Sister Souljah - Life After Death

I touched my hair. Stroking it was calming to me. It had grown back nicely. When I lifted my hand to stroke other strands, the hair I had been stroking fell out. Some was in my hand. Some was slowly cascading to the floor of the booth. I was looking down at my feet where the hair fell. As I looked down, more strands are appearing on my feet in clumps. I looked up and my hair was shedding. I touched it. My touch seemed to cause the shedding to increase. I placed both hands on my head and tried to press down and hold on to the hair that remained. I stood there for what seemed like hours, holding the remaining patches of hair. When I let go out of pure exhaustion, all of my remaining hair fell to the floor. “What the fuck!” I screamed at my reflection. I was bald. I was bald like how Brooklyn Momma turned bald as she changed into Crackhead Momma. “Momma shaved her hair off herself!” I hollered at the bald reflection that was also hollering. I yelled at my own voice that had not spoken in a long while. “Momma made the choice to shave her head. She wanted to look like Grace Jones! So what the fuck is this? I did not will for this. I did not ask to be bald. Why the fuck would I do that? Even Momma looked terrible after she made that move,” I shouted. But there was no reply. Me and my reflection still looked exactly the same, bald. The lights stayed on, even though I realized I had been cursing. But I was not cursing and mixing curses with sacred words like Bomber Girl warned me not to do. Besides, I was talking to myself. So who cared if I was cursing my damn self out?

Suddenly, my face darkened. I pushed myself closer to the mirror. Had someone dimmed the lights in here? I looked around. No, the lights were still the same. I returned my gaze to the mirror. My face had darkened another few shades. It wasn’t pretty dark, like the color of the beautiful black skin of Midnight. It was like ashy dark. I started to try and rub it off. Thought maybe there were some invisible bugs like the ones from the Last Stop Before the Drop attacking my look. But my blackening face didn’t rub off like ash or soil would. It didn’t feel like a rash, either. When I pulled my darkened face back, I saw that where I had been rubbing and touching my face now had marks even blacker than my darkened skin. “What the fuck is this?” I shouted. Then the black marks cracked and opened somehow. Inside there was red. “Oh my fucking God. Why are you doing this. This is bullshit,” I screamed impulsively. My mouth began hurting. I covered it with my palm. It did not help ease the pain. When I removed my hand, a few of my teeth were inside of my palm and the others began falling out and hitting the floor of the booth like spilled raw rice or beans. I started crying furiously. Not a whimper. It was the cry of the whipped mixed with intense anger, no agony. My gums were pulsating. “Fuck it! I don’t need teeth. I don’t eat nothing down here anyway!” I shouted. I began feeling cold. I touched my shoulders and hugged myself. When I did, I felt that the skin on my shoulders and my arms as I moved my hands downward was filled with those open wounds. They felt like the wounds on my face. I realized that wherever I placed my own touch, some horrible ugliness would happen in that same body part. I was like, What kind of shit is this? “I can’t even touch myself now?” I screamed. “Is touching myself a sin? You are too much. You want too much. Farting is a sin. Touching myself is a sin. This is not Mercy. This is bullshit. You are the goddamn liar. You are way worser than Shayton. At least he was fun while it lasted. At least he turns people into animals. I’d rather be a serpent, a dog, or even a rat!” I said screaming and crying. But my tears made the wounds on my face burn. I hate burning , I reminded myself. Calm down, I reminded myself. When I went to wipe my own tears, I felt fur against my face. When I looked at my reflection, my hand was black. My nails were long and black. I shouted. It was not words. It was a scream coming from deep in my gut, a roar.

“It’s all fucked up now! You fucked up my look! You fucked up my currency! It doesn’t even matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.” I tried to keep talking and screaming at the horrible reflection that is me. I couldn’t. My tongue was in the process of growing longer and longer. It blocked me from speaking. Sounded like I talk with a lisp. It soon grew long enough to sit on my left titty. It turned colors, from pink to purple to black. Now I was officially scared of my own self. The floor beneath spun me in a 180 away from my own reflection. I was Yeah, I don’t need no goddamn mirror. I don’t need any damned thing. I don’t worship Allah. I definitely don’t love Allah. I never did! The lights in the booth turned off. The wall screen flashed on. When it did, I told myself in my own mind without a voice of my own, “I’m not going to watch anymore.” I tried to move my eyes away, but they were locked in the direction of the screen. I tried to move my head. Both my head and neck were locked, like a paralyzed person. On the screen close-up was me, riding in Dat Nigga’s whip. I opened my window and threw the Holy Quran out into the darkness.

“ Yeah that was me! I threw out that ridiculous big-ass book. So what. I don’t give a flying fuck!” The floor beneath me opened up. I was sucked through the floor by a powerful heated vacuum. It was not the thrill of the roller coaster. It was not the high or soaring feeling I had while my hand was being held by Young Drummer. It wasn’t like the people who I had seen enjoying hang gliding on the TV. It was a dangerous, endless heated falling—maybe like being trapped alive in an exploded airplane and on fire the whole way down. A shocking, terrifying drop with no warning and no bungee cord to rebound. No parachute to open up. No net to catch me. No, I was not simply falling. I was being thrown and slammed and forced down. I could feel that it was intentional, awfully mean, and a forceful, painful, punishing fall.

33.

“Have you seen the script?” the showrunner asked me.

“I received it. I didn’t read it, though,” I said at the same time as I glanced towards the trash bin where I had thrown the script. She followed my eyes. Her facial reaction revealed that she saw it there.

“This is supposed to be a reality show. So, I’m gonna keep it natural,” I said calmly.

“Natural will only work for you, Winter, for several reasons. First of all, because you’re the star. Second of all, because your beauty, coupled with your mysterious life, will captivate the viewers and keep them from reaching for the remote. Lastly, because this is your first appearance during season one, and it’s the season finale at the same time,” she explained in a desperate tone.

“Exactly.” My one-word response.

“However, everybody else on the show needs to play off of you. So we need you to at least remain in the framework of the script,” she pleaded. I just looked at her. She knew that meant to get out. She was standing in my private V.I.P. greenroom, which was filled with welcome-back bouquets of red roses, congratulatory vases of white calla lilies, and clay-potted blue morning glories. No matter how stunning my surroundings are, inside of me my memory is demanding my attention and always reminding me. Right now, my memory was showing me images of the wisteria trees, the willow trees, the blue jacarandas. I had never heard of any of those trees before my death. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.

“Are you hearing me?” The showrunner politely interrupted my thoughts. She had pulled the script pages from the trash and placed them on the countertop in front of me. I didn’t acknowledge. She left.

I know that I have the top reality show being viewed by millions across the globe. I know that I broke all records by being the star of the top reality show and the star of the top show period. We had even outdistanced scripted shows and sitcoms in terms of the numbers of people viewing my show in America and all around the world. Moreover, we had done something unplanned, unexpected, completely original and unique. We claimed the top slot without the star, that’s me, ever saying even one word or making any live appearances on her own show. Elisha said even a genius could never have conceived such an idea. At that time, I wasn’t sure if he was bigging himself up, since he was the one who decided to move forward with the show even after my being shot dead. But later he clarified his statement saying that the whole show was a “Godsend.” That led me to asking him, “Since the show is already in the top slot, and there’s only the finale remaining, why should I appear? It might be more powerful to end the season without me. Let me debut on the first show of season two.”