The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 40

So he marched with me. He squeezed my hand throughout Brooklyn. But the weight of those girls and boys dying was heavy on my shoulders, their names made a home on my tongue. I wondered who they were, how many things had happened before the one that finally took their lives. And Johnny Boy and I drifted apart because the heavier the burden on my shoulders, the harder I typed into the night, the more New York began to look like Texas began to look like California began to look like Baltimore began to look like Florida. The more Johnny Boy reminded me of his blindness to the thing, of his love for me through the thing. Why didn’t he see me? There were times he held my hand through the night. Those contrasting colors interlocked. Gray eyes in the moonlight. You are special, he said, and I love you, he said, let me love you. And I never said it back. I needed time, I said, I’m just getting over my last relationship. Why do we make the ones who love us wait?

Ashleigh called. She was crying. She wanted to hear my voice. I missed her though I had seen her a week before. My phone was cold and still I pressed it to my ear when I heard her whimper. We were in the news. We were trending again. George Zimmerman was still free. Eric Garner had been choked to death. Michael Brown was an unarmed black boy who was shot six times, at least two in the head, and it had killed him. I know, girl, I eased her. We’ll march and call the congressmen, I said. Write a think piece, I said. Write letters, I said, in this our country. But she told me in these moments she felt worthless. Each one made her feel worthless. Invisible again. Depressed again. Her tears sounded familiar. Like that day in middle school running with the Blackgirls, that cutting music that would replay for the rest of our lives. My friends, these women I hid with during storms, these women I consumed so many of those joyous Brooklyn hours with. And I want to find the words, the poetry, to give her the thanks she deserves for her shoulder. For stirring my ginger tea all those times my voice got lost in that job/man/city. For understanding what it was like to be at that table, to be a young girl just learning how much the world’s opinion of you differed from your loving Mam’s. Those girls helped me. They healed me. She heals me. But another thing had happened and she forgot her power. Another thing happens and she becomes that little girl, running. Racing to safety, to be better than each other, to be better than ourselves, to be seen.

In the shower that night I thought of our conversation, her tears. I had taken my braids out because I wanted to run my fingers through my roots, my coils, to be reminded. I heard the front door open from inside the bathroom, and Johnny Boy shouted hello and what are you doing? I am washing my hair, I yelled back. I took my braids out. Oh, your ’fro is out. Your ’fro is out again, he joked. Doesn’t washing it take forever, he asked, and I could tell he was smiling. I didn’t answer him. Well, I guess we won’t be going out to dinner tonight, he said. Don’t you wish you had hair like mine? he asked. I felt a chill. Of rage, shock, perplexity, exhaustion, something. I was not finished but I turned off the faucet right away. Right away. Foam slid off my body and beads of water from my natural curls fell to my shoulders. I heard my breathing in my ears. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY? I asked. And in the aftermath of the questions, in the silence, he could still hear my anger in my breathing, and I heard his footsteps approach the room. Wait, whoa, what? What did I? No, it was a joke. I’m sorry. It was a bad, bad joke, babe. Babe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And he rambled and was still rambling when I opened the door, naked but not deformed, and the water was coming from my hair, but then the water was coming from my eyes. He had done a thing. But I would not run from him. He stared at me, dared not touch me, sorry, and I knew it. But he had said a thing and that day had already broken me. And I could still hear that cutting music. So loud, it echoed, so I stood there until we both knew. Stood there until the echoes finished.

Springtime. Johnny Boy had been kind, he was good, and I lacked patience. Men like him were the men I grew up with. All-American and well meaning, painstakingly oblivious of their privilege. Most days with him reminded me of the life I traded for New York. What would have become of the day we finally moved into that house if I had closed my eyes and stayed?

On the day my family moved into our first house in America, the sun, although invisible behind the motionless clouds, had already risen onto the cul-de-sac. Knowing somehow that it was there, though she could not see it nor did she ever see it at the time she rose every morning, Mam was already awake and packing old silverware that she refused to discard and newly purchased china sets into a cupboard that she had picked out only months before. After she unpacked each box, she balled her freckled hands into a fist and released her slightly wrinkled fingers into the air. In Liberia when Papa built their first house in Caldwell, she did not reap the enjoyment