We Got This, page 2
“Bonjour,” the goofier-looking lion says to his compatriot.
“Hello,” the small-eyed lion replies.
“Oh, mais oui. Je suis désolé. I thought you spoke French. Your country was not colonized by the Belgians?”
“The British,” the other lion says, rather stiffly.
“Mais oui,” the goofy lion says again, because my imaginary French is limited.
“May whee!” you repeat joyously. “May wheeeeee!”
Of the two elephants in the puzzles, one is clearly a baby. He trots up close to the elder elephant and asks, “What are those called?”
“Tusks,” the big elephant explains. She is more cartoonish, her colors more garish. I wonder if her backstory involves a stint in the circus. “You’ll have them too one day.”
“Oh,” says the grave little elephant. “All the grown-ups in my pack were slaughtered, so I don’t know about tusks.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll teach you.”
The hippos are in your control, so they just make a lot of fart noises.
On the computer, Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” is playing, as per your screeching demand, on repeat. A cloud of dread amasses in my chest when the “colored girls go do-do-do-do-do …” One day I will have to explain to you why he called them “colored girls.” You don’t yet know that I am white and you are brown and what that means, above all else, is that you are not safe. You’ll learn about the vile things that happened to your ancestors and the wretched things that continue to happen to people like you. Your history on both sides is gouged by tragedy: racism and poverty, your father’s family inheritance from colonialism; addiction, violence, and rape, my family’s legacy of self-perpetuating trauma. There are so many things you are going to learn, things beyond my control: heroin and the N-word and murder and suicide and injustice and disease and good old-fashioned heartache. No wonder I don’t want to take you outside.
I skip to a Lucinda Williams song, “You Were Born to Be Loved,” and you begin to rub your eyes. The nap is getting closer. I never had bedtimes as a child; there was no routine, no person, to see me off to sleep. I would pass out in the clothes I had on that day, sometimes on the floor, at whatever time my eyes dropped shut, and wake up to figure it all out again by myself. But not you, not us. I rock you in my arms, and you smile a coy smile, because you know exactly what I’m about to say.
“Remember when you were a baby, and you couldn’t walk or talk or even hold up your head, and I had to hold you in my arms like this all the time?”
It’s our tradition for me to repeat these words every time I hold you like this, to pretend you are such a big kid now, so different from that baby you were a blink ago.
I wish I could remember that time more. The details were so piercing in the moment; the whole of existence seemed to smolder between your long eyelashes. What I remember most is being so in love and so lonely at the same time, so afraid and so happy. And, that you hated to sleep, as you do now, and so I just held you all the time, because I didn’t know what else to do.
“Again,” you say softly of the song playing now. You have found a new lullaby. I lay down in your bed, still holding you, and together we drift off to sleep. We dream.
from The Light of the World: A Memoir
Elizabeth Alexander
The day he died, the four of us were exactly the same height, just over five foot nine. We’d measured the boys in the pantry doorway the week before. It seemed a perfect symmetry, a whole family the same size but in different shapes. Now the children grow past me and past their father. They seem to grow by the day; they sprout like beanstalks towards the sky.
Week after week I continue to watch them at basketball practice with our beloved Coach Geraldine. I listen to how they deepen their voices to holler, “Ball!” Coach G. tells Solo, “Get large!” or, as his father told him, “Never be smaller than you are.” Be large. I watch how the young men on the team intimidate each other on purpose, how they enact their masculinity, in each other’s faces, with controlled aggression that sometimes bursts over, and how they manage the aggression. I watch them knock each other down and help each other up. I watch them master the codes of the court and the street. I watch them practice their swag. They are smelling themselves, as the expression goes, literally smelling their funk, feeling the possibility of their maleness. I watch their splendiferous gloating when they make a three-pointer, how they yell, “Beast!” to each other when they snatch a rebound. And I watch how they give each other skin for each job well done, this fellowship of beautiful young men, learning to be mighty together inside of this gym with an inspirational woman coach who loves them and is showing them how to be large, skilled, savvy young men living fully in their physicality after their father’s body so suddenly stopped working.
Simon’s ankle bones appear shiny at his pants’ hems. He complains his feet hurt, and, indeed, his toes have grown and are pushing against the ends of his shoes. His growing seems avid, fevered. It feels like the insistent force of life itself. Ficre looked forward to seeing his sons grow beyond him. If I could hear him, I would hear him laughing his great laugh at this latest development.
I go to sleep with them on my mind, I wake up with them on my mind, and all my decisions are informed by their presence in my life. I think that’s what all moms do.
—Sheryl Crow
When One Door Closes, Another One Opens
Terri Linton
My earliest memory of my father is not of us walking through a park, going for ice cream, or of me, with legs dangling, surveying the world atop his shoulders. Instead, it’s of me waiting—for him. I’m dressed in a wool coat that’s buttoned all the way up to my neck. A knit hat is snug on my head. Black tights and patent leather shoes cover little feet, poised and ready to hit the floor as soon as the doorbell rings. But it doesn’t.
Hours pass. Sweat streams down my face. I ignore my mother’s pleas to take off my coat. My daddy said he’s coming. Her disbelief has nothing to do with my belief that he will. He said he’s coming; all I have to do is wait.
So I do.
I wait until darkness turns to dawn. I wait until my clothes stick like adhesive tape to my skin. My mother carries my limp body to bed. She’s outlasted my weeping, which has lulled me to sleep. The next morning, I awaken confused. My daddy didn’t come. For reasons I wanted more than anything to understand and forgive, he simply didn’t show.
There were more days like this, many more. Each time, the pain of his absence left a scar uglier than the last. He was my dad, the man I longed to know—the first man I ever loved and hoped would love me back. Whether we were driving around in his super-cool white Pontiac Grand Prix with the sunroof open or listening to Marvin Gaye, just being in his presence was something like magic to me. But when he didn’t show, time after time, I wondered if it was because of me. And in my little-girl mind with a little-girl’s dismay, I told myself I wasn’t enough of anything for him and probably never would be.
My father’s entry and exit continued for years. Sometimes he was around; most times he wasn’t. Sometimes he kept his word; most times he didn’t. His presence was like an imaginary door that he swung open and closed. When he opened it, the warmth of his love flowed through and blanketed me. But when he closed the door, it was impenetrable. No pleading or tears could pry it open.
My mother could no longer take it. If he continued his drifting, she’d take him to court for child support—something he’d always feared, something she’d never done before. And with no parting words or promises to return, my father simply closed the door one last time and disappeared.
I never blamed my mother. She rescued me. Even though I sometimes wondered where he was, I no longer expected him to be there for me. His absence, as hurtful as it was, neutralized the suspense of seeing if he’d finally show up and be the father I’d always imagined him to be. He never did; he never was. And eventually, I stopped wondering.
Now here I stand in the same shoes as my mother, watching my son peer at a door that remains closed despite his hopes that it will one day open. It’s a persistent pain a mother raising a son alone knows: the pain of watching your child’s sky-high hopes come crashing down when the phone doesn’t ring; the pain of his distress when Daddy delivers an apology instead of himself; the pain of your child standing by your side at a Father’s Day celebration amid a sea of twinned fathers and sons. Those pains leave the deepest wounds. Like my mother did for me, I try to anesthetize them and give my boy relief.
At some point, a decision must be made: allow the door to swing open and closed, or nail it shut. Casualties are inevitable. One mother may decide the door will always be open. Another, like me, may decide she will no longer watch her child look for a ray of light to peek its way through the door’s crack. She may one day decide to tear that door down and, in its stead, build a fortress that no longer allows access to her child’s fragile feelings and tender heart. She will grant herself the grace that she has done her best for her child in the worst of circumstances. She’ll remember her own childhood and know that when one door closes, another always opens. She’ll rest assured that for this mother and this son, kindred in their fatherless-child fates, life and love will see them through.
Notes to My Autistic Daughter
Marianne Peel Forman
I. You are three and have not spoken,
except for minna minna minna
over and over again.
I study sign language
for mama and thank you and please
talking to you with my fingertips and words.
Paired like good wine and cheese
or peanut butter and jelly,
I invite you to come to this talking table.
II. In my every night dreams,
I brush my fingers under my chin, then under yours.
You follow my fingers with your eyes
and I see you mouth thank you
soundless communicating
with language on lips, minus the air to propel the words.
You sign please
and take my hand,
pulling me into a meadow
of blue-petalled flowers
and baby’s breath
under a full and vibrating moon.
You sign dance
and climb onto my feet,
swaying us in the moonlight.
III. In our awake world,
I place the dusty contents of a Kool-Aid package
on your lips and mine.
I am inches from your face,
licking the Kool-Aid off my lips,
urging you to engage lips and tongue and teeth.
But your eyes are glassy and far away,
in a world I cannot see.
I pry a floor-length mirror off the wall,
plop you in my lap,
face us toward the mirror
and lick my lips again,
making cooing, smacking sounds,
delighting in the gritty sweetness on my lips.
Your jaw is set and firm.
No amount of mmmm good
will convince you to taste your own lips.
You are wandering in a faraway place.
And so I hold you
close against my soft places,
singing minna minna minna
along with you,
following your lead,
rocking to the rhythms you compose.
I Was the Different One
Nisa Rashid as told to Regina R. Robertson
My birthday is in April, which is also National Poetry Month. In 2011, when I turned eleven, I decided to write eleven poems to celebrate both occasions. One of my poems, which I entitled, “While I’m Alive, I Will,” read more like a bucket list. It included eight things that I hoped to do before I die, like ride a unicorn to Alaska, marry my love on a Mediterranean wave, and even dye my hair neon green. I also wrote that I wanted to walk a Brooklyn street with my father.
I was so young when I wrote that poem. I was optimistic and tended to fantasize about what might be possible, especially when it came to my father. Back then, I didn’t really understand what deportation meant. I didn’t realize that when he was sent to Guyana in 2009, when I was nine, it meant that he would not be allowed to come back to the United States. If he wasn’t allowed to come back to the States, then he wouldn’t be able to stop by his old block in the Bronx, and he definitely couldn’t come see me in Brooklyn. I also didn’t know that there was another option—that I could visit him in his homeland and walk down a street with him there.
I always knew that he had been in prison, but I was never embarrassed about him being my father. What was embarrassing for me was knowing that my friends and I didn’t have the same type of home lives. A lot of them lived with their dads, and, because I sometimes talked about mine, they’d ask me why he was never around when they came over. I didn’t know how to answer their questions, so I’d always find a way to make light of the fact that he wasn’t there at that moment. I knew I was the different one, which was hard for me to admit and accept when I was a little girl.
When I was seven, my mother and I went out with a friend of mine, along with his mother. While we were eating, our mothers shared that both of our fathers were serving time in prison. I immediately felt a sense of relief. Before that day, I had no idea that there were other people, and definitely not somebody I knew, in the same situation. Knowing that I wasn’t alone helped me feel much more comfortable talking about my father.
As much as I used to avoid going into detail about his whereabouts, my father being in prison was never really a secret. My mother had written books and articles about their relationship and about our life, so many people knew the story. When I was growing up, I don’t remember anybody talking about him or the situation too much, though. My mom’s friends might ask, “Oh, how’s your dad doing?” or something like that, but nobody ever asked me questions like, “Oh my God, how does it feel to not have a father?” Sometimes I would feel bad that he wasn’t with me, physically, but I never felt like I didn’t have a father. We have a great relationship, and he’s always had a very strong presence in my life. I’ve always had my father.
I haven’t seen him, in person, for a while, not since before he was deported, but we are still very close. We talk twice a week, and also stay in touch through social media. We Skype sometimes, too. I still remember when my mother and I would wake up early to drive or take the bus to go visit him. For me, those were always such happy times because I got to see him and spend time with him, but my mother used to tell me how mean the officers were to her, especially when I was a baby. She’d tell me that they were really horrible to her and made her feel uncomfortable during those visits, but I don’t remember any of that.
My mother didn’t tell me everything about his incarceration when I was growing up, but I think she was as honest as she could be. Even though she didn’t outright say why he was serving a twenty-year sentence, she never painted him as a criminal either. Instead, she’d talk about the type of man he was. She always told me that he was a good person and that he didn’t have the proper support or guidance around him when he was younger. That, along with his surroundings, was a big part of the reason why he was sent to prison as a teenager. He’s made that clear to me, too.
If I had to describe my father in a few words, I would say that he is very protective and extremely caring. He always tells me how much he loves me, and, as I’m maturing, he talks to me about boys—“Be careful!”—just as any father would with his daughter. He sees my grades and hears all about my accomplishments from my mom, but one of the hardest and most confusing things about not living under the same roof with him is that he hasn’t been able to see me grow, firsthand. I can tell that he knows I’m doing well because he always reminds me that I’m a smart, beautiful young lady. He’s very encouraging and always wants the best for me. I know that, too.
I should also mention that my father is really religious. He grew up Catholic but converted to Islam when he went to prison, before he and my mother got married. When I was born, I was given two Arabic names—Nisa means “the woman” and Rashid means “the guide”—but I don’t identify as Muslim, which is something I’ve expressed to him. He has tried to tell me that having one parent who is Muslim technically makes me Muslim, too, but I don’t agree with him about that. As much as I respect his choice, I don’t like some of the practices of his religion, especially as it relates to sexism. I know that Muslim women are supposed to cover their hair and things like that, but I don’t support that. My mother is much more liberal and understanding.
We might not see eye-to-eye on religion, but my father and I are definitely connected by culture. His family is from Guyana, so, like him, I strongly identify with Guyanese culture. Living in New York, where so many cultures are appreciated, I am surrounded by Caribbean people in my neighborhood, and I am also in touch with my roots through food and music. I’ve taken it upon myself to read about Guyana and study its history, and my mom says that when I’m sixteen, we can take a trip so that I can see the country for myself. I look forward to that, but most of all, I look forward to seeing my father and walking down the street with him, hand in hand. I think we’ll both be happy on that day. Until then, I will try to stay open and optimistic.
Growing up with a parent in prison was not an ideal situation, but as I get older, I understand how important it is to work with what you have. As thankful as I am to have such a wonderful father, I also know that it wasn’t easy for my mother to carry so much of the weight of taking care of me. I appreciate her for all she’s done. While we’ve had help from my grandparents and many friends, I think that running a household and raising a child is too much for one person to take on.
