Post by Cartier on Mar 8, 2021 21:34:46 GMT -5
Cartier stands in the living room of her Brooklyn home, the same home she’s stayed in and shared with her mother and her lifelong friend CC since the very beginnings of her professional wrestling career. The mantel of the fireplace shows various accolades from across the various companies she’s worked with in the past - photographs of her winning battle royals, championships, tag tournaments, etc.
With a swipe of an arm, Cartier pushes all of her memorabilia off of the mantel and onto the floor with a crash of breaking picture frames. Above the fireplace nothing is left other than the velvet painting of a Black Last Supper, something that has hung there for Cartier’s entire life. The glass encasing the painting itself reflects the low light from a living room window, filtering the sun as it peeks from between the window frame and the cheap vinyl shade pulled down over it and focusing the beam into a projector onto the glass. There Cartier sees herself as she stands before the painting, her own visage reflected over the center of the piece.
Cartier’s face looks back at her from the Last Supper, encapsulating Jesus Christ and his Apostles. She smiles slightly, caressing the Revo1 World Championship draped over her shoulder like a newborn.
“This is where we was always meant to be. I got a calm that’s fell over me since I heard that final bell at Allegiance last week. The rage I been feelin’ subsided just a bit, like a tide pullin’ away from the shoreline… still there, still a force of nature, but less pressin’ an’ less immediate. I got what I came for, exactly the way I always knew would happen. I showed up to Revo an’ knocked the door off its damn hinges. Not a single one on one loss to speak of, an’ I went right through every name this place built up in the last six months. Ginger Snaps left the damn company. Amelia Hearts still cryin’ into her diary. An’ now, Miles A. Way is a FORMER champion thanks to back to back losses to yours truly, the Black Madonna.”
Cartier adjusts the belt on her shoulder, running her fingers across the golden face as it glints and reflects the slightest hints of sunlight from its surface.
“Revo1 is just the beginning… we’ll be makin’ this world blacker by the minute… no one to stop us except…”
Loud laughter sounds from outside Cartier’s living room window, causing her to turn her head and break the spell she seemed to have cast over herself.
She sighs and moves toward her front door.
“... our damn selves.”
Dropping her arm to her side, still dangling the Revo1 belt in her hand, Cartier swings her front door open and sees the group of young black kids playing on her stoop. Nothing too strange for this neighborhood. The kids usually found some porch or another that none of their mothers could keep an eye on them at.
These kids were dropping dominoes on the top step, slamming them down with vigor and taking dollar bills from each other as the games were won and lost.
When the door opens wide and Cartier steps out, the kids scatter a bit, but they don’t completely run off. She kicks the dominoes off of her stairs at them, which gets them cussing.
“Shit Auntie Cartier why you gotta kick that shit like that!”
One of the older looking boys grumbles, grabbing his winnings and stuffing them into his pockets.
“If I was y’all fuckin’ auntie I’d make sure y’all each got a ass whippin’ that you felt ‘til next week, bet on that. You kids out here actin’ the way people expect you to act. Like monkeys in a damn zoo flingin’ y’all shit around just because nobody expects no better from you.”
“I’m tryin’ to make this bread.”
“You tryin’ to get sent to fuckin’ juvie like every other little brown boy up an’ down this block. You think these po-lice give a damn that you ten or twelve years old? They see you they see a threat. They see someone who needs to get tazed or worse. You think they looked at Tamir Rice an’ saw a child?”
“Who?”
“God damn… sit down. Sit.”
Two of the younger kids look at each other and then the older boy. The older boy shrugs and moves closer to the stoop, sitting down on the missile step. Seeing him, the younger ones gather nearer.
“You got to look around this place. You got to catch people off guard. Live like you ain’t got bars on a cage surroundin’ you, because believe you me, these Pumpkin Spice prettyboys an’ girls that’s moved into our neighborhoods these past few years want nothin’ more than for all y’all to trip over y’alls own dicks an’ end up in jail. It’s a cycle. They keep you poor so they can say you ain’t worth the trouble. They point at your failure as evidence to not try. But look at them. Look. Look right now across the street…”
Cartier points down the block, where a hipster looking white man is making his way through the area. His eyes dart back and forth and when he sees Cartier and the boys looking at him he gets noticeably nervous, eventually crossing to the other side of the road.
“You seen that? That’s fear. Fear is the most dangerous emotion, y’all, because it kills everyone on both sides of the fence. He fears us, an’ so he sits back an’ looks the other way while the system fucks us. He turns little boys like y’all into convicts, an’ he turns y’all into what it is he was afraid of to begin wit’ in the first damn place. I can’t tell y’all how many kids I knew that ended up behind bars before they was even old enough to drink. Went in just confused an’ tryin’ to survive but by the time they got out they was dangerous. Like animals back in a corner. That’s what a white man’s fear does to black children.”
The kids stare up at Cartier, and they continue to watch as the man disappears around a corner.
“But here’s the flipside…”
She points at the man as he looks back at them again, giving one last glance over his shoulder.
“Their fear is a weapon used against us, but it’s also empowerment. You just gotta be proactive. Smart. Because although what they think they so afraid of is some thug muggin’ ‘em up in the streets, what really terrifies ‘em all is the thought that someday they might not be able to hold us back wit’ nothin’ more than accusations an’ nervousness. You get educated. You work hard. You succeed. You make money. Then you end up bein’ the ones movin’ on up into they neighborhoods an’ buyin’ up the houses they couldn’t afford. You turn those tables. An’ when you see ‘em walkin’ towards you on the street? Then you cross the road on them. You make them feel like they less than. You show them that they the ones who people worry about, because they the desperate, the poor, the hungry. You make THEM live in the projects. You make THEM get food stamps. You feel me? Because that’s victory. That’s more body count than any gang bangin’ can ever get you. That’s more dollars than playin’ bones on a stoop ever gonna win you. You got to go play THAT game, the white man’s game, an’ you got to WIN.”
The older boy shakes his head, looking at Cartier with a furrowed brow as she stands above them all, her hands planted against her hips.
“Man, look Auntie… we just kids out here. We can’t do shit.”
A flash of anger crosses Cartier’s face as she kneels down and holds her title belt in the child’s face.
“Don’t you ever talk that nonsense, boy. You hear me? MLK changed the world but he did it wit’ the help of a bunch of schoolkids in Alabama. They the ones who locked arms an’ stood in the spray of them hoses to make a change. I started dreamin’ of holdin’ a World Championship when I was your age… you think I’d be holdin’ this gold in my hand right now today if I thought the way you do? That I had no chance? No hope? I worked hard my whole life to be more than some neighborhood kid flippin’ dominoes on the porch. They told me I was gonna be a stripper or a hooker or a crackhead. They told me I wasn’t gonna graduate. That I was gonna sell drugs an’ go to prison. But I told them I was gonna be a champion.”
She looks at the belt herself, seeing her reflection faintly in the metal just as she had in the glass of the painting inside.
“I take the disrespect these companies give me an’ I turn it back on them times ten. Revo thought they could shut me down by throwin’ me in the ring wit’ their champion an’ havin’ him close the door on me… they didn’t expect me to flip the script an’ earn that shot. They certainly didn’t expect lightnin’ to strike twice, for their golden calf, their little white poster boy, to get turned upside down the way he did two times in a row. But now I’m standin’ here wit’ this gold. I’m the Revo1 Champion. An’ I ain’t gonna insult after insult keep me from bein’ the best. They got me in the ring wit’ ‘Jojo the special needs chickenhead’ this week, you know that? Some brand new off the street joke. Never done a thing. Never earned Revo a DIME, but he’s in the ring wit’ the champion. Meanwhile, the main event? Some fake titted blue eyed bottle blonde bitch. This is what we got to do. This is what we got to put up wit’. 24/7/365, we got to not only earn what’s rightfully ours, but we got to keep earnin’ it an’ keep earnin’ it while other people who fit the pretty picture they want on the poster get handed our glow.”
She snickers, standing back up.
“But that’s alright though. Bring on the dancin’ fuck. Bring on the next Amelia Hearts or Anya Coyle or Chelsea LeClair. Keep forcin’ these people up into my spot an’ watch ‘em keep gettin’ sent home limpin’ an’ cryin’. This week it’s Jojo, but it could be any one of ‘em. Revo1 belongs to ME, not because I had it handed to me, but because I walked into that motherfucker an’ I TOOK it.”
The boys look uneasy and they start to wander off as Cartier looks out over them. As they leave, she grins wide and holds her arms out to her side, once again feeling the beat of drums in her veins. She dances barefoot on her stoop with her title belt gleaming in the sun.
“Children, your Auntie Cartier, Champion of the World, wants you to live wit’ your head inside the lion’s mouth… because only by fillin’ up the predators until they split down the sides an’ choke on you will you ever find yourselves on the other side of the bars they built between us. This title is for US. And you are ME. I am y’all’s mother goddess, an’ Revo… they about to fuckin’ open wide.”
Cartier turns and heads back inside, slamming the door shut behind her. There’s no sound of a deadbolt turning, though, and behind that door Cartier is as coiled as a snake, praying for someone to try and take what belongs to her.