this body--remembering.

My mother says I never remember anything. She says this because every time she introduces me to someone, a friend or one of her many acquaintances who had formerly met me, perhaps pinched a cheek of mine or doted over me as a child, I make it particularly clear that I don't recognize them. She gets upset, annoyed at my inability and slight refusal to pretend to know the many strangers who have made insignificant appearances in my life. In response to my mother's frustration I always say the same thing: "I do remember things, just not people who aren't important to me." In return, she always rolls her eyes. "Whatever." She says. Whatever. That's her favorite word to use to blow me off. Whatever, I think. I do remember more than you know.

I remember random things and random people, situations that in the moment were seemingly insignificant but in retrospect hold some kind of meaning. I remember how quiet growing up was, how silent my homes were because my mother was either at work or always sleeping. She slept a lot during the day, when she wasn't working. I used to crawl into bed with her and shake her. She'd groan and I'd ask why she was always sleeping. Sleeping was her favorite hobby, she assured me. I figured she was just tired. Looking back, I realize her depression superseded her exhaustion and sleeping was the only way to remove herself from life as she knew it. I remember childhood moments with my closest cousin Laurie, who is one year older than me, and stands in replacement of the sibling I never had.

I remember her teaching me how to write my L's in cursive as we sat in the backseat of her father's smoke-filled car. I remember that one time she scared away my next door neighbor by screaming "We don't talk to strangers!" at him when he was only trying to give me a toy his daughter didn't want. I remember looking at her, teary eyed and eventually crying. She always bosses me around, I remember thinking. I remember the promise we made to one another at ten and eleven years old: "No matter what, we will never be like them." They were the women in our family. I remember wanting to grow up to be a woman but wanting to live my childhood as a boy.

I was a little girl wanting to be a boy. A little girl with "girly" features that couldn't escape me: long eye lashes that curled and made wearing my plastic purple-framed eye glasses impossible for me to handle, long thick dark hair that girls at school could not stop touching, full lips which I discovered in high school were "to die for" by some white girl who did my makeup for a play. None of this bothered me tremendously because I wasn't as preoccupied with not looking like a girl as I was as just living like a boy, living in the realm of masculinity that was so appealing to me. My tiny body swam in oversized blue jeans and a hot pink "BUM Electric" sweatshirt that I wore on a regular basis, with my light up LA Gear sneakers, of course. I was comfortable in these clothes but more than anything I was comfortable with the membership they allowed. I got to play with the boys at school and beat them at their own games. "Man, you suck!" they'd whine, "You can't play with us anymore." I'd move on to the next group of boys and instead of competing with them, we'd role play, mostly Power Rangers. They always tried to make me the pink ranger and I'd protest. "I hate pink. Why do I have to be the pink power ranger, just because I'm a girl?" I remember them nodding. I wanted so much to be a boy because they got to do all the things that everyone told me girls couldn't. Boys had all the fun.

In spite of this, I still imagined myself to grow up and be a woman, particularly a mother, and my tomboyish ways were balanced with my fascination with babies and children. I hated Barbie dolls but I loved baby dolls. I loved pretending to be a mother. I bought cradles, clothing, and food for my babies, my children. I fed them at scheduled times, took them out with me, put them down to nap whenever they were "cranky" and even made play dates with Laurie's baby dolls. And of course, because I could do everything, I cured them when they were sick. I was their doctor too. This was something, I remember believing, that boys and men certainly could not do. They could not be mothers. I had no ideas of what fathers could do. I didn't have one.

I have been remembering all of this lately because the questions of what it means to be a mother and a boy, a young Black boy in particular, have been racing through my mind. I remember thinking motherhood to be simple and boyhood to be whimsical and freeing. I did not and still do not know what it means to be either but as watch my mother's sister struggle through one of the most trying moments in her motherhood and her twelve year old son grow into his young manhood, I wonder how much each of them will remember.

I sometimes say my aunt is my second mother, a substitution for my father and often times a filler for my mother. She lived with my mother and I until I was about seven years old and took tremendous care of me up until then and continuing after. We had always been extremely close up until about a year ago. When I was seven my aunt moved out of the three bedroom apartment that she, my mother and I lived in and moved in with her boyfriend who would soon be the father of her first child, a son, who is now twelve, later be her husband, and eventually the father of her second child, a daughter who is almost six. When their son was four years old they moved from Boston, Massachusetts to Southern Florida and bought a house in a gated community. Fast forward some years and after secretly (but not so secretly) dealing with her husbands physical and verbal abuse, my aunt is now talking about leaving, finally. My mother and I wonder if it's going to happen. We've heard the conversations before but years pass and no action is ever taken. She spoke to her kids about it and her son, who is the most recent victim of his father's cowardliness and rage, seems to have no qualms about moving. My mother told me she could still hear the hesitance in her sister's voice. Maybe in a couple of years, she told my mother, when she's done with nursing school. "Thing is," my mother told me, "in a couple of years she might be six feet under." This sends chills through me and it turns my stomach, not only at the thought of losing her but at what this situation is doing to her son and eventually her daughter.

"A man doesn't do what your father did," I told my cousin over the phone. "I know," he told me. A man doesn't ... a man doesn't ... I remember beginning most of my sentences with declarations of what a man does and does not do. But I'm not a man nor am I a twelve year old Black boy. Who am I, I remember thinking afterwards, to tell him what a man does and does not do? I remember when my cousin was 10, when his mother started noticing how he refused to look at her in the eyes. I remember standing in the public library with him, talking to him about how important it is for him to read, subjecting him to one of my educational diatribes. He wouldn't look up at me. I gently asked him to look at me in the eyes. "Don't look down," I said. "I'm your cousin. I'm your family. You should be able to look up at me. Why won't you look at me?" He started to shake a little, tremble and he sputtered, "B-b-because."

"Because what?"

He finally looked up and broke down crying right there in the middle of the young reader's fiction section.

I tried to understand that moment so many times after it happened. I am still trying. I long to know what was going on in his mind those few years when he would look away or only look at my feet when I spoke directly to him. I remember seeing then how painful boyhood can be. And in his mother, I'm seeing how conflicting motherhood is.

I sincerely love my cousin. I am not his mother yet everything in me wants to protect him as honestly as if he came from my belly, my womb. Sometimes I look at the part of my tummy that's a little rounder than the rest, the pouch--that place that drives women to spend hundreds of dollars on gym memberships over--and hold it. I look in the mirror and I hold it wondering if at 21 my aunt ever held her pouch like me and knew that the fight of motherhood is founded in not only the passion and will to protect her child but also in the power to protect her self.

I can't stop thinking about my aunt and my cousin and the littlest one in the family, almost six years old and the epitome of what I would've loved to be as a young girl. If I was anything like her, had a friend like her, I would've embraced my girlness. There is nothing she can not do, despite being a girl. Through this though, if leaving takes longer than expected or if my aunt never leaves, I wonder what littlest one will see as manhood and subsequently motherhood.

I have so much running through my head right now, so many things that I remember that I haven't the capacity to make sense of at this moment. Forgive me for my rambling, I'm just trying to make meaning of the bits that I do remember.

littlest big things.

The last time I heard from my father was March 23, 2007. He wrote me an e-mail, this after not contacting me for 2 years and prior to that not contacting me for 5 years and yeah, the more I go back in time, the more I realize how estranged we are from one another. I wrote him back and told him that if we were to truly start a relationship, he would first have to know who I am and not the child he never really new but only remembers. At one point I wrote, "I'm a lesbian. I'm an educator. I'm sensitive. I'm passive. I'm passionate. I'm logical. I'm sarcastic. I used to be really insecure. I am getting to understand my self-worth. I'm in love. I'm motivated. I'm living life as positively as possible." I was honest. I don't know what I expected, if I thought that things would've been different this time, but I thought there'd be more beyond that point.

He never wrote back.

I don't know why I'm writing about this, or vaguely writing random thoughts about this, but it just came into my head. For the longest time I tried to convince myself that his absence meant nothing to me, that it had no significance--but it does and there are moments, times like this, when he passes through my mind and I wonder what it is about him, about me, that makes our relationship impossible. I'm sure I'll never come close to conquering my inquiry but I figure it's progress that at least I'm acknowledging that perhaps, I've been missing something.

--

on a better note:
I'm going to Chicago on November 3! I'm being flown out, all expenses paid, to this National Student Leadership Campaign for Public Service meeting. I'm not sure what they want my role to be but it's along the lines of bringing this movement back to New School. I wasn't sure I'd take up the offer but last night as I was reading an e-mail from the coordinator, "B" enthusiastically said, "Do it!" So I'm taking her advice, taking her faith in me and making magic happen. I'm making moves and it's thrilling. My personal and academic career is really lifting off and I find myself being rewarded beautifully. Next stop after this? Presenting on a panel at the Popular Culture Conference in March in San Francisco, CA! Yay me.

say, girl ...

I wouldn't have written it this way. Brown on White, penis and breasts on one body holding flesh that once held and released me, carried and comforted me; heavy man hands wrapped around a 12 year old neck--his own son. I wouldn't have written it this way because I didn't think it would be like this. Familiar and unfamiliar colliding and morphing, creating thick confusion that consumes me. I'm being consumed by my life right now and how it orbits around the ones I love. It's happening so quickly that I don't know what to do or really how to feel. I find myself panning out, distancing myself and glimpsing in on my own world and wondering, how did all of this happen?

My uncle called me the other night and asked what I would say if he decided to change his name. I wanted to know where it was coming from and what name he wanted to change. "All of it," he told me, and then proceeded to explain how much baggage our last name carries and how he doesn't really know why my grandparents named him what they did. I told him to go for it. After all, it's his name and he's going to have to live with it. To be honest, a name isn't always really indicative of who you are because you didn't name yourself. Sometimes though, you grow into it. I feel that way about my name. I wasn't Cleopatra to most people for the first 18 years of my life (minus first grade and a classmate in high school who called me Cleo) and when I moved to New York it spoke to me as a young woman growing into herself. I've grown so much these past few years and as I struggle each day I realize it's an active part of growth. I'm thinking that this will be good for him, to take a hold of his identity competely and be addressed as who he feels he really is. Of course, my family is going to hate the idea and I'm sure they'll be utterly offended and confused, but I say (and I say this with the best intentions)--screw them. They hold us on short leashes only to be yanked back when you fall outside of their parameters of tolerance and to be honest, I do not want to be tolerated or held on a leash. And again, this is the process of growth ... cutting ties, recreating family and reconceptualizing my socialized understandings of what family and love mean. In understanding the necessity to do these things, I have come to understand my mother better.

When I was 13 my mother started to openly share her life experiences and relationship within our family. Of course I take note of the various interpretations of events and drama, but I pay close attention to the impact everything has had on her. I never understood what she was doing when she actively chose not to attend family functions or to move far away from our blood relatives but now I see. She was simply trying to grow. Everyday I think about my mother and I know that woman to be the epitome of strength. I know many women, and many Black women at that, struggle the way she did to keep our lights on, our water running, food on the table and a roof above our heads. And through that she sought to love herself and fought to understand how to love others, many times ending up disappointed and trampled. But now, almost 43, I see her happier than she has ever been. Fuck the diabetes, the asthma, the breast cancer, the money troubles--she loves. She loves in the most unfamiliar way to me and probably to many others and simultaneously loves someone who is everything the rest of the world fails to understand, let alone my family. On one end, I don't fully understand it yet either, and on the other, I just want her to be happy because it's what she has deserved for so long. It reaffirms that happiness, above all else, is what matters. Fuck settling.

And this is my fight, the fight to clearly see what allows me to attain happiness and what I am settling for and trying to transform and mask as happiness. I was talking to a great friend and love of mine yesterday afternoon. Standing on the street corner, trying to catch up on life that has passed us because of our hectic schedules, I talked to her about this very thing. "I feel like sometimes I catch myself saying things out loud just to make them real," I told her. I say things to make myself believe them and hope that they become true. I hold on to people even though they disappoint me. I claim love even though it's lust. I say I'm fine when I'm not. I settle. And it's hard not to. Why fight for something better when somewhere in between hell and heaven is sitting on your lap? I'd kiss mediocre before greatness and I'm trying so hard not to, interpersonally that is. Career wise and academically I settle for nothing less than greatness. Artistically so it's the same way. But personally, I struggle against settling. And I know it's because this is what I've seen growing up. I've watched all the women in my family settle because it's easier not to go seek happiness. But it always fails.

It brings bruises, black and blue on brown and beating hearts; it brings gaping holes in hope and creates loneliness. It brings me wanting to be anything but them and everything about them at the same time. I love them because I'm part of their legacy but I hate them for what they go through, what they allow for themselves because they are worth so much more. I know they don't understand me. I don't understand them either. But I wish for them. I pray for them and yearn for an answer as to how all of this happened. How did strength melt into despair? How did the women who taught me how to be a woman revert back to hopeless, little girls?

let's take this for another spin.

My nights and days have blended into one another. The lack of sleep lately does that, I suppose. I decided that since I'll be up at random hours of the day, I may as well use this as an outlet and break for the hell of undergrad senior year. And so I'm embarking upon this blog thing again. Forgive me if it lacks excitement or upkeep for that matter. I'm really awful with technology and although I'd like this to be a space where I can share everything I'm feeling and thinking, I still realize it's a public realm and that puts breaks on a lot of things. I'm real but not that real. This isn't an inside into my life, but rather me trying to find an entrance into myself. So yeah, you can peek in and out if you wish, when you wish... it's all up to you.

As for updates...
-I'm no longer in New Orleans but my soul remains there and as I work on my senior work project, which revolves around New Orleans and hip-hop pedagogy, my experiences remain very present.
-School and work are kicking my ass.
-My family is ... family.
-My spirit is good.
-My friend came back. I didn't realize how much I had missed her.

oh yeah, and I had a good night tonight. thanks Liz.

a ramble.

originally written on: 6/29/07.

--

there was a point when i didn't know who i was or what i wanted. i thrived on giving bits and pieces of myself in hopes that someone would put me together. i wandered from the realities of my situation desiring that someone would steer me back to my world. i knew nothing beyond want/hope/desire. i kept wishing. i kept wanting. i kept hoping that one day i'd find what i was looking for.

there was a moment when i expected it to be love. when i expected exchanges to fulfill me in a way that i hadn't expected. there was another point when i thought academia would do the trick. i figured out quickly neither of these things would allow me to truly see myself wholly and fully.

i never expected this but being here in New Orleans has opened me up to so many different avenues of thinking and feeling. i've realized what i want my life's work to entail. i've realized that i can survive outside of my comfort zone, outside of a world that is 100% welcoming to me as a queer, black woman.

being an educator is ridiculously hard when you're essentially denied an identity as a teacher. being a queer educator has been an interesting/devastating/uncomfortable experience for me. working in harlem with the younger ones i realized that homophobia runs deep and working with high school students i got a variety of emotions. but working here with middle schoolers in a catholic city has been extremely challenging. students trust me and the world assumes my heterosexually. i find myself answering questions about my "boyfriend" just to avoid further conversation. students blatantly tell me about how they saw two girls kissing and how disgusting they thought it was. they spit the word fag as if it's just another breath and it pains me not to be able to just say this is who i am.

but i know because of this challenge, among many, that this is what i'm meant to do. i'm meant to educate. to learn from students and to learn with them. to have youth be a vessel in my life. to have youth inspire me and my art. to have youth be the core of everything that i do.

to be young, black and in the public education system is a trauma in itself. fuck hurricanes. we've been dealing with the natural disasters of continuous miseducation of black and brown children since the beginning of european's so-called “beginning of civilization.” i'm learning how to unlearn and how to teach unlearning. it's going to be a hard process but i have all faith. always.

i wanted them to tell me their stories, share their stories with one another and with themselves.
i ask L why it's important that people know his story. he says, "because it means something to me." plain. simple. beautiful. fuck the rest of the world.

What's wrong with silence?

Sometimes not everything needs to be said ...

write later, eventually. i'm on an mental hiatus.