Truthfully Speaking

CLEANING OUT MY CLOSET

5:13pm

I wrote a post way back when in my other weblog about a conversation that I had with Lashonda that encouraged me to be less hateful toward the idea of my father. I have honestly never hated him, but I have never cared…

5:14pm

I’ve met a lot of people my age who hate their “absent” parents because of something the “active” parent has said that was negative about them. It would then make sense that the only feelings that the children can have towards that “absent” parent is one of malice. This was not the situation with my family.

Mom never spoke about him. I think that if we would have never asked about our father, she would have never told us about him (in fact, I know she wouldn’t have because she has never told my brother about him. He has never even seen what the man looks like). I mean, the girls knew him. We had the pleasure of living with him when he and my mother were married, though I can’t remember anything about him being a father to me. I never did father daughter stuff with him and I find it hard to remember what he looks like. I guess it is only fair to say that even when he was present, he was absent.
When we pushed to find things to say that would trigger my mother to get angry and speak harshly about him, she just smiled or laughed and remained calm. I always hated that. I always wondered if she was struggling silently. She made jokes about us never getting involved with African men, specifically Nigerian men, but she laughed as she spoke and deep down, I adopted that order as an outline for what my life would not be. I never realized that my mother was serious about what she said when we were beginning college until my sister brought an African man home (actually, he never made it through her front door).

I envied my friends for being able to get money from their dead beat dads. My dad didn’t even pay child support. He was such a coward that he cut out of the United States to avoid it. Bet you didn’t know that if you want to avoid paying the Chi.sup, all you gotta do is bail out of the U.S.

It was in Massachusetts, in my aunt’s house that I saw a picture of my father. I was about to begin my junior year of High School and the last memory I had of him was the one that I saw in the police station when I was seven years old. That time, I actually saw the physical man, this time; I was staring at a photograph. It was hidden on top of her large glass grandfather clock. I was 5’10 and I had to climb up on a chair to see this. I stared at the picture, frozen. No one has ever said that I resemble my mother and I always questioned whether I looked like my father, but my mother would always say that she didn’t know. Imagine her having to look at his face in me every waking day of her life. Maybe that is why we never got along. My head was spinning with thoughts and abruptly, I was snapped back into reality by my aunt who was yelling at me for looking at that picture.
“Why are you staring at the picture gal? You wanna look at you little no good fadda, Akeeny weeny? That little piece of fart. I told Claudette not to marry that no good African. I tol her that them people them nah good people. Ow! Mi’ po sistah. She nah listen. But one ting she did right. She made sure that all of you chil’ren were born in America. You know that if she didn’t do that, you all would probably be there living wit dat man like a piece a fart like him. Shit, you betta thank God you were born in America”
Never in my life had I heard anything about my father, let alone the negativity spewing from my aunt’s mouth. The thing is, I embraced all the negativity. I mean, my mother never said anything about him and I figured that the reason why she didn’t was precisely because her sister had “told her so” and she didn’t want to acknowledge that she had been wrong. So much for being with who you love. In my family, that’s all good so long as he is not an African man. Do you call that self hate? I don’t know what it is, but I knew that it was time to have the conversation with my mother.
When I approached her with my questions, she was immediately agitated. I see that this is not a topic that she wants to talk about. It is not a chapter that she wants to revisit, but it is a story that I need to hear in order to help me deal with a hatred that I have for people who have not necessarily done any wrong to me. So I asked her to tell me about my father:
“Tell you about your fa therrrrr (she likes to make fun of how I enunciate. Hailing from the country of Guyana that was first colonized by the British, she speaks the Queen’s English exquisitely and had lost almost all trace of her accent, especially when speaking to her American children. But it’s still there and I love to hear it.)? What about him?”
“Just about him mom.”
“Just about him mom (she repeats after me and she knows this agitates me)? Just about him. What is there to tell? When you were in the second grade he came to America. Your uncle saw him walking down the street by the house. He told me immediately. They spoke. Apparently he wanted to come and file for custody of his children. He heard that I had a boy. You know that’s the only reason he came? He wanted his son. That’s why I made you all meet with him in the police station and that’s why I didn’t let him see your brother. Hihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”, she laughs, “You should have seen his face when he walked in there and Ubon wasn’t around. He was furious. Asking the cops, Ummmmmmm, es cuse me, my sun eeeeees not here? Where eees my sun? And you should have seen his face when the cops told him that his son was sick and that his mother didn’t bring him. You know that if he would have seen that boy, he might have taken him back to Nigeria? That man was a no good man. You know everything that was in that house in Nigeria, I shipped there from Massachusetts? When I got into that house, his family looked at me and began speaking them language. I was supposed to live in a house with a man whose family refused to speak English around me. And they could speak English. That man…” She won’t say anymore and I won’t ask anymore because this is the most I have ever heard her say about him and all of this she has carried with her as we grew up. The next time I would have a conversation (rather, an “ask and tell” session) would be when I am about to begin college and I need his information to fill out my Fafsa.
He was just never there. When I graduated from college, a woman that my mother had known from Nigeria who was also a West Indian married to a Nigerian, who’s husband had done the same thing too; only one of her children was born in Nigeria and til this day, she has not been able to get him out, approached me and asked me if I wanted to hear from my father. She told me that he had heard that I was going to college and he wanted my college address. I told my mother. She was enraged; told the lady not to ever approach her children with any such talk without consulting with her first. I realize that my mom is still scared and she has the right to be. The lady told me that my father was now teaching at the University of Calabar in Nigeria and I must admit, I was proud even though I couldn’t tell my mother. I was proud of my genes. I am the makeup of two absolutely brilliant individuals and in his absence, after a conversation with Lashonda; I have decided to give him praise.
I’m not happy that he is a deadbeat and I would like to speak to him one day. The conversation wouldn’t be full of cursing or me being rude, but it would be one of me asking:
“Why did you make our stereotype so true? Why couldn’t you be the exception so that when I hear people speak badly about Nigerians, I could say that my father was different? Why couldn’t you be more than book smart? Why couldn’t you be a political prisoner or an activist or something that would help me justify why you were absent from my life?” I would just ask why. I wouldn’t make a pact that from that day on we would be father and daughter, but I would inform him that the son that he always wanted is a High School drop out and the two daughters he turned his back on have gone on to pursue Higher Education. I would tell him that I am an aspiring public intellectual and that she is a Management Information Systems major and hopes to obtain her MBA immediately after she graduates. I would tell him that she a member of Delta Sigma Pi and I run a weblog that people read, not because it’s educational, but because I have a story to tell that they are willing to read. I would tell him that all of this was made possible because he was not there. I would tell him that I never hated him, but I never loved him. I would tell him that though there was no step father in our lives, we just acted like we didn’t have a dad. We didn’t adopt daddies to take his place. We just pressed on with one mom struggling to feed her kids and to keep them from knowing the deadbeat who was our father. I would emphasize that she pushed us to use our brains, expecting nothing less than excellence, encouraging us that we could do it, but never letting on to the fact that the two of you were some of the most brilliant minds to grace Nigeria and Massachusetts. I would tell him about how I envied all of my friends because they had fathers to milk for money, fathers that felt bad for being deadbeats and so they compensated for their absences by giving them whatever they wanted. My dad was too prideful. Left us with a hundred dollars a piece when I was in the second grade and a dream. Never looked back to say damn:
“After all that woman did for me, did I leave her alone to struggle by herself? When she came here and found out that I had another wife and yet stayed, did I not know that I had found someone to truly love and cherish til death?”
I’m just here to let the cat out of the bag. This upcoming year is going to be about me getting rid of the skeletons in my closet. Some cannot come out yet, but those that are over twenty years old should. I mean, isn’t it about time that I began to deal with the issue in a very open and honest way? This year will be about pouring out my heart and I want to begin to do so by dropping the heaviest burden I have ever had to carry on my shoulders, the issue of my identity in an identity driven society. One where I have embraced those who embrace their African-ness, yet I have only admitted to being West Indian and even American before identifying with the place that I spent a small time of my life living, Africa

6:48pm

THIS CHRISTMAS

A thought just popped into my mind a minute ago and I decided to add it to this weblog. This piece is going to be written in numerous parts because I am actually not connected to the internet. I am on Microsoft Word working from my laptop in my classroom. I am leaving for Massachusetts this afternoon and I will probably continue this post on the bus.

8:10am
My students have a long way to go before they can achieve the success that I am hoping to see happen for them. However, they are not interested in trying to get to that point and I’ve begun to realize that you can urge them, but you can’t force them. This saddens me immensely because I guess in this field; you get this feeling that you can save the world. But there is a song whose lyrics I remember that says:

“Don’t save him. He don’t wanna be saved!”

And I guess I just don’t want to listen. In any case, I am working them until the last minute. Yesterday I gave them a passage on Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut to fly on the Endeavor on September 12 (My birthday, yayyyyyyyyyyyyy) 1992.
After they read the passage, they were told to answer the multiple “guess” (choice) questions that came afterwards.
We’ve been working on this for a while and they seem to be getting better at understanding why wrong answers are wrong. Before, they would pick any answer that looked like something they read in the passage, but after drilling it into their heads that it is necessary for them to look at each choice very carefully and then make the selection; they have begun to “get it”.
But today is their last day of school until January 5, 2004 and I know they are going to come back talking about how they don’t remember anything that they have ever done, so I am working them today. I was going to make them write about Dr. Jemison, but in the spirit of Christmas, I think I am going to make them either write about a gift that they received in the past that meant something to them or a gift they gave someone else. They can also write about what Christmas means to them.

Christmas
I wish I could leave this part on the doorstep of the person that I writing about, but I don’t think that would be too nice and I also don’t want to sound unthankful.
The truth is, I have been thankful all my life. I’ve wanted to look past her hypocrisy (in my eyes), and tell her over and over again that what she did for me when I was a very little girl, still resonates in my heart and soul and that words could never express the joy that her gift gave me at the present moment and then the pain that it caused me as I grew to be who I am.
This is a real Christmas story. It is not made to be sad. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. If you do, that’s on you.

“I never cared about Christmas much. I never believed in Santa Clause. I was young enough to believe in a lot of things, but our house didn’t have a chimney and I knew Santa wouldn’t be caught dead (or rather, he would) over in these parts. I knew that kids got gifts for Christmas because all my friends talked about what they were getting. All those toys, and new name brand sneakers, bikes, basketballs, and all that stuff that we couldn’t afford. Mom tried, but there is so much that one woman can do when raising three young kids plus some that weren’t even hers. I knew one thing about Christmas. It would bring me a coat, a good pair of winter boots (though I would hate them for being ugly and not in “style”), some sweaters, a comforter for the bed, and maybe some money in cards from the people at church. I wished I could give because I had grown up watching my mother do so even though we didn’t have (I’ve see the miracle of the 5 loaves and 2 fish repeated a million times over in remix fashion). I loved the look I saw on the faces of people that my mom would send us to take food to. People whose families were away, who didn’t have family, who just scrooged around until we knocked on their doors with hot plates of cook up, channa, pepper pot, roti, curry this and curry that, red bread (silarra(sp)), ginger beer, and all these other West Indian dishes that all the people used to say smelled so curiously good. You would think that there was a party going on in our place by the amounts of food my mother cooked. That’s what I loved about Christmas, all the smiles I knew my mom was the cause of.
On one particular Christmas, I looked under the tree (we used to do a bang up job decorating the tree. Plus we broke the stand, so I suggested leaning it on the wall) and saw a big ole’ box, I’m talking about a big ole’ hard box, like, not a comforter or a coat type box but a “something came in that box” box. Usually, I would open all my gifts before Christmas because I’ve never liked surprises. My mom would be upset with me for doing that, though she never cared much for gifts herself. But this Christmas break, my mom held that box until the day of Christmas. When I got a chance to lift it up and shake it, I could not begin to imagine what was in there.
I shook and shook and knocked and did all kinds of silly things to figure it out, to no avail. Finally, I ripped the wrapping paper off and was absolutely shocked to see a brand new Nintendo Game System, fully equipped with two controllers, a gun, and Super Mario 1 and Duck Hunt. I was floored. No one had every gotten us anything like this. No one had ever been interested in seeing us be kids. No one had ever taken the time out to get something that I wanted rather than something that I needed. That was truly a Merry Merry Christmas for my siblings and me. We forgot about our other gifts and we hooked up the Nintendo System and played for what felt like the rest of the day until my mother made us put it away. I was in Elementary School then. I’m a Junior High School teacher now.
Liani was the name of the lady that got me this gift and I looked up to her so much. I wished she could be my mother. She was so cool and my mother was so serious and strict and old. Liani had this great job and my mother was struggling at the Doctor’s office. I always wanted to be a part of her life and every opportunity I got; I would try to go someplace that she was so that I could hang out with her and her family, like mine was inferior. My mother always told me to “live within your means” and “love where you live”, but I loved the lives that everyone I came in contact with lived.
I don’t know when it happened. Perhaps it was when my best friend became pregnant and the rumors were flying around that one of us was pregnant and they assumed it was me (just because I was grown in thinking didn’t mean I was grown in acting). They tried everything they could to get me to squeal, but I wouldn’t talk. I knew the girl was pregnant from day 1, but it was not my place to tell and so I let them believe what they wanted. We were fifteen and I was a “statistic”, only I wasn’t the statistic. And I began to lose trust in everyone. They spoke to me differently. They looked at me differently. They smiled in my face but I know they were talking behind my back (and I am talking about grown folk here). When I used to see her, I used to be so eager to speak:
“Hi Liani”, I would say, and then she would respond. I began to question whether she would speak to me if I didn’t speak to her first (I still have an issue with this). So I decided to try it out. When I saw her, I would walk in her eye and earshot and not speak, and she would walk right past me. I bet if she were reading this right now, she would deny it. But I pointed it out to numerous individuals who noticed it after I had put them on. It was during these years that I remembered her gift years before and could not help but think that she did it because to her, I was a charity case.
And I went on through High School pulling myself further and further away, seeing people more clearly the further away I moved. I began to “not speak” to many other individuals who continued to “not speak” to me. Funny how adults never take the time out to find out how we kids grow up to be the adults that we are. No one realizes how their actions have had such affects on the youth. But I grew in grace. I became more skeptical, more observant, more cut throat, more outspoken, wanted to please less and less, and more than anything else, I became angrier.
I was angry with myself for not being able to see this woman for what she was. But I was in Elementary school then. I was too young to have such insight. I entered college and I graduated with a degree and without a child and all of a sudden everyone knew that I would do it. I graduated without taking a semester off, without much incident, and with a growing fervor to become an intellectual so that I could read those mean people their rites with words they were not capable of understanding.
I was angry at the world, calloused by the actions of someone who should never have mattered to me as much as she did. Now, I am in the position in which my interaction with youth may mold them into the adults that they will one day be. In the spirit of Christmas, I try to leave to everyone I come in contact with, the gift of my words. I may not be monetarily able, but I have learned after all these years, that it is not always the huge gifts, wrapped in beautiful paper and sealed tightly in huge boxes, that define what this season should be about. It the kind words that we share with each other and the hot plates that we deliver door to door, or even the interaction that occurs with people that takes the time out to say: “I care” and “You! All of you, and your words, are appreciated.”
I’ve long grown past that gift and past that hatred. I have opened my heart and given it the ability to be truly thankful for small blessings. This has been a crazy year for me. I recently graduated. I experienced homelessness. I lost a job. I got a job. I got a beautiful apartment in the burbs’ (a kid from the ghettos dream). I’ve been inspired by words more than ever before, and I’m at a point in my life in which clarity, honesty, and sanity are able to exist simultaneously and not cause anything but joy to exist in my life.

The holiday is quickly approaching and if I can suggest one thing to anyone who reads my weblog, I would say think of that person who may have planted a negative seed in your heart, and transcend it. Use it as your strength for this upcoming year. I guess it may be true that positivity can rise out of negativity.
Completed during Lunch 11:45-1:02pm

A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR FAMILY I NEVER KNEW

Loss is never easy to deal with, especially when it is the loss of someone that you know.
Loss is never easy to deal with, especially when the one lost is your age
Loss is never easy to deal with, especially when innocent lives are lost.
Loss is never easy
Loss is never easy

Today I read a post that really broke my heart and triggered this post. I would say who’s blog I read, but I don’t know how they would feel at the moment because if I am affected by what I have read, they must be struggling to deal with lives that have been taken away from them.

Times like these force us to really value life. I mean, you just never know when your time will come.
And it’s not at all fair.
Innocent people lose their lives and it makes you question your faith.
Good people lose their lives even before they have been given the opportunity to live their lives.

I’m 22 years young
I am 22 years young
I have a life to live.
I have dreams that I wish to fulfill

To all those who have gone before their time, I want to take this moment to say:

MY CONDOLENCES

I feel the pain of your loss like it was one of my own family members….

PEACE….

naið

This moment of Clarity-Steppin’ Into a world again!

I wanna thank God for granting me

This moment of CLARITY

This moment of sanity

THIS MOMENT OF HONESTY

I woke up this morning and I was so inclined to go into my little library and pull out an old book to read or reread. As I looked through my collection, I came upon a book that I bought for a class that I took in college (Post Soul Intellegencia-Interrogating Blackness) entitled step into a world. Now obviously, the title was taken from an old KRS-One song. It is a Global Anthology of the New Black Literature and I opened it and began to re-read.

Kevin Powell, who most of you may remember from the first episode of Real World: New York, edited the book and he begins with an essay entitled The Word Movement. In this essay, he discusses how (and this is my interpretation) “black word and thought and writings” did not just appear out of osmosis. It has been around since blacks could talk (which means, it has always been). From Hidden Transcripts of the slavery days to The Harlem Renaissance to the Negritude Writers to Black Arts to The Nuyoricans to the now existing Word Movement (the post soul generation aka the hip hop generation), blacks have been able to constantly and creatively speak in ways that not only the educated masses could understand, but also in ways that those on the “ground” could understand as well.

And so, step into a world was successful in finding “black thinkers” that ranged in age from twenty three to forty three at the time. These “artists” put together a phenomenal anthology that I would recommend to all up and coming “black thinkers”.

My moment of clarity came as I began to read Kevin Powell’s piece. For some strange reason, I never took the time out to read it and it really struck a chord in me. These people are all the epitome of what I want to be able to do one day, but perhaps my approach has been wrong for a long time. I believe that I have mastered the art of being able to write from the “ground”(that was the purpose of me writing the Legitimatising Blackness piece), but it is not enough for me to be able to just do that, it is very necessary that I go back and honestly read the works of all the people that have made it possible for me to sit behind a computer screen or even behind a notebook and write. Kevin Powell speaks about how “far too many of the poets who have self published their work, or have sent out poetic missives via the Internet, by and large don not want critical feedback on their material.” He also spoke about people not being able to be cultural critics.

I think I am a cultural critic, but I also know that I have not done enough of the research to be the best cultural critic that I can be. My dream is to be able to be one of the new faces or names that will be associated with relevant and well thought out cultural criticism. I want to be one of the individuals that will have work published in another anthology of “black thinkers”

I come online daily and I take the time out to visit almost every weblog that I know exists in the “black circuit”. Perhaps I ought to look at others, but at the moment, I am interested in the weblogs of “my people”. I often wonder when I read:

“Will these individuals be people that I will actually get to know one day and will our works be viewed as truthful interpretations of our society? “

I see so much positivity as I read and I truly would not be disappointed if this was the case. I do not want to see our “thinking and writing” culture lost. I do not want to know that those who are now mainstreamed will not be able to accurately place the names and faces of those who have made opportunities like this possible.

I have a long way to go before I can be the person that I dream of being. I have a long way to go before I can say that I have done all that I can do to see myself in the same place that I see my role models like:

Bruce Morrow
Mark Anthony Neal
Lisa Jones
Ras Baraka
Joan Morgan
Farai Chideya
Junot Diaz
Sarah Jones
Robin D.G Kelley

and those are just the authors

Me’shell N’degeocello
Goapele
Micheal Franti
Floetry
JazzyFatnastees
Sara Devine

and a whole host of other entertainers

I had to take a line from a Jay-Z song and replace it into my life. From today on, I promise to make a conscious effort to do what is necessary to be able to step into those big shoes when the new wave of thinkers have their turn to gather the masses.

THIS HAS BEEN A MOMENT OF SANITY, CLARITY, AND HONESTY, FOR YOUR GIRL

naið

On HOW Life Is

I bet you Google is going to have this up as one of the sites that pulls up when someone searches for Macy Gray’s old album. HA HA HA..

But um, that’s of no consequence to me.
I didn’t go to work today. Had to go to my emergency dental appointment. I tell you, I hate sitting in offices waiting for the doctor to come out and pronounce my name all wrong. All those people you don’t even know looking at you funny, you trying to walk swiftly through the door and make sure that you don’t have anything sticking to your ass from sitting on that waiting room chair.

Ok, so I exxagerate about how bad it is, but I hate it anyhow.

I sat on the operating room chair as the doctor took Lidocaine and placed it into a syringe.
I began to shake.
He asked me if I was nervous
I told him I was terrified.
So he called the nurse to come hold my hand
But um….

IT’S NOT THAT SERIOUS.
Lol, but it really was.
He had the needle in his hand and as he came towards me
I closed my eyes and clinched my toes together.
It didn’t even hurt like that.
But that’s how it goes when you have a fear of needles.

I had a tooth pulled today. It was all the way in the back, next to my wisdom tooth. You can’t see that it is missing when I smile and that was all I was worried about. I mean, I’m too young to be walking around with my front tooth gone because I couldn’t afford to get a root canal or something…lol.

The tooth was humungous..
I asked him to give it to me
But he said NO.

I’m thinking:
“Why can’t I just have it?”
Thinking:
“Why do I even want it?”

No more toothache
No alcohol tonight
No work today
Thinking, no kissing today
but that’s not an issue because I’m single and kissing no one at the moment.

Gotta tell you all about the argument I had with a student yesterday. Don’t want to talk about it now.
Scared that I’m gonna get carpel tunnel or something
but that’s off the topic…

LOL
But what was the topic in the first place?

Oh, yeah!
On How Life Is…

drugged up….clarity comes in the morning..

naið