A Black Woman that Strutted her Stuff...
My aunt Tiny was a small brown skinned woman. She loved music, especially Billy Holidy. Tiny was a quiet woman, a good cook. Tiny was known for carrying an ice pick. Her weapon of choice, kept slid down against her thigh in the top of her stockings. Tiny was known to ice pick boyfriends when they got out of hand.
My mother told me that back in the thirties on the south side of Chicago there was a man raping women. It got so, women were afraid to leave their houses to go to work, or shop. Children wouldn't play on the front stoops. The police did not get involved if black women were victims. And so the rapist continued on his spree. As my mother tells it, Aunt Tiny decided one day she had enough...
That day Aint Tiny took her ice pick and went walking through Chicago, her intent was to find this man and kill him. We laughed when mama told this story. She described the diminuitive Tiny with the short tight haircut, that look on her face. Strolling the streets, asking in dives, searching alley ways until...she found him. Nobody knows how she did it. Nobody knows how she killed him, or how long it took to do so, or if she bore any wounds from the altercation. All they say is that she came strolling home that night like she'd been at a club, and went to washing and cooking like nothing happened, and the only thing she said was, "Negro women don't have to be scared of that nigga no mo." Here's to all the Aint' Tiny's in the world. Wild women with soul and heart, and a inner respect for justice of a kind we have forgotten. A woman walked the streets of Chicago in the ice and cold and took a rapist off the streets when neither the men or the Chicago cops couldn't. Here's to you aint Tiny were ever you are. I know you are holdin it down suga.
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