by Saeeda Hafiz
Inhale one. I said a silent prayer. Exhale. I lowered my arms. Inhale two. My arms went up toward the heavens as I gently arched my back. Exhale three, with a deep fold forward from my hips, I was humbled as I bent toward the earth. Inhale four, I lunged my right leg back, letting the knee rest on the ground. As my tears began to flow down, I looked up at the sun and asked, “Who am I? What’s my true purpose?”
Holding my breath, position five, I held plank. Lowering my knees, chest, and chin to the ground, position six, like a lowly inchworm, I completely submitted to the will of the divine. I prostrated to the sun, like an ancient pagan from Cyprus, a Muslim making salaat, or a Hindu yogi practicing Hatha yoga—all of these now a part of my spiritual heritage.
Snaking into cobra, inhale seven, I opened my heart again to the sea and filled my lungs with fresh air. Exhaling eight, I moved into downward dog. I paused and held the posture, looking at the world and water upside down. Then I closed my eyes, feeling the tension release from my calves and shins. I emptied my lungs, flattened my belly, and felt my hands and toes lock into the earth.
I felt like I was being born again.
Then I concluded with another lunge, inhale nine, forward fold, exhale ten, slow arch backwards, inhale eleven, and then a deep exhale twelve, a strong mountain pose. I stood still, with my thumbs resting on my elevated heartbeat—prayer position. My body was drawing mystical triangles or tetrahedrons, each movement connecting my body to the heavens and then again to the earth.
In Cyprus, I still didn’t have a home, but I did feel like I belonged somewhere. From the moment I arrived, the water coaxed me to its shore to participate in the beginning of emotionally building my foundation, my true home.
* * *
Mighty Aphrodite was said to have been born between two monolithic rocks protruding from the Mediterranean Sea in Cyprus, which had human history dating back over ten thousand years. It was here that my Taoist, Chinese medicine philosophy became even more grounded.
On our first day of sightseeing in Cyprus, I stood in an open, cavelike structure. Its multicolored clay and the sea air smelled both ancient and fresh. Our tour guide, a thirty-something, tanned, earthy-looking woman with curly blonde hair, explained the symbolism of the mosaic embedded in the floor. The mosaic depicted the four seasons and the energy that the people of 10,000 years ago believed each season to have. It sounded a lot like the 5,000-year-old Taoist philosophy, except that it was 10,000 years old. It was comforting seeing life repeat itself, evolve, and grow. It made it all the more meaningful. We humans were always trying to practice a meaningful, spiritual way of living, connecting with the things we understood, and honoring the things we didn’t understand.
I continued to listen to the lecture. The tour guide referenced different symbols in the open cave. There were symbols and pictures that depicted a virgin birth. She explained that the story of Christ was not the only virgin birth story, and the way she said the word “story” made me think that perhaps she did not believe that the Christ story was real. To her, it was just that, a story. Then she said, “There are many traditions that use the virgin birth story.”
My face must have looked stupefied because my mind was saying, You don’t know anything about the world or history. I had never heard that said before. “The virgin birth story is older than Christ? Did everyone know that the Christ story wasn’t that unique?” I thought. I was too embarrassed to ask the guide or my travel mates what they knew.
The tour guide went on, “The cross also appeared before Christ. It has a long history. One of the earliest explanations for the cross was simply as a symbol bringing union between two polarities,” she added. Goosebumps appeared on my arms because this was exactly how I viewed my yoga and food practice.
I felt ignorant, but shattering the last vestiges of religious dogma also freed me up. I realized that everything evolved and oftentimes repeated itself like the virgin birth story. Life was more than my little world of successes and failures. Maybe my life would also be an evolution of stories; some would repeat, and some would evolve.
The next day we went to the historic spot where the goddess of love was born—Aphrodite. I, of course, envisioned an AFROdite. Being on the island of Cyprus, we were smack dab in the middle of the Earth. Cyprians like to tell you that. Literally, we were between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and its geographical position easily explained why this crossroads had a turbulent past. I understood the connection between being in the middle of it all and having turbulence follow. That was exactly what I felt about my world. I was on the margins of everything meta-geographically. I was in the middle of rich and poor, drug addicts and physicians, illness and wellness, educated and uneducated; the list could go on. But I had another thought while I was absorbing the history of Aphrodite; I pictured her wearing a small, short-cut Afro like mine. I smiled and then chuckled to myself. It was nice to laugh for a change.
Cyprus may have been divided between the Greek and Turkish sides, but because I identified with it as the birthplace of the goddess of love, it represented for me a place with the healing powers of love.
After the Aphrodite lectures, we did a prayer ritual and went for a meditative stroll. Kathy called out my name. She walked toward me with the confidence of a queen. Her hands were cupped, one hand over the other, as if she had just caught a firefly. Then she extended her arms out in my direction.
“I have a gift for you,” she said smiling.
“Oh,” I said, pleasantly surprised. She lifted her right hand as if she were taking the lid off of a light-blue Tiffany gift box. It was a rock. I took it from her and gently ran my fingers over it. On the topside, it was smooth and tanned with engraved dark lines. It appeared softly wrinkled. Underneath, my fingertips caressed the rough sandy texture. Being sharp on one end and smooth to the touch on the other, it felt like it could be an ancient cooking or carving tool. I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, so I smiled and put some light behind my eyes and said, “Thank you, Kathy!”
“Saeeda, let me tell you what this is,” she said, excitedly, apparently guessing that I thought it was just a rock. “It is an ancient turtle. I was walking along and saw it standing in the middle of my path, slowly moving as turtles do.” She was giggling. “This rock is your symbol. It is a turtle, and a turtle is never without a home. It carries his home with him all the time. You will always have a home, no matter where you go. You are protected.”
The inside of my nose started to tingle and my eyes welled up. I put the turtle-rock on my heart and smiled. I looked into her blue eyes, and then opened my arms wide, holding on to the turtle-rock, gesturing for Kathy to come toward me so I could squeeze her tight. I hugged her while taking a long, deep breath. I felt whole.
* * *
At the end of the trip, I boarded the plane knowing that I no longer wanted to vanish into that existential abyss, and that my falling into it had stopped. I felt capable and protected.
Much in the same way that Savasana gave me a trust in life, this trip gave me a sense of a protected life, a life that would be filled with unpredictable adventure and healing.
As the plane jetted toward the sky, I thought: “I do have a home; I just don’t know where it is yet.”
CHAPTER 12
Mother
I RETURNED TO ATLANTA, but my financial options had run out. I went to my friend Stacey’s house, again, for a quick refuge. Part of me was relieved. Part of me was embarrassed. Part of me still felt that I had a protected life. But mostly, I felt sad and scared.
At Stacey’s house, I woke up in a pitch-black room. Nothing stirred; I felt like I was in one of those sensory deprivation flotation tanks, minus the water.
The room had a north-facing window, but it also had window blinds that blocked out any incoming light. With no noise or light, I felt like I was suspended on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Alone in that dark room, I thought about the first ti
me I had stayed there, two years before. I was full of magic and hope then, with Atlanta seemingly full of possibilities.
I lifted myself up from my already low-to-the-ground foam mattress bed. I found something to eat in the kitchen and turned on the TV. I turned on Oprah. I was hoping Oprah would give me some inspiration as she had done when I was in college. But mostly, I marinated in my own personal failures and lack of direction. I couldn’t even make myself do sun salutes or cook anything substantial. Why did I feel so immobilized, especially after such a positive international trip?
Late afternoon, I took a bath, where I created my own flotation tank. Sitting in the hot water, my mind drifted to Stacey. Even though Stacey and I were the same age, her life was at a different level. She was already in the middle class and grounded in its values. She was able to build a nice starter home for herself with property given to her by her dad. Instead of being jealous, I was fascinated. I was always curious about how other people lived and made decisions, and what influenced those decisions.
Stacey’s dad constructed things with his property and education, but my dad deconstructed things. My dad could have had my grandfather’s modest property to manage, but it all seemed downhill after he, at age twenty-one, married my mother when she was sixteen. My father lived a different kind of life than the one he said he wanted to live.
My father was the son of two people who built a decent lower-middle-class lifestyle. My grandparents bought a small starter house in a countryside neighborhood near a suburb called North Versailles, east of Pittsburgh. It had a rural feeling to it: not too many people, and houses not too close together. Trees, grass, and fresh air were plentiful, so plentiful that my grandfather was able to plant a Southern-style garden every year. Next to my grandparents’ home, my grandfather and his brother George had built another small house. These were good beginnings for young black men who had migrated from the South. My grandparents seemed to be doing okay, but their marriage appeared loveless at times. My dad confessed to my mother that he often witnessed my grandfather beating my grandmother. My dad pledged to my mother not to be that kind of man, telling her that he wouldn’t do that to anyone.
When my mom told me all that, I felt angry, confused, and deeply saddened. My dad had wanted to do better, but he hadn’t done better. In fact, he did worse than my grandfather. I wondered if I would do worse than my parents and my grandparents.
Floating in the warm tub, I remembered hearing my mom tell me that my dad had never wanted to abuse his wife. Where did it all go so wrong? Was James Baldwin right when he said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”?
My family was complicated and confusing. I know that my dad wanted to do better by me, but couldn’t.
I am eleven years old. I am on a rare visit at my dad’s house, the bar-house he owned. There was a mahogany door that separated the house from the bar. I had to go into the bar around 9:00 in the evening to ask my dad a question. I opened the door, got to the first landing, and saw that he was at the end of the bar near the street entrance. I looked over and saw my father talking and gesturing firmly at some guy, and then, all of a sudden in slow motion, he leaned back, drew a fist, and hit the guy square in the jaw. And just like in a boxing match, the crowd went wild and the guy was flat on the floor.
I was thinking it could have been worse, because my father owned a gun and kept it with or near him for unsuspecting bar trouble.
Later, the man took my dad to court. I was called in to testify. “Dad, what should I tell the judge?” I was ready to say whatever my father wanted me to say. Strangely enough, I wanted to please him.
“Tell the truth,” he said knowing that what I might say could hurt him. He seemed resolved that he had done wrong.
I testified. I told what I had seen. My dad had to pay all of the guy’s dental bills, and then some.
I sat in the bath. I turned on more hot water to heat up the water in the tub, which had started to go cold. I figured that I was statistically doomed. I had read that children of domestic violence are likely to be victims of physical, mental, or sexual abuse. These children also have an increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse, and even of committing a crime.
I was probably doubly doomed, since I had two generations of domestic violence behind me, and who knows what beatings my ancestors before that had had to take. I wondered if the true fight is the fight we have within ourselves to find peace, but our pain is what often wins. I continued staying at Stacey’s house, and I felt more and more hopeless each day. After Stacey went off to work, I repeated my new routine. I crawled out of bed, found something to eat, and watched dumb TV.
One day Stacey, perhaps tired of seeing me so sad, came home with a rose for me. It brought a smile to my face. It was like seeing a rainbow in the midst of a storm.
“Stacey, thank you for being so good to me. You nurture me like a mom,” I said softly.
Stacey looked at me kindly. Our brown eyes locked, and she said, “But I am not your mother.”
I felt a chill crawl up my back like a centipede.
Stacey was right to set this friendly boundary. It was not her responsibility to nurse me back to health, even though her hospitality was impeccable.
I didn’t need to be reminded that there was no one in this world who had any obligation toward me. Where did someone like me go when broken? I felt like I needed my real mother, but I remembered her explosive emotional outbursts any time one of my siblings or I disappointed her. I just wanted to be accepted unconditionally, not broken down further.
I’d always had my own money, made good grades, had good friends. I had never really shown weakness or neediness. Even though my birth order was next to youngest, I felt like the eldest child in my family, even more mature than my parents. But at that point in my life, I was the weakest and terrified to face my mother. Yet I didn’t see any other option.
I knew one thing for sure, Stacey was right; she was not my mother.
So who was?
* * *
It was September 1995—over a year had passed since I had seen my mother. I flew to Pittsburgh, where the fall weather was a lot colder than the weather in Atlanta.
I stood on the corner of Beaver and Butler streets and looked at my mom’s old white house. The lawn sloped downward. The grass needed to be watered—or, in Pittsburghese, one would say, “The grass needs watered.” But as I looked around this financially depressed area, it was clear that watering the grass was not anyone’s priority.
With the same bag in hand that I had taken on the Power Trip and my turtle-rock inside, I walked toward the stone stairs that led to the front door. I stood at the bottom of those stairs, only two short flights. I could see the white metal screen door and the rickety letter-sized mailbox, a muted red color in need of paint. The house looked the same as it had on the day my mother had purchased it—dim and in need of repair.
Although it wasn’t remodeled like Nancy’s Atlanta home, this house did have some similarities. It was a symbol of blood, sweat, and tears.
Nancy’s house yielded a better aesthetic return, but my mother’s house yielded a shelter for a broken woman, a single mother trying to possess something of value in the world. It was a symbol that said she had done something good for herself. All my life, I knew how much my mom needed her life to turn out “good,” as she would state.
I don’t know if this knowledge of “life turning out good” started the day my parents separated, or the day my paternal grandfather evicted my mother, my younger brother, and me from our home.
With my bag in hand, I opened the door. My mother greeted me with a light hug and a look of disgust. I expected as much, considering it was an unwritten rule for all of my mother’s children: Don’t come around here needing and wanting anything because I ain’t got it.
Defenses, on both sides, went up.<
br />
The best way I can describe returning to my mother’s house would be in the same way pet experts tell cat owners about introducing a new cat into a home that already has an older veteran cat. They say that it can be tricky, because you have to take many factors into consideration—territory, age, background, and the personalities of each cat.
I wish I had read an article about that before I went back to my mother’s house; it might have helped my situation. I would have known to set up a comfortable “safe room” for myself. Instead, I didn’t know where to sleep, my old bedroom or the couch. I went to my old room, which was filled with my old bedroom furniture and had a drafty ceiling and a dim overhead light. I put my bag down and went into the living room. I sat on the couch and thought that this might be a better place to retire. The living room had a warmer feeling than the bedroom. I sat on the fifteen-year-old secondhand couch and looked up at my senior graduation picture. My face was puffy in the picture because I’d had dental work done a few days before, and that was the last day the photos could be taken. The light-blue background and my puffy face, no smile, summed up how I felt about my seventeenth year—I had survived life thus far, but it was not pretty.
When I gave my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Nee, a photo, he asked me why I wasn’t smiling.
I shrugged and said, “I didn’t feel like smiling that day.”
I looked up at my photo and stared at all the family’s high school graduation photos. I decided to stay on the couch, surrounded by my phantom family, and the real support I felt against my back from the somewhat firm twenty-inch sofa cushions. I sat there thinking that these cushions might be the only support I would receive here in my mother’s house.