# 12 En Route to Midtown Train Station

(Observation of young woman talking on her cell phone while riding the bus)

Her beauty is found in her voice, her accent, but not in her words. Her drawl reveals a courtship between lovers from distant fences. A love affair between a Joe named Altanta and a madaam from Savannah. Or maybe she was simply from Augusta; a tinge of tea and a tinge of coffee. Each R that peddles off of her tongue conjures up images of Ma telling her story of how Big Ma and Big Daddy Dennis killed a rabbit and slayed their pet hog Sally for dinner on Easter Sunday when Ma and Uncle Keith went to visit them on their farm in Easton, Georgia. Her beauty, her innocence is most definitely in her grits and eggs drawl; if you stare and listen a bit longer you may even see a hint of beauty and innocence in her smile. A smile that reveals "I only look like my mother, but my nose is foreign to me and everyone else in my family." A smile conceived out of Almond Butter's desire for a pallate...a smile conceived out of her need to develop a safe haven to store the fact that her daddy never told her that her nose is beautiful because it looks like his.

Her voice...her smile, modestly trots innocence and beauty while her words sashay a wound that was sliced open while she was tightly nestled in her mother's womb. She heard her daddy offer to have someone kill her...she heard it...she hears it...she speaks it.