The Bold World

by Jodie Patterson

  Being Black and transgender is a super wicked problem. For my family and others who are similar, fighting trans phobia feels like fighting all the “isms” in the entire world. Not only are we fighting against racism, sexism, classism, and genderism, we’re simultaneously expected to defend any presumed attack against the Black family, at all costs. We are expected to reject anything that makes us more vulnerable. I don’t even think Tracey knew all that she was asking of me, not fully. If I can’t speak up, loudly, repeatedly, in any setting—then nothing will change. The status quo will remain of what Black boys and girls, Black men and women, Black husbands and Black wives are expected to be.

  The Black family, in whatever state it’s in or form it may take, however deeply flawed and vulnerable it may be, needs to address gender. So many Black lives—lives that matter—depend on it.

  * * *

  —

  Sometimes I think there is just too much to peel back. America—Black America especially—may not be ready.

  But America wasn’t ready for my grandmother, either, or Aunt Lurma, or my father. They weren’t ready for Martin or Malcolm. Some folks weren’t ready for Bayard Rustin, or Sylvia Rivera, or Marsha P. Johnson. Or Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, or James Baldwin. The list of agitators is long. Change agents, those who aren’t asking permission, are often not welcomed. But they come for the world anyway. They are ready. Penelope, who shares my father’s perseverance and my grandmother’s grit, is ready. Ready, even when the world is not.

  All Black lives matter. My family in our Brooklyn living room.

  TWENTY-THREE

  This Spot

  I NEVER LOOK AT THE OCEAN WITHOUT FEELING AFRAID. I rarely go out far into the water; I just walk in up to my waist and stay put, never venturing farther. The ocean is the unknown—its depth, its darkness. I guess if I could talk to the sharks and breathe in liquid, maybe I wouldn’t be so scared. But I am human and can easily drown, or be eaten alive.

  Today, at the beach on Martha’s Vineyard, I face the water once more. I excuse myself from our beach chairs and blankets, from my friends, and from our kids running like wild things, tackling each other, making starfish in the sand, and I walk into the ocean. Pushing past the cold, past the seaweed tangling around my ankles, past the rough pebbles and shells that dig into my feet, I walk—farther than I normally would. And again, I am scared. But today I’m testing myself. Pushing to know what I have learned.

  From all that I’ve gone through—the fear of losing a child, the poison of tunnel vision, the tug of love, the commotion of life—I know this turbulence around me will always be there, in some form or another. But today I’m facing another truth: The smack of the wave, the snatch of the undertow—they don’t answer to me. They have an agenda all their own. I don’t control them.

  I’d like life to be easier. But it isn’t. Sometimes I want to revert—for a split second—to feeling like the Spelmanite who lands the Harvard superstar, and to lie still in that fairy tale. But then I quickly remember the weight of that pathology. Those ideals have nothing to do with life. They don’t make the marriage, they don’t keep you together. They are irrelevant to the real life that demands your presence.

  I’ve been pulled in so many different directions by so many different forces over the years. Pulled by children, by husbands, by love, by loss and gain, by places and ideas. That constant tug has made me the woman I am. Yet sometimes the pull has been so strong that it’s detached me from my spirit. Daddy could do that to me with just a few simple words. His words, his actions, so many times left me undone—unable to think and feel and do all at the same time. For so many years, all I wanted to do, all I could do in fact, was sleep to get away from that feeling. Or run—far away from my nightmares and their relentless monster. Running fast, a body without a brain, running on adrenaline alone.

  Joe sometimes did that, too—he could separate me from my spirit in his own way. A big fight, a long silence, a wall rising up between us, and suddenly I’d be floating, light and unbearably disconnected. He saw it, my want to be king. And I’m not sure he ever knew what to do with it. I want to be king. Not king of anyone or anything. Not king over this or that—but king of myself. To be that kind of woman—who protects, gets shit done, fixes problems, and takes care of the business at hand. One who drinks defiance like mother’s milk and resists being controlled. That kind of king. And at the same time, I want to be vulnerable, to admit that I’ve fallen apart, and for that to be okay, too. And then I want to make my way back, back to being whole. I want to be that kind of king.

  I’ve always wanted to be king, even as a little girl. But no one uses that word next to my name. I wanted to be my dad, but that wasn’t encouraged. I wanted to be all that “male” implied.

  I was eager to be a woman, too. My mom was so graceful at it. My older sisters were so beautiful; Ramona was such a badass. Those feminine qualities were golden and I wanted to have them. At Spelman, I learned how to embody them. But I wanted masculinity, too. Both. Except I wasn’t sure if the masculine I craved could be mine. And that made me want it even more.

  For as long as I can remember, I’d been sussing out the men—observing how they did things, how they moved through life—and in return what the world did for them. How men sat back and spoke when they wanted to. How they did things without asking permission. How they walked with their shoulders back and one dropped slightly lower. How their gaze was direct and their smiles appeared like a surprise, whenever they chose to reveal them—not when someone (strangers, annoying uncles, persistent aunts) commanded them to.

  But no one ever said, and perhaps may never say “Okay, Jodie—be a man. Be like your father, or Serge, or Joe.” But I observed and tried them on anyway, on my own.

  I’d always wanted what they had—attitudes and freedoms dangled in front of me but forever out of my reach. Freedoms denied to me because of my place, because of my parts. Because of the rules. Freedoms transformed into “bitch” or “butch” or “ball-buster,” “cold” or “manipulative” when worn on a woman’s skin.

  I want to be unclosed. I want to spread out like a starfish in the sand and touch every bit of life around me. I see Joe doing that—he’s unfolding. Opening up to new worlds far beyond the one of finance he’s spent fifteen years in. Beyond Brooklyn. Beyond America. He’s traveled to Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria to test new waters in his career. He’s boldly reinserted himself into our kids’ daily lives, making himself irreplaceable to each and every one of them. He’s spent a year reading and rereading books on spirituality, coding, music, marathon running, cooking, parenting—all the things that make him happy. And, most impressive, he’s torn open the narrow idea of what a man is. “When I stop and think, Jodie, about what makes me a man, I just don’t know anymore. All the things I used to think defined me—making money, providing, being strong—they don’t say enough.” Joe, who loves to cook but once expected me to make all our meals, who loves his kids but felt it wasn’t his place as the man of the house to gracefully, tenderly show that love—that man no longer wants only to be commander in chief of our home. That title no longer holds enough power. What Joe wants is more, endlessly more. Infinitely more.

  And so do I.

  All of us can be more than what gender says. More than what society tells us we should be. If we write ourselves off as purely one thing—boys do this, and girls do that—we will gravely underestimate ourselves, miscalculating our infinite potential.

  Joe and I both get it, this new, wider vision of life. We’ve tried to adjust the terms of our relationship to match our new consciousness. We’ve tried growing together, and we did; we’re better now, smarter than before. But ultimately, irrevocably, we grew apart.

  I’m independent, and couple that with the fact that much of this human experience is solo work, I’ve been in my own head a lot. For better or for worse. Looking back over all my stori
es, from little girl to wife to mother of five—I see myself solo. Where I stand today, shoulders-deep, alone in the water, doesn’t surprise me. Because this love I seek, this life I want, is not something to be merely moved by, or stuck in, or caught up under. This love, this life, must be traversed. Experienced. And in the end, it must make us whole.

  There are multiple stories being told simultaneously here. Penelope’s story. Our story. My story. Rate the success of the story starring Penelope, and it’s pretty damn good. Joe and I have been flexible, we’ve expanded our vision, and we’ve put love first. We’re beyond 100 percent with our kids. But do we put the same level of energy into the adult relationship? Are we as flexible, as bold, as love-centered with each other? No. What Penelope is demanding is very pure: “Let me be in control of my deepest self.” The family gravitates toward that pureness. The world continues to.

  Sometimes adults aren’t as pure—we’re tainted by age, experience, pessimism, expectations, and fairy tales. And sometimes we need to journey in different directions instead of pulling one another to follow.

  Today at the beach, I walk even deeper into the ocean, wade in until the water reaches my chin. And then I stop. And I think. And I watch. The water moves around me, the waves come at me, bouncing off my shoulders, splashing in my face.

  The ocean is uncontrollable.

  But what’s mine is mine. This person, this body, this mind. This soul belongs to me. And what I choose to do with it, I determine. I can choose to swim, maybe to wade in or dive under. But I can’t stop the water from coming—I, woman, control nothing in this sea. Except myself. I, woman, control this flesh, and more times than not, this heart. I can choose to go into the wave, or even under it. I can float on my back. Or I can drown. But that’s not my story or this tale. This tale is of characters that battle, needs that don’t match, and ideas that collide. And most centrally, it is about this directive, this mission to control oneself, to claim the only little spot worth claiming. To find the light in the dark and the anchor in the sea. That anchor being me.

  Now, here, as I stand deep in the ocean, scared as always, and as I look over myself—touching limbs that have grown back, and a face that is etched with lines—I know that this time around, I, woman, control this spot.

  Penelope sees me from the inside.

  To Mama, for showing me how to rise up in love.

  And to Morrison, Hughes, Hurston, Wright, and Angelou for asking me to wonder.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book might never have been written if it weren’t for life smacking me in the face, knocking me down hard, and then challenging me to get back up again. Thank you, life.

  For years, I’d been tossing around several book ideas (in my head as well as over long breakfasts with my friend Keisha Sutton). The topics ranged from beauty to lifestyle to parenting. But it was because Nadeen Gayle, another good friend, encouraged me to write about myself that this particular book began. Helena Andrews-Dyer, one of the coolest women I know, helped me organize my first thoughts. Bishop Sylveta Hamilton-Gonzales, the founder of my young boys’ school and our family’s mentor, offered extra TLC whenever we needed it. My village of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn—full of beautiful people and delicious hangouts like Saraghina, Risbo, Butch & Coco, Zabka, and Casablanca—nourished both body and soul in between writing sessions. I have to especially thank all the “aunties,” from Bethann Hardison all the way down, who’ve had my children’s backs over the years—carrying them over their heads as if they were rock stars in a mosh pit. I’m especially grateful to Keturah Drake for asking me the million-dollar question “What if?” She made room in my head for imagining beyond the obvious. Essence, Refinery29, Mother Mag, BET, Family Circle, and Cosmopolitan were some of the first to help me tell my family’s story, and they prepared me for the deep dive this book would require. Aundreus Patterson deserves to be recognized as my spiritual compass and a man of outstanding faith who kept me on track. To my Spelman sisters—especially Tammy McCall and Loran Hamilton-Warner, our ringleaders—I give thanks for sitting with me in spirit while I wrote The Bold World.

  However strange it may seem to acknowledge two men I’ve loved in one paragraph, I will do so because they are so much of why I am, and how this book came to be. Serge Becker showed me early on that there is always another world worth exploring, just beyond. Joe Ghartey taught me to be a badass. It’s that exact combination of fearless explorer that helped me investigate and write about the tough topics of family, gender, race, and identity. Together we’ve raised a blended family with five ethnicities, three languages, and eight children. Because Serge and Joe are men who share in the responsibilities of cooking, taking kids to and from school, cleaning, and overseeing homework, I was able to write my first book.

  I couldn’t have written The Bold World without my sisters, Linda Braxton, Sherri Hunt, and Yeefah Ramona Patterson, who’ve always exemplified organization, grace, and guts (respectively).

  I’m deeply appreciative of my aunt, Lurma Rackley, also a writer, who took the time to comb through each version of the book with loving eyes, looking mostly for accuracy in family details. Throughout the process of writing this memoir, which spans five generations, I relied mostly on my own memory, old journals, letters, and photographs. But at times I needed additional help to place my memories into historical context—particularly during the Jim Crow era. Lurma (and Mama, of course) served as my historians.

  An invisible weight presses down on nonconforming families like ours, sometimes splitting us apart at the seams. But when I found my community of advocates—Sonya Shields, formerly at Brooklyn Community Services; Jean Malpas at the Ackerman Institute’s Gender and Family Project; Ellen Kahn at the Human Rights Campaign; and Eric Komoroff at Community of Unity—I felt less afraid and more powerful than before. I thank them all for what they continue to do for the world and what they’ve done for our family.

  To Emma Parry at Janklow & Nesbit, my brilliant agent, I’m forever beholden. She told me to think bigger—beyond transgender, beyond Penelope, even beyond myself. She was the first to ask “Who taught you to be bold, Jodie?” Because of Emma, my book is more than I dreamed. To the team at Ballantine Books/Random House—they had me on day one, when they showed up fifteen deep in a conference room, ready to press go! Particular gratitude is given to Pamela Cannon for offering space and time for me to write my best book.

  Maya Millett has been for me an editor, a sounding board, and a guide. The gratitude and respect I have for her are enormous. She was flexible, bending around my particular ways as a new writer: holding my hand when I needed it, leaving me be when I needed that. Her ability to remember the details of my life even when I’d forgotten them is otherworldly. This book exists because of her hard work. In this regard, I also want to thank Eve Claxton for her fierce creative energy and jolts of optimism, especially when we were down to the wire, way past our deadline, and still without a book title.

  To my Gentle Love, for being water over stone.

  And to my children, my Everythings, I see you. Ladybug Georgia, President Cassius, Rock Star Penelope, Rascal Othello, the Gift Nain, and also beautiful Ashley Newman, whom I consider one of us—I live through you, because of you, for you. You make me see life differently and bring me back each morning to the woman I want to be. The writing of this book and most of what I do in life is done to make you proud.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JODIE PATTERSON is a social activist, entrepreneur, and writer. She has been lauded for her activist work by Hillary Clinton, The Advocate, Family Circle, Essence, Cosmopolitan, and Yahoo!, among others. She works closely with a number of gender/family/human rights organizations including sitting on the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Campaign and is a sought-out public speaker addressing a wide range of audiences about identity, gender, beauty, and entrepreneurship. Patterson was appointed by the United Nations as a Champion of Change and, p
erhaps most impressively, she is a former circus acrobat who performed in the Big Apple Circus. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she co-parents her five children with love, education, and family solidarity.

  Instagram: @jodiepatterson

  Twitter: @Jodie_GeorgiaNY

  To inquire about booking Jodie Patterson for a speaking engagement, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com.

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