Please Don't Kill My Sons

There is a fear that permeates black culture that usually goes unexposed.  Black mothers and fathers worry about the of safety their black sons, simply because they are black. 

When I was in my twenties I was at the mall with my little brother.  He was about 14 at the time, but he was already taller than me.  I don’t think he’d ever lifted a weight, but he was still long, thin, and muscular.  Like his classmates he wore baggy pants and t-shirts everywhere he went.  Unlike his classmates he had a severe learning disability that left him with a pronounced stutter and the mind of someone much younger.  He had to be watched closely.  In spite of this, my brother is the essence of kindness in its purest form. 

Once when we were kids I tried to get him to sneak into a movie with me after the one we’d paid for was over.  He refused.  I started going anyway.  He cried, and begged me not to break the rules.

That day at the mall, he and I were eating.  I finished before he did and I decided I wanted to stop at a store while he finished his food.  I told him to wait for me.  I told him I’d be right back.  I went to a store, not far at all from where I’d left him.  When I returned he was gone.

I called to him.  Walked into store after store and could not find him.  I remember becoming convinced that he’d been taken by a security guard of one of the high end department stores and that he was being questioned.  Because of his disability, they might even have thought that he was mocking them.  I was panicked.  I searched and searched.  Thirty minutes passed.  I asked people if they’d seen him.  Finally I found him.  I burst into tears and buried my head in his chest.

“Uh-uh, it’s, it’s, it’s okay, Yvette,” he said as he awkwardly patted my back.  I didn’t tell him why I was so upset.  But I didn’t take my eyes off him again.

When I was pregnant I prayed for sons.  I love my boys and the way that they dig in the dirt, play with mealworms, and never tire of laughing at the word “toilet.” 

My oldest son has some anxiety and when he feels as though he may cry he makes angry eyes to fight the tears.  He’s only seven, but he’s as tall as his friends who are ten.  Late last year we went to the dentist for a cleaning.  I told the hygienist about his anxiety and I never left his side.  I rubbed his arm as a stranger put a loud tool in his mouth that sprayed water everywhere.  Every now and then he fought back tears by making angry eyes.  After a few minutes the hygienist said, “If you don’t work with me, buddy, I won’t work with you.”  To me he looked all the more afraid, to her he looked defiant. 

How old will he be when I have to have the talk with him?  He’s so tall.  Do I have to tell him when he’s eight that people will mistake his anxiety for a precursor to violence and that they may shoot him dead on the street?  

Speechless

My oldest son said something to me tonight.  He said, “If I was regular, I would be white.”

I don’t know how I got here.  Actually, I do know I just don’t feel like admitting it to myself.  There are so few blacks in Arizona that people like me have to make a choice.  Either we live in predominantly black neighborhoods with terrible schools and random shootings or we live in predominantly white neighborhoods with great schools and little crime.  I obviously chose the latter.  Was it the best choice?  Tonight it feels like it was not the best choice.  I hate Arizona. 

I thought I could decide what I would pass on to my children.  I thought I was smart enough to know how to save them from this.  The minute those words left his sweet little mouth, all the running and all the effort of shoring up a different childhood from the one that I had suddenly caught up to me and I felt exhausted.  Is his life something I can construct out of thin air with prayer, advice from the best books, quality friends, and a literature-rich home? 

The horrific event that most civil rights experts credit with sparking the movement happened just a few doors down from my where my father lived when he was five years old.  My parents grew up at ground zero for the movement.  They took me out of Greenwood partly so that I could have a life that wasn’t defined by race.  In the end, pain over being a different color than my peers and neighbors was the anthem of my childhood. 

Now, here I am.  My beautiful, fresh faced, caramel colored son – the most beautiful boy I have ever seen – is coveting the one thing he can never have. 

Booker Wright said that he didn’t want his children to have to go through what he went through, and then immediately after that he took on the persona of a white person and said, “Hey, tell that n---- to hurry up with that coffee!”  Clearly, part of what motivated him was the idea that his children would find a world or make a place for themselves in the world where their race wouldn’t matter. 

For generations my family members have tried to throw this thing off and then run in the other direction, but it always seems to find us or at least it finds our children, stealthily and efficiently like a boomerang.

Headlights

There's a critical piece about this story that keeps getting told different ways. Actually, it gets told two different ways by the same person.  If one version is true, then all is good.  If the other version is true, then there are questions that need to be asked, the answers to which may alter the very foundation of my work.

I don't know if this person's memory is the problem or their conscience.

Sometimes I think this particular part of the story doesn't matter at all.  I watch the video of my grandfather and I see his courage.  I pause the video and I can see the passion in his eyes.  He put it all on the line.  That's what matters.

One of the hard truths I'm learning is that "truth", in and of itself, is elusive. Memory is even worse.  Trying to nail down a story that's 47 years old is like trying to grab the air.  If these events were outside of me this would be so much easier. But every theory and every twist matters to me.  I get elated.  I feel like the wind got knocked out of me.  I jump for joy and call all my friends.  I cry.

There's something in me, the writer in me, the researcher in me that wants to either get to the bottom of all the questions or at least present each of them so that the reader can decide for themselves what is most likely true.

Then there's the granddaughter in me.  The starry-eyed girl who thought she could commune with a ghost is still naively willing to believe in magic.  She wants to conveniently shut her eyes to anything that doesn't make her feel warm and gooey inside.

There is still so much work to be done.  Some of it excites me.  Some of it makes me feel like a deer staring at headlights.

Memory

Today I was listening to a podcast by Radiolab about memory.  The scientists on the show explained that every time we remember something we actually recreate the memory.  Each time we recreate memories there's the chance that we'll make slight additions and changes to the way the event actually occurred.

Therefore, the more times that we remember something the less honest the memory becomes.  If we experience something and only recall it once thirty years later that memory is probably more accurate than if we thought about it every day of those thirty years.

One of the questions that sort of hangs in the ether surrounding this work is, "Why was Yvette so desperate to connect with her grandfather in the first place?"  I've always known the answer.  I finally shared some of it with Raymond last summer.  In August my father and I discussed the past for the first time in almost 15 years. My Razor-wielding Tornado and I talked about it as well.  Actually, she talked, then screamed, then hung up on me.

The answer to the question is in the nooks and crevices of a mountain of childhood memories.

There were things that happened that I've talked about a handful of times in counseling.  There were other things that happened that I've talked about so often they feel like lore.

Every now and then my son will say something to me that is an exact replica of something I said or wanted to say to my Razor-wielding Tornado.  When this happens I am usually forced to stop myself in my tracks and take a cold, hard look in the mirror.  Some days I try to reconcile the mother that I am with the mother I thought I would be.  Other days I throw off every distraction and every worry and I push myself to be the mother I dreamed I would be when that sweet boy was growing in my womb.

How much is my mothering like that of the Razor-wielding Tornado?  Part of me screams, "NONE!"

But the memories that have created the rift, the ocean of hurt between us, are ones that have been played over and over again.  Can I trust them?

I have never felt more pressure to hold tightly to integrity and truth as I do now.  I am writing about my family.  I have a stage, a megaphone of sorts with which to tell the world my story.  I do think it's an important one.  I know that I wasn't the only black girl who was struggling to find her way in a post-civil rights era, predominantly white world.

But I cannot tell the whole truth without talking about why I was so alone.  It almost seems unfair.  I get to tell my version of the facts.  I get to recreate my tainted memories because I have a voice.  My dad, my sister, my  brother, and my Tornado do not.  In the last few months my dad and I have talked a lot about the past.  He gets that writing this story is a healing process for me and there is not a hint of self-preservation about him.  He's fine with me sharing everything.

My Tornado on the other hand is not.  If she even gets an inkling of an idea that I may say anything other than, "It was all grand," she gets really upset.

The writer in me is itching to get it down.  The daughter in me is cringing.  It's hard to write with a cloud of guilt lingering in the air.