by Saeeda Hafiz
I drifted off into a less fearful slumber.
I usually also sleep straight through the night, especially if there aren’t any noises or bumps. But on this night, I woke up. With the covers still over my head, I felt a nudge coming from inside of me. I straightened up, rolled onto my back, and looked around the dark room. I decided to stop imagining a dad’s arms around me because my dad has never really shown up. Instead, I started imagining God’s arm around me. I was no longer a five-year-old kid or a fifteen-year-old girl. I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman alone in the world without a safety net, a back-up plan, or anyone who felt any sense of obligation toward me. I figured I’d better hold the hand of an invisible force, real or imagined.
I was on my own trying to figure out how I wanted to live in this world and contribute to it. I didn’t want to be a burden to others or myself. I wanted to live in this world in a safe way, a joyous way, without resistance. I needed to be a girl in action and not one of inaction.
* * *
That night, I drove home from my yoga client’s house looking at the bright highway lights, the green exit signs, and the white lines that divided the light ten o’clock traffic. I was reminded of the writings of Theodore Roethke, who defines the word “teacher” as “one who carries on her education in public.”
Then I thought of the words of Dianne M. Connelly: “She cannot be teacher-coach-awe-inspirer without giving herself away, without opening to her own astonishing aliveness, without publicly wondering and wandering in her own beginner’s mind.”
That was who I was. I was That Tao Girl living both in action and inaction, and about to live out my education in public.
The big tall trees surrounding Craig’s house sighed as I pulled my car into the semicircular driveway. It was dark, with no street lamps. The antebellum South. I emerged from the car carrying my folded yoga mat and leather Day-Timer, schoolbook style. I heard the wind blowing the summer leaves. Instead of going directly into the house, I walked up to the tree behind my car, put my stuff down on the ground and leaned my back against its trunk, as if it could cuddle me from behind. My spine straightened, feeling the bumpy bark, and I took a deep breath. I placed my right foot on the inside of my left thigh and placed my hands into a prayer position, thumbs resting on my heart. I exhaled, holding tree pose. Then I thought of my ancestors who were enslaved, who couldn’t know in advance their Reconstruction fate, but did try to figure out a new way, their own way, their own Tao—which simply means a way of doing things. That’s what I was about to do, figure out my own way, and at the same time I was hoping that my sister was figuring out her own way, too.
CHAPTER 10
Abundance and Its Opposite
I SAT IN LOTUS POSITION on Ellen’s couch, looking down at the bodies. They were lying still, in corpse pose—Savasana. My thoughts wandered to that night when Ellen, Diane, Nancy, and I discussed how yoga affected us all. Since that evening, we had recommitted to meeting once a week at Ellen’s house for private yoga lessons. These three women transformed to an altered state of being during their yoga practice. I could see that they didn’t move or twitch. It was only the rise and fall of their bellies that proved to me that they were, in fact, still alive. They were not awake, and not asleep. A thick silence permeated the room from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
As a teacher, I’ve often witnessed an active room full of people, with busy to-do lists in their thoughts, decrescendo into stillness. Dead silence. Only their bellies rising and falling, filling up with and then releasing air, like balloons.
Every week, I’d bring my students back from their alternate universes at the end of class. Then Ellen, Diane, and Nancy always talked about the same thing: home renovation. Usually, I was so tired from my long day that I would quickly pack up and go home. Also, not having a home of my own, I wasn’t interested in the topic. But this time I became curious about what they were discussing.
“What are you guys working on?” I asked.
“Nancy’s house,” Ellen said. “Nancy has been remodeling her house for more than ten years.”
“More like fifteen,” Nancy interjected.
That statement sounded painful to me. I had never liked the idea of buying a fixer-upper. I had always imagined that I would move into a place that was ready for me to live in.
“Nancy, you remodeled your own house?” I asked.
“Yep,” Nancy said matter-of-factly. “It’s been a project.”
“You have to see Nancy’s house,” Diane said.
A few weeks later, I arranged to spend some time at Nancy’s house. When I arrived, I walked up to the white picket fence, which she had built herself. The fence was quite low to the ground, but it was the perfect height for viewing the garden in the front yard. There was a lantana, a dwarf peach tree, phlox, hydrangea, yarrow, and buddleia. The garden’s aroma was fresh and wild. It had an uncultivated, healthy beauty. It was a short walk from the white gate to the pint-sized porch, which had a few chairs on it that invited you to sit, drink lemonade, and rock into a peaceful state.
I knocked on the bright-red wooden front door. Nancy opened the door, and the red paint caught the reflection of the setting sun. Looking inside the house, my eyes were transfixed by the large gray stone standing erect in the middle of the house. This monolithic structure served as a double fireplace, heating the living room, the kitchen, and the entryway to the bedroom and bathroom. It also visually divided the space beautifully. I could clearly see where each room started and stopped, even though there were no interior walls in the house. This magical stone sculpture was a symbolic pillar of strength.
“Wow, you worked on this house for fifteen years,” I said. “How did you get started?”
Nancy paused. Her face looked as though she were searching through a library card catalog, looking for the right memory to start this story.
“I graduated from college and was hired at the art museum, hanging works of art,” she chuckled. “I made $15,000 a year. The 1980s were fast approaching.”
“What made you think you could buy a house making only $15,000 a year?” I looked over at Nancy’s petite, slender, frame. I thought: This little lady built all this.
“Well, the house was only $12,000, and the bank gave me a mortgage. I knew that I could do a lot of work myself. And…I had a plan,” she said. “I figured if I stuck to my plan, I could make this pile of rubble into a home.”
“What was the plan?” I asked as Nancy pulled out the pictures. I was intensely curious about people who actually lived out their plans, especially since my parents were always preaching about building a life, a business, and a home—but not really doing it. I thought back to a time when I confronted my father about it during a phone call.
“We have to stick together,” said my dad. “You need to talk to your brothers and sisters more. Talk to your cousins more. Family is important. You need to know what’s going on with them. Stay close.”
This was hard to listen to with a straight face. So I bluntly asked, “Dad, is that what you were thinking when you were beating mom at two in the morning and locking your bedroom door so that my brother Samir couldn’t get in to help her?” I paused. “You missed I-don’t-know-how-many birthdays, football and basketball games. The worst was waiting for you to pick me up to take me to my concerts and have you show up an hour late, if at all.”
He hung up the phone on me. I was used to that every time I confronted him. My dad destroyed relationships. He did not build them up.
So people like Nancy intrigued me. I was interested in learning more about someone who actually followed through on a commitment, and I was eager to experience anything that showed me how to make a true commitment. My mother worked hard for survival, so it appeared to me that making any commitment beyond paying bills seemed unmanageable.
I remembered my mom telling me not to quit my job at the bank because I should ha
ve more money saved. I didn’t agree.
“Mom, when did you decide to leave dad?”
“After he hit me the first time,” she said. “He had come home from the Army. I was about eighteen and we got into some kind of argument, and out of nowhere he hit me upside the head. I saw stars and heard a long ringing sound.”
My mother and I were both silent for a few minutes, staring at the floor. It was as if both of us remembered seeing those stars twinkle and hearing that drone ring, and I wasn’t even born yet.
“Mom, what was your plan?”
“I was going to save some money and get me and baby Rahima away from him.”
“How much money did you have saved up when you finally left him?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
There was more silence between us. Then I added, “And that was twenty years and three more kids later.”
Nancy put the “before” picture album on her handcrafted-to-perfection kitchen island, while we sat on matching blonde-wood bar stools. The pictures documented a dilapidated house. The structural beams were rotted. Looking at the photos, I could smell the funk and I saw mold. There was no functional bathroom or kitchen. Never mind the plan; how did she live here?
I asked her how she did it. “I carved out one part of the house that I wanted to live in, my bedroom, and made it livable. I’d shower at the gym and figured out my meals with friends, and then started on my plan. I would budget my basics from paycheck to paycheck.”
“What do you mean?”
She told me that she would buy just enough building materials to keep her busy for two weeks until her next paycheck. Each night, she had a specific focus. She tapped her hand on the kitchen counter and said that when she was putting in the cabinets, she broke the job down into small manageable tasks. For instance, the first night she might measure and record the dimensions needed for the cabinets. The second night, she’d mark all the wood pieces. The third night, she’d cut all the wood, and so on.
When I asked Nancy how she stayed motivated, she said that she became good at planning two-week projects. This way she was able to line up friends to help for specific tasks on the weekends. Because she had assigned them specific jobs to do, she then felt obligated to have her part done on time. Then she said, “Besides, I wanted the help and needed the company.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, feeling her dedication, discipline, and sacrifice.
But then she told me about a particularly tough week. Nancy remembered coming home every day that week and being so tired of working on the house that she just stopped. Each day, she’d come home and not do any of the scheduled tasks. Then one night she was sitting in the mess and said to herself, “Nothing is going to get done unless I do it.” The next day, she came home from work and started up her regular routine again.
Fifteen years later, Nancy’s house was appraised at $200,000 and her $12,000 mortgage was paid off.
What she had built was so different from anything my mom and dad had created. Where I came from, no one thought like Nancy did. Nancy was a petite woman who lived a big life in a small physical frame, just like her house. It was solid, compact, and manicured on the outside, while the inside was an open space of functional beauty.
I felt flimsy in comparison, but maybe I could also be as strong. The “before” pictures of my life felt rotten; but just as Nancy had rebuilt her house, I could rebuild myself one week at a time. After watching her in action, I decided that commitment is a combination of art, attitude, and alchemy.
* * *
At this point, one main difference between us was that Nancy knew that she was building a house. I wasn’t sure what I was building. I knew that I wanted to live a healthy, dynamic, organic life, but I didn’t know what that life would look like. I believed that my foundation and building blocks included a weekly practice of yoga and eating my own home cooking. Beyond that I was a bit lost, especially because life seemed mysterious and I came from such unorganized chaos.
Sometimes I felt like the gods were playing a nasty trick on me. I imagined one of them saying, “Watch this poor soul live out her karmic challenge. Each day, she is struggling toward the one thing that will define and save her. Her only clues are: one, at the end of each class she will feel alive and whole; and two, her students gracefully remind her that her gift is supporting them in their lives.” Another god chuckles and says, “But by the time she is ready to teach her next class, that synergistic feeling wears off and she’s not sure if it’s real. HA!…Humans.” At this point, the gods indulge in a hearty belly laugh and pat themselves on the back for a comedic job well done.
Every time, without fail, at the beginning of each class I resisted every step of the way. But by the end of class, I was certain that this was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
I tried to laugh along with the gods. I tried to keep a sense of humor about my life, because it seemed that on a weekly basis a game of resistance versus certainty was being played out. Either way, I knew that I had to participate because, “Nothing is going to get done, unless I do it,” But, what to do was the question.
* * *
It was around fifteen months after starting my business that I went from optimistically having money to launch to falling behind in all of my bills. It all seemed to happen overnight. I seriously considered closing everything down and just finding a job. I became dubious about having the right combination of art, attitude, and alchemy to stay committed.
Then one late summer afternoon, while taking my afternoon power nap, I heard the phone ring. I had forgotten to turn off the ringer. I answered, praying it wasn’t a bill collector.
“Hello, may I speak with Saeeda Hafiz?”
I hesitated, then uttered a polite, “Yes.”
“Hello, Saeeda, this is Essence magazine. We got your name from a woman in Atlanta saying that you are a yoga teacher. We would like to feature an African American yoga teacher in our wellness issue. Does this sound like something you would be interested in?”
I wanted to cheer into the phone and jump up and down and say:
Of course that interests me! I’ve always wanted to be an Essence career girl, since junior high!
Instead, soberly, I said: “Yes, that does interest me,” like someone confirming what she wanted to eat for lunch. Grinning from ear-to-ear, I grabbed my three-ringed self-promotion binder. I flipped through a few pages, glancing at the newspaper clipping of me teaching yoga to kids. Then I reviewed a few client testimonials. I needed to see something to remind myself that I was worthy of this interview. Also, I wanted to be prepared to answer the woman’s questions as accurately as I could.
Right there, on the spot, she interviewed me for about an hour. When we finished, I put the phone down like a chef who had just put the finishing touches on a beautiful dessert.
I kept repeating to myself: This is the break I need. This is the break I need. A few weeks later, someone else called from the magazine to fact check my interview. This woman told me that the wellness spread would hit the newsstands in January 1995.
I, of course, told everyone I knew—friends, family, and clients—that I was going to be in Essence magazine. Since I’d always wanted to be like those women in Essence, it was ironic that it was my yoga teaching being featured, and not my corporate work. I told myself, Just when I seriously wanted to give up my business, this is a clear sign that everything is about to change. I felt confident that an appearance in Essence would help boost my money flow, give me more business credibility, and further show that what I do does add value. As I had once heard Martha Stewart mention, “It all started to change for me once I was in print,” I yearned for a Martha Stewart kind of change. I longed for a new start to my new year.
In January, the issue came out, as promised. I bought a handful of copies. I flipped open the pages. I found the wellness section. I read each word carefully,
but I did not see my name at all. I closed the magazine. I stared at the cover. I opened the magazine again, starting with page one. I read each page like an archaeologist excavating a section of dirt for rare dinosaur bones. I didn’t see my name. Nothing I had talked about was featured. I closed the magazine. I looked at the cover and put the magazine on top of the other unopened copies. I stared at the pile as if it were a crystal ball revealing my future. Exhaling, I said to myself, “Happy Miserable Fucking New Year.”
The phone rang and I let my answering machine take the message. “Hey girl,” one of my friends said, “I got the January issue of Essence and you’re not it in. What happened?”
I called Essence, and a woman told me, “Unfortunately, things just get cut sometimes. Every magazine has layout constraints.” I was crushed.
The word “constraints” reverberated inside my head. Perhaps I should not stretch myself any further. In yoga, we often teach students to only go to a point of a stretch, not strain. In my case, I felt increasingly strained and constrained. I felt like I had brought this agony upon myself. No one had told me to start my own business. Hard life lesson learned—dreams can simply be cut out just because there’s not enough room for them.