I’m watching the stage adaptation of Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill, totally engrossed in Audra McDonald’s uncanny ability to channel the spirit of Billie Holiday. Suddenly I begin to think about my mother and grandmother and what life might have been like for them during that time when racism was as a stain on the very moral consciousness of America.
My book comes to mind; I have in reality been attempting to write it for more years than I care to admit. Quite unsure of what the hold-up has been; maybe afraid to venture into the deep. What lies at the end of the tunnel? Considering the fact that I’ve held on to this pain so long, there must be fear of that space being hollow. What a silly notion, healing has to feel better than whatever this is I’ve been allowing to weigh me down.
Billie’s smooth blues-tinted jazz vocals are blaring from my radio; Strange Fruit. I’ve paused to write a poem, Billie’s pain, resonating deeply inside of my own heart. Aptly titled Billie’s Blues, or maybe they’re my own and in this moment it’s easier not to identify with them.
BILLIES’ BLUES
Oh twisted soul
Tattered and torn
Caught between realities
emotionally stillborn
Looking to the heavens
For answers unknown
Silence the only response
Oceans of tears sewn
On the precipice of change
Invisible chains holding you down
Isolation your dwelling place
In your own pain, you drown
A smile hides the sorrow
That lies behind your eyes
Laughter most use as medicine
Instead perpetuate your lies
Oh twisted soul
Tattered and torn
May you one day find calm
In the midst of the storm
A legacy of pain behind me, an unclear future ahead. Even at 40 years old, my future seems so vague and uncertain; so much time lost. I have come to a stark realization that has in fact broken me to the very core of my being. Not a break just for the sake of breaking, but a break intended to rebuild the very essence of who I am as a person.
I was eight years old and it was a few days before Christmas. The house was filled with the anticipation every child has as the day of gift opening approaches. I was giddy, encompassed with that rechargeable energy every parent wonders if they can patent to reserve for themselves or maybe even jar like jam for sale.
There was a knock on the door. I had been instructed by my mother NEVER to open the door if she wasn’t home; which was often. My brother John and I had been playing and in a moments notice we were seized with overwhelming fear of having been heard. We became quiet, so quiet that a mouse could be tip toeing on cotton and the sound of pitter pattering feet could be heard for miles; reverberating like a clanging symbol.
On the other side of the door I hear a voice, one that I recognized. I sprang forth as though the Ring Leader at Barnum and Bailey’s circus had just lit the ignition of a cannon. “It’s Marilyn!” I ran towards the door and unlocked the bottom lock and it thrust open like a gale force of wind had just hit it.
I stood there, filled with anxious anticipation, my gap-toothed grin ready to greet my neighbor. Thinking to myself, “Surely mommy won’t be angry. Marilyn is our friend.” Only Marilyn was nowhere to be found. Instead I was greeted by two very formally dressed men, the police. My heart sank, mind suddenly gripped with fear, knees quaking, tears forming. “I will CERTAINLY get in trouble for this,” I thought.
That was the day my life changed. It wasn’t the day my father stole away into the night with my personal baby wet wet; my brother. Neither was it the day my mother threw me off of the catwalk. Nor the days we hopped from motel to motel because we were homeless; but that day. The day I didn’t heed mommy’s warning, the day my friend Marilyn deceived me; the day I was kidnapped by two police officers and a social worker.
As I exit the shower and dry off in the mirror, I stare at the evidence of time having passed by; a stranger stares back. Grey hair springing forth as if salt accidentally dropped into a container of pepper. Stretch marked belly as evidence of housing life, twice. Sagging breast who’s elasticity is trying its absolute best to hang on and defy the laws of gravity. I gaze upon a face that because of good genes, has yet to display the physical effects of wisdom and time.
Tears begin to fall as I oil my body and begin to put on my clothes. I don’t know why I’m crying. I exit the bathroom and am suddenly grateful that my cousins have gone to the farm. I need this time alone. I turn on the t.v and begin to scroll through a slew of series in hopes one will jump out and grab my attention. Iyanla Vanzant: Fix My Life. “YES, Iyanla, pleeeease fix my life.”
I settle on a three-part series of eight children whose parents had abandoned them due to the ravishing crack epidemic of the eighties. Tears, like a leaky faucet cascading from my eyes, falling down my cheeks and settling where they may. Iyanla is coaching the mother and daughter and asks the daughter what she wanted. Through tear-stained eyes she whispers, “I want my mommy.” The reality of that short sentence smacks me in the face like a tangled spider web unseen until impact.
Iyanla grabs the mother’s hand as she places her palm on the daughters knee, looks her squarely in the eye and very matter-of-factly responds, “You will never have that.” I paused the program as my body is violently overtaken by emotion. The ugly cry is no longer imminent, it has arrived; T minus zero seconds.
“Why, whyyyyyyy, Iyanla?! Why can’t I have my mommy?” Every fiber of my being screams at the t.v. I sit on the edge of the couch, eight years old, wearing the gently worn costume of a forty-year old woman. Mind racing, collapsing in on itself while trying to compute the new data it has received. I’m eight. Emotionally, I’m eight.
I can’t breathe. My lungs won’t fill with air. My body is shaking. A storm of emotions has hit the Island of Tamera and there isn’t time to take cover. Sinking in the quicksand of overdue understanding. Memories uprooted by a gust of wind, blowing around every corner of my mind. I’m eight. I cry until I’m dry; until my eyes are swollen, red and stinging.
The storm didn’t blow through and leave me with rubbles to sift through. My spirit was already war-torn and mine-filled. This unexpected storm cleared a path. A path to be used to get to the next level of my life, to slowly align myself emotionally and mentally with that of the image I present daily.
As I look out through eight year old eyes I see nothingness. Miles and miles of nothingness. Not the kind of nothingness that leaves you feeling empty and void but the kind that looks like a blank canvas. One where pencilled illustrations can be etched and even erased and redrawn if the vision changes or new ideas take form. Sadness still abounds but at the very end of the path, just beyond the mountain, I can see the horizon. Every trial isn’t meant to destroy. More often than not it serves as a vehicle to take us from destination to destination, of healing and growth.
I’ve been looking at it wrong.
Today, I broke. Let the healing begin.
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