Funeral Diva

by Pamela Sneed

  are starting to say now, “Africa is the frontier.”

  “Africa will decide our future.”

  I saw a similar but a different story in South Africa, a still burgeoning

  and powerful queer and feminist community,

  Innovation, business, art, and ideas that sprung up and bloomed after apartheid

  I knew again Africa was the beginning and will be the end, alpha and omega.

  After years of being crushed, colonized, raped, ravaged, and

  pillaged by dictatorships, superpowers, colonialism, and tribal wars,

  Africa is rising.

  I saw it with my own eyes.

  Five years ago I was hospitalized at NYU for about five days.

  I had a series of kidney infections which some doctors were denying.

  Only one believed me and treated me accordingly with proper antibiotics.

  He was South Asian, he had trained at Mass General in Boston, where I’m from.

  He was sitting on my bed in the penthouse since I had great insurance—people who are on death’s door don’t even get those kinds of rooms. It overlooked New York City.

  I only had one other visitor, a white girl from my art therapy group, and the doctor.

  After many years of strife and illness I was in an emotional wilderness

  but I was talking to the doctor about books and writing and my travels in Africa.

  I said, “It’s the frontier.”

  He said, “Yes. I think China knows that and it’s why they’ve invested so heavily there.”

  A second instance when I detailed my vision about Africa as the future—

  It was sometime after I’d left Ghana. I was serving on an artist grant panel in New York and artists from Europe were being considered but African artists, specifically one from Nigeria, was dismissed as being too far away.

  I went home that night and prepared a speech to deliver to the committee.

  I practiced in the mirror for the next day.

  In one line I said, “It is time for us to consider African artists.” My voice was trembling.

  I was the one Black person on the panel, the one who represented diversity.

  A lot was at stake. I don’t remember the outcome but the person in me who had been to Ghana knew that it should never not be discussed,

  that it should not be considered the dark unknown foreign continent ever again.

  I’m sure my identity would have changed even more if I had stayed in Ghana.

  I got involved with a young African man and saw a tiny bit of Africa through his eyes.

  To be sure there’s a mask he wore, one that’s worn for Americans/Black Americans

  so that the ways and secrets of their culture are hidden, but through traveling with him

  and experiencing some things through his eyes, Africa got into my bones

  like the souls of all those slaves jailed and buried at Cape Coast and Elmina Castle.

  Maybe it was like in a movie where ghosts have a message for the living.

  They spoke to me and I carried their message forward.

  This new awareness I had of Africa made its way into my lesson plans and my stories.

  Ten years ago it was still uncommon in academia outside of African Studies to acknowledge Africa but as a Professor I brought it up in many lessons whether I was teaching Communications, Writing, or Solo Performance.

  I think in small ways I was able to enact change.

  Like the Black nurse from Nigeria who had no interest in Nigeria.

  I ran into her years later and she said, “Because of you I took my daughters home to Nigeria. I learned the importance of knowing where I come from.”

  She might have been part of the team of Black nurses I took to the African burial ground in downtown Manhattan/steps from the 9/11 Museum.

  One woman immediately got the spirit and started to cry-laugh,

  another wrote of how the bones of African slaves spoke to her.

  In another class a young Black woman from Sierra Leone talked about how

  her family fled the Civil War and her mother saw a neighbor’s decapitated head

  posted on a fence by soldiers as a warning sign.

  In another scenario two boys in a city school who were both from Africa

  bonded together and created a presentation on Africa.

  They were proud and I knew it was because I gave them safe space.

  There was one mixed-race young man in another class whose family fled Uganda.

  He came out as gay in my class and said, “In my country I could be killed for who I am.”

  Even though he was often absent and didn’t receive a good grade

  He knew I was a writer and when leaving said, “Please publish your stories, Miss.”

  Africa changed my creative work and poems.

  I can never not think of Cape Coast

  I can never not stop wanting to go

  to visit

  to see

  to remember

  to bathe at Cape Coast

  or ride fishing boats at Elmina

  or wander along beaches of Benin

  Or go to South Africa and stare at the beauty of Table Mountain

  and its twelve apostles and the role the landscape played in

  inspiring prisoners on Robben Island to end apartheid

  All of this to say, I am by no means an expert but last month

  I volunteered at a gallery where thousands of visual artists donate

  their work to a fair once a year.

  Every year at the very end I notice the works and images of Black people remain.

  It’s not conscious but all the work by white artists is coveted and purchased.

  This year a giant sculpture of a brown vagina with hair remained.

  I immediately purchased it, and loved it.

  I continued looking around and I noticed in a corner a tiny red, black, and green sculpture of the African continent.

  I picked it up and said to myself, “I must have this piece.”

  “It would be wrong to leave it here.”

  I got home and opened the box and there was a note from a proud African artist living in Brooklyn.

  She said to the unknown purchaser, “Africa is rising.”

  I imagine somewhere in this story, in my journeys, is a metaphor for me.

  I, too, like Africa, am rising.

  BORN FREES

  I used to always write about Assotto Saint

  Slamming his hand down on the pulpit at Donald Woods’s funeral

  when it was common to hide the cause of death of

  young men who’d died from AIDS

  if they were buried at all and weren’t abandoned

  Someone told me about a thin boy

  thin with fear and death

  played piano for the choir

  no one touched him

  or talked about it

  I know in my mother’s family

  her mother’s sister said a parasite

  had killed her son when he died suddenly

  But I remember once him coming out of a gay bar in Boston

  all the white boys said, “How do you know her?”

  I don’t know if he or I said cousin

  I’m his cousin

  He made me promise not to tell anyone in the family

  I’d seen him there

  So when they said parasite I knew something didn’t ring true

  His mother, a seemingly healthy woman, died shortly after that

  but I always felt their deaths were related

  His mother either from the lies or repression

  or a broken heart

  having lost her young son

  And I know everyone blames Jussie Smollett for his lies and staged attack

  but it makes me think there was something very toxic going on

  that he didn’t feel he could talk to someone

  Either that he was covering up

  an a
ddiction or a hookup.

  Watching Assotto stand up at Donald’s funeral and tell the truth

  goes down in history as one of the bravest moments I’d ever witnessed

  Either that or Audre Lorde spreading open the arms of her dashiki

  the bravest woman we’d all witnessed

  telling a crowded room of followers,

  “I began on this journey as a coward.”

  That or seeing a friend at the height of the AIDS era

  at a bar his face covered in purple welts

  refusing to hide

  going out in public

  That or Donald Woods being feeble

  barely able to walk

  accepting an award as a director of AIDS films

  Or an ex-lover on a beach taking off her top

  and refusing to hide her mastectomy scar

  Or when Danitra Vance performed at The Public Theater

  and danced naked revealing her mastectomy scars

  and Audre refusing to wear a prosthesis

  Or when Zakes Mokae in Master Harold and the Boys in the first Broadway play

  that a cousin took me to

  said to his white master, “Have you ever seen a Black man’s ass?”

  and pulled down his pants and revealed himself to the audience

  I was sixteen years old

  Or seeing my mother beaten religiously

  and still go out to work as if it hadn’t happened at all

  Or even me surviving so many

  incredible tests

  Once when I was talking to a doctor, I doubted my strength

  He looked at me incredulously and said, “You are strong.”

  Another doctor looked at me

  my suffering

  And asked, “Isn’t anyone there for you?”

  And another said, “You deserve to be taken care of.”

  Today once more I am nursing my broken heart

  Caused by someone who betrayed

  was not honest

  That and attending an event and asking white people to give up

  their seats to Black people who couldn’t sit down

  And seeing social justice in action

  Yes I often think of Assotto for the important place

  he resides in my history

  But today I am examining his tactics

  pulling the tools off the shelf

  dusting off the weaponry

  in an exhibit

  because today I need to use what he taught me.

  Today I feel that puff of rage

  That continuous assault

  And I want to stand up and testify

  though I, too, haven’t been asked

  I want to interrupt all the proceedings

  all the places Black lesbians

  have been erased

  and silenced

  Like looking down at a manuscript

  seeing that they asked a young white woman to write about

  Black queer history

  when it’s been my area of expertise

  forever

  Or only attributing ’80s and ’90s AIDS activism

  To ACT UP

  I want the point of outrage now to not only the historicizing of AIDS

  But the fact that women and Black lesbians

  have been erased from the dialogue

  When there were so many organizations like GMAD

  Other Countries ADODI

  Men of All Colors Together

  Salsa Soul/AAlUSC

  Las Buenas Amigas

  and more

  Or asking where are all the Black lesbians on Pose

  because certainly they were on the piers and part of that history

  And why are white men constantly at the helm

  to tell our stories

  And why don’t white queers recognize this

  That and seeing panel after panel being organized on history and art

  all things important to the world and no one thinking or noticing

  it might be important to have a Black lesbian present

  Just like they kicked Stormé out of

  the Stonewall narrative.

  And what about the people who weren’t on the streets

  but in jobs

  fighting the system

  The dykes and queers meeting each other forming community

  and connections and families

  and love

  Just like in South Africa where they prevented intermingling

  but ways were found

  And each time we touched or loved

  found each other in darkness and light

  It was resistance

  Each time we told each other you’re beautiful

  You’re not wrong

  It was resistance

  When we stood up to the parents and families

  and courts and those that shunned us

  It was resistance

  Wore what we really wanted

  It was resistance

  Yelled at doctors and drug professionals

  It was resistance

  Every time we wrote and read poems

  It was resistance

  Every time some queer kid

  stays alive because they saw us

  read us

  discovered the archive

  We’ve won

  Every war is fought on our bodies

  And one day after the gender racial

  sexual orientation wars are over

  in America

  there will be a new generation

  just like in South Africa called

  the Born Frees.

  A NEW STORY

  I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN from the start there’d be trouble when we were listening to a song, she started to twerk and said, “I’ll be Rhianna and you be Drake.”

  “Drake?! I’m never Drake. Drake doesn’t do anything he just stands there and folds his arms!” I said it was telling that she saw herself as the star and me her back-up dancer. It was a way of rendering me invisible but maybe I don’t need to say that. I want to write a story about being trapped in a story.

  I see myself as a mime, one you see outdoors with the sad white painted face appearing with hands to scale a wall or like they are trapped in a box somehow. Someone asks, “What’s wrong?” and the mime turns to a sign: “Help I’m trapped in a story.”

  Sometimes it’s my own story that I repeat over and over my patterns, my past, my getting involved with people who render me invisible, people who make me part of their background, and it doesn’t quite matter what my story is, but the purpose of this is my frustration with myself at repeating my own story, how many times I peer outside of the box to see there’s a new story, possibly a new beginning, freedom but I’m trapped in my own story. I see it in their eyes when they are talking to me, and it’s a story but very rarely is it my story. It’s their story. It’s inaccurate and they become enraged at me for the story they’ve told themselves about me, and I see them kicking and punching at the ghost they’ve created, the monster in their story.

  And it’s my dream that if this were a movie or a music video or something one day I’ll get a speaking part. One day, I’ll be able to participate in my own story or the one that’s told about me.

  One day I’ll have a conversation

  or someone will stop to have a conversation with me

  not the person they’ve made

  but the person I am

  and I’ll get to live outside the box

  And all those untold stories in me

  all those bruises

  all those suppressions

  lack of being able to participate

  have landed in my belly

  and turned to rot

  and it’s always so small and confining and I can’t get away because it’s their story and it’s like a noose around my neck pulled tight my feet dangling in air.

  I’m liking some of the preachers these days

  where they p
osit the possibility of a new world

  one lived in spirit

  Not living in the constant matrix

  of fear, doubt, lack, limitation, not-enoughness

  Like a ping pong back and forth

  greed envy

  our daily bread.

  I don’t want to leave you there so I am creating a new mantra for myself.

  Say it with me:

  I am going to write a new story.

  I am going to write a new story.

  MARKED SAFE

  FOR STONEWALL 50

  I want to thank the maestro Tim Gunn,

  Heidi Klum, also every episode of Project Runway and Runway All-Stars,

  Every gay and lesbian contestant that ever sewed, stitched sequins to dresses

  or pantaloons

  every queer who ever threw a tantrum, walked out and came back to win.

  Thank you to the Jersey and Atlanta Housewives and spin-offs

  To all their queer queen besties

  I want to thank RuPaul and every queen on every episode of Drag Race

  Also, that dollar store cashier I ran into with my mother in small-town Massachusetts

  who actually thought I was RuPaul and kept calling me, “Miss Honey.”

  Thank you, Oprah, her close friend designer Nate Berkus.

  I extend condolences to the lover he lost when the tsunami hit Sri Lanka.

  I also want to thank Walmart and the trans person who worked

  behind the register when my mother worked there as a greeter.

  When eventually she was fired for wearing women’s clothes,

  to my shock, my mother said, “That’s unjust and I think it’s discrimination.”

  I want to thank that person wherever they are.

  I want to thank that mixed-race lesbian Josie on Top Chef

  I want to thank every LGBTQIA person on every show that my mother

  watched religiously, because each and every one of them

  in one way or another

  prepared my mother at eighty-four years old for the queer art catalogue I was a part of

  that I brought home to show her called Cast of Characters.

  Holding my breath, I handed it to her, asked her to guess of all the images

  which was mine.

  She saw the word queer first, “Why do you call yourselves that? That’s

  like saying you’re Niggers.”

  I tried to explain the concept of reclaiming language used against us.

  My mother refused to listen.

  She thumbed through the images, eyes wide with wonder.

  She knows I don’t usually show her stuff for many reasons.