by Renée Watson
I slowly roll out of bed. “I don’t just celebrate Christmas, you know? And I call it a holiday gathering—because I appreciate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as well, to honor the Jewish and African American members of our community,” I say, smiling and proud of myself.
“What do you know about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, Chelsea?”
“A lot, okay? I know that Hanukkah is also called the Festival of Lights, and that it’s observed for eight days and nights, and it commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple. Boom.”
“Yeah,” Mia says, humoring me.
“Yeah, that’s right. And Kwanzaa is an African American celebration that honors cultural heritage and traditional values. There are seven guiding principles that we should hold up throughout the year and not just over the holidays. So, in your face,” I finish, and slip my pajama pants on.
“What are the seven guiding principles?” Mia asks.
“Umoja, which means unity, um, Nia—uh, purpose, that means purpose, and faith—Imani, of course.” I pause.
“That’s three.”
“I know that’s three, and I know the others, I just . . .”
“And now I know that you did a basic Google and Wikipedia search on both of those so you’d know what to say when people ask, right?”
“No, it’s more than that. I’m just . . . I’m just into celebrating as a community. I mean, even the lobby of our building is all-inclusive with a tree, a menorah, and a kinara—for Kwanzaa,” I add, showing off a little, “and so I feel like celebrating everything too. I’m for everyone. I also wrote a poem for Jasmine. Do you wanna hear it?”
“Not now . . . ,” Mia says.
I start to read it anyway.
Womanhood
for Jasmine
Old-fashioned beauty myth media breakdown
Pretty—a pathetic fiction sold to us
Stores that carry only size extra-small
Makeup meant to cover up and whitewash
Resolve to go natural, obliterate your machine
Bust boundaries wide open with our skills
Write ourselves into every future we imagine
“I realized that I was not being very intersectional, and so I revised my own thinking and ways of being in the world. I am a work in progress,” I finish.
“I know, Chelsea, I know. You are always very self-important. And I know it’s really important to you to be all-inclusive and all about diversity—I know that—we all know that, but can you please just be there for Mom and Grandma today? Can you just be all Catholic, and not be all weird about Christmas and God, and all the stuff you love to bring up that makes Mom lose it? Can you do that?”
“I can only be true to myself,” I say, grabbing my book and starting to walk out. I’ve been reading The Handmaid’s Tale and loving all the insane drama. “What would Margaret Atwood say, you ask?”
“I didn’t ask that,” Mia says.
“Well, she would say that as women, we have to fight for our bodies and minds, and that no one can silence us or shut us down, and people should value our opinions. That’s what she would say. And on top of that, Mom should really stand up for herself more, and she shouldn’t always be so quiet and subdued. If I’ve learned anything so far this school year, it’s that women need to raise their voices.”
Mia stares at me.
“Fine, I won’t bring up the religion stuff. I’ll be a good little Catholic.” I smile.
“The turkey smells delightful,” my grandma calls into the kitchen at my dad, who’s doing all the cooking for Christmas Eve dinner. We’ve just come from afternoon mass, where I both listened to the sermon AND did some mindful Buddhist meditation.
“Steven, I can’t believe that Lydia allowed you to do all the work today.”
“Oh, Mom, you know that Steven loves to cook, so why can’t you believe that?” my mom asks, sitting down and pouring us all a little bit of wine. My parents are very progressive when they want to be, and, I’m beginning to think, when it’s convenient for them.
“Oh, honey, I just never thought I’d be alive to see a man do all the work in the kitchen. I mean, it’s fine if you want to work and leave your kids in daycare all day and choose different life paths, but, honey—I would imagine you would want to still do a bit of the domestic work around the house.” Grandma smiles at us and takes a sip of wine.
My mom’s smile is tight as she passes the rolls around the table.
“Not that it’s all bad,” my grandma continues, “but a woman’s work is with the children too, you know? A man can only do so much before he feels taken advantage of, and begins to resent his situation.” She whispers that last part so my dad can’t hear as he walks out with the turkey. I’ve always known my mom and grandma have a testy relationship. I mean, they love each other—calling and seeing each other all the time—but I can’t help but feel like some of their relationship feels kind of toxic.
“Mom, Steven and I share responsibilities around the house and with the kids. We always have, and I think Chelsea and Mia have appreciated and benefited from that,” my mom says, squeezing my leg under the table. What? Does no one trust me?
“I know you two have a very new wave thing going on. Well, let me tell you all that your grandfather and I valued tradition. We believed in a traditional marriage—and it was important to both of us that I took care of the home and the children. Your grandfather made sure all of us were comfortable and taken care of. That was important to him. It’s the way all of us did things. And we were perfectly happy that way,” my grandma finishes.
It was the “perfectly happy” that got me. I couldn’t stop myself.
“But, Grandma, you wanted to be a teacher, right?”
My mom glares at me. Not tonight, she mouths in my direction. That’s the main issue with me and my mom. It’s never the right time with her. She is always the cool and calm one, the woman who lets everyone tell her how to feel and never raises her voice for anything, so sometimes I feel like I need to be that voice for her—whether she likes it or not.
“Well, of course, but I taught your mother and your aunt, and that was enough for me. You know, you young girls, you think you can do everything, but you can’t. Something is always sacrificed. Something has to give, and usually it’s the marriage that suffers.”
“But not everyone wants to get married,” I say, completely ignoring the fact that I’ve imagined my fairy-tale wedding with James about a billion times, and they all feature me in a massive white dress walking down an aisle littered with rose petals. So weird. “I have a lot of friends who don’t want to get married. They want a career—they want a job—that’s where they want the focus to be.”
“And that’s what they’ll get, believe me. You focus on a career, you get a career. But don’t expect to get both. Young women today have no time to care about their homes, their families. All they care about is getting to the top—whatever that means, and then the rest of their lives just fall apart.” She makes a side-eye at my mom.
At this comment, my mom sits back. I know it has been an ongoing argument between them, since my grandma has always given her a hard time about sending us to daycare and preschool rather than staying home and being a good homemaker (whatever that means), the way she did.
“Grandma, sorry, but nobody thinks like that anymore. I mean, the system of gender norms was created so we would think that women are the ones who are more biologically capable of taking care of kids and the home, but that’s just not true at all.” I’m on a roll. “My friends and I aren’t in the world just to get the guy and keep the house and have the kids. That’s super dated, Grandma. And we’re finding ways to break down the myth of the gender role in general and the ways people think about women and the kinds of jobs women are capable of.” I take a gulp of my wine and wince when it goes down strong.
My grandma’s eyebrows couldn’t go much higher on her face, but I notice my mom smiling and giving me the go-ahead to be myself.
I’ve
been hanging with Nadine all day. We went to the movies, and on our way to get our nails done, I got a text from Mom that I needed to come home. Now. As soon as I walk into my house, I feel the grief hanging in the air, clinging to the chandelier, touching every doorknob, sitting on every chair. Dorothy, Dad’s in-home hospice nurse, is here. This past week, she’s been here every day.
Hospice.
The first time I heard that word was in a family meeting with Dad’s doctor. The doctor talked with Jason and me about what to expect in the coming months. He said as Dad’s cancer progressed Dad would go to hospice or have a nurse come during the day and help keep him comfortable. Dad was adamant that he wanted to die at home, not in a facility with strangers. I couldn’t handle the conversation. Couldn’t just sit and casually talk about where my dad would die, that my dad would die. I walked out. Stood outside and let New York City’s noise invade my mind. Sirens, dogs barking, honking horns, languages from around the world swirling around me. Sometimes all the hustle in New York is overwhelming, but sometimes it calms me. Gives me something else to focus on other than my own hectic world.
“Where is everyone?” I ask Dorothy.
“Jason is sleeping,” she tells me.
“Sleeping?” It’s only four o’clock in the afternoon.
“He, well, your dad talked with him about what’s happening, and he cried himself to sleep.”
Mom must hear my voice because she comes out of the room and rushes over to me. Her eyes are red and puffy. She looks at me, says, “It’s time to say goodbye, Jasmine. He probably won’t make it through the night. He’s been—”
“Don’t tell me,” I say. “Don’t.”
Mom reaches out to hug me, but I don’t let her. I’m afraid that if anyone touches me right now I will start crying and won’t be able to stop. Ever. I walk to her bedroom, sit on the bed next to Dad, and lay my head on his chest. He tries to hold me, but his weak arms can barely squeeze me. His breathing is loud and slow and sounds like the building up of a tea kettle’s whistle just before it blows, except he never blows out a full breath. His breath struggles to get out, struggles to stay in, like something is playing tug-of-war in his lungs. I listen to his breathing and tell myself, Hold on to this, you will want to remember this one day. I’ve been doing this ever since Dad was diagnosed. I stare at him, trying to remember the way he tilts his head to the side when he’s trying to remember something, the way he rubs his head when he’s frustrated and trying to hold in his anger. I’ve been listening to his laugh. How it is never quiet, never a chuckle, always coming from a deep well of joy. A booming laugh that vibrates a room. I try to remember all of Dad so I can tell my future children about him. They will want to know about their grandpa, and I will want to tell them. I wish he could be on this earth forever, or at least till he’s eighty or ninety, at least till he’s old enough to sneak candy to his grandchildren like my grandpa did to me. Dad will not be here to tease me by telling my kids how I acted when I was their age. He won’t give his grandchildren scavenger hunt challenges, sending them around the city.
A part of me wants to freeze my life right here. I don’t want to have another birthday, don’t want to go to prom or graduate or leave for college or get a dream job or have a dream wedding because Dad won’t be here for any of it.
I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.
We lie together for hours. I didn’t mean to fall asleep with him. When Mom wakes me, she is whispering, “Your phone. It’s Chelsea.”
I pull myself away from Dad and take my phone out of Mom’s hand. I walk into the living room, knowing this is the last time I will be in Dad’s arms. I am tempted to turn around, look at him once more, but I can’t. “Hey, Chels.”
“Oh my God, Jasmine. Did you see my text messages? My grandmother drove me crazy at Christmas dinner. She absolutely pushed me over the edge. I swear, sometimes I wish I was a senior like Mia so I could get out of this house.”
I walk to Jason’s room. He is still sleeping. I sit in the beanbag chair in the corner of his room. He turns over but doesn’t wake up.
“I am so tired of her criticizing me,” Chelsea says.
Chelsea tells me the whole story of what happened at dinner. I don’t say much, just a bunch of Wows! And Reallys?
“Anyway, I’m so sorry,” Chelsea says. “I just started venting and didn’t even ask you what’s up with you.”
I tell her I am okay and don’t say anything else. I don’t want to say it out loud. Not yet. When I hang up the phone, I will have to deal with the chaos that is my own life, but right now, Chelsea is the siren and barking, the honking horns, the words swirling all around me.
“Ugh, my mom is calling me. Sorry, I gotta go,” she says.
We hang up.
I watch Jason sleep, and I wonder about all the things people say about boys needing their fathers and how a woman can’t raise a man to be a man and wonder what this all means now that Jason will be fatherless. I think about Mom and how she is losing so much right now, her best friend, her husband, the father of her children. How will she survive this? How will any of us?
I pick up my phone, text Isaac: It’s happening. My dad is dying.
Dear Jasmine—
I guess the first and most important thing to say is that I love you. I want you to know I’m here for you in whatever way you need. We can hang out at Word Up, or we can talk on the phone late at night the way we used to do when we first met, or we can just hang out together and say nothing. I know I talk too much, but right now I can’t think of anything to say. Okay, that’s not all true, but what I want to say is that your dad was a rock star—and I don’t mean that in a cheesy way, but I mean that everybody loved him. He was always making everybody feel comfortable and making everybody feel like they mattered. I know he was like that, because you’re the same way. Here are the typical things I want to say: your dad is not really gone, he will always be with us, it will get better, we will recover and heal, and my personal favorite—he’s in a better place. I even went to the store to find a card, but those were even worse—No one can take away your loving memories, and May every sunrise hold more promise, every moonrise hold more peace. Well, I actually like the last one, and I like thinking that we’re in this together, and that every day will get easier and you’ll get stronger. I like that thought. But at the same time, I think—screw all of that. This all sucks, and I hate everything about death. But I love everything about you and your family. All I really want to say is that I’m here. I’m not going anywhere—ever.
Love,
Chelsea
The funeral wore all of us out. It wasn’t just seeing Jasmine, her brother, and her mom, but it was seeing their whole community gathered together. It was actually having to get up in front of a whole congregation of people who loved Mr. Gray and speak. I really, really didn’t want to do it. Performing a poem is one thing, but speaking at a funeral? No thanks. Mrs. Gray asked me to, though. And so I really wanted to do it. For her, for Mr. Gray. For Jasmine.
I talked about how Mr. Gray always used the term “community organizing.” He’d say to us, The real work is in the neighborhoods and in the homes. You have to talk to people and get to know them—it’s all about building relationships and getting to know people in a serious way. He would call us art-ivists and community organizing feminists. He always called himself a feminist too, and said that until men started taking it seriously, joining up with us and adding their voices to the mix, then it couldn’t really be a collective conversation. I talked about how he’d send us on New York City Cultural Scavenger Hunts and how I never got to share my findings with him from the last one, the Brown Art Challenge, but that I would keep those lessons with me always. I wanted him to know that our conversations about race, and what it means for me to be a white girl doing this work, will stay with me forever. He taught me to never back down, and to always raise my voice, and that it was my job to not only be an ally, but to be on the front lines too—
pushing myself and others to learn more, listen more (that’s one I’m still really working on), to speak up when it matters, and to help show others what it means to fight for equity—real equity. I wish I’d gotten the chance to say thank you. And of course, in the end, I decided to share a poem.
Family
For Mr. Gray
Forever, I will see art as healing.
Something that cures & cushions,
reflects & revitalizes.
Mends & makes magic, always.
How you taught us to see the world
& our place in it. Build together,
show up for each other, stay.
Learn who you are.
Know who you are.
Connect with who you love.
Forever, you are with us.
Scrutinizing sculptures, paintings,
mixed media, monologues & poems.
We stay studying our past,
the ancestors who came before.
You taught us what it means
to make what’s wrong—right. & just.
Your words permanently penned in our minds.
Have heart. Stand up. Be proud.
Jasmine spoke at the funeral too. She didn’t talk about her dad as a community organizer or his job at the Schomburg or the volunteer work he used to do at their church—making sure all the older folks were cared for and that they always had a Thanksgiving feast for their neighborhood. She just talked about how much she would miss Sunday mornings in the kitchen with him, listening to old-school R&B and gospel, making cheese grits and sausage gravy—a holdout from when he grew up Down South. She told everybody how much she would miss the kitchen table, his prayers, and the way he could always see right through to what she was thinking. She talked about how her family would share a peak and pit at the end of their day. And then she said, “Today, my pit is that my father has left this earth, but my peak is that everyone here has lifted him up. And to see you all is to feel and know—love.” I wrote it down in my journal when she said it, so she wouldn’t forget the feeling in church that day. It even made me feel a little more religious than I usually do. I’ve been saying more prayers lately, and although I’m not totally sure who I’m praying to, I like the process of talking my feelings out loud. It feels comfortable in a way it never has before.