When I think about how Harlem’s streets are a place of conversation, economy, and community, I start to second-guess myself. Maybe the only goods that Charlie was trying to sell were tickets to a DMX concert. Maybe what he wanted was only money, not to climb on top of me. Maybe I misjudged his calling me “sweetheart” as patronizing when he really was just trying to be nice because he did not know my name. Maybe I was being conceited. Maybe I cried because I was still getting used to the city environment, not because I thought he was going to hurt me. The more excuses I made for him, the less trusting I became of my body and my own instincts.
And that sniper tower. It is still there. I do not acknowledge it now when I walk by. I keep my head low and my headphones nestled against my ears. I walk in a fashion similar to that of all the other black women with whom I cross paths every night as I return to my apartment. I wonder what kind of secrets they are holding in their bodies, what kind of experiences they have buried to protect someone else at their own expense. Whom they could run to for help.
As I write this, I’ve just passed my one-year anniversary of living in New York. I have only been on two dates in the past eight months, out of circumstance and choice. Fear encapsulates both of these experiences. My heart palpitated at the thought of what these men could do to me, how they could tremendously hurt me, paralyze me, even though all they did was ask what drink I wanted, or if I was having a good time. Both situations ended with the guy not being interested, and making this clear either through silence or long text messages. Each time, I thought back to my college years and wondered if there was something inherently wrong with me. I wondered if I was too much of everything, leaving no room for a man to find his place beside me. I wondered if my desperation reeked so badly that the stench made men stay far away from me. I wondered if, with each byline that I snagged, I was becoming less and less of a woman, unlovable just as David had said. I wondered if writing this essay would be the last nail in the proverbial coffin of my romantic life.
I haven’t heard “fast-tailed girl” spoken as much as I have before, but that could be because I don’t hang out around any black female teenagers. But that doesn’t make me worry less for them, wherever they are. I am still concerned about myself, a grown woman who desires to be a wife and mother. I am concerned about the women who are already mothers, the mothers in progress, the daughters, and the daughters who have yet to be born.
But I have not given up hope yet. I am learning to love myself. I took a solo vacation, satiated by my own presence. I came back to Harlem feeling refreshed, ready to transform my energy so that I could take the risk of falling in love. But that deep-seated fear still lingers in the pit of my chest, even if it does not pulsate as it did before. I am trying to shed the fear that maybe I am diseased as a black woman, chalking up these experiences to growing pains on the road to true love. I just wish that these pains didn’t hurt so badly.
5
A Lotus for Michelle
Dear Michelle,
In July 2008, approximately six months before your husband assumed office, The New Yorker published a cartoon by Barry Blitt that featured the both of you as terrorists. The theme was “The Politics of Fear,” and it was the front cover image. Barack is in Muslim clothing and you are in military garb and have an AK-47 strapped to your back. You are fist-bumping in what seems to be the Oval Office while the American flag burns in the fireplace. Many called the image offensive and disgusting, but nevertheless the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, deemed it satirical, for it held up a mirror to the stereotypes swirling around about Barack’s faith. But for me, the more problematic issue was how you were portrayed. Unlike Barack Obama, whose seemingly smooth hair was underneath a taqiyah, your hair was transformed from your usual permed shoulder-length hair to a large afro—the cartoonist accentuated the countless coils. They resembled barbed wire. Your lips are pursed, almost identical to the kind of gesture that many black women make when they are perturbed or in the midst of saying something witty. Your eyebrows are raised and your head is cocked to the side. Your lips, unlike Barack’s, are colored red, perhaps to accentuate their fullness. Your eyes, unlike Barack’s, are open and spilling over with intent. The AK-47 strapped to your back is the least terroristic element of this image. Contrary to popular belief, you, not Barack, are its true focal point. You are the one whose body is most exaggerated. You do not incite terrorism with bone-straight hair and good posture. No, your body is forced to reflect what America must imagine in order to strip away your exceptionalism: a large afro, gestures normally ascribed to the sassy black woman stereotype, and a gun for good measure. If this image was supposed to satirize “Politics of Fear” surrounding you and your family, then it succeeded because that image was exactly how many in white America could only see you, Michelle: through double vision. They rejected what their actual eyes perceived: an extremely accomplished woman whose career many of them would have been lucky to emulate. Instead they replaced you with an aggressive and violent woman. As long as their imagination is entertained, their belief in their inherent superiority as white people could be sustained.
I was too young to really engage with this image. I was only sixteen years old and I wasn’t raised in a particularly political home. I did know, however, that we were Democrats and that in my community, the Easter bunny was more believable than a black Republican. I had heard of the possibility of a potential black president but only within the realms of comedy, such as Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, Dave Chappelle’s “Black Bush” skit on his Comedy Central show, and Richard Pryor’s “Black President” skit on his show back in 1977. It seemed like only through black comedy could I, and many others, consume the idea of a black president. Perhaps this was the only space where we could delight ourselves with the idea, through laughter, because if we seriously considered it, we would have worried that he would be assassinated as soon as he was sworn into office. But when you, Barack, and your daughters, Malia and Sasha, walked across the stage after it became official that he would become president, I went into my mother’s bedroom where my stepfather, Z, was peacefully lying on his side of the bed. He smiled at me, but we did not say a word to each other because something in our cores was shifting and we needed time to ourselves in the midst of being close to each other. I will be honest and say that I do not remember President Obama’s full speech, but what I can vividly recount is the single tear that fell down my left cheek. It was the first time I had cried from someone’s oration, but it was more than that. I had an actual image of black ascendancy. It was not a two-dimensional portrait, a subject of a comedy skit, or an idea casually thrown around among ourselves, but a physical reality. But I did not dream of becoming president like Barack. You were the one who enraptured me. Barack’s voice was merely the background noise to the relationship that I, and millions of black women around the world, would have with you.