For the first half of my adult life, I lived in the margins, staying in one place until my feet itched to go somewhere else, never settling in.
At parties I watched people stand with legs comfortably cocked. When I tried to copy their loose limbs, I'd stumble. Overhearing conversation about a new book I'd make a note to read it. By the next party, they'd be onto something else.
Girlfriends would read my poetry and say, "Maybe you need a therapist." Guys would say, "It has no balls." Even my signature lagged.
When I was a girl, Mama told me, "Don't be ugly." Sometimes she and Daddy called me "Sister." "Don't be ugly, Sister." Stay on the straight and narrow is what they meant.
My hair was straight — and lank. When it wasn't French-braided and pulled tight, it hung like damp straw. My grin was lopsided. I know this from my first-grade picture. That was the school where all the elementary kids met in one big room and the teacher made us stand up, starting with the oldest, to tell something special that happened during the summer.
I was bug-eyed by
the time it was my turn. "Lice!" I blurted. "I got lice this summer at the public swimming pool and Mama had to pour kerosene on my head." For weeks afterward, boys would run up and poke cootie-catchers in my face.
When I was thirteen I read a novel about a woman who learned she was part Black. I fantasized that my mother was my grandfather's secret love child with a beautiful wild woman. I wanted some insurgency in my blood, freedom from demands to be quiet at meals, to not sing in the car, to wear shoes when I'd rather be barefoot.
I'm still hungry to sit cattywompus, to run untamed, to roam crooked and wide.
At parties I watched people stand with legs comfortably cocked. When I tried to copy their loose limbs, I'd stumble. Overhearing conversation about a new book I'd make a note to read it. By the next party, they'd be onto something else.
Girlfriends would read my poetry and say, "Maybe you need a therapist." Guys would say, "It has no balls." Even my signature lagged.
When I was a girl, Mama told me, "Don't be ugly." Sometimes she and Daddy called me "Sister." "Don't be ugly, Sister." Stay on the straight and narrow is what they meant.
My hair was straight — and lank. When it wasn't French-braided and pulled tight, it hung like damp straw. My grin was lopsided. I know this from my first-grade picture. That was the school where all the elementary kids met in one big room and the teacher made us stand up, starting with the oldest, to tell something special that happened during the summer.
I was bug-eyed by
the time it was my turn. "Lice!" I blurted. "I got lice this summer at the public swimming pool and Mama had to pour kerosene on my head." For weeks afterward, boys would run up and poke cootie-catchers in my face.When I was thirteen I read a novel about a woman who learned she was part Black. I fantasized that my mother was my grandfather's secret love child with a beautiful wild woman. I wanted some insurgency in my blood, freedom from demands to be quiet at meals, to not sing in the car, to wear shoes when I'd rather be barefoot.
I'm still hungry to sit cattywompus, to run untamed, to roam crooked and wide.
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