Black Boy Out of Time: A Memoir

by Hari Ziyad

  “It was hard,” she said quietly, “but this is a chapter in history that we should learn from, Hari-Gaura.”

  These small moments of healing still don’t come easy. They still come with sweaty palms and clenched jaws and nightmares. They still come with tears and resistance and rage and frustration, and death is always on the horizon. But they also come with brilliant spurts of a love I am only now beginning to know again. A love that I always needed. A love that you so generously bring but that you always needed, too.

  These moments of healing come with the laughter my father bequeathed to me, laughter I can now easily conjure just thinking about how the hair sprouting all over my body, which once made me feel so beastly, might be the same hair that Mata made us cut off in that failed attempt to force us into manhood all those years ago, the same hair I’ve missed for so long. These moments come with laughter just thinking about how I’ve now learned to embrace all the scars on this body that show me how to get back to you. Scars I have filled with ink and stories, stories I can return to only now that I have a deeper understanding.

  And this laughter sometimes fills my whole belly until there is no room for anxiety to turn it, just as the tattoo depicting another of Mother Bhūmi’s pastimes fills the largest of these scars. It illustrates the pastime about the four enlightened souls who decided to stay in the bodies of young boys so as not to be burdened with the distractions and false ego of adulthood. The four boys were turned away from the gates of heaven because the gatekeepers couldn’t believe anyone so young could be enlightened enough to be in the presence of god. After the boys cursed the gatekeepers for their ignorance, condemning them to spend either three lifetimes as demons or seven as saintly people, the gatekeepers chose three just to get back home faster. They were sent down to this world to struggle with their god, knowing they could not beat him, not needing to, and they chose this timeline that others may not have chosen because they loved him. My back tattoo fills the scar with an image from the moment after one of the gatekeepers, in his first demon life, performed sacrifices even more powerful than Dhruva’s. After the gods blessed the demon for his sacrifices with any benediction other than immortality, he thought he could outsmart them by asking for the boon not to be killed inside a building or out, during daytime or at night, on the ground or in the sky, by human or by beast. He did not know that some gods, like those my ancestors call me to, cannot be outsmarted.

  The tattoo fills this largest scar with a depiction of Narasiṃha, Kṛṣṇa’s incarnation as a half man, half lion—a body he chose in order to kill the demon on a veranda, during dusk, on his lap, just to protect the demon’s son. A reminder that some violence is righteous, that binary thinking creates foolish shields, that children always deserve the truer protection of the gods I now pray to. The tattoo evoked Mata’s laughter, too, when my cousin came to her with concern after seeing it, so frightened by my demons and the reasons I chose to face them instead of continuing to run away. We laugh, but I understand why this is such a frightening thing to so many.

  And now our mother asks about Timothy whenever you and I speak to her, which is whenever she has the energy, as she battles through the latest round of cancer treatment, having returned back to the States.

  Now our father has cried many times to us about how much he loves our mother and how afraid he is to lose her. Before this year I had seen him cry only one or two times in my entire life because of what always seemed to be an inflexible commitment to a stoic ideal of manhood.

  Now both of our parents have agreed to come to our queer wedding, even though they are honest about their own anxieties around doing so. Now keeping our parents safe and healthy is more important, and having them at the wedding isn’t all that matters. Now we can apologize sincerely to our parents for the harms we’ve brought them, too.

  Now Mother Bhūmi is still here in the silence, walking with us everywhere that we go. Because now I can feel you here walking, too.

  I know that there is still a long, long journey left to truly heal from all this, but I also know that the destination is where you came from. I know that it is not a destination at all in the colonial sense of the word—it is not located in a single space and time in the form of some unchanging, inflexible tome of knowledge that you capture when you have found the end. You did not come from an unchanging world of capture. I know that the end is out of time as I thought I knew it, and into time as my ancestors do. Some parts of these relationships will never be mended in this life—but I can, and I will.

  I swear to you: I will.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  While writing this book and reckoning with all the ghosts that were excavated in the process, I cried often, laughed maniacally just as much, questioned my sanity and my skills and my motives, learned to trust myself even with those questions still hanging thick in the air, then forgot and learned and forgot and learned to trust again. I lost friends and loved ones and gained a much deeper relationship with so many others.

  Those others, the ones who showed me love through it all—through the stress of writing the first terrible draft, and the second terrible draft, and the third and fourth and fifth, up until all my conflicting thoughts and beliefs and stories finally began to come together in a readable way (even though some will debate whether this final product is not a terrible draft itself)—are owed so much from me. Writing this memoir was way more work than I thought it would be, was way more about the community I wrote it with and for than about me writing at all, and that community is owed so much greater appreciation than any acknowledgments can express. There are too many to name, and if you aren’t mentioned due to some oversight, I hope you are able to forgive me, but this is only the start of the rest of a life I promise to spend in gratitude to all of you.

  Mata, thank you for modeling healing and what it means to always strive to be a better, more caring person every day. Thank you for encouraging me to tell my truth, even in the moments it didn’t line up with yours. I couldn’t have written this, or anything worthwhile that I have ever written, without you teaching me what loving words can do.

  Daddy, I’ll always remember the importance of living my name, inshallah, and that is because of you. I hope you always remember how much I appreciate you for that.

  Thank you, Rani, for your boundless generosity and for always being there for the rest of us; Bhakti, for showing up even when it’s hard and trusting me to show up even when neither of us quite knows what showing up might look like; Kṛṣṇa-Kumari, for protecting me in the same beautiful way you have always protected your own children; Syama, for being so dope and cool and my model in so many ways without even trying; Mohan, for caring about the world so much it hurts, so much it heals, too. It’s clear to me that you are all central to the most beautiful parts of this book, even in the places you’re not named.

  Thank you, Ganga, for reading drafts and holding me accountable when I needed that, for never being afraid to call out what is wrong and fight for what’s right, for holding Mata’s spirit so close to your own. So much of my capacity to deal with her illness is because I see her in you. Thank you, Ghanasyam, for being kind and generous and dope yourself, for somehow personifying all the best parts of this family.

  Thank you, Kiss, for always operating out of love. I can’t recall the last time I noticed it seeming like you didn’t, and I’m sorry if there were moments when you couldn’t say the same about me. Thank you, Visnu, for being so brilliant and passionate and unconditionally yourself, and for trusting me to guide you through the fire that such things cause. So much of this book I wrote so that you two can come out the other side of the flame stronger than I did, and so many parts of both of you are already more powerful than I could ever fathom.

  Thank you, Nigel, Khadijah, Makedah, Vidah, Rasheed, Tauheedah, and David for adding a whole ’nother layer of love to this family.

  Thank you, Zara, Rafe, Noah, Kira, Marlon, Jacob, Kirk Jr., Monique, Keval, Nimai, Peyton, Syama Jr., Prahlad, and
Dominique for being the kindest and smartest nieces and nephews I could ever ask for. I hope when you are each old enough to read it, this book inspires you to continue the wonderful work you are already doing of taking care of each other and of your newest siblings/cousins, Toshani, Malani, and Aja.

  Thank you to my agent, Rayhané, for always being in my corner and having so much patience as I learned my way through this field, and to Hafizah and Camille for giving me space to get my thoughts down clearly and helping make everything better through your careful editing. Thank you, Carmen, Emma, and everyone else on the Little A team for seeing me through this process, and Faceout Studio for designing and David for illustrating this gorgeous cover (I am still in awe!).

  Thank you, Lisa, for taking care of the things and the people you love in awesome ways, and Phillip for believing in and supporting me even while maintaining the highest standards (which is only suitable to your being a master of this craft).

  Thank you, Eric, Omar, and Shanika for healing me and showing me how to heal myself.

  Thank you, George Johnson, Alex, and Aman for being the best writing partners, for watching me smash buttons into the keyboard and being generous enough to sometimes read what came out (then pointing me in the right direction even when the words didn’t make sense), and Darnell, Kiese, Robert, Blair, and Steven, for loving us as you do and always offering guidance and support at every stage of my career.

  Thank you, George Arnett, Leon, Jahvaris, Shikeith, Jon, and Gerry, for being ever-present and consistently encouraging and for keeping those group chats buzzing when we’ve been stuck so far away for so long and all needed this friend group more than ever. And thank you, Kevin, Ahmad, Daniel, Henry, and Sevonna for keeping me on track and always being there, too. Thank you, Darrius, for all those sad nights that you let me come over for a beer and a cigarette after writing through trauma, Johania and Nathanie for showing that you really meant it when you said we would always be there for each other (even though we still don’t see each other enough!), and Q for all the times you wouldn’t let me pay for hookah even when I only vented about how hard this book was the whole time we smoked it.

  Thank you, Preston, Myesha, Hess, Brittney, and Chelsea for teaching me so many things about Black spirituality when I didn’t even know our interactions to be lessons, and Delia and Tabias for keeping the invitation open for me to be a part of a community that learns and grows together. Thank you, Raquel, Bree, and Ro, whom I have still never met in person (I hope we can fix that soon!), but who have contributed more to my understandings of Blackness as my first real group of online friends than the majority of people with whom I have IRL relationships.

  Thank you, Amber, Rachael, and Arielle for contributing so much to a Black AF, loving space as part of the RaceBaitr team, and for showing me over and over again what ethical work looks like.

  Thank you, Cathy, Jenn, and the Black Youth Project team for offering me my first professional writing home and for having faith that I could steer it.

  Thank you, Shanita and Da’Shaun, for helping me to be a better writer and abolitionist.

  Thank you, Zen, for trusting me to care for you, even when it was hard, and for always trying to return care back.

  Thank you, Michael Stout, Betty and Sasha, for giving me the space to dive deeper into our relationships and for demonstrating how to forgive without letting harm-doers off the hook. Thank you, Michael Hives and David, for proving there are no mistakes in love and for trusting me, too. Thank you, Justus, D’Aaron, and Ronald for reminding me that family is never lost, no matter how far they try to lock us away. Thank you, Bayna, for allowing me to be a part of your story and becoming a friend in the process.

  Thank you to all my writing and scholarly influences, especially the Black feminist thinkers who laid the groundwork for this memoir.

  And thank you to my best friend, my partner, my husband, Timothy, for reading everything I’ve ever written, even when you didn’t have to, and always knowing what to say; for making sure I hear what needs to be said even when I don’t want to hear it; for holding space for my anxiety and self-doubt without encouraging it; for fighting for a healthy version of us harder than I’ve ever seen anyone fight for anything; and for making fights feel so unlike the inherently harmful things I thought I knew them to be. I love you utterly and completely.

  NOTES

  Prologue: Misafropedia

  1. When I reference Black people, I am speaking from my own experience as a descendant of enslaved people in America but referring to all people who descend from Africa. Experiences with colonization and carceral logics—beliefs rooted in policing, punishing, and incarcerating the socially undesirable—may manifest in different ways outside this country, but we all have had to fight those systems.

  2. Kemi M. Doll, Cyndy R. Snyder, and Chandra L. Ford, “Endometrial Cancer Disparities: A Race-Conscious Critique of the Literature,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 218, no. 5 (May 2018): 474–482.e2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2017.09.016.

  3. Ganga Bey, “Health Disparities at the Intersection of Gender and Race: Beyond Intersectionality Theory in Epidemiologic Research, ” in Quality of Life: Biopsychosocial Perspectives, ed. G. S. Taukeni (London: IntechOpen Limited, forthcoming).

  4. Roni Caryn Rabin, “Huge Racial Disparities Found in Deaths Linked to Pregnancy,” New York Times, May 7, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/health/pregnancy-deaths-.html.

  5. Todd M. Michney, “Beyond ‘White Flight,’” Belt Magazine, May 31, 2017, https://beltmag.com/beyond-white-flight-history-one-cleveland-neighborhood-can-teach-us-race-housing-inequality/.

  6. Trymaine Lee, “A Vast Wealth Gap, Driven by Segregation, Redlining, Evictions and Exclusion, Separates Black and White America,” New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html; Alina Baciu, Yamrot Negussie, Amy Geller, and James N. Weinstein, eds., Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2017), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425844/; see Elizabeth Hinton, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed, An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System, Vera Evidence Brief (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2018), www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-unjust-burden-racial-disparities.pdf.

  7. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham coined the term “respectability politics” in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  8. When I reference Indigenous people or cultures, I am including the original people of Africa. With the guidance of several practitioners of African traditional religions, particularly my friend Preston Anderson, I have come to a deeper understanding of Black diasporans as displaced Indigenous people. Read more in my article on this topic: “Why We Need to Stop Excluding Black Populations from Ideas of Who Is ‘Indigenous,’” Black Youth Project, November 6, 2017, https://blackyouthproject.com/need-stop-excluding-black-populations-ideas-indigenous/.

  9. Moya Bailey and Trudy, “On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 4 (March 13, 2018): 762–768, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395.

  10. Luke Darby, “Florida Police Officer Arrested and Handcuffed a 6-Year-Old Black Girl for a Tantrum in Class,” GQ, September 23, 2019, www.gq.com/story/six-year-old-black-girl-arrested-for-a-tantrum.

  Chapter 1: Carceral Dissonance

  11. See Michelle Kessel and Jessica Hopper, “Victims Speak Out about North Carolina Sterilization Program, Which Targeted Women, Young Girls and Blacks,” Rocker Center, November 7, 2011, http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/11/07/8640744-victims-speak-out-about-north-carolina-sterilization-program-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks?lite.

  12. See Dave Colon, “MTA Will Spend $249M on New Cops to Save $200M on Fare Evasion,” StreetsBlog NYC, November 14, 2019, https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/11/14/mta-will-spen
d-249m-on-new-cops-to-save-200m-on-fare-evasion/.

  13. See Terry Nguyen, “Fare Evasion Costs Cities Millions. But Will Cracking Down on It Solve Anything?,” Vox, November 15, 2019, www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/11/12/20959914/fare-evasion-costs-cities-millions.

  14. See Henry Grabar, “Andrew Cuomo and the Curious Case of the $81 Million Elevator,” Slate, September 20, 2019, https://slate.com/business/2019/09/mta-elevators-are-the-perfect-example-of-new-yorks-cost-problems.html.

  15. See Brian M. Rosenthal, “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth,” New York Times, December 28, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html.

  16. See Kristopher S. Cunningham, Danna A. Spears, and Melanie Care, “Evaluation of Cardiac Hypertrophy in the Setting of Sudden Cardiac Death,” Forensic Sciences Research 4, no. 3 (2019): 223–240, https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2019.1633761.

  17. See Kevin Rashid Johnson, “Prison Labor Is Modern Slavery. I’ve Been Sent to Solitary for Speaking Out,” Guardian, August 23, 2018, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prisoner-speak-out-american-slave-labor-strike; Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy, “Following the Money of Mass Incarceration,” Prison Policy Initiative, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html; and Alex Mayyasi, “How Does Prison Gerrymandering Work?,” Priceonomics, October 20, 2015, https://priceonomics.com/how-does-prison-gerrymandering-work/.

  18. Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 19.

  Chapter 3: Nowalaters

  19. Although I want to stay faithful to how my mother’s teaching job was described, I must acknowledge the dangers of the term “at-risk,” which lets the systems that pose risks for Black children off the hook, thereby placing responsibility for avoiding such risks onto the children themselves. In place of this term, it is important to note what the risks actually are—in this case carceral punishment—and who actually causes them—in this case a carceral system that neglects and abuses Black children.