The first was an article published in Ebony magazine in March of 2012 by Joyce Clark Hicks entitled, Dear White Folks: Black People are Sensitive to Race, which is Hicks' written response to someone's questioning on why she is so sensitive to racial matters, which touches on her experiences as a black woman in a white world.
The other being the Tumblr, We Are Not Trayvon Martin, which are reader submitted reasons why they are not Trayvon Martin in order to distinguish the difference between race in this country and how we, as a society, have been trained to view Black vs White, in an effort to enlighten and put an end to the fear mongering.
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| My parents starting their family early with a bunny who would become a giant. |
These are my parents in the year 1968. They're like any typical Caucasian persons, which means they are by no means pure blooded white, but they pass at the top of the grading scale for white people. My mother was upper middle class (boarding on the low ranks of the very wealthy) with English, Irish and Choctaw (Native American) in her lineage. My father was lower middle class (bordering on upper poverty) with Welsh, Scottish, and Cherokee, Choctaw and Osage (Native American) in his lineage.
Both of my fathers grandparents were born and raised in Arkansas and raised large families well below the poverty line. His paternal grandparents were so poor they lived in a run down clapboard house (something about like this) with newspaper coving the inside walls for insulation. Both sets were sharecroppers; which meant they didn't own any land and farmed for someone else to reap the benefits. The paternal grandparents lived this way until their deaths in the 1960's.
My fathers parents, as I've said, bordered on the upper poverty/lower middle class level. They moved around a lot for my grandfathers work, finally settling in Laurel, Mississippi when my father was in middle school. He dislikes certain photo's of his past because, to him, they remind him of his poverty. Threadbare, second hand clothes and shoes with holes in them. This is not one of those photo's, as he earned the money to buy a nice enough suit.
My mothers blood relatives lived in Lucedale, Mississippi. They were somewhere in the poverty line. Her maternal grandparents were morticians. Embalming the dead of the community.
My mother was adopted by Ohioan parents who had resettled in the south; Laurel, Mississippi to be exact. She was given up for adoption and sold on the black market to a wealthy couple older than her maternal grandparents. They also adopted another girl, three years older than my mother.
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| On her wedding day. |
She was sent away at age 16 to University in Atlanta, Georgia. She fared a little better there since Atlanta is a vast and bustling metropolis; instead of a very segregated, small town. She met a white man there. I'm not sure why they married. Did he know her parents were wealthy? Did he really love her? It was not a happy marriage from the get go and ended in bitter divorce years later. But, I am happy of their union because they gave me...
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| My brother as a teenager. |
He was always singled out among his white friends. Followed in stores, accused of shop lifting, having his tires slashed, having a hard time being hired for jobs he qualified for, being fired from jobs when there was no logical reason of doing so. He even went to prison. He and three other friends were just hanging out and driving around. They wanted him to stop so they could go into a convenient store to get drinks. They came out, they all drove away. What happened is that they robbed that convenient store and used my brother as the get away driver. Beyond his knowledge. Who was the odd one out? Who wasn't white enough? My brother. Who was the only person tried and convicted to time in prison? My brother.
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| I think, the only time I was happy to hold a baby. |
I am, as I have said from my parents' lineage, European Caucasian (English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish), as well as Native American (Choctaw, Cherokee, Osage). I have my mothers body type, though she was starved into being acceptably thin her entire life, but she is no waif, and was never as slender as her sister. I was never as thin as my sister either. Far from it. My normal body structure seemed too fat for people. My body type unnerved them. From an early age I was deemed overweight and plans were strategized to shed all the pounds. Funny thing is, the "excess" weight wouldn't come off, as there was no excess weight to be gotten rid of. Needless to say that I was made fun of for my (non) enormous size; singled out and ostracized because my body type was different. I looked like a few girls in class, but that didn't count because they were black. I was white and therefor should be as slim as all the other white girls. I was tormented for being different; for being something I couldn't possibly even change.
My body type just isn't that of your average white girl. I know. I see average white girls every day and I do not resemble them. What I do see a resemblance to are black girls. There are, of course, different types of body shapes for black girls as there are white girls (and other races). I'm talking about the big black girls. The girls who have meaty arms, big bellies, hips, large behinds, and an ample bosom. It's like looking in a mirror, only the colour shading is off by several degree's. When I shop for clothes, the white women don't know what to do with me and can't understand how the clothes aren't fitting. The black girls who are bigger and have my body shape understand. They are the only girls I have ever found who understand my body shape and know how to clothe it. There's nothing to explain. They look at me and they totally get it, even if sometimes some of them are at first puzzled.
From my parents lineage I also get my skin colouring, which is light olive. I'm not dark enough to pass for Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, but am too olive coloured to be a "true" white person. They don't even have a skin tone at the make-up counters that matches me. I'm too light this way and too dark that way.
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| Not high school. |
In high school I was the one always singled out, just like my brother. I was followed around in stores, asked if I'd shop lifted, watched with wary eyes, harassed by security guards, police, store clerks. My car was destroyed on several occasions with side mirrors ripped off or tires slashed simply because they saw who got out of the car and didn't like what they saw. Having a hard time being hired for jobs I qualified for, being fired from jobs when there was no logical reason of doing so. My brother is the only "white" person I've ever met or known who understood any of this. How it was all the time, over and over again; a constant bombardment of how unacceptable we were to society.
I have never been called "Nigger" like my brother or aunt, or countless other people. I have, however been called a "Nigger Lover" on many occasions, to which I would always reply, "No, I'm sorry, I don't love ignorant people. That's why I'm not with you.", as the term has an original, derogatory definition; a person of any race or monetary status who is deemed ignorant or otherwise unworthy, therefor completely appropriate as a come back for such people.
I have spoken with people on the phone who treated me as sub human, only to end up having to meet them in person as they happily exclaim, "Oh! You're white!", like it's a blessing, a reprieve, like now they won't sully their hands having to deal with me. I have also been "accepted" by white peers only to find that they are intolerant and narrow minded. They find out quickly enough just how unlike them I am. I am quickly cast aside again. Fine by me, really in those instances as I wouldn't ever choose to associate with that type of person. It also doesn't seem to matter, for the most part, if other races see that I am not one of those white people. I'm still white, different from them, therefor they avoid me. They don't accept me. They don't let me in. I don't seem to fit in with them either.
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| This is a photo of my mother. |
Obviously that woman is not my biological mother, as I have already shown you my biological mother. This woman was the only adult female to show me real love during my early childhood; she is the woman I associate with family; she is the woman I wanted desperately to be my mother.
There was an incident, prior to my birth, that is a very direct reason as to why I ended up bonding with the woman above, in some sense. During the end of my mothers pregnancy with me, she was rushed to hospital in terrible, agonizing pain. They ascertained that she was hemorrhaging internally, but didn't know why, so they gutted her open, ripped me out, poked and prodded around in there until they found that her spleen had ruptured. Both my mother and I almost died. I was immediately taken away to a neonatal intensive care unit as doctors tried to save my mothers life. We wouldn't see each other for four days. Mother/child bonding is critical and only happens between the moments right after birth up to four hours. Then it's over. Bonding is natural, if it doesn't occur in that select time frame, the mother never really can connect with that child. In not connecting, it's as if the child was never even a part of them. Because of my mothers severe condition I ended up bonding with some random nurse in intensive care, I'm sure... but never with my own mother. Reminiscent of wealthy Victorians who birth their child and it's immediately handed off to the wet nurse. Those children bonded with their wet nurses and never their own mothers. The mothers never bonded with their children so there was no emotion to be had towards something that biologically now, because of missed bonding, you feel isn't yours.
Her ordeal left her weakened and drained. She wouldn't fully recover for several years. Factor in Postpartum Depression and the critical mother/child bonding that was missed, you have a recipe for severe neglect. It didn't mean she didn't love me. It meant that nature was working against her (us). She was too tired, depressed, and lifeless to want to look after a child that held no real meaning, biologically, for her. My father was always at work, my mother was non existent. If it had not been for my older sister, I might not be here today. She was only six. She was excited about the prospect of a new baby that she claimed as her own baby doll. When I would cry and no one would answer, she took up the duty of making sure I was fed and clean and held and played with. The first three years of my life basically consisted of my six year old sister being my mother.
By that time, however, she'd had enough. She wanted her childhood back and who could blame her? My mother was still rather non existent in my life except for rare moments. I have no memories before this time, so I did not know that my sister did something other than avoid me. My father was always at work. I was alone, raising myself in a house of four. So what did the Universe do? It sent me a mother.
It is an odd story. That a woman would randomly come across this house, ring the doorbell and ask the owners for a job; cleaning. This woman, desperately needed a job right then and there in that moment. My mother could barely take care of herself, let alone clean an entire house. This woman started the next day. Of course the woman I am talking about is the woman pictured above; the woman that, for all intents and purposes, was my mother.
Here was an adult female. This is the someone that all other children had in their lives. The someone they called mommy. The someone who cleaned up their rooms, told them not to make messes. The someone that made them feel better. The someone who treated them like a human. The someone that made them feel safe. I didn't know she was their to clean our house. My child mind didn't work that way. My child mind saw the similarities between this woman and in what I knew (from other children) a mother to be.
She would bring her children to work with her. The youngest of which, a girl, was about my age. Her children treated me like a human being, were nice to me and therefor my desperate need for love clung to this woman and all three of her children. They were my family. The youngest girl, I came to think of not only as a sister, but a twin, since I was fascinated by twins.
In my early childhood, all I knew was that families were similar; the same. My own parents and sister were similar. Other families we knew were similar. This woman and her children were similar. I assumed that to be a true family we would have to all look alike. By the time I was three I'd encountered people other than my immediate family. I had a Scottish nanny who sang lullabies and told folk takes to me in Russian. But that nanny, our family friends and my family were all white. There were my aunt and brother who were Armenian and that was it.
So, before this woman and her children, I'd never seen a black person before in my short stint here on Earth. I loved the colour of their skin, the way their hair was different than mine and how they could style it differently, their non-European features. I never dreamed we all had to be the same like me. I wanted to look like my new family. My twin styled my hair like hers, though it didn't look nearly as awesome on me as it did on her. Also, we sat around planning how to get my skin to be the colour of her skin. We didn't know much, being children. The only ways we knew of colour and changing were paints; spray paints, house paints, and artist paints. We were, however, unsure which would be best suited to our plan, so we asked our mother.
This woman knew that I was an innocent, not yet tainted by the evil poisons of the world. I saw the world in glorious colour... and loved every bit of my world. I didn't know to judge, to hate, to fear. She was both happy and sad when the question was posed to her. Happy that I loved her and her family and how I desperately wanted to be accepted by them. Sad at the fact that I desperately wanted and needed to be accepted by them, because I was a young child starving for love and attention. She'd been working for us long enough to see what my life was like; how I was pushed aside, how I was not really wanted around, how my mother's cruel words affected me.
In this instance she told me that I was perfect just the way I was, that I didn't need to change. It was a good enough answer for a five year old; something that I could only obtain from a woman who was not my mother; words I would never hear from my own mother. In previous instances, where she saw how my mother treated me. I would flee from the room, trying to push tears away; pretending it didn't hurt. She would find me, squat so as to be face to face with me and tell me that I was loved, not to pay any attention to those negative words. In my child mind, I took it to mean that she loved me; that this was her saying she was my mother. I'm sure she did love me on some level, but I'm also sure she never intended to be my mother. I remember clinging to her ever since her arrival, but the first time she told me I was loved, that's when I made the bonding connection with her that she loved me and that she was my mother.
I was eight when we could no longer afford to pay her and she had found work in her specified field. She was trying to say her goodbyes and my fragile, abused heart couldn't take the pain. My mother, my family was leaving me. They weren't taking me with them. My mother was punishing me for something. What had I done wrong? Why wouldn't they stay? I cried and cried and cried. I begged, I pleaded, I bargained. With my mother and with this woman. I desperately tried anything and everything I could think of to not be abandoned once again.
I went to see the film, The Help, with my sister when it was in the theatre. The scenes between the maid, Aibileen Clark, the mother, Elizabeth Leefolt and the little girl, Mae Mobley Leefolt made me want to look away, to stop watching the film, to run from the theatre; anything so I didn't have to face what I was seeing. What I was seeing was my life on the big screen. My life, set two decades earlier, in vintage clothing, but with the same gory details. It was very difficult for me to watch those scenes. Looming so large in a recreation in front of my eyes, in a crowded movie theatre, things I had kept hidden even from myself.
No, those scenes were not written about me. But, it was none-the-less my life that I was watching. How does a girl, born in 1980, well out of the height of the Civil Rights, have this life? No one should have this life after the 1960's. But there it was. The birth mother neglecting and abusing her daughter. The black house maid showing love and kindness and sharing encouraging words with the little girl. The girl bonding with the new mother. The little girl absolutely distraught when her new mother leaves. I wept during their last scene together, because I do know exactly what that feels like. I may have been eight, but I know that type of abandonment, confusion and hopelessness. I know what the whole scenario feels like. I shouldn't, but my life didn't go as one might expect. My life went down a different path, and that was one of my experiences.
I'll also chime in that we can include the relationship, in that film, between the author, Skeeter and the house maid, Constantine as part of my life. There is a quote in that film by the character Minnie. Something along the lines of the help being the mothers to these white children... but then those children grow up to be just like their mothers. Those white children forget that the adult female that showed them love and kindness in their childhood, was not their white birth mothers, but these women. These women who were black and therefor treated as inferiors by white adults. Who had to leave their children at home, being raised by someone else. How is it that the inferior of that society, not only black, but woman as well, can have so many hardships and trials; such terrors in their ancestry and in their current lives, tread upon and used, can have so much love to go around? They can have all of that misery about them, love their own children and countless white babies.... but a white mother, with none of the same hardships can't bother to love one child; their own? But we'll come back to this... in some fashion.
Needless to say, the 1980s (in my household) were a different time than the 1960s. This woman cleaned our house, but she was not a maid. She was also not my nanny. She didn't bathe or feed me. She just loved me. She was not a lower class. She was not beneath us. While my mother may have treated me like Elizabeth Leefolt treated Mae Mobley, she didn't not treat this woman like the civil rights movement had never happened. They were equals, this woman and my mother. They drank coffee together, they talked, they laughed and enjoyed each others company. They let their children play together, have sleep overs together, go to the skating rink together, attend each others birthdays.
Now, two years ago, I saw my mother again. She stopped by on a whim. She always thinks of stopping by, she said, but never does. But on that day the Universe told her to turn around. I was as happy as ever to see her. Causing a scene with my pure happiness, as I had done on on many occasions over the years when I saw her or one of her children out and about. There were no thoughts on correct behavior. My childhood passions and innocence always took over before my brain. I was happy, it was true, I couldn't deny it. Only after did I think, perhaps, I probably looked like the wacky relative who is never let out of doors, finally free.
It was sort of like a weird flash forward of The Help. I was the white child who never forgot. I didn't become one of those adults. I grew from a Mae Mobley to a Skeeter. She was very happy to see that I was still me; that society hadn't changed me. She asked what I did for a living, and for the briefest of moments was saddened. I think somewhere in there, she had always thought of me as another daughter. For at that time in my life, I was a maid. I hadn't escaped. I had been forced into my societal role. But then her face changed. Almost as if she had to remind herself that I was not her child. Why I was a maid was strange, but I wasn't trapped. It wasn't the same. It wasn't the old ways. And she exhaled and was fine again.
Only minutes later, she would see that not all of the old ways were dead. She would see her past replay before her eyes. She would see a mother who couldn't love this baby she had never bonded with. She would see a mother belittle and ridicule the baby girl in the flash of an instant, without batting an eyelash. She would see me fight back tears. But me and this loving mother had moved past words. I saw her look from me to my mother and back again with a look that showed she was sad that our relationship was still so bitter and painful for me. Then all she had to do was give me the same knowing, kind look that accompanied our short talks all those years ago. With that look, I knew she still loved me. She was giving our special version of "You is kind. You is smart. You is special." the one where she would call me baby girl and tell me I was loved and not to keep those words of hurt. I really couldn't contain my emotions at that point and did have to run away and cry; having my moment, before returning.
See, I had doubted that bond. She wasn't here, I would only see her randomly a few times in those twenty years. I don't know why exactly, since I was too young, but basically once the job was over, once she left that was about it for my birth family and her family. I never knew their whereabouts, yet somehow I always seemed to find her. She was always startled and a little unsettled that I was there. I always felt a bit foolish, since I didn't know why I was the only one who was happy. I'd seen family reunions on Unsolved Mystery's. Didn't they go better than this?
It had nothing to do with hating me and everything, I'm sure, simply with confusion. How exactly had I found her...? I always seem to speak too much, but perhaps in those instances it was helpful. I'd quickly just spit out that "I'd been going to the library, yet for some reason I felt the pull to go down this street and then there you were outside and I just HAD to turn around because it was YOU!" But I hadn't yet gotten to the point in my life where I didn't judge myself so harshly. No one liked me, so I'd learned to be defensive. Sure sometimes I'd forget to be defensive, would let myself be myself, but when I couldn't figure out people's reactions, it would make me feel foolish and I would assume it was me and they just didn't like me.
I apparently needed that last meeting, that one look from her to know I'd not been a fool. That it had all been true. That there was no need to doubt that I'd had a mother once who loved me. That I wasn't crazy.
While it is true that I never really was too affected by the societal race poison, I was, however, affected by a different poison. The sneaky kind of poison that leaches in over years. The kind you barely know is there, but on some level you know... and you fight back. But you fight and fight and fight until you are too weak to fight anymore... and then it has won. You have now lost your self to the poisons of worthlessness and its counterpart, lovelessness. Once it's won, the thoughts weave themselves into your psyche that no one can see your worth and no one will ever love you. Once those have taken over, they change. They question whether you even have any worth or if you can even be loved to ultimately convincing you that you indeed are worthless and unworthy of love; there is no point in even having love for your self.
I was on the brink of breaking through those chains, but was stuck, when she came by the house that last time. Her look was the antidote that I had needed to finish flushing the poisons from my system. It helped me not only take back my love and worth, but to actually see with fresh eyes who had loved me over my life. To see who I had gathered into my family over those years. Family doesn't have to be blood to be family. But I didn't want to see that before our last meeting. It wasn't something that I could accept yet, at that time.
But it has also helped me find my place in the world. To accept where I do stand (and where I don't). I will always be an in between. I used to hate it. Feel out of place for it. Feel hurt by the fact that I didn't fit in anywhere. But the truth of the matter is that I fit in exactly where I need to fit.
I will never know what it is like to be a black person, or a Native American, or Chinese or Mexican, etc. Also, I will never truly know what it is like be be a white person. Really, I just remind myself of the Hulk. He has this problem. The whole being angry and turning into a giant, green monster. Bruce Banner sees this as a curse. That is until he accepts "the other guy" and then he's no longer a mindless killing machine, but can now differentiate which people are the good guys and which are the bad and who exactly to smash.
I don't want to smash, but I always thought my in between status was a curse. But now that I've accepted it, I no longer think of it that way. Really all that time that I desperately wanted to find my place in the world and was miserable in the place where I was; I never realized I was on the top of the mountain able to see more than myself. No matter which person speaks, I find that I have shared that experience, on some level, with them.
Every group has horrors and fiends, advocates and supporters, tolerant and intolerant people.
I can't choose a side, because there's no side to choose. At the basic of levels were are all the same. People will always do something that other people do not like or think is wrong. People will also always do something glorious that other people like and think is right. There are ways of thinking that I am for, and ways of thinking that I am against. But at the core of my being I have always held one belief. No one is better than anyone else and no one is worse than anyone else. We are all the same and we are all equal.
I do not have the capacity, nor would I want to simply, eradicate all the hate and injustice in the world. I would not want to, because if someone does the job for someone else, that person will never learn. I do believe people should help their neighbours, all of your neighbours here on earth; not in our own town or country or clique. But helping and taking over are two different things. And while I am able to see the injustices in the world, I choose rather than to only see them, to actually see the beautiful things in life as well.
One of those beautiful things of life is how we are all the same, yet all so different. I personally would find a world, in tones of grey, to be very boring. So, along with languages and customs and cultures, I also notice different skin tones, hair types, body types, eye shades and shapes. I notice them and love that every body in the world is so beautifully different. Groups are different and groups within groups are different, down to the last person.
I know that I have always felt this way, but I do think that what has transpired in my life has helped me continue to love and appreciate the beauty of difference, instead of to fear it, hate it, judge it.
The people in the world that I see are beautiful. We are not grey, carbon copies of one another, but different forms and different shells sharing the same heartbeat in this life time.
She would bring her children to work with her. The youngest of which, a girl, was about my age. Her children treated me like a human being, were nice to me and therefor my desperate need for love clung to this woman and all three of her children. They were my family. The youngest girl, I came to think of not only as a sister, but a twin, since I was fascinated by twins.
In my early childhood, all I knew was that families were similar; the same. My own parents and sister were similar. Other families we knew were similar. This woman and her children were similar. I assumed that to be a true family we would have to all look alike. By the time I was three I'd encountered people other than my immediate family. I had a Scottish nanny who sang lullabies and told folk takes to me in Russian. But that nanny, our family friends and my family were all white. There were my aunt and brother who were Armenian and that was it.
So, before this woman and her children, I'd never seen a black person before in my short stint here on Earth. I loved the colour of their skin, the way their hair was different than mine and how they could style it differently, their non-European features. I never dreamed we all had to be the same like me. I wanted to look like my new family. My twin styled my hair like hers, though it didn't look nearly as awesome on me as it did on her. Also, we sat around planning how to get my skin to be the colour of her skin. We didn't know much, being children. The only ways we knew of colour and changing were paints; spray paints, house paints, and artist paints. We were, however, unsure which would be best suited to our plan, so we asked our mother.
This woman knew that I was an innocent, not yet tainted by the evil poisons of the world. I saw the world in glorious colour... and loved every bit of my world. I didn't know to judge, to hate, to fear. She was both happy and sad when the question was posed to her. Happy that I loved her and her family and how I desperately wanted to be accepted by them. Sad at the fact that I desperately wanted and needed to be accepted by them, because I was a young child starving for love and attention. She'd been working for us long enough to see what my life was like; how I was pushed aside, how I was not really wanted around, how my mother's cruel words affected me.
In this instance she told me that I was perfect just the way I was, that I didn't need to change. It was a good enough answer for a five year old; something that I could only obtain from a woman who was not my mother; words I would never hear from my own mother. In previous instances, where she saw how my mother treated me. I would flee from the room, trying to push tears away; pretending it didn't hurt. She would find me, squat so as to be face to face with me and tell me that I was loved, not to pay any attention to those negative words. In my child mind, I took it to mean that she loved me; that this was her saying she was my mother. I'm sure she did love me on some level, but I'm also sure she never intended to be my mother. I remember clinging to her ever since her arrival, but the first time she told me I was loved, that's when I made the bonding connection with her that she loved me and that she was my mother.
I was eight when we could no longer afford to pay her and she had found work in her specified field. She was trying to say her goodbyes and my fragile, abused heart couldn't take the pain. My mother, my family was leaving me. They weren't taking me with them. My mother was punishing me for something. What had I done wrong? Why wouldn't they stay? I cried and cried and cried. I begged, I pleaded, I bargained. With my mother and with this woman. I desperately tried anything and everything I could think of to not be abandoned once again.
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| My life was the updated 1980s version of this. |
I went to see the film, The Help, with my sister when it was in the theatre. The scenes between the maid, Aibileen Clark, the mother, Elizabeth Leefolt and the little girl, Mae Mobley Leefolt made me want to look away, to stop watching the film, to run from the theatre; anything so I didn't have to face what I was seeing. What I was seeing was my life on the big screen. My life, set two decades earlier, in vintage clothing, but with the same gory details. It was very difficult for me to watch those scenes. Looming so large in a recreation in front of my eyes, in a crowded movie theatre, things I had kept hidden even from myself.
No, those scenes were not written about me. But, it was none-the-less my life that I was watching. How does a girl, born in 1980, well out of the height of the Civil Rights, have this life? No one should have this life after the 1960's. But there it was. The birth mother neglecting and abusing her daughter. The black house maid showing love and kindness and sharing encouraging words with the little girl. The girl bonding with the new mother. The little girl absolutely distraught when her new mother leaves. I wept during their last scene together, because I do know exactly what that feels like. I may have been eight, but I know that type of abandonment, confusion and hopelessness. I know what the whole scenario feels like. I shouldn't, but my life didn't go as one might expect. My life went down a different path, and that was one of my experiences.
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| Constantine and Skeeter |
I'll also chime in that we can include the relationship, in that film, between the author, Skeeter and the house maid, Constantine as part of my life. There is a quote in that film by the character Minnie. Something along the lines of the help being the mothers to these white children... but then those children grow up to be just like their mothers. Those white children forget that the adult female that showed them love and kindness in their childhood, was not their white birth mothers, but these women. These women who were black and therefor treated as inferiors by white adults. Who had to leave their children at home, being raised by someone else. How is it that the inferior of that society, not only black, but woman as well, can have so many hardships and trials; such terrors in their ancestry and in their current lives, tread upon and used, can have so much love to go around? They can have all of that misery about them, love their own children and countless white babies.... but a white mother, with none of the same hardships can't bother to love one child; their own? But we'll come back to this... in some fashion.
Needless to say, the 1980s (in my household) were a different time than the 1960s. This woman cleaned our house, but she was not a maid. She was also not my nanny. She didn't bathe or feed me. She just loved me. She was not a lower class. She was not beneath us. While my mother may have treated me like Elizabeth Leefolt treated Mae Mobley, she didn't not treat this woman like the civil rights movement had never happened. They were equals, this woman and my mother. They drank coffee together, they talked, they laughed and enjoyed each others company. They let their children play together, have sleep overs together, go to the skating rink together, attend each others birthdays.
Now, two years ago, I saw my mother again. She stopped by on a whim. She always thinks of stopping by, she said, but never does. But on that day the Universe told her to turn around. I was as happy as ever to see her. Causing a scene with my pure happiness, as I had done on on many occasions over the years when I saw her or one of her children out and about. There were no thoughts on correct behavior. My childhood passions and innocence always took over before my brain. I was happy, it was true, I couldn't deny it. Only after did I think, perhaps, I probably looked like the wacky relative who is never let out of doors, finally free.
It was sort of like a weird flash forward of The Help. I was the white child who never forgot. I didn't become one of those adults. I grew from a Mae Mobley to a Skeeter. She was very happy to see that I was still me; that society hadn't changed me. She asked what I did for a living, and for the briefest of moments was saddened. I think somewhere in there, she had always thought of me as another daughter. For at that time in my life, I was a maid. I hadn't escaped. I had been forced into my societal role. But then her face changed. Almost as if she had to remind herself that I was not her child. Why I was a maid was strange, but I wasn't trapped. It wasn't the same. It wasn't the old ways. And she exhaled and was fine again.
Only minutes later, she would see that not all of the old ways were dead. She would see her past replay before her eyes. She would see a mother who couldn't love this baby she had never bonded with. She would see a mother belittle and ridicule the baby girl in the flash of an instant, without batting an eyelash. She would see me fight back tears. But me and this loving mother had moved past words. I saw her look from me to my mother and back again with a look that showed she was sad that our relationship was still so bitter and painful for me. Then all she had to do was give me the same knowing, kind look that accompanied our short talks all those years ago. With that look, I knew she still loved me. She was giving our special version of "You is kind. You is smart. You is special." the one where she would call me baby girl and tell me I was loved and not to keep those words of hurt. I really couldn't contain my emotions at that point and did have to run away and cry; having my moment, before returning.
See, I had doubted that bond. She wasn't here, I would only see her randomly a few times in those twenty years. I don't know why exactly, since I was too young, but basically once the job was over, once she left that was about it for my birth family and her family. I never knew their whereabouts, yet somehow I always seemed to find her. She was always startled and a little unsettled that I was there. I always felt a bit foolish, since I didn't know why I was the only one who was happy. I'd seen family reunions on Unsolved Mystery's. Didn't they go better than this?
It had nothing to do with hating me and everything, I'm sure, simply with confusion. How exactly had I found her...? I always seem to speak too much, but perhaps in those instances it was helpful. I'd quickly just spit out that "I'd been going to the library, yet for some reason I felt the pull to go down this street and then there you were outside and I just HAD to turn around because it was YOU!" But I hadn't yet gotten to the point in my life where I didn't judge myself so harshly. No one liked me, so I'd learned to be defensive. Sure sometimes I'd forget to be defensive, would let myself be myself, but when I couldn't figure out people's reactions, it would make me feel foolish and I would assume it was me and they just didn't like me.
I apparently needed that last meeting, that one look from her to know I'd not been a fool. That it had all been true. That there was no need to doubt that I'd had a mother once who loved me. That I wasn't crazy.
While it is true that I never really was too affected by the societal race poison, I was, however, affected by a different poison. The sneaky kind of poison that leaches in over years. The kind you barely know is there, but on some level you know... and you fight back. But you fight and fight and fight until you are too weak to fight anymore... and then it has won. You have now lost your self to the poisons of worthlessness and its counterpart, lovelessness. Once it's won, the thoughts weave themselves into your psyche that no one can see your worth and no one will ever love you. Once those have taken over, they change. They question whether you even have any worth or if you can even be loved to ultimately convincing you that you indeed are worthless and unworthy of love; there is no point in even having love for your self.
I was on the brink of breaking through those chains, but was stuck, when she came by the house that last time. Her look was the antidote that I had needed to finish flushing the poisons from my system. It helped me not only take back my love and worth, but to actually see with fresh eyes who had loved me over my life. To see who I had gathered into my family over those years. Family doesn't have to be blood to be family. But I didn't want to see that before our last meeting. It wasn't something that I could accept yet, at that time.
But it has also helped me find my place in the world. To accept where I do stand (and where I don't). I will always be an in between. I used to hate it. Feel out of place for it. Feel hurt by the fact that I didn't fit in anywhere. But the truth of the matter is that I fit in exactly where I need to fit.
I will never know what it is like to be a black person, or a Native American, or Chinese or Mexican, etc. Also, I will never truly know what it is like be be a white person. Really, I just remind myself of the Hulk. He has this problem. The whole being angry and turning into a giant, green monster. Bruce Banner sees this as a curse. That is until he accepts "the other guy" and then he's no longer a mindless killing machine, but can now differentiate which people are the good guys and which are the bad and who exactly to smash.
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| The "other guy". |
While I can choose a cause to fight for, I really can not choose a side. All of us are humans. Neither group is all that different from another group. All of us have insecurities, fear, hatred, pettiness. We as individuals may work to overcome these things, but they are still rampant in every society. We all have our own ilk; pedophiles, serial killers, rapists, murders, animal abusers, spouse or child abusers, bullies. These things are not unknown to any group, though every society strives to stop these atrocities. We're all different types of people; people with dwarfism/giantism or who are short/average/tall. People with mental handicaps, to slow/fast learners, below average/average/above average intelligence and geniuses. People who can not walk, people who can not speak or hear or see. People who are below thin/thin/average/muscular/large/very large. People who like the opposite sex, the same sex, both sexes, who feel that they are a woman trapped in a man's body (or vice versa), people who transition into their preferred sex, people who dress in the opposite sexes clothing, men who wear make-up and women who wear steel toed boots. People who try to be someone they are not, people who are true to themselves, people who are on the fence about who they should be. People who follow a religion and people who do not. People who go out of their ways to help people, animals, and nature and people who can't be bothered.
I can't choose a side, because there's no side to choose. At the basic of levels were are all the same. People will always do something that other people do not like or think is wrong. People will also always do something glorious that other people like and think is right. There are ways of thinking that I am for, and ways of thinking that I am against. But at the core of my being I have always held one belief. No one is better than anyone else and no one is worse than anyone else. We are all the same and we are all equal.
I do not have the capacity, nor would I want to simply, eradicate all the hate and injustice in the world. I would not want to, because if someone does the job for someone else, that person will never learn. I do believe people should help their neighbours, all of your neighbours here on earth; not in our own town or country or clique. But helping and taking over are two different things. And while I am able to see the injustices in the world, I choose rather than to only see them, to actually see the beautiful things in life as well.
One of those beautiful things of life is how we are all the same, yet all so different. I personally would find a world, in tones of grey, to be very boring. So, along with languages and customs and cultures, I also notice different skin tones, hair types, body types, eye shades and shapes. I notice them and love that every body in the world is so beautifully different. Groups are different and groups within groups are different, down to the last person.
I know that I have always felt this way, but I do think that what has transpired in my life has helped me continue to love and appreciate the beauty of difference, instead of to fear it, hate it, judge it.
The people in the world that I see are beautiful. We are not grey, carbon copies of one another, but different forms and different shells sharing the same heartbeat in this life time.
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