The Healing

by Saeeda Hafiz

  “We are close friends,” he said, holding my hand.

  Soon after, the evening came to a close. He packed me a lunch for the next day. I left his apartment confused and relieved and went home.

  A few weeks later my colleague Francine stopped me in the hall.

  “I have a question to ask you. There’s a rumor floatin’ around.”

  “A rumor? About me?”

  “Yep. The black folks at the bank thought that Frederick was gay,” she said, “but they noticed that he does spend a lot of time with you that seems romantic.”

  Doors that seemed closed to Frederick were starting to open up. I could see that he was happy about being accepted socially, not just for his business acumen and textbook knowledge.

  He and I started to frequent lots of couple-like functions together, such as events with higher-ups at the bank. I was cool with it, and Frederick was finally the cool kid in school, not just the smart, well-dressed one. He started to see the advantages of living a visibly heterosexual lifestyle. It was exciting and sad to watch and participate in. It was clear that his aim was to be an upper-middle-class African American who might earn enough to start his own foundation. He wanted a prominent place in society, and in 1991 his being gay was not helping, especially in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  One night, while he was at my house for dinner, he confessed, “I’ve never had these feelings for a woman. This is the first time that I am questioning my sexuality in reverse.” There was moisture beading up on his forehead. His dark skin glowed. “I know that I had joked about taking our kids to McDonald’s and us being married, but I didn’t want to admit to myself that I cared for you in that way. The more and more I think about it, I think it could really work between us.” He took another big breath, paused, and then continued, “The only thing I ask is that you let me, two times a year, go out and be with men.”

  I was shocked. And then he said, “I can give you a comfortable life. We could be really great partners together.”

  “Frederick, if all things were equal and you were straight and came to me with this same proposal of twice a year you had to go out and be with another woman, I’d refuse. I don’t want to live like that.”

  My heart started to really ache. It ached because I wanted to live in a world where Frederick could be himself and not have to hide or pretend to be someone else with those who didn’t understand him or thought it was against God to be gay.

  He was perfect for me in so many ways, but I didn’t think I could live with a man who essentially was on the down-low to others and out to me. All of this triggered my daddy issues of being told that, “I can love you on my terms, or these terms only.” Of course, Frederick was always kind to me and he really did show up in my life, but I wanted to give myself a chance to create my own kind of happily-ever-after story. I didn’t want to live with a man who was gay and requested to be with a man two times a year.

  It was a sad night for us because, even though he was gay and I was straight, we had fallen in love and we were remarkably compatible.

  After we sat in silence for a few minutes, I asked, “Frederick, what made you think you could ask me to live in the shadows of your gay life? I think I deserve a fully committed relationship, and I deserve someone who wants to at least try and live this way, wholeheartedly.”

  “Well, I have friends who do it. They get it all—the wife, the kids, the careers, and the woman gets the appearance of having it all, too. Some black women find that the trade-off is a good one. They get the status of not being single, having kids, and a high-income lifestyle.”

  I grew more forlorn. I didn’t want a lifestyle where I had to live in the shadows of someone’s life. This was similar to the shadow life proposal that Ben had made to me. And once again I knew for certain that I didn’t want a Same Time Next Year kind of life.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rahima

  I WORRIED ABOUT MY LIFE A LOT, and I worried even more when I saw what was happening to my eldest sister, Rahima. Her life was twisting and turning out of control, unpredictably and with great velocity.

  When Rahima was sixteen, I was six. Up to that point, my sister had survived my parents’ domestic violence episodes. I thought she was the most beautiful person on earth. She stood lean, coffee-colored and, at five feet eight inches, she looked similar to the model Iman, resembling Somali royalty. I had always thought that my sister was the prettiest one, not just in our family but also in her crowd, or any crowd for that matter. Boys used to call her Rahim-the-Dream.

  I tried to tag along with her whenever I could. She was athletic and played intramural softball. Sometimes she would let me come along, but not every time.

  I am six years old and chasing her up Harriet Street.

  “Take me with you!” I am screaming and running my little legs as fast as they can go.

  “Go back home, Sy. Go back.” Her long, gliding brown legs get smaller and smaller, and then they vanish around the corner.

  I plop down on the cement and cry and cry. I don’t want to go back home and be all by myself.

  I needed Rahima to be successful. I needed her to show me the way out of our trauma. When it started to look like she couldn’t escape, I was afraid that I would somehow be trapped in a depressing life, too.

  As we grew older, we did less and less together. Throughout the years, she had boyfriends who came over to watch TV at our house. One guy in particular was different. His name was Jackson. Every time he arrived at our house, he brought juice and snacks for the family to eat. This is the person from whom I learned that it is polite to bring a gift with you each time you visit someone’s home.

  When Jackson came into my sister’s life, things were better for her and, weirdly, for my family. You see, my sister had not always done what my mother wanted her to do. But she seemed to be getting this one right. My mother had wanted my sister to go to college, marry a nice man, have a career, and then have babies. But when my sister said she was going to community college, it soon became clear that she was only pretending to go each day. We discovered that, instead of being in class, she was in the neighborhood, braiding boys’ hair. My mother then tried to follow my sister’s interest by encouraging her to go to cosmetology school, but to no avail.

  It wasn’t until my sister started dating Jackson more seriously that her life had order and purpose. He had a good job as a manager in the railroad business. She rented an apartment and worked a steady job. Then, after about a year or so, he bought a house and she moved in with him, got pregnant, and became a great stay-at-home mom. My mom felt at ease, especially because my sister could help my mother’s financial situation.

  I was thirteen years old when my niece Amilah was born. I was excited.

  Jackson and Rahima paid me to babysit each weekend to give them time for a date night followed by after-midnight grocery shopping, when the stores were relatively empty and the checkout lines were short.

  My niece was adorable and easy to care for. My babysitting skills came in handy, and I enjoyed being with her. When Amilah grew bigger, almost three years old, I took her for rides on the public bus to show her our city. I knew people on the bus, with their disapproving eyes, thought I was a young teenage mom. So sometimes I would say in a loud voice, “Your mom put a nice dress on you this morning, and now your aunty is showing you the city. You are such a smart and pretty girl. Who’s a pretty girl?”

  I loved those weekends away from my own home. Rahima and Jackson had the house well supplied with fun snacks and juice. They weren’t properly married, but they soon turned into a good role model for me to observe. Their system seemed to work. The bonus was that each weekend I earned $20.00.

  This went on for years, and then Rahima had a second baby, Ameer. I continued this niece-and-nephew weekend ritual until I went away to college in Philadelphia. While I was in college, life for my sister started to shift. I heard
grumblings. She was unhappy because Jackson was never going to propose to her. He had been clear about never wanting to be married from the very beginning, and his last girlfriend had broken up with him because he wouldn’t marry her. Now my sister was in the same situation, but with two kids.

  I was confused because he was a good provider and significant other, whether or not they were legally married. Besides, she had gone along with this for seven years. The grumblings that I had heard was that friends and friends of friends had opinions like: You should make him marry you. You don’t have any security. He can leave you at any time. Even my dad got on a soapbox, saying: If he cared for you, he would marry you. This was funny coming from my dad, a man who did marry my mother but didn’t provide much. A few people said to my sister: He treats you well; don’t listen to them. My mom even said: You got a good thing here, don’t mess it up.

  But, the “you’re-not-married” comments really got to my sister. She gave Jackson an ultimatum. Marry me by the time Ameer is five, or I am out of here.

  She kept her word. She left him. But, from that point on, Rahim-the-Dream’s life started to become a nightmare.

  Even though she had two kids, she kept her shapely figure and her striking good looks. In a flash, my sister found another man named Wendell who was nine years her junior. He and I had gone to high school together, and I didn’t approve. But it was none of my business, so I stayed out of it.

  When she got pregnant with her third child, Daoud, I wondered if it was planned.

  I remember the first time I saw my sister’s life unraveling. It was January 1988. I am home from college, visiting my sister at her new apartment, a newly built, low-income development behind Eastland Mall. It was stylish and clean, with new furniture and modern appliances. Rahima always could put together a look, whether it was an outfit or a room. Besides, Jackson was giving her more than fair child support. She never had to take him to court. He was generous that way.

  Everything in my sister’s life was different, but when she asked me to babysit her kids for a few hours early one Friday evening, I was happy to do so. She didn’t even have to pay me.

  My plan that night was to spend some quality time being an aunty, and then go out later to see my college friends in the city. She told me she would come back by 8:30 p.m.

  Eight-thirty came and went. I had already put the kids to bed. Then 9:00, 9:30, and no Rahima. Later, 9:45, 10:00, 11:00. I tried calling around, mostly to vent my frustration. It was midnight, and I was vexed. Stretched out on the couch, I watched more mindless TV to sedate my raging thoughts.

  “Why is she taking advantage of me? Why is she trying to trap me? Why does she not value my time and plans? Why does she think so little of me? She’s doing what dad does.” I drifted off to sleep.

  Then I heard the keys fumbling in the door. I looked at the clock. Three a.m.

  Rahima opened the door and swayed back and forth with a chuckle. I sprung up. “I will never again watch your kids,” I growled.

  It was clear that she had been out drinking and having fun.

  Early the next morning, I left my sister’s house and got on the bus headed toward East Pittsburgh. I sat down and stared out the window. I watched Eastland Mall get smaller and smaller. I rode past the old neighborhood, and in my head I said goodbye to friends I’d had since elementary school. I gazed at Pittsburgh’s George Washington Bridge, reflecting on the numerous times I’d stared out of the window from my house as a girl wondering what did the future hold for me. Now that bridge has come to symbolize my past as well as my future. Built in 1932, it is a stone structure with five parabolic arches whose construction was groundbreaking for its time. Its central arch then had the longest span in the world, but today bridge construction has progressed far beyond that. Just as my life was progressing far beyond my sister’s. It was time to move on. I looked at everything from that bus window, hoping that the bus would take me far away from my family.

  It was that very morning that I decided to surround myself with people who were doing better. At that moment, I adopted my new philosophy: “Always be the dumbest one in the room.” My logic was that if I were the least educated or accomplished one in the room, I would always have a better chance to improve myself. My ego could relax because I had nothing to prove. I was there to learn. Besides, I didn’t want to get stuck in the quicksand environment my family members constantly battled, in which other people could pull me under.

  I went back to college determined to finish, even though classes were not easy for me. But Rahima’s life kept spiraling down. My handsome sister went from living the life of a stay-at-home mom with two kids and a common-law husband, to the hard life of a single mom working as a medical assistant, to an even tougher hard life as the pregnant girlfriend of a short-term partner.

  By this time, 1991, I had graduated from college in Philadelphia and started working full-time in banking there. I was creating my new life in the middle class. My sister’s relationship with Wendell fell apart. Acquaintances from high school gossiped about the breakup and the fast hookup with another guy named Jerry, who married her right away. It was hard to stay focused on my dreams, since the new rumor about my sister was that her marriage was a violent one with lots of drug abuse. Jerry even tried to kill her. I’m not sure how and why she made the decision to move to Atlanta. But one day in 1992, with only her youngest child along, she packed up and left Pittsburgh.

  Her downward spiral was halted. Rahima called my mother from Atlanta periodically, with good reports of having found a job as a hostess in a restaurant where famous people often dined. She would eventually send for her other two kids, who were now living with their father, when she got more settled. We were all thrilled by her efforts to make a fresh start. At the same time, I kept practicing my plant-based diet and yoga. I didn’t want to fall through the cracks. Yoga and eating whole foods were still giving me a deep sense of peace and the strength to keep on healing.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ted and the Bank

  TED WAS MY UNOFFICIAL MENTOR at the bank in Pittsburgh. I’d often frequent his office for feedback. Ted stood six feet five inches, with honey-colored skin and wavy black hair. His hair resembled that of mixed-race people, with loose curls that were neither tight nor kinky. He had a medium build and huge hands that were the color and structure of baseball mitts. Ted was in his mid-forties. He was in charge of the International Division, and he spoke fluent French. He might have been the only African American man in Pittsburgh filling an executive vice president position who ran an entire division. He looked Moroccan to me, but he said he was a black guy from Philly.

  In January 1992 I was a quarter of a century old, and for two years I had been practicing an alternative lifestyle. But even though I worked in corporate America, I no longer wore dark business suits; instead my wardrobe had evolved into nicely fitted, colorful dresses. I was hoping to communicate that I was an independent-thinking professional. Back then, the term “personal branding” was not yet a thing, but I understood that style and appearance were ways of transmitting messages and I also wanted to be comfortable. I didn’t want to think too much about clothes or how to put them together. I wanted to think more about my goals and who I could become.

  The New Year was always a time for me to establish my goals, and I was excited to share my work plan with my mentor. I designed a strategy for how I was going to prove myself in the Corporate Marketing department. I showed Ted how I established an important morning goal and then an afternoon goal that fit into my department’s long-term goals. I was applying all my Seven Habits of Highly Effective People strategies to my real-life corporate job. I also shared with him my new lifestyle of going to the gym and eating in a holistic way.

  “What’s holistic eating?” he asked.

  “You know, eating grains, beans, greens, tofu, nuts, seeds and fresh fruit, and vegetables,” I said.

  “Grains
, humph,” he said. “What do you mean, grains?”

  “You know things like brown rice, buckwheat, millet, and quinoa,” I stated proudly, a bit perplexed that he did not know what I meant.

  “Quin-What?”

  “Quinoa.” I said as he looked over his black-framed reading glasses. “It’s a South American grain, high in protein.”

  “Girl, you want protein, eat steak. And millet, that’s what poor Africans eat.” He schooled me. “Your problem is that you’re eating too low on the food chain.” His voice was so matter-of-fact.

  I, on the other hand, naively thought that I was doing what corporate bankers and other businessmen and women did in this world, working out and eating well.

  I felt the corners of my brow furrow. I thought he would be proud of me. My old feelings of superiority rescued me. If he didn’t understand that eating grains was a great way to get some protein, fiber, minerals, and vitamins (especially the B vitamins), then I was not the one to explain it to him. My face relaxed somewhat. Then I simply explained it all to him in terms that I thought he might relate to—African American history. African Americans have a long history of high cholesterol, diabetes, and hypertension, and mostly because we eat foods that derive from the American slave table. I felt like a Marcus Garvey inside. I wanted to give an evidenced-based sermon about how we and other oppressed people were often given the worst of everything to just barely survive, along with the exploitation of our disadvantages and pain. Almost no area of life was untouched by a marketing scheme that would exploit the food we would buy, the neighborhoods we would live in, and the schools we would attend. I wanted to preach about how making self-care changes can liberate us in so many ways. But instead I indicated that if we eat more foods from our rich African heritage, it can help us connect to our history, our biology, and ultimately our spiritual heritage. My teacher, Gia, emphasized that eating grains like millet and teff could better connect us to our African ancestry. This was my way of consciously choosing foods that promoted a sense of freedom, and besides, grain protein is absorbed and digested more easily than steak. I wanted Ted to understand this. So I held my ground.