Black Superwoman's Planet

My name is Beatrice Harold. A five-foot-ten, brown-skinned, black-haired and pleasantly voluptuous ( and big-bottomed ) young Haitian-American woman living in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. Anyone looking at me would see an ordinary gal. A sweet-faced young lady with a permanently dreamy expression. I've been told my light brown eyes are naturally sleepy-looking. People make plenty of assumptions about me when we first meet. And they're wrong most of the time. You see, I'm far from ordinary. I've got super powers. I'm the vigilante known as the Avenging Angel. I fight crime. And I take no shit from anybody. That's how I roll.

It's hard to believe that I was just an ordinary chemistry student at UMass-Boston at the beginning of this year. A recent graduate of Brockton Community High School, I looked forward to starting my college career in my favorite town. Plenty of my Haitian, Jamaican, African-American, Cape Verdean and Hispanic friends from Brockton Community High School were attending Boston-area private schools like Bay State College, Gibbs College, Berklee College of Music and Emerson College. I chose UMass-Boston because of its large concentration of Black, Asian and Hispanic students. I like racial and ethnic diversity in American academia, thank you very much. If I wanted to go to a lily-white school, I would have gone to the University of Maine, which accepted me but I declined their offer.

I was working in the chemistry lab when I got zapped by this incredibly piece of machinery known as the Atom Scrambler. Basically, it scrambles your atoms in unpredictable ways. I was exposed to it purely by accident. It was supposed to kill me but instead, it changed me. I wouldn't realize it until a week later, though. Somehow, the Scrambler gave me the strength of ten to fifteen men, inhuman stamina and an accelerated healing ability. I was besides myself as these extraordinary powers became a part of my daily life. I saw the potential for greatness, and the danger as well. In the movies and comic books, every super-hero or super-heroine must prove themselves by taking on the forces of evil and battling injustice in a world gone mad.

I never thought anything like this would happen to me, though. I live in a pretty mundane world. My father, Bertrand Harold is a police officer in our hometown and my mother, Christine Joseph Harold is a Professor of Sociology at Boston University. My older brother Jerome attends a famous military school, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. We're a pretty normal family. We live in a nice two-story house in Brockton's West Side, not too far from the high school. I considered myself a pretty average gal. I've got a talent for chemistry. It's been an area of interest for me ever since my junior high days. Lots of people don't know what they want to do when they start college. For me, there never was any doubt. I wanted to be the first Haitian-American female to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. That's one of my goals. I didn't want to become a superhero or fight crime. I'm a pretty realistic and down-to-earth person, not one of those lofty dreamers you meet from time to time. I'm as realistic and grounded as they come. That's the kind of person my family raised me to be.

So when my abilities first manifested themselves, I sought out to find out as much about them as I could. I measured my blood pressure, body temperature, height and weight. I tested my blood for anomalies. And you know what? Everything registered as normal. That's the unsettling find. I was still the five-foot-ten, 230-pound, brown-skinned and dreamy-eyed Haitian chick I've always been. The boldest thing I've done in my life was trying out for the men's wrestling team at my old school. My parents didn't approve but they reluctantly signed the papers allowing me to compete. I was one of three females on the high school wrestling team. Wrestling was grueling, but wickedly fun at times. I lasted for one season, and it was okay. I won fifty six percent of my matches, which isn't bad for a first-year wrestler. I gave up athletics to focus on my schoolwork when my GPA slipped nearly one point due to my obsession with coed varsity wrestling. I wanted to get into a good school so I couldn't let my love of wrestling interfere with my dedication to academia. So I quit wrestling and once more became the Queen of the Nerds on campus.

Those days are vivid in my memory but they seem like a lifetime ago, considering all that's happened in my life. I tried to lead as normal a life as I could under the circumstances. I didn't get the urge to wear a brightly colored costume and fight crime in the streets of Brockton and Boston. I had much more important things going on. There were some talented young people at UMass-Boston's Chemistry Department. And I was one of them. My only rivals were this short, nerdy Asian chick named Lynn Chang and this tall and almost ridiculously good-looking and unfortunately openly gay Hispanic guy named Hector Chavez. Hector and I were friendly but Lynn hated my guts with a fiery passion. I really didn't like that chick!

I didn't make many friends at UMass-Boston. Most of the students were interested in the social scene. During the weekends, they went to sporting events or night clubs. Me? I was always in the lab, tirelessly working. There are a lot of smart people at Boston-area colleges and universities. Schools like Boston College, Suffolk University and Tufts University along with Northeastern University are cranking out talented graduates who rival the blue-blooded rich brats who attend Harvard and MIT when it comes to readiness for the working world. The University of Massachusetts in Boston was a respectable institution, but I had a lot of competition. I couldn't afford to relax, or slack off. Seriously. I had too much to lose.

I'm a scientific person through and true but sometimes, I think I'm starting to believe there's a higher power guiding our lives and actions. How else would you explain how I was plunged into the world of crime fighting? I was hanging out downtown with Hector and his buddy Manny Lassiter, a good-looking Black guy who was also hopelessly queer. I loved hanging out with these two. They were charming, friendly and funny. Definitely the kind of company I needed since I'd fallen into a funk recently. I was really bored and borderline depressed. Too much time spent in the lab, I guess. Manny Lassiter ran Track for Northeastern University. He was that rare openly gay African-American student-athlete you seldom hear about. I liked him. He and Hector were just friends, he assured me. When I wondered aloud how come two good-looking and openly gay college men chose to be just friends rather than boyfriends, they told me they'd known each other for ages. Ever since their days at Boston College High School. Wow. That's a long friendship!

Watching Hector and Manny, I found myself envious. There were times when I felt really lonely in the big city. I had the unconditional love and support of my family but I lacked friends among my peer group. And I haven't had a serious boyfriend since the beginning of my last year at Brockton Community High School. My last boyfriend was this tall, good-looking Black guy named Achilles Jean Pierre. A.J. to his friends. He played football for the high school and would eventually sign a letter of intent to play for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was the big man on campus. Tall, good-looking, smart and athletic. The kind of guy all the females wanted, and I was no exception. I've never been lucky with guys and I'm quite shy around the ones I liked. Imagine my surprise when A.J. asked to be introduced to me at a party where I hung out with my old wrestling teammates. I was stunned, and thrilled. A.J. and I looked into each other's eyes, and it was love at first sight. From that day, we were inseparable.

A.J. and I had a whirlwind romance. My parents were thrilled to see me interested in a guy. Especially a good-looking, smart young Black man like A.J. He was a fellow Haitian, and as it turns out, we even went to the same Haitian Catholic church in Brockton's West Side. How about that? Yeah, I loved A.J. And he loved me. Once, we were attacked by a gun-toting mugger in George Keith Park in Brockton. And A.J. didn't back down, though I begged him to just hand the guy the money we had and leave it at that. A.J. fearlessly grappled with the mugger and eventually knocked the guy out. He was my hero! We even went to the Prom together. I lost my virginity to him. He asked me to come to UMass-Amherst with him. I really wish I could have gone there, just to be with him, but UMass-Boston was offering me an academic scholarship. I couldn't afford to go to a big school like UMass-Amherst. It was too expensive, and financial aid wasn't guaranteed. A.J. was really disappointed that I didn't follow him to UMass-Amherst. I think that's what broke us up. To this day, I regret it, but what could I do?

All those thoughts were running through my head as I walked through the city with Hector and Manny, my new friends. Imagine my surprise when we were approached by six or seven people, all of them white and in their early twenties, at the park. They smiled nastily and circled us. I counted six males and three females. All of them were pale, and unfriendly. They asked us where we were going. Hector told them to mind their fucking business. They laughed. Then one of them, a blonde white chick, produced a pistol. She called Hector a motherfucking spic and told him to shut the fuck up. I heard the others call her Marilyn. I stared hard at her, as did Hector and Manny.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I lived in a state where a Black man was recently elected Governor. In a year that saw the election of a Black man to the Office of the President of the United States, racist white women and racist white men were making a comeback as well. Deep down in my heart, I always knew plenty of white people were racist, no matter how much they claimed to be open-minded. And the proof was right in front of me. Seven wholesome, well-dressed young white men and young white women were holding me and my friends at gunpoint simply because we were minorities in the big city. Some naïve Black people think it's only down South that white people are racist. How foolish. I always knew blue-blooded New Englanders were just as vicious as the Southerners, they were just more discreet about it.

I looked at Marilyn and her entourage of Ku Klux Klan wannabes. She was going on and on about how Boston was being lost to racial minorities and immigrants. No longer was it the paradise of the Irish and the Italians. There was something angry and sad in those blue eyes of hers. I did the last thing she and her friends expected. I smiled, and told them their time had come to an end. They smirked, and told me to shut up. I continued anyway. I told them that in the very near future, Blacks and Latinos along with Asians would become the racial and ethnic dominant groups in the United States of America. They were the most fruitful populations, reproducing at a much faster rate than whites. And many Black, Asian and Hispanic students were attending traditionally white colleges, and later many of them would buy houses for their families in white neighborhoods, slowly forcing out those who once made them feel unwelcome. That's what happened in Brockton, you know. In 2000, Brockton was sixty one percent white. In 2009, it's only forty eight percent white. Progress! Looking Marilyn in the eye, I told her that the time of the WASPs had come to an end. America now belonged to those who were Black, brown and yellow. Or a blend of all three. It wasn't the undisputed kingdom of minority-hating Euro-trash.

Marilyn screeched angrily and told me that me and all others like me were responsible for the world's overpopulation problem, but she would rectify that. She was about to reduce the country's minority population by a small percentage. Not enough to make a dent on things, but enough to satisfy her. Man, this chick was getting really worked up. Her friends shouted at her to kill me, and finish us off. Standing behind me, I could hear Hector and Manny as they pleaded with our enemies to let them go. I noticed Marilyn's hand fidgeting on the trigger, and made my move. Moving faster than anything human, I snatched the pistol from her and threw her into her friends. Two of them, a pair of burly white males, fell as she crashed into them. The remaining four turned on me, but froze when they noticed the gun was now in my hand. That made them change their tune.

I smiled, loving the look of shock on their pale faces. They weren't laughing now, were they? Instead, they held their hands up in surrender, their bravado gone. I knew what I looked like to them. An angry Black woman. The most fearless entity in the universe. I saw their fear, and to be honest, I savored it. A while ago, I read something alarming in the paper. Something which shocked my community. A racist white guy named Keith Luke went on a rampage in Brockton, shooting several people. All of them were non-white, his sworn enemies, according to his twisted world view. Although many white people from Brockton appeared to reach out to us so-called minorities in the aftermath of the incident, I didn't trust them. Honestly. I think a lot of white men and white women share Keith Luke's racist views and would gladly exterminate non-whites if they could. I don't trust any of them. I don't care how progressive and open-minded they claim to be. And just like that, my finger began to squeeze the trigger.

The racist brats eyes widened, and they begged for their lives. I thought about Keith Luke and what he'd done. Had his victims pleaded for their lives? Did he show them any mercy? I gritted my teeth, bracing myself to do what I knew had to be done. Evil must be shown no mercy. Suddenly, a hand touched my arm. I whirled around, and found myself looking into Hector's warm brown eyes. The Hispanic stud told me to give him the gun, telling me these racist WASPs with Nazi leanings weren't worth it. I looked at Hector, considering his words. Manny joined him, and they told me we'd best walk away, that we were better than these racist white brats.

Marilyn was now standing with the help of her friends, and she begged me not to kill her. I looked at Manny and Hector then nodded. I told Marilyn I wasn't going to kill her. The blonde-haired white chick breathe d a sigh of relief. She was still sighing when I shot her in the leg. Twice. She fell, and her howls filled the park. Instead of helping her, her friends took off. I knelt beside her, and told her that if she told anyone what happened, I'd shoot her and any Aryan bastard or bitch who got in my way. Fearfully, she nodded. I looked at Hector and Manny, savoring the stunned looks on their handsome faces. I told them we could go now. And just like that, we were gone.

That night, when we returned home, Manny and Hector were not exactly pleased with me. However, they commanded me for stepping up to that racist white chick and her cronies, those neo-Nazi rejects. They promised not to the police, as long as I got rid of the gun. I dropped it in the Charles River. I'm glad Manny and Hector didn't report the racist incident to the cops. Can you honestly imagine a Boston Police officer paying attention to a bunch of minority students attacked by a bunch of racist white brats? Probably not. Like I said, they stick together in this town. Even in 2009. White cops can't be trusted to honestly investigate hate crimes against minorities when it's a white person or persons who are guilty. I know you probably want to believe the world has progressed further than that but I don't believe in the goodness of people. I've seen too many racist, homophobic and misanthropic bastards and bitches in my time to trust people. Hatred is here to stay.

That night, as I lay on my bed, I found myself feeling really good. I kept replaying the scenes in my mind. Standing up to that gun-toting racist white chick took major balls. Hector and Manny were there and didn't even do nothing. I guess sometimes the best man for the job is a woman. I remembered my strength and how it came out of nowhere during that decisive moment. I found myself more curious about my powers than ever. Manny and Hector dismissed my prowess as adrenaline-fueled and I kind of let them believe that. I decided that from that moment on, I would develop my abilities on my own. I wanted to see what I was made of.

Over the next few weeks, I trained hard. I went to the gym three times a week, and put myself through a grueling exercise regimen. My goal wasn't merely fitness. It was to develop my endurance and confidence. I went to Brown's Gym, a family-owned gym near Mattapan. There were lots of hot guys working out in there. I saw a dozen or so Black and Hispanic hunks on my first day. Watching some gorgeous, half-naked men working out turned me like you would not believe. I had the time of my life at Brown's Gym. The older, Armand Brown, was a tall, burly Black man in his mid-forties. Very friendly guy, but married with offspring. He put me in touch with his niece Kendra Jackson, a curvy, dark-skinned sister from Atlanta who became my workout partner.

While working out, it was hard for me not to display my superhuman strength. Pretending to struggle to lift 300-pound weights on the bench press was taxing my patience. The only upside was that whenever Kendra was away, this really cute Puerto Rican guy named Diego would come by and offer to spot me. He flirted with half the chicks at the gym but I didn't mind. Shoot, he's just about the only heterosexual male paying attention to me these days. The guys at UMass-Boston are either dating ditzy women or busy with other stuff. Brainy gals like me seemed to intimidate some of them. Sad but true.

Slowly, I built myself up. My body acquired some toning, and I was finally starting to look as strong as I felt. I loved it. During the day, I went to class. When night came, I was either in the lab working or patrolling the city. Boston was a world-class city. Filled with everything you can think of. That also includes serial killers, rapists, sociopaths, pyromaniacs, skinheads, neo-Nazis and the like. All of them were a threat to decent, hard-working and law-abiding people. I decided to prey on those who preyed on the weak.

I went looking for them, and I didn't have to look very far. In the South End, several young men had gone missing. Many of them were young Hispanic or African-American men. Handsome athletes from the city's top colleges and universities. For some reason, the police didn't find that strange at all. I did some investigating, and found out that many of these young men frequented a certain nightclub. Axis Nights. Something which also eluded the police. I went there, and checked it out. If you want to catch the hunter, you've got to first find the prey. I found the prey alright.

Axis Nights was the favorite hangout of many young Black and Hispanic men from Boston College's athletic teams. And none of them were louder than Jamal Williamson and Keith Hernandez, captains of the Boston College football and men's basketball teams, respectively. These guys knew how to party. According to ESPN, they were sure to be in the NFL and NBA Drafts this year. You know what that means. These two studs were going to have to fight off the gold diggers. It seems every chick at Axis Nights wanted a piece of them. All except one. A tall, stunning, blonde-haired and green-eyed young woman who was dressed to the nines in a bright red dress. She eyed the jocks and their entourage coolly while drinking at the bar. What a model of self-restraint. I found her puzzling, as did Jamal and Keith. They invited her to join them, and she oh-so reluctantly agreed. I don't know if it was her demeanor or that coldness in her gaze that tipped me off, but somehow I knew that this dame was the predator I'd been looking for.