Chapter 1 "He loses because he never understood the game." -- Sister Souljah,Coldest Winter Ever Maya Gayle Hope stood in front of The Dandridge Pavilion and Convention Center on Three Birds Avenue squinting into the dim daylight. Strains of wayward poems in her head, windbeaten protest sign in her hands,"Stop police brutality now"on her lips; her life was held together by rubber bands. "Once upon a life when I was sexy / Connected to my sweet meitude. / What a metamorphosis is this? / Shade / Sweetness / Struggle." She was feeling the beginnings of a new poem's first kiss. They usually came at inconvenient times. There was nowhere to write it down.
"No justice, no peace!" She marched the sidewalk chanting like an evening chick gone wrong. A crumbling gray Thunderbird honked an ungentle greeting as it passed. A police car slowed, trying to determine whether she was a threat or a lone crazy. They decided lone crazy and kept it moving. A corn-colored '70s Beetle rumbled by and the backseaters, laughing, tossed neon orange soda, even their music cussing her: "I'm gonna rape, rape, rape the game / Make you cream, scream out my name / I'll put it in the front and bust out ya back. / Keep pounding till your momma have a heart attack." "Yo, Pippi Longstocking. Take your panties off your head!" the mohawked one shouted.
Dumb ass. Good men were slim pickings in Faustus. Sistas felt with the shortage it was time to start sharing, meaning that those freaks were a catch to somebody. No brotha she'd ever met, including her pop, knew how to be good to one woman much less multitask. While other brown girls strove for this year's version of Moschino ho or Versace hottie, Maya's gear of many layers was what a homeless person might sport if Goodwill shut down. In fact, that was where she shopped in the rare moments when saving the world created some net. Her student loans and Athena's credit card debt made for lean living. La glorious boheme it damn sure wasn't, but with her hazelnut eyes, and triple dark toffee skin she could sometimes get away with it.
Curry scarf, lemon coat, pomegranate-red corduroys and vanilla pearl earrings. Maya was viewing everything in terms of food these days. Matching was clearly not on her list of priorities. Her booty coulda made JLo blush and her saggin'-too-soon D+ cups definitely would have been helped by a bra. But you know dudes. They don't care. She caught her reflection in an old rain puddle. She was two years past the age when most people found looking bootleg acceptable.
Although thirty is the new twenty, you still need to have your stuff together. Folks blamed her hyper meta colors on her Trini background. She never mentioned that although her parents walked to Tobago for school holiday, the dirt under her childhood fingernails was Yankee through and through. Ohio's own. Yellow Springs born, Faustus bred. You know that concave spot in the small of your back that's the first to sweat when you're on the treadmill working it like you promised you would? Right above the booty, deliciously kissable when given half a chance but it usually just languishes as a repository for warm sweat? Ick. Yeah. Ick.
Faustus, Ohio, just east of Cincinnati, is exactly like that spot with a large dose of small town pride heaped on top. Three things about The Faust that nobody in the real world gives a damn to know: (1) Faustus is the home of The Midwest Game Fishing Museum, a fantastic place to get some geezer to buy you lunch; (2) the best spot anywhere to get your multiculti grub on is Fillet My Sole -- be sure you try the crawfish; and (3) hip-hop music is alive and thriving high in the 513 area code. Oblivious to only one out of three of these critical facts, Maya stood in the center of the sidewalk with her curly 'fro sweating out into plain ole naps under her pom-pommed pea-gree.