I’m sick of this dialogue. I’ve been having it since I was a likkle girl. At first it wasn’t so much a dialogue, but the diatribe of daddy’s instruction on how to navigate the double standard. Triple if mommy was talking. But mostly it was daddy with his regular lectures on race and our place on that tightrope balanced between two worlds.
Monday to Friday was PB and J but weekends were for guava jelly and bammi. I could win’ up my waist while Bob boomed through the stereo but dancing to the piped music when shopping at Simpsons would garner a quick and furtive clap. Mom was doing her best to protect me from exoticism and sexualization. It didn’t matter that I am built nothing like the Hottentot Venus, historical precedent had been set and perverse curiosity has endured.
I’ve been tired since I was eleven years old. It’s a fatigue triggered by the atmosphere. Whenever there is racial turmoil it flares up, but triggers are myriad and varied. I know I was eleven, very possibly ten, when it settled into my marrow like a rheumatic affliction. My parents had worked and saved diligently for five years and we were nestled in the fruits of their labour. The yellow curtained kitchen to be precise.
Breakfast set the tone for the day, warm cinnamon infused oatmeal prepared us for the wintry day ahead or maybe we started a warm day with cold cereal, the sugary milk helping to fuel us until lunchtime. Mommy would scan the news, cherry picking headlines to read out loud. This morning she is reading about a shooting downtown, she pauses and prays under her breath that they do not say the suspect is black. But he is and there is a shift. A veil falls over her face and she has that weariness she sometimes carries at the end of a day. I saw her see me see the sadness in her eyes.
I understood later that my parents obsession with current events was a survival tactic. Weather reports prepared them to bring an umbrella, the news prepared them for the racial climate of the day. It’s a fucking exhausting way to live day in day out, but those were the rules of navigation.
In school the rules were clear. Rise above reproach. Never give them reasons to judge you; they already had a surplus. How to excel? Do twice as well. The exchange rate on my achievements is not in my favor so I have to double my efforts for the same result.
Striving. Striving. Striving. Always aware that the system is rigged.
I understand now her sadness. She realized that although far from Brooklyn and the racial strife reported by aunties and cousins, the house in Scarborough wasn’t going to shield my sister and I from racism. We were going to navigated the same systems. It will rarely be overt but the covert and coded gaslighting is constant and bruising.
I’m sick and tired of repeating the same appeals for justice. I’m angry that my nephews have inherited this fight. I’m angry that I’m hard-wired to worry every time one of them has a tournament in a southern state. But this time might be different. I’m channeling the rage into the work that needs to be done. I’m embracing new allies amongst old friends. I’m still burning with rage and that’s okay. The phoenix needs a fire.
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