Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / In da field

Who is Deborjha? How have I come to this point in my life? What has led me to occupy this particular electronic niche?

I look back now on my formative years through the healing filter of great distance. I was a university brat, having tagged along with my parents as they quenched their insatiable hunger for knowledge. The result of this immersion in adult circles has been a lifelong tendancy to challenge "accepted fact," to analyze, to critique, to debate. The enviroments of my childhood were rich and varied:

the housing projects in Southwest Washington DC, where the rat who lived in the wall behind the stove was my father's mortal enemy; from which my mother would emerge in a pony tail and saddle oxfords in order to fool the bus drivers into accepting her school tokens as she took two buses and a street car to Howard University; where I captured lightening bugs in a jar and patiently waited for them to turn into diamond rings overnight; where my picture appeared on the front page of the Washington Star, integration's local poster child with lips pursed over a dry water fountain cut off for fear of "colored taint."

the stilt houses of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I never, ever saw any faces that weren't black; where frogs and snakes fell through the thick humid air from trees; where late at night you could hear the crocodiles mooing in the river; where my father snatched me back from a water fountain downtown, with a glaze in his eyes; where my mother so writhed in rage at (who is this man Jim Crow? I thought then) that Daddy sent us away to California to save her Michigan born and raised life.

the adobe and wood house in the Montecito "suburb" of Santa Barbara California (a return to my birthplace), nestled in the coastal mountains overlooking the city; where the only other brown faces I saw belonged to the Mexican Indian children adopted by our "landlords," my surrogate grandparents; where I swam naked in a pool made of concrete and wine bottles lined by guava bushes (this before nude children were sexualized into perpetual cover of clothing by the media); where I discovered that mexicans were niggers too; where doors were never locked and children roamed like grazing goats from one home to the next.

the apartment on the "wrong" side of Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica California, where I learned that bricks tied with "nigger go home" notes weren't only lobbed through windows in The South; where I received my most spectacular ass-whippings sparked by my most spectacular acts of misbehavior; where the white girls in my scout troop couldn't attend meetings in the houses of the colored girls who lived on the "right" side of pico Boulevard; where I wrote my first book, "The Adventures of Rum, The Dog" and helped my mother raise laboratory rats because we needed the extra money; where I would lie on the sidewalk for hours looking at the sky after they finally discovered that I was as blind as a bat and got me some glasses.

the brick house in Washington DC, where I strugged with adolescent angst; from which I emerged into a world containing more black folks than I had ever seen in my life; where I was teased about sounding like a "white girl" until I adjusted my intonations; where I at long last had black teachers; where I fell in love too many times to count; where I realized that my father couldn't cook much more than fish sticks, mini-pizzas, pot pies (my mother was a full time medical student and full time employee somewhere)...and cup cakes with chocolate chips, raisins, walnuts and cream cheese frosting.

I got married straight out of that brick house in DC, thinking that I was escaping repressive parents. In actuality, I was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, exchanging a set of elders who demanded accountability to a man who just demanded. Both of us were too young, too naive and too coddled to successfully negotiate the rigors of married life. It lasted long enough only to produce two marvelous children - three years.

In a fashion that I believe was not atypical of my generation, I embarked on a long run of extended adolescence: working just enough to make ends meet, growing up with my children, partying, smoking weed (the only mature part being that my children did not know it) and depending on my father to bail me out of sticky financial situations.

I finally "grew up" as a result of my father's death. It was then that I realized that there was absolutely no one I could not live without if I remained sane after his passing over. I attended Overeaters Anonymous meetings and, as I looked back on and dealt with the "savioristic" martyr I had allowed myself to become, I was finally able to shed the 100 pounds with which I had clothed myself in order to insulate myself from reality. And I am so happy to be on the "other side" now.