me and the gas peddle and turned up the radio to drown out the sound of the roaring engine. Once I got close to San Miguel, I hung a left; It was probably better to stay on the backroads. 15 minutes later, I was approaching  Paso Robles and a good song came on. I was singing along and reached down to turn up the volume but I couldn't see the radio knobs. Glancing up, I realized that the road teed off and I had to make a left or a right- THERE WASN'T ENOUGH TIME! I pulled the wheel to the left thinking I would have more road to cross but the turn was too sharp. The truck slid off the asphalt onto the dirt shoulder, through the tumbleweeds, ripping through a barbed wire fence, down a hill- Blackout. I awoke to the sound of the horn and the taste of dust and blood. As I pushed myself off the steering wheel, the horn ceased.   I sat there for a moment taking in the silence, the hazy glow the headlights cast upon the shattered windows. The truck was so old it didn't even have tempered glass.Then I heard a voice calling out to me. I was startled. I didn't know what to do. "You hurt?" Said the voice, closer now. I felt for the door handle and pushed the door open but it wouldn't go far as I was in the thick of wild brush. "Hold on now, I'll help you out," said the voice of an older man. He did help me out, led me to through the brambles and stickers with his flashlight, wordlessy I followed him, in shock towards his house. When I reached the porch, an older woman stood at the door and gave me a critical once over then beckoned me inside. She took me into the bathroom and told me to clean up. I looked into the mirror and listened as she talked of all the accidents that occurred right there, there should be signs up....I looked awful young, did I have a license? I told her yes and then she disappeared from the doorway. I stood looking at the mirror at my pale face with the dark makeup that looked so inappropriate on my young face in the bright bathroom light. I was amazed to see that one of the cuts across my forehead cut across my temple, I could have easily lost my eye. My head hurt. I touched the side of it and felt glass embedded in my scalp and matted blood in my hair.

I didn't have anytime to clean up because the next thing I knew I was being escorted  into an ambulance.  I'd never been in one but it didn't make a lasting impression. I was at the hospital soon and a nurse tended to my wounds as a sheriff asked me questions. I was so scared, I lied. I gave them a false name address and told the m my parents were out of town. I wasn't scared of the police though- it was Connie and my dad. To think of the the anger and disappointment on their faces reminded me of the time I'd snuck out on my dirt bike and drove it to town. They were still pissed about that- I guess it hadn't been but a few weeks. When they told me I could make some phone calls, I called my boyfriend Micheal, who was expecting me over an hour ago. I asked him if his mom would come get me but I forgot they didn't have a car. The hospital would call an ambulance for me if Joyce, his mom would agree to provide temporary guardianship over me. So that's what I did. I still had no idea what I was going to do but I figured I still had a few hours before daylight, before my dad walked outside to feed the horses and realize the car, and I , were gone.

           When I got to Micheal's, we went to his room but his mom called down the hall to keep the bedroom door open since she knew how strict my parents were and I tried to forget the whole mess for awhile; I hadn't seen him since the motorcycle incident and was dying to kiss him. The kissing of course led to some heavy duty making out and I let him touch my breasts but my thighs were hurting so bad. I pulled down my pants to identify the source and we were shocked to see the horrible bruising from knee to upper thigh. It must have been the steering wheel. Micheal eased my pain by pulling down my pants and kissing my legs, caressing them. And then he went a little farther and it seemed like the perfect time to give myself to him. Who knew when the next time I would see him would be? When my parents found out they were bound to lock me up for months. It was my first time and I didn't know what to expect but Micheal had been with at least 3 girls that I'd known of. He was gentle but aside from the usual source of pain during a girls' first time, my arm, my thighs, my head throbbed. My torso and upper half of my body was halfway in his closet and I could see the shadows in the hall from the television in the living room. It was definitely not romantic. I stopped him. I don't even think he "popped my cherry" because although there was pain, he hadn't penetrated me fully. I knew he was disappointed but he seemed to understand the discomfort I was in. We'd just put our clothes back in when we heard the knock at the front door. My parents were here.

Lovely Rita

We grew up together- kinda. Our parents really wanted us to be friends but we were so different from one another;  I remember she had a tea party in 4th grade and I went; it was lame. 3 other nerdy girls dressed up, toting teddy bears in one hand and birthday gifts in the other. We all sat about her front yard drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches on a beautiful spring day, listening to Bach or something comparably inappropriate for our age group. Rita, genuinely excited, shared her collection of the American Dolls with us proudly and I left  wondering what in the hell was wrong with her; We were 11 for crying out loud.  People our age weren't playing with dolls and they certainly weren't listing to classical music; we were playing video games and listening to pop and R&B.
After graduation from 8th grade, my parents invited her to come with us to see a movie and I almost died of embarrassment to be seen leaving school with her. The following year, we were in junior high and during winter break, her parents somehow talked my parents into bringing me along on their family road trip to San Jose De Cabo, Mexico. I was excited because I'd never been out of the country and I liked her parents although her younger sister was quite annoying. But something magical on that trip happened; Rita and I became friends. We read teen magazine quizes to each other during the many hours of travel and built a huge sandcastle on the sandy shores of a mexican beach. She pointed out that I had hairs growing out from a mole on my jaw bone that I had no idea existed and I trusted her to cut them off me with a knife. She definitely had her quirky moments, such as the time she bit off a cockroach head and chased me around the RV with it clamped between her teeth. But she was unique and fun. When we got back to school however, I had a difficult time integrating her into my social life. She was annoying to most and an ugly duckling type with her red hair, freckles and long nose. She cornered me one day crying and asked me why she couldn't be my best friend.  "Kelly's my bestfriend, you know that" I told her uncomfortably. Then she looked at me and said, "well how about if we don't call ourselves bestfriends then? How about something else? Bosom buddies?" We laughed. "Premium compatriots?" And although her vocabulary far exceeded mine, I agreed wholeheartedly because deep down, I knew that although I treated her more like a sidekick, she was my best friend. And I sure miss her.

Such a pretty name...

Imagine everyone's surprise when they ask me where it originated from and I tell them that my mom was on LSD while she went into labor with me and when I was finally delivered, all she would mumble was tennis-shoe and my dad thought it would be funny to call me that. Of course tennis-shoe being masculine had to be converted to a feminine form, so tennis-sha it was.

Actually, I've no idea where it came from but my name has always been of interest to people. First of all, people always assumed I was black if they'd heard my name in passing. And because I grew up in predominately white city of 30,000, my name stood out like a...black fly in cream soup. of course it was beneficial to introduce myself to a black person, I got many excited replies, "that's a down-ass hood name for a white girl", "I'll be damned, that's my sister's name" and white people would always say, "Isn't that the name of a country over in Africa?", or, "that sounds like a black name".

Better yet, I have the landscape to go with it. Although I may have blonde hair and blue eyes; I've got a bubble butt any rapper would be proud to write about in one of their booty-shakin' versus. And believe me, I heard all about it in school. 

At first, I didn't mind the kids would teasing me with songs like Sir-Mix-Alot's, "Baby Got Back" but then I learned that the mexican guys were calling me Nalgona. I had no idea what it meant so I asked my Spanish teacher and she asked me why. When I told her the guys were calling me that, she launched into a tirade and next thing I knew I was in the couseling office with my parents and everyone was talking about how people are teasing me for being "easy with a big butt". When that blew over, every whistle embarrassed me and every mention of anything related to butts made me self conscience. I bet my parents didn't see that coming. Although now that I'm in my 20's, I must admit two things; my butts not so perky anymore and I do love my name. At least I'm an original and no one ever has to call me Tenesha T or Tenesha W. I'm simply Tenesha. Tenesha the White Girl.