Push

Nearly a month has passed. Ms. Rain pushes Precious to write more and more, and her spelling and writing abilities improve. However, Ms. Rain mentions that Precious seems depressed. Her friends from class take her to the movies and museums. Ms. Rain wants Precious to go with Rita to a group for incest survivors, which Precious calls an “insect” group. Precious admits that she is angry: She thought she had gotten away from her parents, but HIV is a way that they continue to follow her. Ms. Rain asserts that it’s impossible to escape one’s past.

Over time, writing makes Precious start to feel less angry. She wonders what it feels like to be loved romantically. Ms. Rain no longer reads everything in Precious’s journal, and she is glad to keep some things private. She writes a poem about taking Abdul to the nursery during breakfast, but instead of eating, walking around Harlem and watching people. Precious hates people with substance use disorder but doesn’t know why: None have ever hurt her, and Rita—a good person whom she loves—is a person who previously used drugs.

Precious likes to get to school early, just before Ms. Rain. Rita and Rhonda usually come early too. The students have made the classroom their own by cleaning it and bringing their own plants and decorations. Precious brought a photo of Abdul and a plant that has already outgrown its pot three times. Precious enjoys the structure of school days and wonders how her life might be different if she had been able to learn in school before. She discovers that she does have an aptitude for math and wishes that someone had taught her properly.

Rita tells her, “All people with HIV or AIDS is innocent victims; it’s a disease, not a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’” (108). Precious doesn’t see how a white gay man or a person with substance use disorder is anything like her, but Rita kisses her forehead and says, “You don’t see now but will. You will” (108). Precious is 18 now. Her reading score is a 2.8, which Ms. Rain insists is a meaningless number that doesn’t demonstrate Precious’s growth and improvement. Precious writes that she has grown because she no longer cares about finding a boy to love her or hair extensions and new clothes; she now cares most about her health, sex, and writing poems. Precious has never had consensual sex and has secretly been thinking about a street artist named Franco. Precious also thinks about her mother sometimes, and even more about her father. Little Mongo doesn’t have HIV or AIDS, which suggests that her father might have become infected after impregnating her the first time and died quickly.

Precious’s counselor, Ms. Weiss, says that since Precious is young and healthy, she could live a long time. Precious is skeptical, however, and the counselor doesn’t give her a concrete estimate. Ms. Weiss offers to find information about Carl, but the mention of her father makes Precious think of the pleasure of sex, which makes her feel sick. She felt like her body betrayed her by orgasming. Afterward, she would stare at the wall until she could see movies there in her imagination. She went into the bathroom and smeared feces all over her face; she also bit down her fingernails and cut her arms with Carl’s razor. She thinks of herself in those moments as “a TV set wif no picture” (112), aside from imaginary movies where she was “a pink virgin girl […] a sexy girl don’t no one get to fuck. A girl for value” (112).

In class, the students recite poems, and Precious chooses “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, which she dedicates to Abdul. The class cheers. Ms. Rain asks them to write out their fantasies about themselves and their lives. Precious wishes she had light skin and hair extensions so boys would find her attractive. Although she loves Abdul, she also wishes that her body hadn’t endured the pain and trauma of childbirth. Ms. Rain tells Precious that she is already beautiful, but Precious doesn’t believe her. She wonders what it would be like to have a normal life. Both Ms. Rain and Ms. Weiss tell Precious to write and talk about the past, but Precious doesn’t like Ms. Weiss and wants to focus on her future. She knows that Ms. Weiss is a bureaucrat who will decide where Precious goes next and whether she will lose funding, which makes Precious feel like her mother.

Ms. Weiss asks Precious to recount her earliest memory of her mother. Precious knows that she needs counseling, but she is sick of this prying white woman’s questions. She asks Ms. Weiss for a soda. As soon as Ms. Weiss leaves her alone, Precious finds her own file (under the name Claireece) and hides it in her backpack. When Ms. Weiss returns, she suggests that Precious write in her notebook if she recalls her first memory. Precious already knows her first memory—the odor of her mother’s genitals in her face—but declines to say so. Ms. Weiss reveals that Mary has been calling and asking to see Precious, and she offers a joint counseling session. Precious agrees to consider it. Rushing back upstairs, Precious calls Jermaine and asks her to come over because she doesn’t want to read her file alone.

Together, Jermaine and Precious decipher the language in her file, which first praises her educational progress and then mentions her “disappointingly low” test scores, which upsets Precious. She needs a score of 8 to move on to the GED course and currently has a 2.8. Precious has mentioned a desire to get her GED and go on to college, but Ms. Weiss believes that this would require extensive effort and resources. She suggests that Precious, with her “obvious intellectual limitations” (119), focus on job training and enter the workforce as a home attendant. Precious explodes at this. She is also angry to discover that Ms. Weiss has written her HIV status in her file after promising that she wouldn’t. Ms. Weiss comments that Precious doesn’t trust the social work system even though she “seems to envision social services […] taking care of her forever” (120). Jermaine tells Precious to keep her voice down, return the file before she’s caught, and discuss it with Ms. Rain.

In class the next day, Ms. Rain gives the students 20 minutes to write in their journals. Precious writes an angry entry about becoming a home attendant and essentially working as a white person’s servant for long hours and very little pay, which she uses her math skills to calculate. When Ms. Rain asks the class who would like to share, Precious volunteers right away, explaining that she stole her file and discovered that the counselors aren’t therapists but “flunkies for the ‘fare” (122). Jermaine interjects, agreeing that they aren’t on the same side if they want someone like Precious to drop out of school.

Ms. Rain starts to chastise Precious for stealing but is impressed that she read the file herself. She tells Precious not to worry but remarks that if she can’t speak to her counselor, she isn’t getting the therapy she needs. Precious protests that she can write in her journal and go to Rita’s “insect survivor” meetings (123). A girl named Bunny interrupts and corrects her, explaining the difference between “insect” and “incest,” which makes Precious laugh. Ms. Rain asks Precious if her hearing has ever been tested and Precious says that it hasn’t, although she’s more concerned about needing glasses because her eyes get sore from reading.

Precious writes every day, often staying after school and thinking about what will happen to her in the future. She tries to come to terms with her own life story and how such terrible things could have happened to her in the modern world. Precious can’t open up to Ms. Weiss and sees her as someone who blames her for her issues. Precious has difficulty writing without crying; she understands now that she used to see herself as white and beautiful on the inside and only “fat and black and ugly to people on the OUTSIDE” (125). She also realizes that someone should have helped her when she was 12 and that Carl should have gone to prison.

That night, Precious and Rita take a bus downtown to go to an incest survivors meeting. Precious notes that Rita has a new boyfriend, a person who previously used drugs, who is also HIV-positive. Precious is surprised to learn that white people can be addicted to drugs. He’s wealthy and in love with Rita, and he has paid for her teeth to be fixed. Rita dreams of creating a home in Harlem for HIV-positive mothers and their children, which Precious supports. Precious writes a poem in her journal about the bus taking her to the New York of rich white people, wondering how she might be different if she had grown up there. If these are the people they want her to serve, she’d rather kill them first.

At the meeting, Precious is intimidated and certain she will not speak, unsure how to voice the way she feels. The women at the meeting are all different, but she sees them—and herself—as bombs, and the meeting as the only thing preventing them from exploding. Precious is shocked when the leader of the group, a beautiful woman named Irene, states that she is an incest survivor. Rita rubs her hand, and Precious is inundated with sensory memories of her mother and father sexually abusing her. When Irene finishes, Precious raises her hand. She starts to say that her father raped and hit her, and that her mother forced her to give oral sex, but she can’t finish her statement. She holds Rita’s hand and listens to girls and women of all ages, classes, and races telling their stories of rape, molestation, and victimization. Precious can’t believe that so many different kinds of women had experiences like hers. Afterwards, several members of the group get coffee together. Precious drinks hot chocolate, feeling happy and loved. She compliments a Black woman at the table on her dreadlocks, and the woman offers to do the same for Precious. Rita hugs her and buys her another hot chocolate.

In Ms. Weiss’s office, Precious has a counseling session with her mother. She refused to meet with her at first, but Ms. Weiss convinced her to agree. Precious thinks Mary looks like a mess and smells bad. She doesn’t know why Ms. Weiss or her mother wanted this session to happen but presumes that her mother wants Precious to move back in so she can get benefits for her and Abdul. Precious is determined to stay in school, earn her GED, and get custody of her daughter. She reads from her journal about her first memory of her parents sexually assaulting her. When Ms. Weiss asks Mary to discuss the abuse, Mary replies, “What ‘buse?” (133). Ms. Weiss persists, noting that Precious gave birth to two children by her father.

Mary insists that she was a good mother who took excellent care of Precious, that she loved Carl, and that Carl had loved their daughter. Precious is aghast at Mary’s claims about her happy childhood. Calmly, Mary explains that Carl first assaulted Precious when she was about three. She had started feeding Precious from a bottle so Carl could suck on her breasts. Precious was in bed with them when they started having sex, and Carl began touching Precious and tried to rape her. Mary told him to stop and now says she wasn’t at fault because she hadn’t wanted it to happen, adding, “I wanted my man for myself” (136).

Ms. Weiss asks Precious if she wants to share her poems or anything from her journal, but she declines because it’s private. She gets up and walks out, hating her mother. She goes to the kitchen and finds the house mother of the halfway house. Precious asks her to babysit Abdul so she can go to an HIV support meeting. The house mother is reluctant at first but agrees when Precious recounts what her mother said in the session. Precious has decided to skip dinner to write on the bus, and the house mother silently gives her three dollars from her purse. Precious thinks about how much she has to live for and starts to cry. The house mother brushes away her tears and gives her two more dollars. Precious jokes that she should cry more often and then goes to the meeting, which is helpful. She works on her story for the book at school. The class goes to the museum, and she marvels at the size of a blue whale, wondering if she could feel even more love if her heart were the same size.

Precious is relieved when Abdul tests negative for HIV. She sees small acts of kindness around her as evidence of God. She still doesn’t understand why she has had to endure what she has, and she still isn’t happy that she has HIV. However, Rita pushes her to stop wondering why and to look toward the future. Precious scores a 7.8 on her test and feels certain that she can keep improving until she reaches college level. On a bright Sunday morning, Precious is alone reading to Abdul. In the sunlight, he looks like an angel, and Precious’s heart aches, wondering how long she has left. Precious writes, “In his beauty I see my own” (140). Then Abdul tugs on her earring to bring her back to the present and read to him, which she does.

The class book begins with two poems by Precious. In the first, she compares her life to “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but the lambs that follow her to school are a child and HIV. In the second, she describes her morning routine with Abdul, handing him to another woman and then walking down the wet streets where she sees hidden beauty everywhere.

The next entry is “My Life” by Rita Romero. She remembers living in an apartment full of nice things. Her mother—dark-skinned, Puerto Rican, and beautiful—was a medium who gave tarot and crystal ball readings. Rita barely remembers her father, except that he reminded them repeatedly that he and Rita were white. He forced them to speak English instead of Spanish, screaming and threatening her mother. When Rita was six, her mother gave her a piece of candy to keep her quiet for a client. In the middle of the session, Rita’s father walked in, accused his wife of sleeping with her customers, and shot her. Rita wonders if life would have been different in Puerto Rico. She gets better treatment for AIDS and drug addiction here, but she has endured foster care, rape, prostitution, jail, and rehab. She prefers to remember her beautiful mother and their nice apartment.

The third entry is “My Younger Years” by Rhonda Patrice Johnson. Rhonda was born in Jamaica but came to the United States as a child with her mother and brother after her father died. Instead of going to school, Rhonda worked in her mother’s restaurant. Her brother, Kimberton, was a year younger, went to school, and got whatever he wanted. When Rhonda was 14, Kimberton started raping her. Rhonda tried to tell her mother but couldn’t find the right words until she was 16. Her mother blamed Rhonda for corrupting Kimberton, ordering her to leave the house.

In part two of Rhonda’s story, “My Grown Up Years,” eight years have passed and Rhonda is 24. Kimberton became a dentist but was charged with molesting a young girl patient. Rhonda ran into her mother occasionally, and her mother acted as if Rhonda simply grew up and moved out. After her mother kicked her out, Rhonda couldn’t find a job and slept with men in the hopes of securing shelter until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Homeless, she tried to get welfare but didn’t have a social security card, and she ended up punching a woman in the face. Then she met a Trinidadian woman who was leaving a job caring for an elderly woman and recommended Rhonda for the position. Rhonda worked for a while and then left because the woman was abusive. She went back to the welfare office and ended up trying to strangle someone. Nevertheless, they found her a job caring for an elderly white man. However, the man died, and Rhonda became homeless again.

One day while wandering the street, she passed her mother’s restaurant and saw a “For Rent” sign and Kimberton in the window. He was well-dressed and shocked to see her on the streets. Furious, Rhonda couldn’t speak. Kimberton told her that their mother was dead and offered her $100, which she didn’t take. As she walked away, Kimberton exclaimed, “You wanted it as much as I did!” (162). A man at the soup kitchen eventually helped Rhonda to get a job cleaning an office building. She rented a room and met Rita, who told her about Ms. Rain’s class. Rhonda finishes: “the end, no the BEGINNING” (163).

“Harlem Butch” by Jermaine Hicks begins with a poem echoing everyone asking her why she wants to be a man. Jermaine insists that she doesn’t dress like a man but like herself. As a child, Jermaine would put on her brother’s clothes and feel deeply right, like a river. Jermaine wishes she could join the Navy to be on the water all the time. She refuses to take her GED because then she’d have to leave the class.

Jermaine then remembers flashes of her life. A boy held her down and tried to rape her at seven. At eight, she kissed Mary-Mae. At nine, she used her fingers, and at ten, her tongue. When she was 13, they were caught together in Mary-Mae’s bedroom. Mary-Mae’s father attacked and raped Jermaine, knocking out one of her front teeth, to “show [her] what a MAN is. What a woman is” (168). Jermaine asserts that this experience isn’t why she is butch: She was born that way. At 14, her religious mother was preaching at breakfast and her father hit her mother in the face with the Bible. Her mother lost her eye and her father left. Her mother took to yelling religious accusations on the subway.

At 17, Jermaine’s mother caught her having sex with Mary-Mae and screamed at them, not caring that they loved each other. Jermaine left home and never saw Mary-Mae again. She moved in with her father for a little while, but the apartment was too small, and she could hear him masturbating. At breakfast, she remembered what he did to her mother and left, supporting herself by moving from job to job. Her face is scarred because six men attacked her when she was 19. Determined to never let a man hurt her again, she now carries a gun, which she has named Mary-Mae. 

The final entry is an untitled poem by Precious. She dreams about driving away in a car with Abdul. She feels like she lives in a prison: She can’t be free because she has HIV and a baby, but she is grateful to be alive, breathing and learning, and to have a smart child and children who are alive. She quotes the house mother: “PLAY THE HAND YOU GOT” (176), Langston Hughes: “HOLD FAST TO DREAMS” (177), Farrakhan: “GET UP OFF YOUR KNEES” (177), Alice Walker: “CHANGE” (177), and Ms. Rain, who says that poems don’t have to rhyme. They have a beating heart, “like a clock, a virus, tick tock” (177). Precious is a ticking time bomb, but her life isn’t over yet.