Who Is My Mother's Legacy?
history.
My mother’s womb carried me the spring of ’95. Her amniotic fluids caressing my flesh – the pink secret dot of break-ups bound up by my parents’ bodies closing distance. She, my mother, held me and knew me, but not what was to come. She couldn’t. She had no history.
...
My mother’s mother also knows the weight of seasonal secrets. At 21 she had sex. Unprotected, out of wedlock sex. And excommunicated herself from ‘good girls’ everywhere in 1967. Her own mother sent her across state lines, shame her only companion. Words held in by the matriarchal tongue silencing sins. My grandmother carried my mother’s own pink flesh nine months long. Then pushed my mother’s unnamed body beyond the boundary of her own. Swift nurses in good girl virgin …show more content…
white came and walked her away, my break-up bound-up mother still a child. They made my bad girl grandmother clean, neat, washed all trace of sinned sex residue from her skin. Papers signed, missteps manipulated, calculated, quieted. My mother, before her first breath, was destined to become a mystery. Her history, like her body, pushed aside, unseen.
…
Disappearing bodies have become a familial legacy.
…
Grown into her own form, my mother decided mysteries weren’t enough. At 28 she met me face to face for the first time. “I cried when I looked into your eyes, yours was the first face that had ever looked like me.” Three babies after that left her with reflections all around, but by 39 she was wise enough to know mothering does not fill the void of one’s own. fantasy. The mothers of me are not the only ones to whom I attribute birth. Men have taken their turns at playing daddy, playing father, always playing – they think themselves playful. Their wisdom words writhe atop my skin:
“You’re a frat boy’s dream, so many daddy issues.” And.
“You a good girl, I can tell.” Or.
“But how bad you really, what you gon’ let me do to you tonight?”
And then slip in the words of a woman not hers to give: “You’re a black man’s dream.”
Come …show more content…
again?
…
When was it decided that my body is not a reality, just a fantasy you can revive from memory, a game. Who told you I am not a creature of flesh, of blood, no real damage can be done to something you wave away. I’m just a 3 a.m. moment for the frat boys, the black men, fed to stereotypes of people not even people you conceive as whole themselves. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to gut me, dismiss my father’s impact woven through my bones, and segregated me sexually without consulting a black man himself. You’re a white girl. How dare you speak on the behalf of a sex, gender, race not yours to claim. You’re also a white boy, black boy, sometimes a man’s body speaking too. Categorizing the size of my hips, the space of these thighs as the things desirable about me. Over sexualized. But I’m just a fantasy, so I guess it doesn’t hurt.
…
Dismembered parts don’t bleed ‘cause they can’t be ripped apart. flesh. My baby sister went shopping the other day. Begged our mother to step inside the Thursday night weary of a week not quite complete; feet feeding upon the glossy retail floors awaiting. Summertime called her 15 years to racks of shorts, hemlines no longer than upper thigh. In, out, in out. Dressing rooms occupied. My mother waiting.
“Do you like them?”
“Yes.”
“Well let’s go.”
Hesitation.
“What?”
“Nothing…it’s nothing.”
My mother recounted the purchase three days later over wireless connections. “I think your sister has a problem with her legs. It breaks my heart.” My reply less shocked, almost expecting the words, “She made it pretty far considering what she’s up against.”
…
It’s not that I don’t empathize, I do. My heart’s just already broken, been broken, finds itself situated in breaking. Those were the four years lived in disordered eating, shower screaming, food regurgitating. The width of me shrinking and silencing, shamed into perceptions of perfection. Only to swell in the wake of my pain: restrict, binge, shame. And though I stand another two years further, grown into skin marred in memories and resilience, this flesh is no foreigner to the land of expectation. Moments of me found sliding down to steadying tiles. Tightening into a curl, praying for a little less. These curves too feminine, no hiding my mess.
…
Or my own Thursday evening, wearied. Exhale stress, inhale sex. Only to be pointed out: “Are you on your period?” Accusations are not questions. Rust spot on cotton sheets. My body responding, confirming my anatomy, my form. You, so subtly, standing slightly superior, asserting the compactness of your masculinity.
Eyes asking, “Who ever told you you have the right to leak, to grow beyond me?” pleasure. Little is as explicit as a woman fully present in her pleasure. Not pleasure created for men, artificial performances administered by mass media execs. Productions, not women. But the pleasure that is whole, full, expanding. Honey dripping, sugar melting. The succulent sweet of a woman acting within and through her desires, any desire.
…
Because a woman centered, speaking, moving in her power is threatening. And what threatens must be censored.
…
I asked my mother about her steps away from my father to divorce. Long car rides provided space enough between us to allow raw truths’ escape. Loving exceptions offered, care attended to pain, but still whispered words stark, dispossessed of their veils: “That’s why I didn’t buy new things, not for myself. I had to ask your father for money, his money. It wasn’t ours because I just stayed at home. Sometimes I would hide a new dress, but mostly I didn’t have anything new to keep secret.”
Except she did. Keep secrets. The kind of secrets passed down in DNA. Secrets relieved by an extra slice of cake, a social glass of wine, too many minutes spent on landlines connecting missed voices long away. The pleasures of women dismissed in their necessity. These, also secrets.
…
I also know blood-passed secrets. My tendency toward too much. Too much love, too many emotions, too much solitude, too many words. The too-much-never-enough narrative that says,
“Don’t grow, gathering yourself from dismembered parts, do not leak, flowing over. Do not be dangerous.” voice. At 39 my mother found a letter between her fingertips that looked like home.
It was the first composition written beneath mystery’s hand. My grandmother, my nana. It was springtime, the season of my conception. Now also the conception of a future tearing back inaccurate perceptions, retrieving a mother’s memories, my mother’s history. We met that summer, my 11 years guiding my newly acquainted great aunt, Nana’s sister, through our small Midwestern neighborhood grid. She complimented the honey in my hair. I wondered at her expansive freedom, single, without children, always traveling. But what I really wondered at was my nana’s wearing my own mother’s face. The dark eyes and hair, the narrowed nose, structure of bones. We, her reflections. It was then that my mother released herself as unseen and I witnessed her affirmed and becoming.
…
I had asked a boy about sexuality’s double standards. A woman deemed the very pinnacle of shame if she deviates from expectation, commands her own power and pleasure. I asked what he would think of a girl who slept around, even slept with multiple men in one night. “That’s a dirty hoe. Disrespecting herself. I wouldn’t fuck with that.” Except. I asked him if he would sleep with her. “Yeah.” Would you think of her differently? “Yeah.” I also asked if it was okay for him to hook up with multiple women at one time and whether that made him dirty, disrespectful. “Nah, there’s nothin’ wrong gettin’ bitches.”
… I guess he didn’t know those bitches are women dangerous and becoming.
…
I do not fold neatly. I cannot braid the strands of my hair quiet, tightly drawn the loosed pieces agitating in their audacity, moving out of place. I do not require your permission of space. I am messy, not a mess, there is a difference. I demand adequate air and the effort of your gaze. I will not hide, be hidden, hushed. I am power. You did not read me wrong: Power. Powerful does not demand enough reverberation. For I am more than merely full.
My wholeness is leaking.
My mother’s womb carried me the spring of ’95. Her amniotic fluids caressing my flesh – the pink secret dot of break-ups bound up by my parents’ bodies closing distance. She, my mother, held me and knew me, but not what was to come. She couldn’t. She had no history.
...
My mother’s mother also knows the weight of seasonal secrets. At 21 she had sex. Unprotected, out of wedlock sex. And excommunicated herself from ‘good girls’ everywhere in 1967. Her own mother sent her across state lines, shame her only companion. Words held in by the matriarchal tongue silencing sins. My grandmother carried my mother’s own pink flesh nine months long. Then pushed my mother’s unnamed body beyond the boundary of her own. Swift nurses in good girl virgin …show more content…
white came and walked her away, my break-up bound-up mother still a child. They made my bad girl grandmother clean, neat, washed all trace of sinned sex residue from her skin. Papers signed, missteps manipulated, calculated, quieted. My mother, before her first breath, was destined to become a mystery. Her history, like her body, pushed aside, unseen.
…
Disappearing bodies have become a familial legacy.
…
Grown into her own form, my mother decided mysteries weren’t enough. At 28 she met me face to face for the first time. “I cried when I looked into your eyes, yours was the first face that had ever looked like me.” Three babies after that left her with reflections all around, but by 39 she was wise enough to know mothering does not fill the void of one’s own. fantasy. The mothers of me are not the only ones to whom I attribute birth. Men have taken their turns at playing daddy, playing father, always playing – they think themselves playful. Their wisdom words writhe atop my skin:
“You’re a frat boy’s dream, so many daddy issues.” And.
“You a good girl, I can tell.” Or.
“But how bad you really, what you gon’ let me do to you tonight?”
And then slip in the words of a woman not hers to give: “You’re a black man’s dream.”
Come …show more content…
again?
…
When was it decided that my body is not a reality, just a fantasy you can revive from memory, a game. Who told you I am not a creature of flesh, of blood, no real damage can be done to something you wave away. I’m just a 3 a.m. moment for the frat boys, the black men, fed to stereotypes of people not even people you conceive as whole themselves. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to gut me, dismiss my father’s impact woven through my bones, and segregated me sexually without consulting a black man himself. You’re a white girl. How dare you speak on the behalf of a sex, gender, race not yours to claim. You’re also a white boy, black boy, sometimes a man’s body speaking too. Categorizing the size of my hips, the space of these thighs as the things desirable about me. Over sexualized. But I’m just a fantasy, so I guess it doesn’t hurt.
…
Dismembered parts don’t bleed ‘cause they can’t be ripped apart. flesh. My baby sister went shopping the other day. Begged our mother to step inside the Thursday night weary of a week not quite complete; feet feeding upon the glossy retail floors awaiting. Summertime called her 15 years to racks of shorts, hemlines no longer than upper thigh. In, out, in out. Dressing rooms occupied. My mother waiting.
“Do you like them?”
“Yes.”
“Well let’s go.”
Hesitation.
“What?”
“Nothing…it’s nothing.”
My mother recounted the purchase three days later over wireless connections. “I think your sister has a problem with her legs. It breaks my heart.” My reply less shocked, almost expecting the words, “She made it pretty far considering what she’s up against.”
…
It’s not that I don’t empathize, I do. My heart’s just already broken, been broken, finds itself situated in breaking. Those were the four years lived in disordered eating, shower screaming, food regurgitating. The width of me shrinking and silencing, shamed into perceptions of perfection. Only to swell in the wake of my pain: restrict, binge, shame. And though I stand another two years further, grown into skin marred in memories and resilience, this flesh is no foreigner to the land of expectation. Moments of me found sliding down to steadying tiles. Tightening into a curl, praying for a little less. These curves too feminine, no hiding my mess.
…
Or my own Thursday evening, wearied. Exhale stress, inhale sex. Only to be pointed out: “Are you on your period?” Accusations are not questions. Rust spot on cotton sheets. My body responding, confirming my anatomy, my form. You, so subtly, standing slightly superior, asserting the compactness of your masculinity.
Eyes asking, “Who ever told you you have the right to leak, to grow beyond me?” pleasure. Little is as explicit as a woman fully present in her pleasure. Not pleasure created for men, artificial performances administered by mass media execs. Productions, not women. But the pleasure that is whole, full, expanding. Honey dripping, sugar melting. The succulent sweet of a woman acting within and through her desires, any desire.
…
Because a woman centered, speaking, moving in her power is threatening. And what threatens must be censored.
…
I asked my mother about her steps away from my father to divorce. Long car rides provided space enough between us to allow raw truths’ escape. Loving exceptions offered, care attended to pain, but still whispered words stark, dispossessed of their veils: “That’s why I didn’t buy new things, not for myself. I had to ask your father for money, his money. It wasn’t ours because I just stayed at home. Sometimes I would hide a new dress, but mostly I didn’t have anything new to keep secret.”
Except she did. Keep secrets. The kind of secrets passed down in DNA. Secrets relieved by an extra slice of cake, a social glass of wine, too many minutes spent on landlines connecting missed voices long away. The pleasures of women dismissed in their necessity. These, also secrets.
…
I also know blood-passed secrets. My tendency toward too much. Too much love, too many emotions, too much solitude, too many words. The too-much-never-enough narrative that says,
“Don’t grow, gathering yourself from dismembered parts, do not leak, flowing over. Do not be dangerous.” voice. At 39 my mother found a letter between her fingertips that looked like home.
It was the first composition written beneath mystery’s hand. My grandmother, my nana. It was springtime, the season of my conception. Now also the conception of a future tearing back inaccurate perceptions, retrieving a mother’s memories, my mother’s history. We met that summer, my 11 years guiding my newly acquainted great aunt, Nana’s sister, through our small Midwestern neighborhood grid. She complimented the honey in my hair. I wondered at her expansive freedom, single, without children, always traveling. But what I really wondered at was my nana’s wearing my own mother’s face. The dark eyes and hair, the narrowed nose, structure of bones. We, her reflections. It was then that my mother released herself as unseen and I witnessed her affirmed and becoming.
…
I had asked a boy about sexuality’s double standards. A woman deemed the very pinnacle of shame if she deviates from expectation, commands her own power and pleasure. I asked what he would think of a girl who slept around, even slept with multiple men in one night. “That’s a dirty hoe. Disrespecting herself. I wouldn’t fuck with that.” Except. I asked him if he would sleep with her. “Yeah.” Would you think of her differently? “Yeah.” I also asked if it was okay for him to hook up with multiple women at one time and whether that made him dirty, disrespectful. “Nah, there’s nothin’ wrong gettin’ bitches.”
… I guess he didn’t know those bitches are women dangerous and becoming.
…
I do not fold neatly. I cannot braid the strands of my hair quiet, tightly drawn the loosed pieces agitating in their audacity, moving out of place. I do not require your permission of space. I am messy, not a mess, there is a difference. I demand adequate air and the effort of your gaze. I will not hide, be hidden, hushed. I am power. You did not read me wrong: Power. Powerful does not demand enough reverberation. For I am more than merely full.
My wholeness is leaking.