Watch Us Rise

by Renée Watson

  For New Year’s Eve we all get together at my house. There’s a party happening at Word Up that we’d all planned to go to, and James’s parents are out of town, so he invited the whole class there too, but none of us really wanted to go out, so Isaac, Nadine, and Jasmine ended up piled on the bed and beanbags in my room. We’d gone to the bodega to get every possible food we’d need—two liters of Coke, Cheetos, dulce de leche and rocky road ice cream, tortilla chips and pineapple habanero salsa (which is my personal favorite), and a couple bags of candy that were on sale. Mom ordered pizza for us before she went to dinner with Dad, and Mia told us not to mess with any of her stuff but said we could borrow her Beats Pill so we could listen to anything we wanted. And then the apartment was all ours. This was pretty much my dream come true. To cheer Jasmine up, we made a playlist that included the following:

  Mending a Broken Heart—Jasmine’s Playlist

  1.“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” —Jackie Wilson

  2.“I Say a Little Prayer”—Aretha Franklin

  3.“I’ll Be There”—The Jackson 5

  4.“Through the Fire”—Chaka Khan

  5.“The Best”—Tina Turner

  6.“Up Where We Belong”—BeBe and CeCe Winans

  7.“It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”—Boyz II Men

  8.“I Didn’t Know My Own Strength”—Whitney Houston

  9.“Midnight Rider”—Willie Nelson

  10.“Endless Love”—Lionel Richie and Diana Ross

  It was pretty much the best playlist we’d ever created, and it included a bunch of songs that Jasmine’s dad used to love that we heard him play all the time. We pulled out a bunch of my scarves, hats, and jackets and started to lip sync and dance all around the apartment. Isaac stood up on our couch and belted out Willie Nelson’s “Midnight Rider” in a way that made us all wonder how many times he’d actually listened to the song to know every verse. And then Jasmine and Isaac did the BeBe and CeCe Winans duet, and basically I had to bite the inside of my cheek as hard as possible to stop myself from saying anything out loud—kiss her already, you idiot!

  It was pretty awesome to be acting as wild as we were without any alcohol. I knew that at James’s house, everyone would be drunk at this point, or at least tipsy. But Nadine was allergic, and Jasmine and I didn’t really like the taste of it, and Isaac had one too many drinks at a party over the summer and threw up the whole night—so he was taking an indefinite break. This is how I know these are my people, though, the ones who you can dance around and act silly with—the ones who you can do shots of soda with and laugh until it comes out of your nose. They’re also the ones you can cry with.

  By the end of the night, Jasmine is in tears. We huddle around her and tell her we’ll be there the whole way. We also all decide to write New Year’s resolutions.

  “Make them with ‘I’ statements,” Nadine says. “You know, like . . . I resolve to . . . eat more spinach.”

  “What?” Isaac asks.

  “Start with ‘I resolve’—you know, make it from your point of view.”

  “No, I get that, I just don’t understand why you’re resolving to eat more spinach.” Nadine punches Isaac in the arm, and we grab pens and paper.

  Jasmine writes: I resolve to mourn. I resolve to heal. I resolve to love.

  Nadine writes: Yes, I do resolve to eat more spinach, because I want to grow healthy and strong—in your face, Isaac. I resolve to practice guitar and get some new DJ gigs. I resolve to pass algebra. Please!

  Isaac writes: I do solemnly swear to blow up as an artist—make art that matters.

  And I write: I resolve to say what I want, when I want, to whomever I want. My messages will be heard. I resolve to speak louder and longer, make my voice bigger and stronger. I resolve to be ocean and sky. Revolving. I resolve to show up, show off, show out—stay later, love harder, be there when it matters. I resolve to be a woman who wins.

  “Whoa,” Isaac says after we read them all out loud. “I like these.”

  “I love them,” Jasmine says quietly, hugging her paper to her chest. “I think I needed tonight. Thanks, guys.” We all pile on top of her to hug. Jasmine looks at the paper again. “Isaac, do you think you could do some quick sketches on these resolutions?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something that represents women,” Jasmine says, pulling out her phone.

  “Oh yeah, what about the Venus symbol for the female sex?” Nadine asks, pulling an image up on her phone now. “Oh, I like the Venus symbol where the middle section is a fist. That’s so cool.”

  We start to compare notes. We find a heart with the words: “Women + Power + Rights,” and then a scale with the Venus and Mars symbols and a big equals sign. We find a symbol with “Proud Feminist” written inside it. Isaac starts to sketch. He changes it to Womanist & Feminist Rights!

  And then he makes a Wonder Woman symbol with the words: “I Resolve to Show Off My Superpowers.” Then we all start drawing and writing resolutions.

  We start Jasmine’s playlist from the beginning, and I pull out all my art supplies. I write: Women—join us. Resolve to stand up against sexism, and Women Make All the Difference. We find the We Can Do It poster with Rosie the Riveter, and then see a bunch where black women and Latinas are shown, so Isaac sketches all our faces and writes beneath it: All of Us Can Do It and Do It Well. We write: The Future Is Female, and he sketches faces all around it on a small sheet of paper.

  On my last piece of paper, I write, Down with the Patriarchy in cursive handwriting. “I think I’ll hand this to Principal Hayes personally,” I say, and start to laugh hysterically. Maybe it’s all the Coke and candy, or maybe I just feel free and wild, and like we’re about to do something a little dangerous.

  “Wait, what are we gonna do with these?” Isaac asks, sitting back to look at all the scraps of paper lying on the floor.

  “I have an idea,” Jasmine says, holding up a paper that reads, I resolve to protest and rage like a girl.

  Everyone stays until almost two a.m. Once they’re gone, I check my phone and see two missed calls from James and four text messages.

  Party @ my place.

  Come over.

  Where you at??

  Happy New Year!

  I smile, knowing he was thinking of me, and write back:

  Happy New Year to you too. To all new things.

  “What do you mean, put them everywhere?” I ask.

  “I mean, don’t leave any space untouched. Put. Them. Everywhere. Books in the library, textbooks, slip them inside lockers, leave them in bathrooms—any spaces you can find, we gotta make sure people see them everywhere they turn. We have to stay on people’s minds,” Jasmine says. She looks through her backpack and pulls the bag of quotes and statements out to examine them. A couple of days later, after we made our “I resolve” statements, we photocopied our favorite ones so that by the time school started we’d have hundreds that we could work with.

  “You sure about this?” Isaac asks. “I mean, I can understand posting them in books and stuff, but I just don’t really want to get detention for posting Down with the Patriarchy in the teachers’ lounge.”

  “Stop being so weak,” I say, siding with Jasmine, “and besides, I took that one out. I replaced it with The Patriarchy Is Dead. That’s better, right? It’s kinder.” I smile.

  Isaac stares at me. “I know you all want to do this, but maybe we can make a bigger statement at Word Up, and post there . . .”

  “Nope,” I say, “it has to be bigger than that. We can’t just keep posting in places where everyone already believes what we’re trying to say. We’ve got to bring more awareness of the things that need to change here at Amsterdam Heights.”

  Isaac still looks unsure.

  “You’ve already done enough, Isaac. You helped us make these look so good. We’ve got it from here. I mean it,” Jasmine says, taking the bag of statements and handing it to Nadine, who is standing next t
o us and pulling out her favorite statements, figuring out the best places to post them.

  Isaac surveys the hallway. We all have after-school commitments in a half hour, but that means if we work fast enough, we can cover a ton of ground. “No. I’m in it now. Let’s do this,” he says, and grabs the bag back from Nadine.

  The four of us take off like a crew of womanist/feminist superheroes leaving our mini forms of justice all over the school campus. We all split up. Jasmine and I tackle the locker rooms, bathrooms, and the theater. But before we get there, I have a stop to make.

  “Where are we going?” Jasmine asks. “We gotta hurry.”

  “I know, but I have a special poem for a special someone,” I say, moving ahead.

  “James? You wrote something for James?”

  “No! It’s for Jacob Rizer,” I whisper, pulling the rolled-up poster board out of my bag. It’s big enough to cover his locker. I hold it out so Jasmine can read it.

  You—­

  for Jacob Rizer

  You don’t own my body.

  It’s not yours for the taking.

  You don’t get to put your hands on me—­

  touch & burn. You are too full

  on your own corrupt metaphors & similes to see that

  You don’t own me. Not my head to pat,

  or my shoulder to bump, or my behind to smack.

  You can’t hold me down or shut me up.

  I’m an avalanche & my words will drown you.

  You know the truth—what you did, who you are.

  Think you can bop & weave away, but

  You are less than. An equation that equals zero—­

  a subtraction. The sum of nothing.

  You made me feel like nothing.

  Like my anatomy was yours to handle,

  regulate, oversee. You don’t get to win.

  I’m not yours to keep or command.

  My shape stays my own.

  You can keep your brazen, outrageous,

  hateful hands—to yourself.

  “What? You wrote that?”

  “Yup, and I’m gonna tape it right on the front of his locker for everybody to see it,” I say.

  “So you’re really doing this.”

  “No, WE are really doing this.”

  Jasmine and I make our way to Jacob’s locker and post it in record time. Next, we head into the girls’ bathroom and pull open every stall door. I figure posting a statement that says I resolve to listen to women’s voices is way better than the statements already scribbled on the bathroom walls, which include: Mary Lyvers is a slut whore and THIS SCHOOL CAN SUCK IT. Actually, sometimes I agree with that last sentiment, and I consider writing a check plus next to it but stop myself.

  “I mean, whoever wrote this didn’t even put a comma between slut and whore. They didn’t even write it correctly. I mean, what is that anyway?” I ask, spelling out Female = Future in blue tape.

  “It’s sexist is what it is. And it’s slut shaming. Here, give me a sheet of paper,” Jasmine says, writing—I resolve to stop slut shaming women.

  “Oh, I like that,” I say, writing it again, and putting it directly under the info about Mary Lyvers. “By the way, she graduated like two years ago, which means that no one has even taken the time to clean this, or paint over it, and you know that girls have been looking at this every day for years and no one has ever said anything.”

  “Nope. And neither have we.”

  “Until now,” I say, taping resolve statements to the soap dispenser and writing WOMANIST on all the bathroom mirrors in tape.

  We move even faster once we’re done in the bathrooms, and we make our way to the theater. We tuck statements into all the Playbill posters and the blown-up photographs from previous shows. Jasmine has a whole list:

  I resolve to play whatever role I want.

  I resolve to see black women as multidimensional,

  be multidimensional.

  I resolve to be sweet, sexy, sassy if I say I am,

  sophisticated, and smart,

  be all the woman I was made to be.

  I resolve to break your boundaries, unbox myself.

  I resolve to shut down simple stereotypes—­

  shake up systems meant to shut me down.

  You won’t shut me down, shut me up, shut me out.

  I show up anyway, anywhere.

  I resolve to stand on stage and be me,

  and not the woman you want me to be.

  I resolve to grow back stronger—unshakable, unstoppable.

  “Wow,” I say when she reads all the extra statements she wrote. “When did you write those?”

  “Last night. I started thinking about the ways that Mr. Morrison was trying to pigeonhole me, and the ways he was trying to get other people to see me, and I just . . . ​it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. And to be honest, I miss the ensemble. And I miss my dad. He would’ve been really proud of us for doing this, and he always loved seeing me on stage. I just don’t want anyone to take that away from me,” Jasmine finishes. I don’t hug her, since I know she hates when she’s about to cry and then I hug her, which makes it even worse, so I just take her extra statements and run them all over the theater, backstage, and dressing rooms. We make sure to put them in small spaces where people will see them when they’re getting dressed, and when they’re putting on stage makeup. Everything is open because after-school activities are starting soon, so we move even faster and then meet Isaac and Nadine in the lobby. They are laughing when they roll up.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Oh, nothing, we just pretty much got James and a few of the basketball players to run up and down the bleachers while doing their sprints and drop statements in all the seats. It looks like it’s been raining women’s rights in the gym,” Nadine says, clearly proud of herself.

  “At one point, Ramel was throwing up statements like it was cash money,” Isaac says, smiling at us.

  “And he also might have been singing some of the statements,” Nadine finishes, and as if on cue, Ramel and James walk down the hallway, Ramel singing, “I resolve to raise my hand more. I resolve to answer more questions in algebra. I resolve to use my voice.” He enters a falsetto on the last note, and we all start laughing. I see him tucking one of the statements into his pocket.

  “What’s that one say?” I ask, hanging back as they all continue down the hall practicing their new songs.

  “Ah, nothing, I just liked it.” He hands it to me. It says: I resolve to ask for what I want. My voice should be valued and heard.

  “Why do you like it?” I ask.

  “I guess I’m just curious. What do you want?”

  The next day, Chelsea and I arrive to school extra early so we can plan a follow-up to our I Resolve action. We meet up at our lockers then head to Ms. Lucas’s classroom. Chelsea already had her morning coffee so she is talking nonstop. “So, like I was saying, Valentine’s Day. How do we get James and Isaac to take us on a double date?”

  I am listening but not listening.

  Ever since Dad died, it’s been hard to keep my mind focused.

  I am here but not here.

  Yesterday, I felt so powerful. Felt like Dad was smiling down on me, with me even. And I didn’t cry at all, not even last night when that commercial came on that always made the two of us laugh even though we’d seen it countless times. Yesterday was a good day. But this morning? This morning I feel heavy. I wanted to talk to Dad at breakfast—debrief everything Chelsea and I did. Talk about what we should do next. Today, on the way to school, someone was on the subway platform blasting a song that I don’t even know, but it made me think of Dad. I started crying right there, standing in a crowd of people, surrounded by noise and the early bustle of the city. Not a sobbing cry, just tiny tears crawling down my face.

  Today is not yesterday. If I could, I’d go back to bed. Start over tomorrow.

  We walk into Ms. Lucas’s classroom, and instead of her usual smiling face, she is gi
ving me those sad eyes that I am starting to get used to. Chelsea asks, “Is everything okay?”

  Ms. Lucas walks over to the door and closes it. “Girls,” she says. “I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do. Principal Hayes dissolved our club.”

  “Dissolved?” I ask. “You mean he shut it down?”

  Chelsea tosses her backpack to the floor. “He’s a such a piece of—”

  “Chelsea!” Ms. Lucas shouts. I have never heard her raise her voice before.

  Chelsea sits down. “He can’t do this,” Chelsea says.

  “Yes, he can. You two are way outside the usual boundaries. I mean, personally, I applaud what you are doing, but this just can’t exist within the confines of a school club. It’s becoming a distraction to the education of other students.” Ms. Lucas sits down across from Chelsea.

  I am still standing. “A distraction to the education of others? What is school supposed to teach us then?”

  Ms. Lucas crosses her arms. “Jasmine, please, you have to understand that it is inappropriate to slip notes into textbooks—books that belong to the school, mind you. You two can’t have these quotes and resolutions interrupting the school day. Do you understand that the entire custodial staff had to stay late to clean up the mess you all made? And you know that Principal Hayes had already given you a warning. This was your last chance.”