WHAT ARE YOU? by Leesa Cross-Smith
1.
I don’t want to write about racism. I don’t want to write about being sexually harassed in middle school, the boys who put condoms in my backpack or the boys who sat next to me and drew pictures of me performing oral sex on them. I don’t want to talk about how the teachers didn’t do anything about it, how things are so different now. I don’t want to talk about one of those boys grabbing my arm when he saw me on campus years later and how I shook and screamed DON’T TOUCH ME, scaring both him and myself. I don’t want to talk about having an emotionally abusive first boyfriend, either. I don’t want to write about being vulnerable or hurt because doesn’t that give away my power? (No.) But. I don’t want to write about it. I don’t want to be a victim of anything. Does anyone? (I don’t know.) It makes everyone uncomfortable. Even me? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.)
I don’t want to write about racism.
Racism sounds like a small, feckless, faceless mob of children, in the woods, behind a screen, loudly asking HEY ARE YOU BLACK? to a fifth-grade girl, the only black girl at church camp. Church camp is where you get saved in the summer and learn what the Bible says about loving one another: how it says we can’t hate a person we see and claim to love God, because we can see the person and we can’t see God. Hating a person and loving God at the same time is a lie. Simple. Southern Baptists memorize a lot of scripture. 1 John 4:20.
Racism feels like repressed memories: Did I hear the n-word? It felt like the n-word. Maybe. Maybe not. Is this real? Am I misremembering? The word we will not write here. The word so awful, so bitter and dripping with blood. That word, the last word so many have heard before their lives were taken from them. The ropes, the guns, the knives, the trucks, the chains, the whips, the scars, the dogs, the trees, their souls departed. The souls of the ropes, the guns, the knives, the trucks, the chains, the whips, the dogs, the trees. The souls of the humans, the hunted. The hunters – their souls departed long before they died.
Racism feels like the summer-warm, overly-chlorinated, silky pool water in the middle of the campground, the surprised faces because not only can the black girl swim, but she swims well and goes underwater too. She – gasp! – even gets her hair wet. She does not drown. Racism burns like the acid poured on black swimmers. Racism reads like the sign hung on the pool fence that says PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL WHITES ONLY NO COLOREDS.
Racism sounds like an adult camp counselor asking that same girl later if she’s Indian or something else. He won’t let it go. He needs to know. This is important to him. You look ethnic. What are you? The little girl is ten and away from home for the first time. An adult is looking at her as if she is something to be explained. Where are you from? You’re different from everyone else here, why? What are you? The little girl cannot hide, but the little girl is invisible.
2.
I went to sleep-away church camp in Bagdad, Kentucky, for the first time when I was in fifth grade. I lasted two or three days before I called my dad to come and get me. It rained, both outside and in my heart the day he came. I’d cried the entire day before, facing a wall of depression I’d luckily never experienced before. There were hundreds of kids there. I was the only black one. My reflection was the only other black child I saw. It is a lonely feeling being far from home for the first time. It is a lonely feeling being the only black child in a large group and having adults single you out and ask what you are. What are you? When I got home and opened my suitcase, a camp roach crawled out. The next day, my neighbor across the street mocked me in a high-pitched voice from his kitchen screen door, whining oh waaahh Daddy I’m homesick, come get me! Some time after that, he apologized. I don’t like telling that story because it’s embarrassing. I’m easily embarrassed. I avoid even thinking about it. I don’t want to write about it.
3.
I am married to a white man.
4.
I don’t want to write about racism.
Racism feels like a stick in the back. Racism sounds like the n-word said clearly so there is no confusion. Racism sounds like an uh huh girlfriend and a head roll/finger snap after the black girl says something the same way anyone would.
You’re not black-black.
You’re not like other black people.
You are pretty for a black girl.
You are so surprisingly well-spoken, so smart.
I could make love to a black girl like you.
Do your people tan?
Can I touch your hair?
Racism tastes like my dad eating cold fried chicken in the car because the diners on the way to Alabama have whites only signs in their windows. Racism tastes like hot water from a dirty faucet for coloreds only. Racism feels sticky, as sticky as the tar someone put on the doorknob of my dad’s classroom when he taught high school and they had to call the National Guard in to integrate the schools. Racism sounds like a large, heavy tank, rolling. Racism sounds like a student telling my dad to his face when he met him oh yeah, my dad told me my teacher was a [REDACTED N-WORD]. Racism is all the things I am leaving out because there is too much for me to list here or anywhere.
5.
I don’t want to write about microaggression because that’s racism too and I don’t want to write about racism. I had a Sunday school teacher who pulled one of my high school boyfriends aside and tried to show him in the Bible that he shouldn’t date me since he was white and I was black. That Sunday school teacher wrote me a message on Facebook recently after he’d heard I’d mentioned him by name when discussing racism/microaggression in the church. In his message, he used the term blacks instead of black people. Instead of people. Instead of humans or brothers and sisters. The term blacks like how you’d say socks or animals or dishes. It was a small gift to me, him saying that. Proof I hadn’t misremembered. Proof I wasn’t overreacting or being overly sensitive. I don’t want to write about this.
In the Bible, Moses’s siblings do not accept his African wife and are punished. Numbers 12.
I was out for tea once with a white girlfriend and her white friend she brought along and before the end of the conversation, her white friend had said the n-word with the -a on the end, not the -er, as a joke. To make me laugh? I was too shocked to say anything. I wish I’d said something. This woman led worship at our church. I am saying something now, although I don’t want to write about racism. My husband went camping with men from our former church and another church and one of the men from the other church made a racist joke. Later, someone informed him that my husband was married to me, a black woman. The man apologized, generically. The man used to be a church leader. A girl at school told my biracial daughter she was the first biracial girl she’d ever seen with normal hair. My daughter asked what do you mean by normal? The girl said you know! . . . Normal.
6.
I don’t want to write about racism.
Don’t touch my hair. Don’t touch my daughter’s hair. Or my son’s. Don’t touch. Don’t.
I remember exactly where I was when I first heard about Nat Turner, what he did. John Brown, too. I rewatch Ken Burns: The Civil War every autumn. I am the daughter of a Civil War buff. Although my husband’s grandmother eventually came around, upon first hearing we were married, she told my husband I can get you out of this. This mistake. She knew a lawyer. Racism sounds like the deep jingle and crisp fold of inherited wealth and protecting it. Racism looks like the fecund rolling acres of green and green and more green. Racism sounds like the ripping of being cut out of the will. Racism looks like me having to be the Jackie Robinson of the family until my husband’s cousin marries a brown girl too. Racism looks like Jackie Robinson having to be the Jackie Robinson. Racism sounds like the thwack of that bat hitting the ball, the opposing team’s manager screaming [REDACTED N-WORD] as Jackie rounds the bases. Racism sounds like the clang and chunk of that Confederate statue going up, of that Confederate statue coming down. Racism looks like that Confederate flag unfurled and blazing, sounds like that flag whip-rippling in the southern wind. Racism sounds like a yawp, a rebel yell. Racism looks like the KKK pamphlet that was left in our driveway years ago, letting us know they were active in the area. Racism tastes like the tang of the inky venom used to print those pamphlets, the grey salt of tears.
7.
It is not my job to make white men feel better. It is not my job to make white people feel better about this country’s history. It is not my job to keep anyone’s bedraggled secrets. It is not my job to justify my feelings to you. It is not my job to be a strong black woman for you. I am not always strong. I am, at times, weak and broken. Completely destroyed, heart-shattered. It’s hard out here. I wish I weren’t writing this. Racism sounds like the tippity-tap of my keyboard because I have to write this.
8.
I don’t want to write about racism.
Racism sounds like my true last name I will never know. Racism sounds like the new name my enslaved ancestors were given. Cross. That’s who owned us. Crosses. Racism looks like researching our family tree and finding our ancestors listed with the farm animals.
Cattle: 4
Pigs: 4
Chickens: 12
Slaves: 2 = my great-great-grandparents. They had names and we know them. Dollie and John. Their daughter was Carrie and I remember the feel of her papery hands, her tiny farmhouse. John was a blacksmith as a slave and after being freed. John’s dad was enslaved too and also a soldier in the Civil War after the Union troops freed him. His name was Milton.
Racism feels like my great-grandmother’s papery hands in her Alabama farmhouse. Racism reads like the letter she wrote to her grandson – my dad – when I was born. There are some misspellings because she was only allowed to finish second grade. Racism is learning when your ancestors were freed from enslavement.
9.
I don’t want to write about racism. I don’t want to write about race. I am muscle-sore, tired and thirsty, out of breath from so much racing – from not knowing where we’re going, but knowing exactly what we’re running from.
10.
What are you?
I am a homemaker, a mother. A black woman descended from Africans and more Africans, Scandinavians, Europeans, too. A Kentuckian, an American. A college graduate, a writer, an editor. A homebody, a God-fearing Christian, a grown-ass woman, etc.
What are you?
What are you hiding in the damp coolness of your shadow?
Leesa Cross-Smith is the author of the short story collection Every Kiss A War (Mojave River Press, 2014) and the novel Whiskey & Ribbons (Hub City Press, in 2018). “What Are You?” is her second published essay.