CHAPTER ONE:
GALE
It’s a terrible thing to be a woman.
I’m
not talking about the pain of bearing children, menstruation, or menopause, not biological misery. Nor do I speak of
the psychological, the mental fallout of carrying the burden of woman-ness. I refer you to the secondary meaning of
the word, which is “extremely formidable,” terrible with a capital “T” as in a Terrible storm.
And just why is it Terrible? Because some time ago, we women bought a bill of goods about
ourselves, a big steamy pile with a pretty red bow on it.
Someone
told us we were equal to men.
This notion is nonsense.
Men and women are too different for that kind of comparison. It’s like apples and orange elephants.
Women are equal to other women and men to other men. As to a comparison between men and women, there is only one, which
holds water: We are their emotional superiors. What we lack in upper body strength we more than make up for in heart.
And if hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, there is something worse: a woman freed from the
fallacy of male equality. This is a force of nature, an intellectual and emotional Superwoman capable of bringing the
world to its knees with awesome and frightening consequences.
So,
it’s a terrible thing to be a woman.
Because a woman
is a Terrible thing.
My name is Gale White and
I readily admit that I’m too much sometimes. Too loud, too cute and too damned smart for my own good. In
this story, I will say some things that are mean, nasty and just plain evil. And I know it’s gonna get me in trouble
with a lot of people. But I learned a long time ago that no good ever comes without pain and struggle. So, if
I must pay a price for telling this tale, then so be it.
My
mother and her friends used to play bid whist each week and discus things like this. Sometimes they played four-handed
with partners or three handed bid called Three, Five Nine.
In
these games, the women dispensed knowledge, empowered each other and ripped each other to pieces. I became a little
more of a woman each week at those card games.
Also
in the card game there was a special suit of card called a “trick” each game that won out over every other suit.
(In some places it’s called a trump) And when a player played it, she’d slam that trick on the table and show
her power at that moment.
The metaphor was evident
to me. A woman had to play her hand in life wisely and when you got a trick you had to slam it down with power and majesty,
take the win and move on.
Now before I get to my tale,
I want you to know that all the names here are made up and while the story is real, I’m fudging a lot on the people
and places to protect the innocent. I don’t need any more trouble, you know, not after everything that went down.
We live in a big city with a large black population. You might catch a reference that will
make you think of Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit or D.C., maybe L.A., Dallas or even Oakland. It won’t matter in a
while. If it happened in one city, it’s happened in all of them.
At
the time all of this began, we were all happy to be dating the men in our lives. And like any adventure, it began
with a few simple words.