“What I done, I did in self-defense. I have nothing against anyone. I am ready to meet my God.”

Once upon a time, a certain pretty girl with good teeth, swathed in the warm and glowing aura of celebrity, bore the slap heard around the world.  There was righteous sympathy for her and equally righteous disdain for her attacker.  But what if she had been a bad girl, but perfectly good at it?  What if her eyes had been brown and not green, skin blacker, teeth the color of           or worry?

There is a road like a large footpath between lush, whispering trees.  A road of blood-orange dirt, a hardened mound lifted like a freshly dug grave.  Down this road lives a whore.  She was not always a whore. Our true selves are always god-like and artistic.  She wanted to sing, too—sang in the church as a child all the time.  Grew up in the church.  But that was a long time ago.  Times are bad.  The wages of cooking and cleaning for whites could pay her fare North to a life as a nightclub singer, but how long could that take?

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