You know what they say about best-laid plans.
By week one of phase four, a Witness friend had put two and two together.
She says to me, “Have you been secretly dating Josh?”
I was exposed. The lying, the dating, the intimacy, all of it.
I couldn’t ask her to hold that secret. I knew what the next steps were.
So I called the elders in my congregation, and I told them everything. The decision was made to disfellowship me.
So for those of you who don’t know what disfellowshipping is, it’s a disciplinary action that Jehovah’s Witnesses take when someone is an unrepentant wrongdoer, a fornicator such as myself.
What it means in practical terms is your family can no longer talk to you, your friends can no longer talk to you. You walk into a room full of people who’ve been your only social network your entire life, and they can’t even say hello.
Some of them won’t even look at me. It’s not to be mean, it’s because they’re hurt.
So now, for the first time, everything is on the table. On the one hand, there’s my family, my friends, my community, my God, my faith.
On the other hand, there’s this man who loves me, and his parents, who have my picture on their mantel, and his friends who have welcomed me, and the wedding we talked about, and the life that we wanted to build together, and that feeling of joy that he gives me. It’s time to strip everything down to zero and come clean to myself about who I am and figure out what I want.
I break up with Josh.
In the absence of that culture of accountability, where no one is checking on me and no one is calling to see where I am, I surprisingly find myself still going to my meetings. The doctrine feels insurmountable, but I keep going, and I realize that I believe, I really, truly do believe, what they’re teaching here. And, to my shock, I want to be a part of this organization. I want to find my way back.
There is a path back. You go to all your meetings, you pray, you study, you stop doing what you’re not supposed to do, and then you meet with your committee.
And it was interesting, because I didn’t just go to my meetings. I went to my meetings, and I marched all the way up to the very front row, and I sat there. I made sure everyone could see me.
I wanted them to know, I’m human, I fell short, but I’m still here. I’m not giving up.
But I missed Josh. I missed him so much it hurt to breathe, and I’m not one of those girls, I never have been.
So four months into this ordeal, I called him up and I said, “This is how I feel. How do you feel?”
And he said, “Whatever it is, we can figure it out together. This is not insurmountable.”
I had to believe that the God who loves me wants me to have love, too.
So we decided, “Why not?”
Josh and I got engaged in June.
I’m still disfellowshipped. I’m still going to my meetings. We’re figuring it out together.
It’s messy, it’s work, but it works for us because we love each other.
There have been times through this journey where things get dark, and I feel like giving up because it’s hard.
And in those moments Josh has never once said to me, “Why don’t you walk away from this faith?”
He’s never asked me to give up my religion.
So I have to have faith that if this man can make room in his life for my faith, with time my community will make room for him in my life.
So Saturday, two days from now, Josh and I are getting married. I’m still disfellowshipped, so it’s going to be a small ceremony. My family will not be there, and I’m not going to lie, I’m sad about that. It’s a small sadness, though; it’s a tender spot that I know will heal with time.
I’m excited about the prospect of being reinstated with time. I’m excited to be part of the congregation again. I can’t wait to go knocking on people’s doors again.
But what I am most excited about is that Sunday morning I’ll finally get to wake up in the arms of a man who loves me.
* * *
Born and raised in South Florida, JENI DE LA O moved to Michigan eight years ago. She is the founder and director of Relato:Detroit, the nation’s first bilingual-community storytelling series. When she’s not telling stories or writing poetry, she’s trying to convince her Cuban family that she is not now and has never been a commie pinko.
This story was told on February 7, 2017, at The Great Hall of The Cooper Union in New York City. The theme of the evening was Leap of Faith. Director: Jenifer Hixson.
I was six years old in the first grade, and I was sitting at a table with my three best friends. We were all really similar. All of our moms bought us clothes from the Children’s Place, we all liked to play house during recess, and all our names started with the letter A. It was Ashaya, Alicia, and Aleeza.
We were working on a first-grade icebreaker project, which our teacher, Miss Pennington, had assigned to us. It was gonna be self-portraits that we could hang up on the wall and get to know each other’s faces and names. I was really excited for this project. I knew it was really special because there were three drafts. And we were working on the final draft, which was going to be colored in.
I was super stoked for this. Over the summer my mom had bought me this coloring book that taught me all these great techniques for how to draw properly, and I finally mastered coloring inside the lines. I was so excited to show my friends my new skills. I was basically young Picasso.
I also knew this was a special project because we were using oil pastels. I loved oil pastels—they’re really soft, so I would pinch off a little bit and melt it between my fingers. They were expensive for my public school in New York City, and so each table got one box. And each box had one of each color, so you had to be patient and wait for your color.
At this point I had colored in my shirt blue and the background green, and there was a little tree. I had drawn in all the features of my face, which the book had taught me to do first. I had drawn in my lips and my nose, and I was ready to color in my face.
All my friends had used the peach oil pastel to color in their faces, and since we were basically all the same girl, I would use peach, too. So finally, when it was available, I picked it up, and I started drawing so slowly, going around my lips and my eyes and coloring in all one direction. I was watching as the oil pastel melted into the paper and my face came alive, and I colored inside the lines.
When I looked down, it was like I was looking into a mirror. This girl I had just drawn was exactly how I saw myself. I felt my teacher, Miss Pennington, over my shoulder.
Miss Pennington loved it when people drew well, and so I was getting ready for her to praise me, to say, Aleeza, that is the most beautiful self-portrait I have ever seen. I’m gonna hang it above my desk so everyone who comes in can see it.
Instead Miss Pennington says, “Aleeza, that’s not your color.”
I’m confused by this, because I don’t understand how colors can belong to people.
But before I can find a way to ask her, she’s gone to the oil-pastel box and started looking for it. She doesn’t find the color that she’s looking for, and so she goes to the crayon bin.
Now, every school had this infamous crayon bin that had bits and pieces of gross crayons that had been rolling around in that bin forever, and I never went to the crayon bin. Nonetheless, Miss Pennington is rummaging through it, and she reaches in, and she pulls out this little nub of a brown crayon that’s unwrapped and gross.
And she hands it to me.
I’m still really confused by all this, but I notice my friends are staring at me, and my heart is beating really fast, and I want this to be over. So I just grab the crayon, and I start coloring in my face, and I’m going in all different directions. But wax crayon and oil pastel don’t mix together. They don’t belong on the same paper. So it doesn’t matter h
ow hard I’m pushing, because I can’t get the crayon to stick, and I’m coloring outside the lines.
When I look down at the paper, I am this grotesque monster that can’t decide if she wants to be peach or brown.
And I want to beg Miss Pennington, Please don’t hang this up. I’ll do it all over again. I’ll use the colors that you want me to.
But before I can find the right words, she’s taken my self-portrait and put it into a pile with all my even-toned peach friends, and it gets hung up.
That night I go home and I ask my mom why I wasn’t allowed to use peach. And she explained it as best you can to a six-year-old who’s just gone through an identity crisis.
She says, “You know, I’m not peach, and your dad isn’t peach. And since you’re our daughter, you’re not peach either.”
But this confused me even more, because my parents are just like my peach friends’ parents. They sound the same. They make the same small talk at school pickup. But they’re apparently not the same. And everyone seems to understand this concept of color. I’m not getting it, and I don’t want my mom to think that I’m stupid. So I don’t ask her anything further, and I try to not think about it.
But it wasn’t that easy. A couple months later, we had a day called International Day. We had it once a year at my elementary school, where everyone would dress up in the traditional clothing of the country that they’re from or that their parents are from and then march around the school. It was meant to celebrate diversity and heritage.
I hated International Day.
First off, my mom is from Afghanistan and my dad is from Pakistan, so each year I’d have to alternate who I marched with.
But no matter who I was marching with, they always seemed to understand the traditions better than I did, or they spoke Urdu or Farsi, which I did not. And so even though we were the same color, I didn’t belong with them completely, just like I apparently didn’t belong with my peach friends.
I didn’t know where I fit, and I was stuck in this color limbo.
But I finally graduated elementary school and moved on to sixth grade and thought I had left this whole concept of colors behind me.
So on the first day of sixth grade, I was really excited. It was a brand-new start, and we were all trying to get to know each other by asking questions, like “Where’d you go to elementary school?” and “What’s your favorite book?”
And this one kid comes up to me and says, “What race are you?”
I had never been blatantly asked this question before, and so I didn’t have a prepared answer.
I thought back to Miss Pennington and that brown crayon, and I told him, “I’m brown.”
He gets this confused look on his face, and he says, “What do you mean you’re brown? Brown isn’t a race.”
And I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I had finally said “I’m brown” and it still wasn’t enough. And then this little six-year-old girl deep inside of me gets angry. And then I get really angry. And then I’m screaming at him.
I said, “You know what? If I say I’m brown, then that’s it! I’m BROWN!”
And he never spoke to me again.
Which was fine, because I had finally found the words to stand up for myself, and I had finally come to terms with who I was.
I want to say that was the end of it, that because I was, you know, okay with who I was, that I never had to stand up for myself or defend my race again. But that just wasn’t true. I was growing up in post-9/11 New York City, where being brown put me in this category of “other,” and I have been questioned about who I was many times after that.
I had to reaffirm over and over that “I’m brown, I’m brown, I’m brown,” because nothing anyone says to me will ever make me question that again. I’ve worked so hard to love the skin I’m in, and nothing anyone says can take that away from me.
Today if you ask me to draw a self-portrait, I’d draw a confident young woman who’s proud of her Afghan and Pakistani heritage, who is a proud American. And I would find the most beautiful, soft brown oil pastel to color in my face. No one would have to tell me to pick it up. It would be my first choice.
* * *
ALEEZA KAZMI is a senior journalism major at Stony Brook University. She first got involved with The Moth during the Education Program in high school and has since told her story for The Moth onstage at Lincoln Center and on The Moth Radio Hour. She’s not quite sure what she will be doing after graduation, but as long as she’s telling stories in some way, she’ll be happy.
This story was told on December 15, 2016, at West-Park Presbyterian Church in New York City. The theme of the evening was How the Light Gets In. Director: Catherine McCarthy.
There I was, standing at the podium with my client. I was a public defender, and I was representing him on a burglary charge. They claimed he had broken into a store and taken some money out of the register.
Now, the video they had wasn’t really clear. And they had his fingerprints, but he used to work at that store, so there was a good reason why his fingerprints were on the scene.
I thought I had a winnable case—I could probably come out good on this one.
But I was practicing in front of Judge Lacy Johns at the time. And Judge Lacy Johns had this long list of rules you had to follow in her courtroom. If you missed one single rule, that could be the difference between freedom and jail.
So I had sat with my client, Mr. Coleman, and we had gone over these rules. I mean, I literally gave him a copy of the rules. And I read them out to him:
You must use the title of anybody you’re referring to—no first names.
You must wear professional clothes.
You must have a job each time you come to court.
You must always answer questions “Yes, ma’am” or “Yes, Your Honor.”
These were the rules you had to follow.
So when I first saw Mr. Coleman come into court that day and he had on a polo shirt and khaki pants, I got a little nervous, but I thought, We’re going be all right. Not what I told him, but not too shabby.
But then when the judge asked him where he was working and he said, “Well, I don’t have a job,” I felt the ground open up just a little.
Then she went on to ask him, “Well, why don’t you have a job?”
And he said, “Well, Sheila”—referring to me by my first name—“told me I should get a job, but I thought I should just wait until the case was done.”
That was it—the ground completely opened up, and sure enough he was carted off to jail. He was revoked on his bond because he didn’t follow those arbitrary rules, and he ended up spending about six months in jail, pleading guilty to get out for two years on probation. I started feeling bad about our justice system.
Was this really justice?
But then one day my boss came to me and said, “We’re going to switch you to Judge Thomas Shriver’s courtroom.”
I had heard about Judge Shriver. He seemed pretty fair. And when I went into his courtroom, it felt different. There wasn’t a long list of rules you had to follow. There was no dress code.
People seemed fairly relaxed. It seemed like a place of peace in the midst of a broken justice system.
I started to think, There might be some justice in this courtroom.
I had a client, Mr. Blacksmith. He was an older gentleman. He had never been to court, and it was a minor charge. But when we got to court, I could tell he was real nervous. He smelled like a distillery. I mean, I thought he had bathed in a bathtub full of beer. He smelled so bad everyone could smell him a mile away.
It was just terrible. I didn’t know what to do.
I was hiding him.
I felt dread. I didn’t know how to handle it.
I was giving him every mint I could find, I was spraying him with perfume I had in my briefcase, I was try
ing whatever I could do to keep him from going to jail.
Finally they called him into the courtroom.
And immediately the prosecutor stood up and said, “Your Honor, I want his bond revoked. He’s been drinking.”
Judge Shriver looked at us. And he must’ve sensed that fear, that dread.
He said to my client, “Mr. Blacksmith, have you been drinking?”
My client was very honest with him, he said, “Well, yeah, I had a beer.”
And Judge Shriver said, “Well, when did you have this beer?”
And my client said, “Well, I drunk it last night.”
“How much beer did you have?”
“Well, I only had one beer, but it was a forty-ounce.”
The floor started opening up. We were done. I just knew it.
But then I heard Judge Shriver snickering.
He was laughing.
The judge was laughing?
He said, “Now, Mr. Blacksmith, next time you come, don’t drink before you get here. You can go.”
Judge Shriver wasn’t being lenient on him. He was being fair. He recognized that this gentleman was nervous and he had made a mistake. And he recognized that he deserved a second chance.
Now, Mr. Blacksmith’s case was eventually resolved, and he was given a second chance. He was able to get back on the right track and never returned.
And what it showed me was that Judge Shriver understood that you can make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that your life is over. You can have another chance. He showed compassion and empathy to all the clients who came in there.
Over the next three years, I learned so much from Judge Shriver. He became a mentor to me, a father figure.
He was someone who always treated everybody with respect and with fairness, while holding them accountable for their actions.
True justice.
The Moth Presents Occasional Magic Page 22