PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness
ISSN: 1543-0855
Issue 5 (27)
| PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness ISSN: 1543-0855 Issue 5 (27) |
|
HOW |
Step I
Do not fall
in love with other girls.
Step II
Learn fast: you not one of the boys.
In basic school, when all the girls clump together like hair kinks and whisper about that cute boy with the nice eyes who going marry them after school, don’t find yourself playing in the dirt, pushing mud to feel how it feel between your fingers. Them girls will watch you like a hawk and wonder why you act like you do and word will spread fast that you not one of them, you not like any a them.
Wash the dirt from off a you. Fix you dress. Fix you face and look friendly: nice face and it can get you places if you know what to do with it.
So you don’t like it when that boy grab you at recess and try to press him reaching lips unto your face. Him just want you give him a little kiss cause him think you so pretty, like one a them dolls him sister get from America with the bright skin and the red red lips. You can’t stand it and that’s alright with you. You not looking to get married after school and that’s alright with you. You rather kick him down than kiss any part of him and that feel just fine to you. Even so, listen here, don’t punch him so hard in him face that him front teeth fall out and him momma have to warn your momma that a good thing a him baby teeth and him will get new ones; she won’t look down and narrow her eyes at little you standing bold-faced with your hands on you hips; she won’t tell your momma watch you close, real close, cause you too wild even at this tender age.
Step III
Learn to listen.
Learn to listen when you momma tell you that you better learn. Learn to bite you tongue and do what she tell you cause you not one a them boys. You can’t just go ’bout so.
Hear we when we tell you not to walk ’round the neighborhood barefoot and shirtless ’cause you like the warm asphalt and the hot sun.
Stop being so unruly.
You listening?
You want us to tell you again about them girls who end up on the street, no place to go? You want us to give you more copies of the Daily Gleaner with stories about them let-go girls them find by the roadside, in the bushes, in the gullies, rotting like trash? You want more stories from the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation? Stories about Precious Brown who stay at her yard and study hard and going on to study even more at University of the West Indies – on scholarship? We got more stories. We can tell you. But it clear from the way you keep hanging out at the gate next door, it clear from the way you keep you hair like a bag a coir, we still on step II. Make sure you get it.
Step II
You not a boy. Don’t climb the big mango tree in you backyard and ignore you momma when she call you from the kitchen to come grater the coconuts. You have work in the house and if you know what’s good for you, you better go do it.
Don’t sit in a the tree and let mango juice drip down your chin and chest, unto your pale yellow shorts with the pink flowers. You can’t stand them shorts for true but you not one of the boys and you momma going beat you for looking like a let-go beast and not coming when she call you.
You not one of them boys and so you better learn to stay in your yard like them other girls. Go to church and school and come home like them girls who raise right and know them place early.
You not one of the boys and one day you momma going point to the blood on your shorts and tell you for the last time that you better watch you yard and you self more than you been doing and keep out of the streets. Them is no place for girl – especially now you practically a woman.
You better hear her good ’cause you going get into a world a trouble if you don’t heed what she saying. You is a hard-headed and hard a hearing girl for true and them is the ones them find dead in the gullies all the time with them skirt peel back over them chest and them body mash up bad. So you watch yourself and keep yourself safe in the house. Them boys you see running ‘bout the street will ruin you for sure if you don’t keep an eye out. So you better watch it before them ways a yours bring nothing but heartache to you and everybody.
Ways a mine?
You was always a facety gal. Don’t ask stupid questions. Word travel like wild fire and every body see you hanging ’bout like some stray. We know all ’bout you wildness from basic school through primary school.
Why you keep telling me I not one of the boys? I never think I was and that alright. I don’t want be them and that good too. So what you keep carrying on’bout?
Step III
Learn to listen.
When you pass the Comman Entrance exam and get into our best high school for girls, learn to listen. Immaculate Conception School for Girls is just the place for you.
You will hate the white uniforms. You will hate the white nuns. You will hate the rules about how to chew gum with your mouth closed and never in public. You will hate the rules about how to comb your hair so that every strand is straight and in place. You will learn how to stand each time your teacher comes into the room and how to wait until she tells you when to sit. You will learn to sit with your lips and knees pressed shut. You will learn how to cook rice and peas and chicken for other people. You will learn how to serve escovitch fish on a platter to other people. You will learn how to keep your eyes lowered when in conversation. You will learn good English. You will learn to be the kind of girl we can look at and admire. You will learn proper ways.
And you will wonder for years how you going make it. You might think this going kill you. But that just how it feel.
But I feel like I going die.
I hear what you saying to me, but, let me tell you, is not true. That just how it feel. You not going dead from this.
But I feel –
You not listening.
It already killing me.
You was always a hard-headed girl, real hard a hearing.
Step II.
But how –
Learn to listen.
But –
Learn to listen when we tell you how to walk and how to talk and how to look and how to –
But you not telling me how?
Sometimes we can’t tell you a thing.
But you not telling me how I suppose to be this Immaculate girl.
Step I
Again?
Step I, again
Don’t be the kind of girl you so bent on being.
How?
Step II
You know?
Step II
You not free to go ’bout like one of the boys.
Step III
Is this all you know?
Step III
Learn to listen.
Step I
Wait a minute: you even know how to be a Jamaican girl for real?
Learn to –
I don’t think you really know how this go. I don’t think you know a way for me to be.
Step I
Learn –
Step I
You can be –
You was always –
a bull-dagger.
If you are, make-out with the girl next door and tell everyone she’s your best friend. You’re twelve and you can hold her hand and hug as much as you want in public. Learn to think of yourself as her very best friend, her very special friend, and feel good about what that means.
Choose an all girls school, like the Immaculate Conception School for Girls. Do not cry when you realize that your very best friend is going to go to a different school. It’s the beginning of the summer when you both stop looking like little girls and she’s already treating you like a not so special kind of bestfriend.
At the Immaculate Conception School, pretend to play by the rules. There are a lot of them. Do what it takes not to get expelled.
Do what it takes to make it.
Make friends with the single girls. Talk boys with them long enough to get invited to their house for a slumber party.
At the slumber party, act like you are one of them. Suggest they play a game you’ve seen on TV. Act innocent when you explain the rules of “Spin the Bottle”. Act innocent when you later explain the art of french kissing. Make sure you mention how much their future boyfriends will love it. Make sure you stress the importance of practicing. Make sure you make yourself available.
Do not make yourself too available.
Do not let on that you REALLY like it.
Do not make-out with so many girls you make a name for yourself.
Do not fall in love.
Worry that you cannot hold this much of yourself in for this long. Remember that high school is hard on everyone; it only feels like it’s killing you.
Do not write love notes using the word denouement while Sister Davidica discusses Great Expectations. Do not daydream in class. Do not write down all your fantasies in the diary you keep in your unlocked desk.
Do not get expelled.
Step I
Start again.
Step I
Leave home. Travel what seems like the space of an ocean, but is really just a sea. Go knowing that you’re going for good.
Step II
Move in with the auntie, uncle, cousin, some other family member who first left the island for New York City years ago and who can now “show you the ropes” and give you a place to stay for a while.
You may have to sleep on the floor or the sofa. You may have to live out of your suitcase. You may feel a little homeless while you don’t sleep in a bed or have a drawer for even your small things.
Step III
Hit the ground running!
This is New York City and as soon as you put down your suitcases, you have places to go and people to see. Really. You have documents to gather, forms to fill out, lines to stand in, and jobs to go after. You are away from home now and there’s a whole new world not waiting for you.
Step IV
Don’t believe everything you’ve heard and seen at the movies and on TV. This isn’t a whole new world you’ve come to.
Don’t believe the stories you told yourself before leaving home and that you still tell yourself as you spread the blanket on your aunt’s/ uncle’s/ cousin’s/ family member’s floor/ sofa at night.
Here you are not free to be all the things your heart desires.
Don’t be let your eyes betray the skip in your heart at the sight of the kind of girl you’ve always dreamed about.
Don’t shave your head and let your body hair grow.
Don’t spend as much time as you can in Greenwich village “wid dem deh people.”
News travel fast here too.
Before you know it, the auntie/ uncle/cousin/non-immediate family member who moved to New York City from the island years ago, who you moved here thinking will let you be because them not you parents, will monitor your every move and standstill and report it back home.
Step V
Spend as much time as possible away from your home way from home.
Do everything you can think of to move out.
Excel: take 24 credits per semester; join the newspaper and the English majors’ magazine; write stories about survival; win awards for your fiction; add an after school job in Greenwich village to your long day. Work like there is no end of things to accomplish. And always plan for the day when you will have everything you need to move out.
Step VI
Get a scholarship to grad school.
Maybe you were thinking about becoming a lawyer, about spending your life arguing your case and altering the world for a living. However, grad school comes with a stipend and a way to move out – and out of state.
You are tired and ready. Take the path of least resistance.
Step VII
Do not fall in love
with a new sense of freedom.
You finally live on your own. No one watches your comings and goings. Anyone you want can stay. Anytime you want, you can go.
Your furniture is just where you want it. And it is easy to think that you are too.
But do not fall in love with this new sense of freedom. It is only New Jersey you’ve come to.
Step VIII
Do not fall in love
with the first girl to ever hit on you.
Do not think she is the answer to your high school prayers when she tells you that she’s from Jamaica, when she tells you about the crushes she carried at her all-girls high school, when she tells you your lips are beautiful.
When she invites you to her home that night, do not think this is it.
Step IV
Do not believe everything you’ve seen and heard.
This is not a whole new world you’ve come to.
Do not believe the stories you told yourself before leaving your home away from home and that you still tell yourself each night as you pour over the novels and texts from your postcolonial lit and theory class.
This is not a whole new world you’ve come to, free of everything you want to leave behind.
Step VIII
Do not fall in love
with the first girl to ever make you feel at home.
She has also traveled away from home and is already planning her next move to Hawaii, then China, then back to you. Then gone for good to France with the man of her dreams.
Do not throw up when she sends you the news via email from an undisclosed location. Do not wish you could throw up and flush everything inside you.
Step IX
Do not give up on everything.
Do not turn off your phone, close your blinds, stop writing stories of survival, stop going to classes, stop eating, stop.
Do not tell yourself it would be better if you never woke up.
Do not do this until your parents, worried for weeks that you have been out of touch, send campus police to check on you.
Do not make it so that you have to leave this home you’ve worked so long and tried so hard to make for yourself.
Step X
Move back to New York City and back to your auntie’s/uncle’s/cousin’s/ non-immediate family member’s house in Brooklyn.
Do not give up on everything.
This is a whole new world you’ve come to.
But it is still only heartbreak.
Step I
Start again.
Travel what seems like the space of an ocean, but is really just the distance of a sea.
Go knowing you’re going for good.
Citation Format:
Racquel Simone. “How?” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 5, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Africa Resource Center, Inc.