Our Stories, Our Voices

by Amy Reed (ed)

  The day after the election I tried not to panic. I tried to remain levelheaded and began thinking about the actions I would take to show my resistance, and I even tried to logically remind myself that all progress comes in cycles of ebb and flow. But later that day, I decided to take my dogs out for a walk, and no sooner was I outside—in my very own neighborhood, just one house down from mine—when I was gripped with an overwhelming sense of fear that rivaled what I felt directly after my first assault more than twenty-five years earlier. I don’t even know how I managed to get myself back inside, but I literally did not leave my house again for an entire week. I couldn’t. I felt as though I relived every moment of doubt and pain I ever had, reexperienced the worthlessness and the shame I had worked so hard to manage.

  Those first days after the election were some of the darkest. But it was also in that time that I once again found the inner resolve to be my own advocate, once again found my voice and held fast to my principles and my own inner truth. To me this process is the true nature of healing and what it really means to be a survivor (of any adversity). It is not about never being scared or feeling hurt again. It is about allowing yourself to feel that way, but then also taking the next step to transform those emotions and channel that energy into something productive. Emotions are not bad, even the ones like anger or fear that are often labeled as such. These emotions always come up for a reason, and that is to let us know when something doesn’t feel right. Those emotions are what urge us to make a change or do something about the thing that’s not right. It is only when we don’t or can’t do anything that those feelings overtake us and become negative.

  It was from this space that I began thinking about you, all of the young people I care about and write for, who are witnessing something devastating and deeply confusing happening in the world. I especially thought a lot about the mixed messages you are receiving about tolerance and violence and self-worth. On the one hand you are taught to love and respect one another, taught to honor your differences, and taught that America was built on the principles of equality, liberty, and free speech. These are the values that we’re all supposed to be upholding in our lives every day, yet these ideals stand in stark contrast to what we see happening right now.

  So to the young adults reading this, what I want you to know is this: Do not be confused—you matter. Your experiences matter. Your voices matter. Violence and violation of any kind is never okay. It is never asked for and never warranted. Power that is gained by disempowering someone else is not power at all. Hatred is wrong—it always has been wrong and it always will be. And lastly, you are not alone.

  When I was younger I was always seeking external validation—whether this was in academic pursuits, waiting for someone to stand up for me, waiting for someone to ask me for my story, or waiting for someone to assure me that I would still be loved if I came out. But what I found was that no amount of external validation was ever enough. Because I was still standing outside of my experiences, orbiting that old black hole. It was not until I was able to be really honest with myself and own my experiences, to be the support I craved, for myself, that I finally understood what true empowerment was. And the other thing I’ve found is that once I made this internal shift, I did start receiving the external validation I had once coveted, except it didn’t matter so much anymore. What mattered was that I knew I had my own back, my own respect, and my own compassion.

  While I don’t claim to have all the answers about the current state of affairs, one thing I have learned beyond all doubt is that silence is the driving force behind not only rape culture but so much of the pain and ugliness and disconnection in our world today. And this is no accident. This happens specifically because our voices are the most powerful things we have, and that is why others will immediately and frantically try to take our voices away by any means possible. But the point is this: they can’t be taken away. We all have voices and they all count. They are formidable vehicles capable of creating change. Change happens when we speak up and when we listen, when we have empathy and compassion, when we stand up and empower ourselves and others. What happens next is up to all of us; it is what we create together.

  BLACK GIRL, BECOMING

  Tracy Deonn Walker

  This essay was selected from the editor’s call for submissions from unpublished writers.

  I once was a Girl Scout. Our weekly troop meetings took place in a reserved room on the second floor of a local church. Each time my mother dropped me off at the entrance, sending me away and up the stairs wrapped in the thin but warm cloak of her smile, she must have known that I was the only Black girl in the group. Me? I’d yet to step into that fact. Looking back, this room was almost certainly the first space I’d encountered framed specifically as a site for female empowerment. In fact, that Girl Scouts meeting room may have been the green-vested, badge-bearing, tilled earth within which my own nascent feminist self began to take root. Unfortunately, that particular soil, and perhaps even that particular feminism, has restrictions on what should grow.

  One evening the girls in our troop were on the church’s playground, chatting on top of the merry-go-round as it spun slowly, in motion only due to someone occasionally dropping a foot to push it along. We were on our own. A group of preteen girls talking and laughing, unsupervised after the troop meeting, while the moms met inside to talk about boring mom things. One of the oldest girls, Lisa, began to gush about a cute boy in her class, and the group, emboldened, picked up her cue and began to share their own stories of junior high romance. No one was really going out with anyone, but our daydreams of doing so grew solid, almost real, as we continued to share. Excited whispers and giggles passed from girl to girl as we spun, eager to participate in one of our first experiences of “girl talk.” This type of talk, and the nervous release of hushed secrets spilled, made me feel connected to these girls. To my troop. By the time it was my turn, I had been energized enough that I spoke my own secret without hesitation. I told my troop about a boy on my bus that I had been crushing on for months: Cody. Cody who played soccer and liked grunge music. Cody who wore the most in-fashion Adidas jacket of the time. In green. Cody who sat at the very front row of the bus and smiled and scowled in equal parts. (This made his thoughts mysterious, I’d decided. And mysterious was attractive.) Cody who ever so casually said “hi” to me in the halls and had no idea that each time he did so my heart began to race against my rib cage. Cody.

  As soon as I finished my brief description of Cody, Lisa pounced quickly onto the name.

  “Wait, wait. Is Cody white?!” This caught me off guard.

  How did she know? Was “Cody” a white boy name?

  “Yes.” I confirmed that Cody-the-crush was indeed white. Lisa’s giggles set off immediately.

  She asked us, asked the entire group: “Wouldn’t it be funny if Cody and Tracy got together and had babies? Because they’d be ‘swirly’ like chocolate and vanilla ice cream! Oh my GOD! How funny would that be!”

  The troop laughed in unison at the concept, and I’m certain I did too, even as a part of me was mortified. Even as a part of me realized that this space may have been for girls, but not girls like me. This was the first hint of trouble that my desires—my attractions, what I like, what makes me happy—might not be good topics to share in social spaces. This was the first indication that being a Black girl meant treading carefully. This was the first time I realized I might have an identity illness.

  I stopped talking about Cody.

  * * *

  I grew up hating Black History Month. I didn’t want to hear about George Washington Carver and his peanuts. I knew who Rosa Parks was. I hated hearing about slavery and the Underground Railroad. I didn’t care that much for Martin Luther King Jr., although I did appreciate his speeches. They were good speeches. I generally liked historical figures, but the famous Black people we learned about each February weren’t just historical figures. They were judgmental, needy ghosts. They stared back at me from th
eir photos and from the black-and-white sketches in my history book, demanding that I care. They needed me to care deeply, and they knew precisely when I skimmed over their chapters and lives. And they weren’t the only ones who watched me carefully during Black History Month. My white classmates eyed every Black kid in the room during those lessons. Sometimes not for anything in particular, I’d guess. Mostly just for big reactions. They wanted to see me respond to a month dedicated to people who looked like me. But there was no room, no space, no way for me to be excited about Black History Month; excitement about being Black is scary to white people; this much I’d learned. I’d always been an observant child. This default setting was less out of shyness than an overabundance of social awareness. I’d noticed that whenever something culturally “Black” entered our social sphere, be it a hip-hop song on the radio or a dance craze, my white classmates who recited the lyrics and knew the dance gained instant cool points. They were superstars. But I have clear memories of my white peers’ eyes growing into wide, uneasy saucers when watching Black students do the same. Blackness by way of whiteness was appropriately filtered, but Blackness by way of Blackness was too raw. Uncut. Scary.

  I was surviving middle school only by being as barely Black as I could possibly be. In order to blend in, I needed to care about Black History Month exactly as much as my white peers did, which is to say, not very much at all. But this was the one month during the year when everyone around me wanted me to care, needed me to. They needed me to know the lyrics and do the dance. But I couldn’t do any of those things, and even if I tried, I couldn’t do them like the cool white kids did them. Every February I was asked to be Black on their terms, but I was much too white to respond. I hated those eagle-eyed historical figures in the textbooks that had lived through slavery and who, for one month each school year, kept me muzzled and bound and trapped and anxious in ways that they could have never imagined.

  Stay neutral. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t raise your hand when they do the Black History Month trivia game, even if you know the answer. Head down and it will pass. Every February 1, I attempted to shrink into the tiniest possible speck in the classroom.

  One February my seventh-grade science teacher, who had undoubtedly been tasked with weaving Black history into her curriculum in some fashion, started a portion of her lesson with a line like this: “Some people in the 1800s believed that Black people were meant to be slaves or given lower-class jobs because they thought that Africans were too unintelligent to do anything else.”

  What a bomb she’d just dropped. I prayed that I wouldn’t be called on to reply to whatever ridiculousness this well-meaning white woman was hoping to impart. Heads were already turning my way. I remember sinking into my chair. I remember the loud soundtrack of internal groans beginning its loop inside my head.

  My teacher continued her speech, and I’ll never forget the self-satisfied and superior tone of her voice as she said the next sentences: “But, everyone, look at Tracy and Latoya! They have some of the highest grades in this class! That idea was obviously racist and not true. Just a stereotype. If it were true, Tracy and Latoya wouldn’t have such good grades.”

  Fuck.

  Somehow she’d pulled a triple whammy: she’d reminded everyone that we’re Black, revealed that we get better grades than other students, and demanded that everyone give us their attention. The first I knew. The second I’d only guessed at, but it’s not something you get confirmed in public. Especially in middle school. The last, well, that just countered the very purpose of all of my Black History Month evasive maneuvers.

  Everyone turned to me, and I immediately shot Latoya a brief look. We weren’t friends, but in that moment we understood each other. Her eyes met mine, and we turned in unison to the front of the classroom, ignoring the other glances. Shields up. Don’t respond. It’ll be over in a couple of weeks. You won’t be their designated Black spokesperson anymore. At least until next year.

  Did my teacher really need to rely on Latoya and me to help prove her point? Could she not have sought out any other evidence that Black people weren’t morons? Did she—did anyone—have lower expectations of me at the beginning of the school year because of my skin? Had anyone in the room been surprised that I was smart?

  There was a lot of room in the silence that filled the air after this “lesson.” Just not room enough for me.

  Always, as the month of February began, anxiety trickled in like smoke under a closed door. By the time we’d hit the second or third week, I’d find myself sitting stock-still in my chair, jaw tensed, heart racing as we learned about slavery and peanut butter and traffic lights and sit-ins. I wanted to run. I wanted to explode. I wanted to claw at my face and skin. It gets like that when you’re trying so desperately to pass and the world won’t let you, no matter where you go.

  I didn’t realize how visible my reactions were until one year a friend reached out and tapped my trembling shoulder during a screening of a film about civil rights.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “This isn’t me,” I said back through clenched teeth.

  * * *

  I was one of those suburban kids who grew up playing competitive soccer for years in rec leagues. I was an only child, but my mother had to upgrade to a minivan just so she could cart all of my stuff around each week for practices, each weekend for games, and every few months for tournaments. And, of course, so that she could keep up with the frequent demands of carpooling.

  Every Sunday morning that we didn’t have a game my mother would drag me early to our practically all-Black church for youth Sunday school. I am not a morning person, and Sunday school seemed more like a social experiment than an opportunity to learn about God, but I was also a middle schooler who thought weekends were supposed to be about soccer, reading books, and writing fan fiction, so my perspective was undoubtedly skewed. None of the other kids in Sunday school went to my actual weekday school. I think my mother hoped that going to a Black church on the weekends would help take care of my cultural education on Blackness, an education that I wasn’t getting during the week. Possibly an extra hour of Sunday school each weekend with my Black peers would really help that tutoring take. “School” was in the name, but it didn’t feel like an education. It felt like a prescription.

  This particular Sunday the group of a dozen or so teenagers was seated at a table and our teacher was leading us in a discussion about free time—how we use it, how it can be in service to God, and the role of hobbies in our lives. One girl raised her hand to list the type of free time activities that she thought were against God. An oddly critical way into the discussion, I remember thinking. A chief category of concern for her was music and her specific example was a Nirvana song with typically grungy, screamy, ragey lyrics. The room nodded solemnly; this was clearly against God. I looked around the table and guessed (correctly, I’d wager) that none of the other Black teenagers in this room had ever listened to Nirvana on purpose or long enough to learn the lyrics. I had. I liked them. I thought about speaking up and offering a counterargument, citing another example of lyrics from the then-alive Kurt Cobain, but I didn’t. I’d recently made the mistake of turning the volume up on the radio when a Smashing Pumpkins song came on. A family member had turned to me and said, “You listen to too much white people music.” It had been a harsh diagnosis.

  The discussion turned again to the best ways for teenagers to spend free time. This time the teacher spoke to us about the value of athletics in keeping our bodies, our temples, healthy and active. A boy sitting next to me turned and asked what sport I liked.

  I answered without thinking, “Oh! I play soccer. I love soccer!”

  “ ‘I love soccer!’ ” He mocked me, voice high and overly enunciated, affecting a hard r to the end of the word “soccer.” His shoulders shook as he exclaimed, pointing at me. “You sound like a white boy! ‘I love soccer . . .’ ” He was laughing too hard to continue the conversation, but I already knew it was over.r />
  I didn’t talk about soccer to Black people again.

  When Kurt Cobain shot himself, I brought it up only with my white friends at school.

  * * *

  My unrequited love for white boys continued throughout middle and high school. After Cody, there was Jack. After Jack, Tyler. After Tyler, Bryce. I pined after them just as any awkward teenager pines after their crush, but by eighth grade I knew without asking which ones would never, could never, see me as a romantic interest. For some reason I pined after those boys the most. Even though I didn’t think it would magically change my situation, I’d study the girls my crushes dated as if they were beautiful animals in the wild. I’d look for common traits: the brands on their jeans, the words they said, the way they held their backpacks. I couldn’t adopt their pale skin and eyes, but maybe I could learn enough to . . . something. I even tried mimicking their hand gestures and ways of speech. Sometimes they studied me, too.

  One day at recess I was chatting with a popular girl named Brittany (who was also my friend. Mostly. Sometimes) and she suddenly reached out to touch my hair.

  “Your hair is so . . . fun,” she said, gazing at it with wide blue eyes. “The way it sticks up and just stays.” Brittany was popular because she was very pretty and very nice to everyone. She had straight blond hair and smiled with so many dimples you couldn’t count them.

  “I guess so,” I said quietly. Her hands were still in my hair, tugging on it and playing with the chemically straightened dark strands. I wanted to extract my head from her reach, but I didn’t want to seem rude; she was popular and nice.

  “I think it’s really . . . cool,” she said thoughtfully. Brittany was so kind that when her tone went from overly positive to neutral, as it had just then, you knew she must have been thinking something less than kind but was too polite to say so.