The Avoidance Factor

I was in a good mood this morning, surprisingly, so I decided to treat myself to a bagel. I haven't had one of those in a couple of weeks. I returned to my room and watched tv. Practically all day. I also watched a little bit of the movie Fiddler on the Roof.

I figured I would be able to avoid any personal racial revelations with this one. I was right. I love Tevya. The Papa! I did venture outside finally, later in the day. In an almost agoraphobic space, I meandered about the East Village and, realizing I was too early for the show I was supposed to see, decided to head to my favorite reading ground, the tea lounge. Sitting outside, smoking a clove, I began to think. This always gets me in trouble, leading me, as it is wont to do, to places I find it difficult to return from.

That 'thing' that happened Saturday morning is there, like a big cloud now, that I feel I can't maneuver through. So I began to take it apart piece by piece. I didn't get very far, though, because I tried to remember another time where a similar 'thing' happened, a time when I felt an overwhelming lack of history and singularity.

Immediately, I thought of it. The moment happened when I was about 25. I sitting on the back of a colleague's pick-up truck on a lunch break at my first editing gig. I was reading Homegirls, a black feminist anthology compiled by Barbara Smith. The particular piece I was reading was about the sistren, the great-grandmothers, the grandmothers, the aunts, the sisters, the mothers.

I remember looking up and imagining all of them, sitting around telling yarns about the days of old, speaking in the language only they could understand. And for good reason. Just then, another colleague, returning from his own break, pulled up by me to engage in, what I'm sure was, a stupid conversation. His name was Daryl.He wasn't the brightest bulb in the lot, but he was a maniac graphic artist who had an enviable freelance gig and an imaginative way of telling stories. The kind that were most likely untrue. But I liked him. He said good things to me every once in a while. And he was always telling me I needed to be writing. "What are you thinking about?" he would ask sometimes after catching me in a trance. Daryl at the time had two girls. Or maybe three. He's probably got about five at the rate he and his wife seemed to be going.

I saw them once, his kids, at a softball game. The (men's, of course) team was sponsored by my company and this was the only game I attended. I had heard a lot about his kids before meeting them, so I was anxious to see what the big deal was. They were cute as hell, of course, having the same skin color as me. Daryl's black; his wife is white. Every once in a while, I'll look at mixed kids like that and feel some sort of kinship to them. I know what it's about to a certain extent; it seems obvious. But then, as always, my story must take the extra step. Is it really kinship? For many years, it didn't matter. They didn't know my story, couldn't know, so I went with it, feeling a connection to them. It's my right, I suppose. I had a similar reaction when I saw Daryl's kids. And knowing Daryl like I did, I would ask him questions sometimes, feeling comfortable in the space and knowing he would understand where I was coming from.

This lunch-break conversation was different, though. Feeling a little annoyed he had interrupted my train of thought, and not having patience for inane discussions, I interrupted him. I asked him if his daughters know their history. If they had female relatives on his side with whom they could identify one half of themselves.

They did, he said. His sisters or sister. (Age is wearing on my memory.) I was satisfied with this. And a little envious of them. Of what they had. But the overwhelming feeling was satisfaction. His girls would be all right. Would be taken care of. Thinking about this today, I noticed a difference. It didn't matter that I didn't have what they had; what mattered was that they had it. Rather than consider my own loss, I concentrated solely on their fulfillment. And that's as far as it went. So, yes, now, I'm thinking of no one else. No other mixed kids who may or may not have their own answers. Or even non-mixed kids who don't have answers.

That's one of the things that has prevented me from lamenting my own situation. Others are in it, so I have nothing to complain about. I realize now that it's not complaining. It's searching for peace. I have yet to understand the intensity of what occurred to me this weekend. I can tell that I've been avoiding it. This is most likely due to the fact that I don't have any answers. And I'm one to always need those.

I need to be able to think apart a complex equation in order to get to the bottom of it. Only then can I move on. But there's no moving on from this one. It will, 'it,' always be the case. The dealio. The situation. The fact. But it's only one fact. As I delve deeper into it, other things arise. That blasted identity thing creeps up time and again.

Gains ground on my ass as regularly as my need for tampons. And it doesn't end at race. It's always got to go into sexuality. And gender. And everything I've been writing about with so much certainty, the ambiguity of it all, is finally getting to me. I'm realizing that I may not be so comfortable with ambiguity within myself. I am as far as others are concerned. Really, just stop looking at me. What's happening, I think, is that I have spent a lot of time, in the last two years especially, pushing it all out.

Really, stop looking at me. I haven't necessarily considered its effects on me. Just to say that it sucks. Or it makes me angry. Or sad. Well, it exploded Saturday morning. And I don't know quite yet what to do with it. Perhaps I'm to do nothing. Just keep looking at my eyes and derive my own meaning from them. My nose and let it speak for itself. My hair and keep dousing it with gel and welcome the waves when they grow out. My color, let it wash over me like it does and be saved by it, rather than feel it represents loss.

When I was sitting outside the tea lounge tonight, a black woman probably in her early 60s walked by. I didn't let myself go 'there.' Instead, I thought back to other times when I would look at old black people and fantasize about them being my grandmother or grandfather. I would wonder what kinds of stories they would have for me about being born during Reconstruction or living through Jim Crow. Then it had a name. I thought back to the other time when a movie made me react strongly. Five years ago, I saw the movie Amistad.

The scene where the lead dissenter was breaking from his shackles stuck with me. I was trying to sleep that night next to my girlfriend, and so many thoughts were going through my head that I couldn't. I got out of bed and went for my journal. In five minutes, this came out:

Where do I start? How do I start? All of a sudden, I'm black. I've had dark skin since birth. A black man into violence against women decided to find someone that night to rape -- perhaps kill. The victim was my mother, although not quite yet. His brutality and impending ejaculation conceived me. Him and his dark skin, my mom and her white. "Shut up white bitch." I don't know where to begin. Who could have known the issues I would face? Not my mom. Not my aunt. Not even me -- until now. Where do I start? Fresh from watching Amistad, I attempted sleep, but sleep wasn't ready for me. Feelings of rage, sorrow, madness, and confusion were enveloping my being. I was trapped on my side of the bed, inside my head. A silent cry emerged from my soul, whose wound was heard by no one. Who? Who out there feels this? No words I have can express the anger inside. Anger at what? Anger at whom? Who am I? Where do I belong? I flashed back to what is an imaginary night in my mind. To what was most likely a cool evening, for it was an October night -- the night this little bundle of joy was conceived. Why? What does it all mean. His desire to overpower a helpless woman, his desire to find his masculinity, and his insistence on showing her who's boss gave birth to the anger in his child, the anger buried deeply beneath the layers upon layers of confusion, isolation and longing. For what? How could a father do this to his child? Why does a woman want so badly to give birth to a constant reminder of such a brutal night? Weren't the scars enough? But to have to feed the reminder, clothe the reminder, love the reminder? Why? This reminder whose skin color resembles her in no way. A reminder who is half rapist.

So yeah, my thoughts have been here before, in a way. I can either give fuel to its complexity, or I can try and treat it as simply a thread that will forever wend its way in and out of my thing called life. There could be worse things. Like the guy with one leg I saw on the train tonight watch his friend take off to another subway car with his prosthetic leg in hand. I looked up from Plexus to find a guy with two legs carrying the prosthesis in one hand. Through the window to the next car I saw numerous faces peering in at him laughing.

And then, wouldn't you know it, was the legless guy, himself, standing on the good leg, laughing. Every once in a while, he lifted his stump, which was wrapped neatly in gauze, a metal rod coming out the end of it looking for its hole. Which was on my side of the window. The shenanigans lasted only the length of one stop. I stepped off the train with the hooligan and, as I walked by, I looked in the other car. They were all laughing, except for an appalled woman who had been witness to all that went on. You know what? If the legless guy is laughing, then I don't see any harm in it.