Dear Leticia Part 2

A couple posts back, I wrote a letter to a woman who I call Leticia. Because I think that's her actual name. If it isn't, well, we will call her "Leticia." This is part two, in case you were dying to know what happened to one of Harlem's finest citizens. The first one is here but it won't be hard to catch up. There's a 3rd and final installment that I'll post in a couple of days. Unless she gives me more banter to share, which is very feasible.

Dear Leticia,

So remember the other day when Simone said we had a building meeting coming up? Said it was "very important?"

You turned your face at me-maybe you meant it, or not, cause I do it too-when I asked about it. Like I should know what the fuck is up.

Whatever, as long as yall don't fuck up my shit.

Now that I think about it, does this meeting have to do with you goin on the landlord the other night? From what I heard, the kids were playing on the stoop and making noise, whatever they were doing, caused him to come upstairs. He wanted you to control them, and generally keep it down. Because it was a Sunday night, and he (and his wife) had a job to get to in the morning.

Instead of doing the respectable thing, and complying, because you're a tenant and own nothing, because our leases specifically say "no hanging on the stoop," because its not the first time you've been called out, you decide that being disrespectful makes more sense. That you'd set the example for your kids (oh but wait, imma come back to the kids), that a grown woman, a mother, handles business by yelling twice as loud, coming twice as hard, because your opinion meant more than his and you weren't going no damn where from that stoop.

That you would call him out his name because, maybe he cares about the building, about the environment that we live in. You accuse him of "snitching on 3C" because "everytime something happens bad in this bulding, everyone wanna blame 3C."

"It's not fair! It's not fuckin fair!" You grab your children, ready to go upstairs. They're accustomed to your behavior. You're right, its not fair. All you doing is sitting outside trying to catch a breeze and a break.. Its so much work to be a single mother, and when all you (and the kids) know is the block, that's where you stay--for business, pleasure, war, peace, in mind, in spirit. The conditions under which you mother aren't fair. These are not fair conditions which we live in. Middle of the road, mediocre. Not good, not bad.

Fair would probably be a step up, had you been read to as a child, raised with the norms of success, that doing well was more than getting your GED whenever you got around to it, that teenage pregnancy would be the norm, and that believing you were the shit while being told you weren't shit was the foreword of your self-esteem. That your children deserved the same fair conditions you had. Twenty someodd years ago, you were playing on these same steps, on these same streets. Was it unfair then?

Yes, for many more reasons, its not fucking fair. You right.

Xoxo, tdixonspeaks

P.s. Those "kids" of yours...why they call you grandma? Is that a nickname or something? How old ARE you anyway? Lemme find out you have daughter MY age. I know black don't crack, but damn. You got that "I'm young but the hood has aged me" look but seriously, I bet you're almost twice the age you look.