Ray BEN Studevent - Black Sheep: A Blue-Eyed Negro Speaks of Abandonment, Belonging, Racism, and Redemption

Black Sheep

A Blue-Eyed Negro Speaks of Abandonment, Belonging, Racism, and Redemption

Ray BEN Studevent

Afterword by My Haley, PhD

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available through the Library of Congress

2021 Ray Studevent

ISBN-13: 978-07573-2381-2 (Paperback)

ISBN-10: 07573-2381-2 (Paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-07573-2382-9 (ePub)

ISBN-10: 07573-2382-0 (ePub)

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Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.

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Boca Raton, FL 33432-1653

Cover and interior design by Larissa Hise Henoch

Formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

To Lemell Studevent

M y angry Southern Black mother, Lemell Mell Studevent, was madat God, Jesus, and everyone who was ever born since Adam and Eve.

My heavenly and loving Father, I need to speak with you and your son Jesus immediately, she uttered late one night when she thought I was fast asleep in my bed.

Im only asking one favor, please give me the strength of Samson not to kill this little blue-eyed rascal that youve sent into my life.

Momma was beside herself after I was caught throwing eggs at passing cars in our neighborhood. She hated whooping me because she knew I had been through a horrific first few years of my life. When she learned that one of the eggs I lobbed hit a neighbor in the face through the drivers side window, she had no recourse but to grab the thick leather belt she kept for occasions like these.

The thrashing turned my milky white bottom a bright, crimson red, but the pain in my posterior didnt take the starch out of me. I was still hyper and full of mischief, so I secretly placed my sisters reel-to-reel recorder under Mommas bed. I wanted to hear what she was whispering in her nightly prayers. I always felt a special tingle in my wounded soul whenever she mentioned me. Of course, most of the time she was praying for the good Lord to help her maintain her sanity and not kill me for driving up her blood pressure. Black folks seem to have a special relationship between that last nerve and high blood pressure. I believe its caused by the intimate relationship we have with pigsspecifically pork.

When I was sure she was asleep, I snuck into her room, crawled under the bed, and retrieved the recorder. Its a good thing Momma never found out. After all, the conversation she had with the good Lord and his son was private and certainly not for my ears.

That night, I also discovered a piece of my mothers writing:

I once read that blue eyes were a mutation gone bad, and they are better equipped to see in the dark. I dont know if thats true, but a bunch of folks with blue eyes seem to have so much darkness inside of them. The first time I looked into a pair of them steel-cold blue eyes, I nearly peed in my panties. The Klan had strung up my cousin Jesse from a tree, and three hooded Klansmen stared at me. I saw nothing but pure evil.

Sometimes, the evil in the world makes me question the existence of God, but all I gotta do is raise my tired eyes toward that beautiful blue sky above or look at a picture of a royal blue ocean. Growing up in Mississippi, when the teacher asked the class how many of us liked the color blue, nearly all us nappy-headed country girls hands flew up, including mine. My pencil-thin, ashy arm nearly came right out my shoulder.

When coloring, you had to guard the blue crayon with your lifebecause it would surely disappear the minute you turned your back. My favorite gospel song back in the day was Feelin Blue, which our church choir sang every Sunday. We even had our own music, known as the Mississippi blues. Back then, I was too young to know about the blues, but like all us Southern Black folk I would soon learn the true meaning of the word. It kinda bothered me that folks chose my favorite color to describe how they felt.

As I grew older, I wanted to disown blue as my favorite color because I believed that blue-eyed, white-skinned men hated us Negroes with a passion. There was proof all around. Years ago, a White man named John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed us colored folks. In the 1900s, blue-eyed, white-skinned men went crazy. That Hitler fella killed all them Jews and then Lee Harvey Oswald murdered our next Great White Hope, President Kennedy. Then Byron de la Beckwith killed civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Next, and the most painful, was that sinful joker named James Earl Ray who killed the greatest Black man who ever lived, Martin Luther King. It sure does seem to me that blue-eyed, white-skinned men get a whole lotta pleasure killing Black folk.

Now heres a funny thing about Black folks and blue eyes. Every Black family I have ever known has the same painting of a white-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus mounted on a wall in their house. Black folks like to believe that Jesus picture makes a house feel like a home. God tells us to forgive our enemies, but these crazy blue-eyed men make it really hard for us Black folk to turn the other cheek. I pray on my knees every night for the strength to forgive these evil people.

My grandmother, a former slave, always said that the Lord works in mysterious ways in order to help us overcome our weaknesses. Her words proved to be true when one day, the good Lord saw fit to answermy prayers by way of a lil five-year-old, blue-eyed devil he sent to me.

My life was forever changed.

Fast forward forty-five years.

The woman who prayed for the Lord to keep her from killing me has Alzheimers. Ironically, Ive become the one who feels the need to converse with God, to plead with him to give Momma her memory back, at least long enough for her to recognize me when I enter her room at the Alzheimers facility. If she doesnt remember me, it will feel like Ive never been born. She was one of the first people to make me feel like I was worth a darn. If Im gone from her memory, Im a nonentity, a nobody.

I still cant believe that this tough-as-nails, God-fearing woman has Alzheimers. Shes eighty-seven but has always seemed invincible, immune to any and all diseases and afflictions known to mankind. She smoked for nearly fifty years and not once did Mr. Cancer try to ruin the retirement she earned after working more than four decades for the government.

Full of self-doubt and denial about what awaits me, I board a plane in California on a rain-soaked evening to fly across the country to my hometown of Washington, DC, determined to prove to my siblings that Momma will tearfully embrace me with her weathered hands the moment she sees my blue eyes.

As the plane descends over the worlds most powerful city, the white marble monuments shimmer in bright floodlights. I recognize the once blood-soaked streets, where the divide between the haves and the have-nots is marked by a bridge or body of water. I locate the Anacostia River and look southeast. I recall the guys in my old neighborhood who were murdered thereJunebug, Bo, Ricky, and Beeftheir bodies riddled with bullets. Unlike many of my childhood friends, I was fortunate to escape. The woman I am going to see, Lemell Studevent, was responsible for me making it out of that concrete jungle in one piece.