The Day My Mama Killed My Monkey

Every Friday at noon I have a standing appointment to see my therapist, but this past Friday was way more difficult than most.  This past Friday was the anniversary of the day my mama killed my monkey.

Although no one would ever guess now; when I was a child, I was actually clinically diagnosed as being developmentally retarded.  I even had to wear a special helmet until I was ten.  Because of my severe learning disability, when I was seven years old my doctors assigned me my very own specially trained monkey.  Yep, some people have guide dogs; I had what they called a “guide monkey”.  The philosophy was that, since monkeys are naturally so much more smarter than retarded kids; they figured that by mimicking the monkey on a daily basis, they could help us with our basic cognitive skills.  It was an extremely revolutionary program at the time.  For the life of me, I don’t know why it didn’t catch on.  My little monkey’s name was Bobo, and he was the best damn monkey any mentally disabled kid could ever ask for.  In no time at all, Bobo and I became fast best friends.  My grandmother even made us both little matching outfits for every day of the week.  We did everything together too.  We played together; ate together; bathed together; and at night we even prayed together.  Bobo had the best little sense of humor too.  I remember he used to do this little thing where he would pee in the bed, and then blame it on me in the morning; and we would just fall on our backs laughing at that for hours.  With the exception of that big knock down drag out fight we once got into, over which Power Ranger could kick Superman’s ass; it was literally the happiest time of my life.  That is, until the day my mother went and ended it all.

Truthfully, my mother and Bobo never really got a long all that well.  If you ask me, she was always just really jealous of what we had.  As a result she would always try to keep Bobo locked in his cage, complaining he was “unruly”.  I will admit that Bobo could be a bit rambunctious at times, but he really didn’t mean anything by it.  That was just his way.  Unfortunately Bobo really didn’t help matters at all.  He knew that Mama didn’t like him, and being the big jokester he was; he would sometimes like to do funny little things just to push her buttons.  But just innocent little monkey stuff like; using her toothbrush in the morning, hiding dead mice inside her purse, or turning the water up as hot as it could go when she was in the shower.  His favorite thing to do was to wait good until Mama was on her way out the door for work, and then he’d suddenly run up and snatch her keys, and then shove them up his ass and run out the room.  Looking back, Mama lost a few good jobs behind that one.  But it was all just typical stuff you’d expect with a monkey.  What used to really get mama worked up, was when she would be in the kitchen cooking greens.  Bobo would hop up on the stove, and then stick his finger in the pot and taste them.  And everyone knows you can’t mess with a Black woman’s greens; but certainly that’s still no reason to kill a person.

For the record, I think there are some pets that Black people were just not meant to own.  Black folks like pets we can yell at and curse out when we get mad.  Take a dog for example.  If you yell at a dog, he’s going to stop whatever he’s doing instantly, and run out the room with his tail between his legs.  Try that with a cat and he’s going to just look at you like your crazy, then keep on doing whatever he’s doing.  Monkeys are the same way.  You can yell all you want at a monkey.  Not only is he going to keep doing what he’s doing; he may even yell back, and that doesn’t work to well for Black people.  Whenever Mama would get mad and yell at Bobo, he would just flip her the bird and then go upstairs and pee in her shoes.

The night of the big incident, Mama was already in a particularly bad mood.  As a result I had warned Bobo to just leave Mama alone.  But for some reason he was in an extremely silly mood that evening.  I remember I was upstairs sleeping in my room, and Mama was down in the kitchen having cocktails with her special friend Aunt Bruce, and that’s when it all happened.  Bobo used to have a tendency to like to show off sometimes in front of company.  So apparently, he thought it would be really funny to go strutting through the kitchen with Mama’s good house shoes on.  And that was when she completely lost it.  All of a sudden, I heard Mama scream at the top of her lunges, “Lawd…if you don’t get yo’ little monkey feet out my good house shoes!!!!!”, and then the sound of fighting: pots clanging, pictures falling off the wall, etc.  Panicked, I ran down to the kitchen to see what all the commotion was.  By then Mama had Bobo off the ground choking him with both hands.  I had never seen my mother like that.  With tears in my eyes I cried “No…Mama no!!!”  Mama’s special friend tried to stop her, but Mama had the strength of a mad woman that night.  Bobo tried his best to hang on; but he was no match for Mama.  I just remember seeing his little hairy legs flailing about, and his little monkey feet kicking out from under those house shoes.  Then all of a sudden they just stopped kicking, and the shoes slowly dropped to the floor.  I screamed for Bobo to “Stay away from the light!”, but obviously he didn’t hear me.  And that was when I must’ve blacked out.

When I woke up the next day I was in the emergency room.  I guess in all the excitement, I accidentally swallowed my tongue.  Apparently that’s pretty common with retarded kids.  And that was the last I ever saw of Bobo, or Aunt Bruce.  Believe it or not, still to this very day I break down crying whenever I see a picture of a little monkey or a pair of pink Isotoner slippers.

This post was for you Bobo.  I know you’re somewhere up in heaven right now helping little retarded kids learn.

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