Prophet?

“If you leave me, you will immediately die.”

What had I done? Why was he saying this? I’d been doing my best. Working to have faith, working to be obedient. Trying to believe. Eve had said that she trusted him because he quoted scripture. Reading the Bible, at least, was better than watching her screaming at the TV, urging her favorite boxers to kill each other.

I heard him shuffle his feet, turning away from me. “I’m hungry. Let’s …”

He did that strange twitch again, and again, his voice changed. Completely. He turned back to face me, a soft look in his eyes, as if an entirely different being were seeing through them.

“Lamb.”

Nothing made sense. Nothing had ever made sense, but maybe it was me. It must be me. Everyone in Woodbridge said so. I was … hard-headed. Didn’t give a damn. Smart but dumb. None of these things were true, but no one believed me, so why did it matter? I tried to obey, but every word I said was twisted, every thing I did, was wrong. No matter what. I wanted family, but no one believed me, no matter what I tried to say, or explain. And I always choked. The stares of disbelief, the shouts, the screams, the belt that was going to be for me, no matter what. And I certainly gave a damn. But no one else did. Not even when she held me over the stairs, pissed off because the belt was gone, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t stupid enough to touch that belt, let alone hide it somewhere. I knew who had, of course, but it was no use. Die being pitched down the stairs, or die out here. What was the difference? Three children? From my skinny body? Right.

“You will bear three.”

How did he do that? Maybe it was true. All I could do was stare, because this gentle voice would probably not last long. But what was going on?

“Thus saith the Lord. You will bear My prophet sons. Say not ‘I am too young’ for have I not known thee from the womb? Yea, truly I say unto thee, you two are one, and you shall obey your husband as the Church obeys me.”

Nothing made sense, but at least this was better. In this tongue, he would not hit me. I would not have to lie down with him. Even the pain went away, when he spoke like this, whoever he was. Whoever this gentle voice was. The only voice, since Grandma Marie, that had ever made me feel loved.

He twitched, again. Oh, no. Not that look. Maybe he’d leave me alone if I was busy.

“Um, I need to wash my hair.”

“You are lukewarm.”

“What? How am I-”

The slap had come out of nowhere. More of a shock than pain. I’d taken beatings that made a mere slap in the face look like cotton candy. But this was the first time by his hand. What had I said?

“Do not question me.”

When had I questioned him? I opened my mouth to ask what I had done wrong, but no sound would come out. I looked him in the eye. That was a mistake. I found myself on the ground before I saw anything.

Then, I could not breath. Something was pressing into my chest so hard that my lungs refused to move, my ribcage smashed into the ground:

“Never question me!”

This voice was different, but not that gentle voice that said I was safe, and not even the normal voice that told me to stay still, but a growl, that told me to hide, in silence, and play dead. Even the pain down there was starting to go away. Maybe I will finally die, here. It was better than bearing his children.

It had been months since I had a period, but that wasn’t new. I’d skipped for six months in a row, back in Oxon Hill, back when I’d been held over those stairs. After that, I’d been sent to stay with Eve, and my periods had started again, when she made me eat more meat. And I’d been taking the metro to my summer job. He’d offered to teach me calculus over the summer, and Eve liked him. Then, Dad had come back.

Eve said that I had to go back with them, next week. I had no one else to talk to, and he’d told me to pack a bag. Something about a school in Florida, and protecting me. I knew about shot records, but he told me to just do it, and don’t ask questions. Tell no one, because, who could I trust? The one who held me over the stairs, or the one who drank and smoked? Obviously not the grandmother who let her husband kiss me, and certainly not the whoring mother who had sent me there.

So really, who, but the Lord, should I obey? Eve considered him a friend of the family, now, and said that I should be obedient to scripture. So did he. And I obeyed. But it was never enough. I was never good enough. No matter how hard I tried to obey, no one believed me. And nothing ever made sense. No matter where I was. I’d learned from my great grandma Marie that adults were supposed to be good, but none of them were, not even the other old folks. She believed in the Lord, so I wanted to believe. But I never got to see grandma. But I could try to believe.

I heard footsteps, and looked up, but not far. I was too tired. “I’m not hungry.”

Then it happened again.

“I love you.”

Sometimes, he could seem so kind. Especially back before we’d left. Eve had told me that she and Dad had discussed my new friend, and that Dad called him a cradle robber, but she disagreed. She trusted him, as a religious man. I’d told him that Eve and Dad said I was too young to hang around with him, even for Calculus tutoring, but he’d promised me that I was safe, that my virginity was safe, and that he would get me into a good school where I would be safe from lecherous step-grandfathers, and no one would beat me for the sins of others. All I had to do was to have faith. And then, it had come. The Word.

“You are my wife.”

I had not known what to do, what to think. Like everything else in life, this made no sense. Maybe it wasn’t really happening. I knew I was too young to get married, and true to his word, a month had gone by, and I was still virgin. School had taken a detour because he had been asked to preach at several churches along the way.

Then, he had told them that we were married. By the Lord. I knew that someone must have spoken with him about it, because he told me. They disapproved. But he was the Lord’s prophet, and the Lord had given me to him to be his wife. Swallowed fingernail clippings, his version of a ceremony.

After that, he was always angry with me.

“I could love you if you were ten.”

My appetite left me again, as the pain down there started, right in step with the nausea. Again, it had been nearly six months since my last period. Everyone said I looked too thin, but was I pregnant? How would I know? At least it gained me favor in his eyes, and freedom from his appetites.

***

-Nia, writing to “bear witness” as Toni Morrison said is the Work of the Black woman writer, in the hope that no child ever suffers such things again. This is why I wrote the Do Better manual/ifesto…

The nine books our critics couldn't put down in May
By Kate Evans, Nicola Heath, Declan Fry, Rosie Ofori Ward, Daniel Herborn, and Ying-Di Yin

Sweet teen love, gay football stars, alien abductions and a murderous PhD student bent on revenge — this month's best new releases have it all.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-30/best-new-books-may-elizabeth-strout-francesca-albanese/106693732

#Books #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Author #Novel #Fiction #Autobiography #NonFiction #KateEvans #NicolaHeath #DeclanFry #RosieOforiWard #DanielHerborn # #YingDiYin

Bakersfield: The Early Return

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 28, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Before Dawn

We left Tucson before dawn.

We always left early when driving long distances. It was cooler and quieter. This time it was my mother driving, my sisters Geri and Lauren, me, a small square fish tank with guppies, and a cat whose name I no longer remember. My father was not with us. That tells me he was still working on Kwajalein.

The fish container was more reinforced bowl than aquarium. It sat in Geri’s lap. Somewhere between Tucson and Los Angeles, the rising sun poured through the car window. The water heated gradually. By the time we realized what was happening, the guppies were dead.

I remember the sunrise more than the fish.

Desert Light

I was four, not yet five, and I saw a desert sunrise unlike any I have seen since. Reds and oranges across a flat horizon. Silence and scale at the same time. It remains one of the clearest visual memories of my early childhood.

The cat became carsick and vomited in my lap. I reacted in kind. Somewhere inside that remarkable sunrise was a miserable cat, a crying boy, and a station wagon heading west.

That was our return to California.

A Project Family

We were not a family that planted roots.

We moved where contracts required — Tucson, Kwajalein, Bakersfield. Stability was provisional. Addresses changed.

My father was gone for extended stretches. Kwajalein Atoll. Defense work. Important work, as it was described. To a small child, the description did not matter. He was simply absent.

When he returned from one of those stretches in Bakersfield, I made a smart remark. I do not remember what I said. I remember being taken into a bedroom and beaten with a belt.

That was discipline as it functioned then. There was no discussion. You obeyed.

Years later, when I had children of my own, I repeated what I had been shown.

Patterns pass forward unless someone interrupts them.

'My Pressures: The Bizarrely True Story of Andy Serkis' by Andy Serkis, out November 2026

#AndySerkis #Autobiography #StarWars #FanthaTracks #andyserkis #mypressures #autobiography 

Andsy Serkis autobiography, coming late 2026.

Read the whole story at the below link:

https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/literature-art/my-pressures-the-bizarrely-true-story-of-andy-serkis-by-andy-serkis-out-november-2026/

Tucson: Lessons in Independence

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 21, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Too Young for Baseball

There was a city-run youth program of some kind — crafts, games, structured activity without the formal label of school. I was four, perhaps four and a half. Not enrolled in school. No preschool. My mother was not present that day.

I remember the announcement clearly:

“Time for baseball.”

The older children gathered. Two teenage camp leaders conferred briefly, then delivered their decision.

“You’re too young to learn baseball. You should go home.”

There was no modified role, no escort, no accommodation. Simply a dismissal.

I was apparently too young to learn baseball — but not too young to walk home alone across blocks and intersections.

So I walked.

I arrived safely. I never learned childhood baseball in Tucson. Years later, in Chicago, I would play 16-inch clincher softball through Awana — gloves unnecessary, the ball large and soft. It was enjoyable, but it was not the same beginning.

My father favored individual sports such as golf and auto racing. He disliked the way team sports credited one player for collective effort. Baseball never became central in our household.

It remained peripheral — and later, personal.

The BB Rifle

The early 1960s are often described as safer years. My experience complicates that narrative.

One afternoon, Geri and I walked to a small soft-serve stand on a main street. On the way back, we passed a pair of older boys. They watched us. We continued walking.

A sharp impact struck the back of my head.

One of them had fired a pump-action BB rifle.

I do not recall whether I dropped the ice cream cone. I remember crying as we walked home. My mother cleaned the welt and then went, with Geri, to the boy’s house.

His father was a county sheriff.

The conversation was direct. The rifle was taken away. Discipline followed. In that moment, authority functioned as intended.

The early 1960s were not without danger. They were simply managed differently.

The Apricot Tree

Across the street lived an older woman who guarded her apricot trees with vigilance. Pie tins hung in the branches as improvised alarms. She sat nearby with an air-pump BB rifle. When birds descended, she struck a tin with precise aim, and the metallic snap scattered them.

She allowed me to shoot as well.

I was too young for baseball, but apparently old enough to handle a BB rifle under supervision. That contradiction did not occur to me at the time.

Old Tucson

Old Tucson was a movie set converted into a tourist attraction. One ride simulated a haunted gold mine: rail cars, flashing lights, staged explosions. I was unprepared for it.

During the ride I panicked completely. When we emerged into daylight, I declared through tears that I had known God would save me. My sisters laughed.

Later that day I reached for my mother’s hand while crossing a street and grasped the hand of a stranger instead. Realizing the mistake, I ran forward until I found her.

We ended the outing in a saloon-style establishment where I first heard the word “sarsaparilla.” It meant root beer.

The Collapsed Lawn

One afternoon my mother set up a metal sprinkler near the carport and we went inside for a nap. When we returned outside, a large section of lawn had collapsed into a cavity beneath it.

Before city sewage, the house had used a septic tank. When the system was removed, the pit had not been properly filled. Boards had been laid across the opening and sod placed over them. The sprinkler softened the ground, the boards failed, and the lawn gave way.

The situation was repaired, but our time in Tucson was already nearing its end.

My father secured work with General Electric on Kwajalein Atoll, installing generating equipment for the missile test range. He departed first. Not long after, we packed and left Tucson by car, returning to Bakersfield.

The desert chapter concluded as the others had — with departure.

I am now 42 books into the year, and I am starting this one next. It has languished on the teetering tower that is my to be read pile for a few years now, but I always feel a level of trepidation when it comes to reading autobiographies: the author could turn out to be a self-centred egotist blowing their own trumpet or a boring fart with nothing of any actual substance to say. That said, I’m pretty sure that neither of those will turn out to be true for this particular hero of mine!

#CurrentlyReading #Goodreads #ReadingChallenge #Bibliophile #BookLovers #Bookworm #Autobiography #MadBadAndDangerousToKnow #RanulphFiennes #TBRpile #SirRanulphFiennes

Tucson: The House and the Desert

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 14, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

The House Near Davis–Monthan

By the time we settled in Tucson, my father’s work was tied to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base. The house was a typical post-war Southwest stucco structure — single story, compact, functional. In memory it was off-white with a green roof.

Inside details are incomplete. Kitchen to the left, living room to the right, hallway toward bedrooms that no longer hold clear images. I do not remember where I slept or whether I shared a room.

What remains is the exterior.

Lawn and Boundary

There was a small patch of grass in front and a white picket fence with a spring-loaded gate that snapped shut behind you. Beyond that fence, the desert began immediately. Not down the block — at the edge of the yard.

My father’s truck sat in a simple carport. One afternoon I dropped pieces of my plastic train set into the round stake holes in the truck bed and became convinced they were lost forever. When I told my mother I had dropped them “down the hole,” she imagined a hole in the yard and nearly panicked. Once she realized I meant the truck bed, she opened the tailgate and retrieved them.

Four-year-old logic operates differently.

The Boat in the Sand

Behind the house ran a long block wall. I walked along it often, scanning the sand beyond for anything of interest. One day I found the bottom half of a plastic bathtub boat lying on the desert surface. It was intact and unburied.

I brought it home.

Days or weeks later — time had little structure then — I found the top half in the same area. I checked to see if anyone was watching and carried it back as well. When the pieces snapped together, the boat was complete.

I never learned how it arrived there. For a child, explanation was less important than possession.

Food and Small Economies

If any food defines Tucson in my memory, it is Cheerios. Plain cereal, heavily sugared by my own hand. The milk turned gray from what settled at the bottom of the bowl. I scraped and ate that too.

Lunch was often tomato soup with bread or peanut butter and jelly. Dinner varied. I disliked lima beans and liver then and still do.

I collected cereal box tops to mail away for a model car kit. When it arrived, I realized I lacked the skill to assemble it. The older boy next door — perhaps eleven or twelve — built it for me after my mother spoke with his mother. Glue marks, mismatched seams, fingerprints in the plastic. It did not matter. It was finished.

He helped without obligation. That remained with me.