| |  | | | | April 11, 2017 | Letter No. 81 | | | | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
Last year, there was a spate of essays by mothers writing about how having children sapped their creative impulses. At the time, they made me fucking furious. I viscerally object to the notion that the maternal brain has been hormonally short-circuited in some irrevocable way — it's demeaning, insulting, and just untrue (see Zadie Smith, Lorrie Moore, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Shirley Jackson, and many other heroines of mine who have managed to write brilliantly after pushing a baby or four out of their loins).
And yet in the past month, since my children have decided that everyone in our household must wake up before the sun rises, I have been totally bereft of original thoughts. Just making sure I keep all the logistical details of my work and home lives in my head has taken up all the available space on that hard drive. This is because I'm exhausted, not because I'm a mother. But where I used to be able to efficiently squeeze bits of writing in the margins, now all I can do in the margins is lie under a down comforter and watch The Great British Bake Off, because anything else requires too much intellectual investment.
At first this was incredibly distressing, and I started to catastrophize. What if I never have a creative impulse again? What if all I can ever remember to do is send emails reminding myself to order Fresh Direct and buy the baby a new sun hat for the rest of my damn life? So the trick for me has been to breathe deeply and remind myself: The circumstances of your life are always changing. You are never stuck in one mode forever.
That's something that our writers this week are able to keep in mind, and in much more trying circumstances than merely a string of sleepless nights. The actress Krysta Rodriguez writes about going into early menopause after getting treated for breast cancer, and grappling with what it means to be a "woman" who can no longer fulfill biological functions associated with "womanhood." Instead of falling into despair, Krysta beautifully expands her mind about what a woman can be.
Next we have our pal Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist, writing about a conversation with her estranged father that changed her views on him forever. Then Alexis Coe, Lenny's historian at large, discusses a letter Coretta Scott King received from the fire chief of Memphis shortly after her husband's assassination in that city. Alexis explores the courage and grace that Coretta shows in the aftermath of MLK's death and how her actions changed the country's views about the civil-rights movement forever. We also have a lovely essay from Jennifer Epperson about her relationship to her hair, which changed over the years, though she always knew deep down that she wanted to keep it natural. And finally we have a piece by the novelist Lilliam Rivera, in which she talks about coming to terms with her alcoholism, despite the fact that drinking problems were generally unrecognized by her family.
For now, I'm doing my best to accept the spot that I'm in and not project too far into the future. In the meantime, I will maybe learn how to make a frangipane tart through osmosis.
Xo,
Jess Grose, Lenny editor in chief | | | | | | | | | | | | A Woman Survives | | | | By Krysta Rodriguez | | |
I have been grappling with the question of what makes a woman since being diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, at age 30. I was born biologically female and my body progressed in that way for decades, never veering from the textbook. Puberty, estrogen, breasts, a period, you name it, if it was a trait of a "woman," I had it. Then, suddenly, a rogue cell. Next, an incessant reproduction of that cell, the forming of a tight-knit unit of these cells, a mobilization of assets, and then the motion of those cells through an otherwise healthy body.
Cancer is almost militarily systematic. It moves with stealth purpose, in trenches of tissues and ducts. And, like any effective attack, its terror reigns far beyond the starting point. It had a goal: attack and destroy "woman" wherever you find it.
Though the cancer was in my breast, the first bomb of destruction was my uterus. I was single when I was diagnosed, so my uterus became the subject of much debate. I was about to begin chemotherapy, which could effectively destroy any hope of reproduction. Do you want children? Maybe? You must start fertility treatments this week. Got anyone to father it? No? Here's a pamphlet of sperm donors. Oh and, by the way, it's possible that because you couldn't establish your career, find the perfect man, and procreate in the time allowed for "woman," you just left yourself wide open to cancer. You see, there are some studies that support the idea that the childless are at a higher risk for breast cancer. Add that to a historic trait of womanhood: shame.
At the same time of my diagnosis, my career as an actor had taken a pivot, and I was directing a musical at my alma mater. I was surrounded by bright, young children: the physical manifestations of other people's ability to reproduce. As for me, I was sneaking into a high-school janitor's closet on rehearsal breaks to give myself two shots a day to stimulate my ovaries. I had superhero friends who were offering sperm, and all the while, wondering if I gave myself cancer by choosing other priorities. Ultimately, I decided to freeze my eggs unfertilized, giving me four sweet bastard children on ice. I decided that no matter how badly cancer wanted to ruin this for me, I will choose to have children if and when I'm ready, and I will choose who their father is. No cancer or doctor or legislation will decide that for me.
The next detonation took a different approach. My estrogen. The cancer was eating up my lady juice at a rate too fast to process, which is why I have an eight-centimeter ball of hell in my boob. So we must cut it off at the source. I had to get rid of my estrogen. Starve out the enemy! At 12 p.m. on the day I began my hormone depletion, I was given an injection of Lupron, an ovarian suppressant. It was the heaviest day of my menstrual cycle.
By 6 p.m. that evening, not even a drop of blood could be found. My internal factory that had been chugging along at a clip for the majority of my 30 years suddenly sputtered to a stop, like a cartoon train, wheezing and spewing smoke until it slumped in defeat. It felt like silence. Stillness. The end of productivity and promise.
This was menopause. A rite of passage I was decades too young to experience. Like a real-life Freaky Friday, this body didn't belong to me. The pounds start packing on in preparation for, I don't know, being sent adrift on an ice floe as you mournfully wave ashore at the men, busily sniffing new pheromones. The hot flashes have you ripping off clothing in public. You have the opposite of lady glow. You're a walking ghost town. You don't emit sex, and you certainly don't want to have it. Before menopause, I loved the sensuality that came with "Woman," and now I may as well have a slab of marble down there. My evolutionary purpose is gone. Can I still call myself a woman?
Chemo came for my hair with zero hesitation. I dutifully shaved it and promised to own the look. Purple wigs, temporary tattoos, fascinators, I put everything on my head. But no matter how much fun I had, or how grateful I was to have a nicely shaped dome, I still saw Mr. Clean whenever I looked in the mirror. So long, flirtation! No more hair flips, batting lashes, or arched brows. I was a bald, bloated, achy, unfuckable creature.
Last but not least, cancer came for what it really wanted. My breasts. The pain of deciding on a double mastectomy was excruciating. No cancer had been found in my right breast, so I got to choose to take only the left or do a two-for-one special. I would have to trade the ability to feed my potential children for the hope that I would survive long enough to have them. I would lose all sensation in both breasts, furthering the desert wasteland of sexual dysfunction already swarming inside me. I would be cut and scarred for life. I would be me, but with not one part of me left unharmed. But I did it anyway.
So, here I am. A 32-year-old "Woman." No breasts, no hair, no estrogen, no functional ovaries, no pheromones, no libido, no skinny jeans, no milk ducts, no supple erogenous zones, no self-lubrication, no period, and no cancer.
I did whatever it took. I fought harder for my health than I had ever imagined I would have to. I advocated for myself when my opinions were marginalized. I wrestled with the tough questions life gives you and even wrestled life itself. I'm a strong Woman who is expanding the definition every day, and I have my own list of criteria.
A woman chooses. A woman persists. A woman resists. A woman asks questions. A woman has scars. A woman feels sensual in her own time and way. A woman has stories. A woman speaks up. A woman loves. A woman survives.
What's your list?
Krysta Rodriguez can currently be seen in NBC's Trial & Error. Previously, she starred in the second and final season of the musical drama Smash. Krysta has also starred in a number of Broadway musicals, including Spring Awakening, First Date, The Addams Family, In the Heights, A Chorus Line, and Good Vibrations. | | | | | | | | | | | | Hold the Phone | | | | By Jess McIntosh | | |
I talk to my father twice a year.
Around Christmas, we call each other and leave messages until one of us picks up. And our birthdays are just eight days apart, so we repeat the process around then for the second call.
This December, it was hard to put my shoes on. Remember December? Were you OK? I was not OK. I could barely get dressed. So it was almost impossible to do anything emotionally taxing. I was taxed enough already. I was my own tea party.
I'm a liberal, half-Mexican, half-queer New Yorker who's spent her adult life in progressive feminist politics and was a senior communications staffer for the Hillary Clinton campaign. So on a number of levels, December was spent with the curtains drawn. My boyfriend, Chris, and I ordered disco waffle cheese fries. For breakfast. For a week straight. I was drunk more hours than I wasn't.
So the Christmastime phone call to Dad loomed. I never want to make it, necessarily, but it's benign. For about 45 minutes, my father tells me about the illnesses and achievements of a family I don't know. I tell him about work. We make polite noises, a weird "I love you" is said, we hang up.
I think he likes me.
This year, I stalled. January rolled around. The check I get every year for Christmas sat on the counter. I can't cash it until I thank him for it, that's the rule. I learned the rule when I broke it one year. He missed the next six phone calls. By the time we spoke again, I was divorced, living in a different city.
"Just call him tonight," Chris finally tells me. "You know you're just putting it off, and that's making it worse." He is right. "You have to call your father, I have to call my mother, we all have to call our parents even when they're awful."
So when Chris goes to work that night, I call my father.
He lives in Michigan. The red part. I don't know his politics. He knows mine, obviously, it's my job. He's proud of me, I think. I know he likes it when family members tell him they've seen me on TV. I know he doesn't watch MSNBC. I remember he didn't like George W. Bush; I can't remember why. I think he voted for Mitt Romney, but when I asked him who his wife was voting for in 2012, he said he didn't know, they'd never talked about it. This blew my fucking mind.
This year, I guess the subject was harder to avoid. He asked what I was doing for work. I told him I had a couple of interviews, one with David Brock. I started to explain who that was, that he funds progressive organizations, but my dad already knew about him.
Then he asked me if I knew George Soros.
"Like, not personally." I am wary.
"Huh, yeah. Well, what do you think of him?" He is wary.
"He's a very rich man who gives money to causes I care about. Dad, where are you getting your news?"
This is where I learn that my father gets his news from alt-right websites.
He's always been a night person.
I ask him carefully if he's ever read anything about me on these sites. He picks up cheerfully. "They write about you?" There is distinct pride in his voice. "I'll look it up!"
"Dad, no."
I tell him about what can happen when these sites write about you and you are a woman who says woman-things out loud in public, the nauseating wave of insults, the rape threats, the blinking gifs of violent porn that fill your feed — if someone is feeling feisty, they'll Photoshop your face onto the woman being violated. Your social-media feeds are unusable for days.
I keep my voice really calm, just adding info here, that's all. I am pleased with myself when I end articulately, by saying, "So be careful. Those kids are bullies and I worry about you hanging out with them. They have a way of turning their political opponents into monsters, and that kind of thinking is what leads a guy to shoot up Comet Pizza."
And he says, "Wellll."
This is how I learn that my father believes there was a child sex ring being run by John Podesta and Hillary Clinton out of a Washington, D.C., restaurant called Comet Pizza and Ping Pong, where probably they sacrificed and ate babies in a ritual known as Spirit Cooking.
I don't know where to start. "I worked for John Podesta." He's horrified. "You did?!"
"He chaired the campaign, yes."
"Did you notice anything weird about him?!"
"Dad, Comet Pizza is a family place. I threw my friends' book party there. They have Ping-Pong tables."
"Yeah, well, I saw photos of their walls, and they had some weird stuff painted on there." He sounds a little shaken that I know the place, that I've been inside.
"No, they don't. I don't know what you saw, but it wasn't real. None of this is real." I don't understand why it's not enough that I've been inside. I should be able to end this with that one fact.
On the one hand, this is horrifying in a profoundly sad way. On the other hand, I've got a live one here. I never get to talk to this person. And I know this one well, if weirdly. I can ask it all kinds of impertinent shit. I don't have to make it OK because it's an undecided voter.
"Let me get this straight. There's a pedophile, possibly-baby-eating ring run out of Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C. You, sitting in Michigan, know about it. Alt-right websites know about it. But no one is doing anything about it. That means the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington, D.C., police department, the FBI, every Democratic politician, probably the schools and the church, they're all ignoring it because they're all a part of it. Dad, does this sound sane to you?"
I don't remember what he says, but it isn't "You're right."
"If this scenario were true," I say, "the only person I feel OK about is the guy who showed up with a gun to self-investigate. Children are being murdered and everyone knows and no one is doing anything? I mean, what the hell are you doing in Michigan? Why aren't you shooting up the place yourself?" He sort of chuckles.
I realize this is probably the first time he's even said this stuff out loud. He doesn't talk politics with his wife, he's just been hanging out in the comments section all night, where no one tells him he sounds like a lunatic.
"No," he says. "Maybe not in Comet Pizza, but this pedophile thing is a really big problem with Democrats." You know this is a thing that conspiracy theorists say, right? The Clintons run child sex rings, there's a satanic element involving ritual sacrifice. They say this. And in the same way you know if a politician can't stop talking about how gay people are evil and must be stopped, that that politician is totally gay, this line of attack makes me want to ask them: Are you guys eating babies?
"It's a huge problem in England," my father is telling me.
I say: "No, no it's not."
That when countries do horrible things to children, we know about it. We know about drowning girl babies and Boko Haram. We'd know if British baby-stealing were a huge problem.
"So now we're adding the British newspapers, and Downing Street and MI5 and probably the Vatican to the list of people who are in on it? Right?" He's quiet, so I go for it.
"Dad, do you think I'm part of the baby-eating conspiracy?"
The motherfucker PAUSES. He backtracks in descending order. "No, I mean, I have no reason to, I mean, I hope not."
I would like a moment to reflect that his daughter has just asked if he thinks she's maybe involved with baby eating. And his answer was ambiguous.
A few questions later, and I just can't do it anymore. "Oh, look, it's eleven, I have to go." We say our goodbyes and I hang up.
I call my mother immediately afterward. And in a quick minute, I learn exactly what's wrong with our country. "Ma, I just had the weirdest conversation with my father, you will not fucking believe it." And my mother, who votes every time, who organizes, who's super-informed, has never even heard of Pizzagate. I fear that we have no chance of moving forward if my father can get that far down a rabbit hole my mother doesn't even know exists.
She apologizes for her ignorance, and her choice of parental partners. She asks how long before Chris gets home. She asks if I'm OK.
I have no idea if I'm OK. This is the most animated conversation I've ever had with my dad. Usually, we sort of monologue at each other about our very separate, non-intersecting lives from parallel tracks, passing the talking stick back and forth at the conclusion of our paragraphs. This time, we were making points, asking questions, hearing answers. It wasn't fatherly, or even kind, but it was a dialogue. Sometimes talking is painful, but how else do you get to the part where you understand, or respect, or even agree?
My birthday is September 10, my dad's is September 2. I have five months to decide whether to make the second annual call. I mean, we actually connected. I spent an hour on the phone with my father, fully engaged, learning about his inner life. On the other hand, his inner life was a frightening and paranoid place, and I hated it.
We have a thing going, my dad and I: a reliably distant, regulated, and unstable relationship I know I can count on. I'm worried getting to know each other will ruin everything.
Jess McIntosh is a Democratic strategist living in Brooklyn, who is fairly confident her father doesn't read Lenny Letter. | | | | | | | | | | | | The Courage of Coretta | | | | By Alexis Coe | | |
In this new column, Alexis Coe, Lenny's historian at large, will conduct Q&As with specialists in archives across the country, focusing on one primary source.
For the inaugural post, Alexis spoke with Wayne Dowdy, manager of the history department in the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis, Tennessee, about a letter the Memphis Fire Department chief sent Coretta Scott King following the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. The letter illuminates an overlooked moment in history, when Mrs. King, with the press documenting her every move, demonstrated that the civil-rights movement was bigger than any one person.
Alexis Coe: Wayne, we met a few years ago in your archive, where I was researching what would become my first book, Alice+Freda Forever. I was focused on the 1890s, but you got my sensibilities early on and would often tempt me with other archival treasures, including this letter, which I've thought about a lot over the last few years. Let's parse the last paragraph. What "ticket" is Edward A. Hamilton, the Memphis Fire Department Chief, referring to?
Wayne Dowdy: It was a pleasure working with you, and I appreciate you letting me share with you our collection. Hamilton is referring to a document generated when a citizen was transported to the hospital by a city ambulance. In this case, when Dr. King was shot, he was transported by ambulance to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was treated for his wounds and unfortunately died from them.
AC: When she got a bill, standard policy or not, it must've been a bitter insult, but to the City of Memphis, it had the potential to be a national embarrassment at a time when they already looked pretty terrible. Is Hamilton asking her to keep the mistake quiet in the last sentence?
WD: I think that's quite possible. Memphis citizens and their leaders were shaken by the condemnations leveled at them and did not want to contribute to that environment. On the one hand, Hamilton's letter seems effusive and heartfelt, but it no doubt was also designed to quell any additional criticism over the billing error. Hamilton's words were certainly more kindly than those of Mayor Henry Loeb, who stated, "We wish the incident had happened elsewhere — if it had to happen."
AC: Mayor Henry Loeb is at the top of my list of worst Memphians, and that quote always turns my stomach. He seems to be saying that Memphis was the real victim in the assassination of MLK, a sentiment I've definitely heard in Memphis. Loeb goes on to imply that the assassination was probably inevitable. Now, the mayor was a racist who had described court-ordered integration as "anarchy," and Tennessee was, until the end of the Civil War, a slave state. Did most white Memphians feel as though they were victims of the assassination, too?
WD: That unfortunately was a very common view. For the rest of the 20th century, Dr. King's murder would be blamed for every civic failure. At the same time, an inferiority complex seeped into the city's bones and is only now dissipating. It's taken a long time for us to come to grips with the fact that Memphis created the conditions leading to Dr. King's murder on that specific day.
AC: Let's back up and explain why Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis in the first place. On February 1, 1968, a rainstorm pounded the city and set off two very different incidents. The weather triggered a trash truck's compactor mechanism, crushing Echol Cole and Robert Walker, two black sanitation workers. At the same time, 22 black sewer workers were sent home without pay, while their white counterparts were compensated. The city had a long history of discrimination against black workers — they had little job security, struggled with safety, and didn't receive equal pay and benefits — and opposed their union. Mayor Loeb was, as you said, intransigent on every issue, so sanitation workers went on strike, and King was asked to come to Memphis and lend his support. What happened then? Did Loeb meet with him?
WD: As you say, Dr. King came to lend his support to the sanitation strikers, not to negotiate on their behalf, so he and Mayor Loeb never met. The plan was for Dr. King to give a speech and then move on with the planning of the Poor People's Campaign (which was carried out in the wake of his assassination). However, he was so impressed with the spirit of the Memphis movement he committed to leading a march, because he realized Memphis was the Poor People's Campaign in microcosm.
| (Courtesy Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library) |
AC: Do we know if Coretta Scott King responded to this letter? I assume the copy you have in the archives is from the city's collection?
WD: The letter is located in the papers of Fire and Police Director Frank Holloman. The document was carbon copied to Holloman, but if there was a reply from Mrs. King, it was not forwarded to the director. My sense is that if Mrs. King ever saw the bill and Hamilton's letter, she simply ignored the whole situation.
AC: This letter is dated April 10, 1968, six days after Martin Luther King was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis. Coretta Scott King wasn't with her husband when he was shot. When did she come to Memphis to claim his body, and how soon after did she leave?
WD: Mrs. King arrived in Memphis on April 5, in a plane provided by Senator Robert F. Kennedy. After collecting her husband's remains, she immediately flew back to Atlanta. Mrs. King then returned to Memphis on April 8 to participate in a march her husband was scheduled to lead.
AC: Coretta Scott King returned to the city where her husband had been assassinated three days after claiming his body. This was truly extraordinary. On a national level, she's demonstrating that the civil-rights movement would not be deterred by the death of its leader. If she could, in the most nascent days of her widowhood, with small children at home mourning the loss of their father, show up to fight, so should everyone else. And on a local level, she's telling Memphis, and Mayor Loeb, this needs to end. Now. How closely was the country watching her and, by extension, Loeb?
WD: The courage, dignity, and poise shown by Mrs. King impressed many Americans and certainly influenced the many white Memphians who pressured Loeb to settle the strike. In addition, Mrs. King's two visits must have influenced the conduct of the majority of Memphians who, unlike those in other urban centers, stayed true to Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolence.
AC: What was the April 8 march led by Coretta Scott King like? How did Loeb and the city react to it?
WD: Nineteen thousand people marched silently with Mrs. King down Main Street to City Hall. Mayor Loeb watched it from his office window but did not attend. However, the police and National Guard were fully mobilized, and Director Holloman and Police Chief Henry Lux were at the front of the procession to protect Mrs. King and maintain a careful lookout. In the crowd were Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Bayard Rustin, James Brown, Sidney Poitier, and Ossie Davis, as well as labor and religious leaders from around the country. Not a single disturbance marred the somber occasion.
AC: Did Coretta Scott King get involved in the negotiations with Loeb? Was she still receiving support from the likes of Kennedy and others in Washington? How long did she end up staying in Memphis?
WD: Mrs. King was not involved in the strike negotiations. After Dr. King's death, President Johnson sent a federal labor mediator to assist in ending the strike. Kennedy attended Dr. King's funeral in Atlanta, but he did not come to Memphis. Mrs. King received a great deal of support from Harry Belafonte, who came with her to Memphis for the memorial march. She left Memphis on the afternoon of the eighth because her husband's funeral was scheduled for the following day in Atlanta.
AC: Did Coretta Scott King ever return to Memphis after the strike? What's her legacy there?
WD: During the April 8 memorial demonstration, Mrs. King urged marchers "to see that his spirit never dies," and she returned to Memphis many times to fulfill that goal. In 1977, Mrs. King supported a union's effort to organize workers at the Memphis Furniture Company, and the following year she returned to speak on behalf of a jobs bill then stalled in Congress. She campaigned for President Jimmy Carter's reelection in 1980, and during a 1982 visit on behalf of a local education project, she declared that "Martin would be as proud as I am to see the Memphis school system as it is progressing … and to see Memphis as it is progressing today." It is not an exaggeration to say that Mrs. King's legacy of preserving her husband's teachings while promoting economic justice and education had a significant effect on the development of Memphis.
Alexis Coe is the author of Alice+Freda Forever, a consultant on the movie adaptation, and co-host of Audible's Presidents Are People Too! Follow her. | | | | | | | | | | | | God Bless My Scalp | | | | By Jennifer Epperson | | | |
For most of my childhood, I was deeply obsessed with Rudy Huxtable's hair. Rudy, one of the few non-mixed black girls on television, had natural hair that looked an awful lot like mine after a good wash 'n' blow dry.
"Mo-oom, can I please just wear it puffy today?" I begged. "Puffy" is what I called my hair after it had been washed and dried, before it would be straightened. I pessimistically watched my mom warm up the electrical hot comb in the bathroom mirror's reflection. It was picture day in second grade, and I already knew that I preferred the puffy version of my thick black pigtails over the straightened version.
"Today is picture day. You want to look well put together now hold your head up so we can go!" she responded in a run-on sentence mastered only by black moms. Ever compliant, I held my head up with eyes closed, nervous system bracing itself for the hot iron teeth that would undoubtedly make contact with my scalp. When it was all over, I opened my eyes to see one long pigtail thoughtfully hanging to the side, another pigtail back and centered, both held by matching Goody hairballs.
Today, I look back at that picture and chuckle victoriously each time. Because for all the commotion around straightening every hair on my head, pictures were taken after recess. Sweat and wild-child zeal for life had devoured my straightened hair. Frazzled and kinky hairs are celebratorily sticking out of my hairballs in every which way. My smile is an unmistakable sign of satisfaction.
I knew I wanted natural hair all along, beginning with some unusual fireside chats I'd have with my otherwise-wordless father. During the early years, when he enjoyed a single beer in His Chair after a long day of work, watching reruns of Good Times, he'd say something like, "Florida's hair looks just fine. More of our women should just leave their hair alone!" Usually grading papers in Her Chair, Mom would put her red pen down and quip that Florida Evans doesn't work at a school or an office or somewhere that expects Negroes to be culturally agreeable. I looked at Florida Evans's neatly manicured Afro like a modern marvel. And besides, I'd already been determined to impress my dad with my grades and wit, so I just added "have natural hair" to the long list of things I'd devote my life to for his favorable gaze.
Thankfully, the concept of "good hair" didn't exist in my household. This was no easy feat given my parents' Creole heritage, ravaged with preferential treatment to any features that increase a black person's ability to "pass." My mom's quest for her daughters to have straight hair was more about social politeness, and maybe ease. The concept of "natural-hair care" didn't exist in the '80s and '90s, so I'd imagine having three heads of black hair to manage could get overwhelming for even the most woke mother. Nevertheless, when I got to middle school, I was shocked by the premium placed on "good hair."
The moment my pinkie toe stepped onto Johnston Middle School's campus, I noticed black boys' heads turning whenever light-skinned black girls walked by. For a while, I wondered if there was some orientation handbook I was supposed to have received before the start of sixth grade to explain this phenomenon. For that year, I couldn't figure out the mystique. I'd look at these girls' facial features, and though they were also God's children, I saw nothing special. Nothing exceptionally beautiful.
After a year of confusion, the first day of French class in seventh grade would explain everything. Midway through roll call, the door flung open, and in walked Jewel. She shuffled past me to take her seat, and then for the following five minutes, her Black Rapunzel hair followed. Her hair was as thick and soft as any hair I'd seen on a human to date. The jaws of the few black boys in the classroom dropped. It was probably a combination of her wicker-basket-colored skin and flowing hair, but that day, it hit me that maybe there was a sort of hair hierarchy within the black race that I was supposed to care about.
Most black girls at school had perms. I knew continuing to wear straightened hair was just another factor reducing my already-struggling coolness score, but I just couldn't bring myself to get a perm. In fact, I wore it as a badge of pride. I couldn't articulate it, but I knew there was a more significant premium on having the option to just wear my own hair, unaltered by chemistry and Just for Me products. I viewed perms as an embarrassing attempt for the black race to say, "Hey, white folks! We're just like you! See?!" I had yet to see white women spending hours in the beauty salon to make their hair turn into Afros to increase their odds of gainful employment, so it all seemed so obviously wrong to me.
"You're sixteen now. It's time for you to go ahead and get a perm," Mom said one night. "I already talked to your Daddy about it." And so it was. I got my first perm after basketball practice, at a Walmart in Stafford, Texas. The electric doors zapped open, and there was the greeting lady: "Welcome to Walmart! God bless you!" God bless my scalp, I thought to myself. I went to my mom's hairdresser, the only black beautician on staff. The beautician seemed both appalled and overwhelmed by my thick, coarse hair when I sat down in her swivel chair with a musty black smock draped over me. My neck muscles still contract just thinking about how tight the little neckhole of that smock was. While she parted sections to apply the lye kit on top of the layer of thick base, she'd mutter things like, "We're gonna work this right on out." I closed my eyes so that I could roll them without her seeing.
As the perm was applied and the burning of my scalp began, I tried to distract myself from my anger over "selling out." I envisioned my high-school crush ignoring Jewel in the cafeteria as I playfully whipped my conked hair to one side like Cher in Clueless. He would share his Frito pie with me instead. This fantasy was short-lived. Every few minutes, I'd stick my fingers up to feel my transforming hair, thinking to myself, What have I done?
"Get some of your daddy's Chips Ahoy cookies," Mom said. My hair was permed, and now we were taking full advantage of Walmart's one-stop shop by picking up a few items before heading home. I turned my head to find the bag of cookies and was startled by my hair flinging along with me. It was baffling how straight and "white" my hair had become within just a few hours. It's like it lived in poles, only on my dad's kinky end or my mom's Spanish slave master's white end. The rest of the shopping trip was uncomfortable. Every time I felt myself enjoying my new curtains of hair, I felt guilty.
It wasn't until we returned home that I got a good look at myself alone in the bathroom mirror. Suddenly, my facial features took on a plastic version of themselves. My Angelina Jolie–esque lips were even more accentuated, almost cartoonishly big, like those candy lips that were semi-popular around Halloween time. My almond eyes used to be the eyes of innocence but now looked unintentionally sexy. Thankfully my conjoined eyebrows were still providing some grounding realness for my newfound womanly face. I'm sure some girls would have been so relieved to finally look like "the other girls," or close, but I felt slimy. Like a con artist, a girl who had sold out to the things that really matter to her.
But God has a way of answering prayers with a sense of humor, and after a few weeks, my regular hair started growing in. I'd later learn that this is called "new growth," when your natural hair starts growing in, pushing the permed hair further away from the roots. While most black girls could get away with waiting two or three months without getting a perm, I could barely make it a couple of weeks before my hair descended into "chicken head" territory, as the black boys not-so-affectionately started calling me. The boys had never made fun of my hair when it was natural and straightened with the straightening comb, no matter how many weeks had passed since it had last been straightened. But it's almost as if they were in on the joke, that they knew my temporarily permed strands were just a sham.
My family and I were unloading suitcases and boxes onto my half of my dorm room when it occurred to me that I'd be living ten hours away from people who expected me to attempt to keep up with the permed Joneses. I immediately began plotting my plan for letting go of my perm. I wouldn't go the shaved-head route because I have a dent in my head that I wasn't prepared to defend. I would braid my hair and let my natural hair grow in over time. As if she knew what I was plotting, Mom intercepted my scheme. "Be sure to find out where you can get your hair done. There has to be a black side of town here," Mom said, centering my computer monitor on the built-in dorm desk. "Oh, yes ma'am, I'm sure there is," I responded, knowing that I'd only look for someone to braid my hair.
For the next few months, my hair remained braided while my natural hair grew in. Each time I got it re-braided, I'd have more of the remaining permed hair cut off. The more of my own hair I had growing out of my scalp, the more authentically I started living my life. I didn't shyly mention that my favorite band was Radiohead. I plastered a giant Radiohead poster on my wall to serve as a talking point for visitors. In high school, I was a quiet observer, behind the shabby and unconvincing curtain of permed hair. But my budding Afro seemed to validate my thoughts and feelings, and I found myself being quite outspoken in most of my civil-engineering classes.
"So what are your plans for your hair?" Mom asked while surveying it with her eyes. I was home for Christmas break my junior year. "I'm just going to leave it like this. Natural." My mom's eyes continued to survey over my head, the silence building tension. Finally, she handed down her verdict: "Well … you do have the face for it."
Jennifer Epperson is a proud Texan living in New York. She writes essays and sketch comedy, she designs digital products in the tech industry, and she does *not* believe in laundry delivery services. | | | | | | | | | | | | Latinas Don't Have Drinking Problems | | | | By Lilliam Rivera | | |
The young mother stared at me. She was dressed in her Sunday best. Next to her sat her cute daughter in a flouncy princesa outfit. I kept my eyes glued to the dirty floor of the train heading uptown. The baseball hat I wore didn't do much to shield my swollen face. The black eye was already forming. I made the mistake of looking up to make sure I didn't miss my train stop. My eyes connected with the mother's, and she gave me that look of pity I knew so well, like she wanted to help me. My eyes returned to the floor, and I tried to shrink even more into the seat.
The ride from Jackson Heights in Queens to 183rd in the Bronx would last for at least an hour. It was more than enough time for me to figure out what lie I was going to choose. Was it the three Long Island Iced Teas that did me in, or was it more? I couldn't remember but I definitely blamed the fruity drinks.
I'm a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. You drank Bacardi Rum or Heinekens if you had money, Budweiser if you didn't. The only drink I knew how to order was a rum and Coke because it made me feel much older than nineteen. When my stop approached, the face that reflected back on the train's window reminded me of my neighbor, the one who would wear heavy Avon foundation to conceal the bruises her boyfriend gave her.
"Que te paso?" Mami asked once I entered the apartment. As much as I tried to stay in the shadows, the glaring florescent light fooled no one.
"Nothing," I said. My nervous laugh couldn't conceal my shame. "I drank too much. I forgot to eat."
The excuse I've used before, part of an old script. I come from a family where secrets are preserved. Even when I told Mami that my broken nose came from drinking, she couldn't believe me. My messed-up face must have come from somewhere else, she thought, some incident way more dramatic than blacking out in some grungy bathroom in a bar in the Village. But the one thing I knew I could count on was Mami not asking for more information. My embarrassing moment would be kept hidden.
At the time, my cousin Jose lived with us. He was a big burly guy with a thick Bronx accent. He loved to tease me, tell me I sounded white. Maybe he thought I was a bit too bougie. I was the first to go to college. Clearly, I was trying to act like I was somebody.
"But what happened to you?" Jose asked over and over again. "Tell me. If you're protecting someone, tell me right now. I'll take care of it."
It would have been easy for me to say yes, that it was some guy who gave me the black eye, who broke my nose. No one in my family could wrap their head around that I got hurt because I couldn't stop drinking. Alcoholism doesn't really exist in my family. There are only freak accidents and bad liquor choices. It didn't matter if I blacked out or if I broke more body parts, I wasn't going to stop.
"Don't be stupid in protecting some guy," my cousin said. "Give me his name."
The first time I took a drink, I was nine years old. It was at somebody's wedding reception held in a church basement. Each table had plastic champagne glasses filled with cheap bubbly. When my older cousin Leslie told me to drink it fast, I did what she told me to do. It felt warm going down. The champagne burned my throat, and I immediately wanted more.
I come from a big family. We lived walking distance from each other. We always partied together. Strangers were definitely not allowed in our tight circle. It's easy to feel safe when the people you're getting loaded with are your relatives. There's a rite of passage each of us went through that consisted of consuming lots of alcohol at one of our many house parties. If you could hold down your liquor without passing out, then you were fly. When it was my turn, it felt good to be able to pass that test, to receive mad props from my older cousins for showing that I wasn't weak.
For a shy person, alcohol became a great mask. The tape on repeat that played in my head convinced me that I was ugly and stupid. With a little bit of liquor, I felt pretty. Visible. I could hold a conversation and tell funny stories. I took that courage with me as I headed to college. I'd never been away from my family. When I landed at Binghamton University, I was surrounded by people with money who had never even ventured into the Bronx before. I felt lost and ashamed of being a Latina in a mostly white school. On my first day at the university, I got so drunk that I don't remember how I got to my room. There were many other incidents. Dangerous situations that would scare my mother if she knew. Too many to count.
It was the year 2000, and I was newly married. No one knew about my secret. Not my husband. I would sneak into the kitchen and take shots. Run to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Not my friends. I was good at pacing my drinks when I was with them so I didn't draw that much attention. But moving to Los Angeles meant driving, and that scared me so I stayed home and drank. My world got really small. Work. Go home. Walk across the street to get more alcohol. Try not to get checked out by the same cashier. Hide the empty bottles. I lived my very own Lifetime TV movie.
There was a deep fear that my life was about to explode. I couldn't keep this up. It was only a matter of time before my husband found out about my problem. When he confronted me on why I seemed so depressed, I told him I was unhappy with the relationship. I wanted to separate. Clearly, he was the problem. The news came to him like a blow. He didn't understand, but he made me promise to at least speak to a therapist before bailing out on the marriage.
"You have a drinking problem, and I won't continue treating you until you admit it," the therapist said. I thought for sure she was confusing me with some client who happened to be white. Latinas don't have drinking problems. I was already complicating things by seeing a therapist, a last-ditch effort to save my marriage. There was obviously a cultural misunderstanding going on here, a disconnect on the way Latinos are raised. It's almost religious. We drink. The therapist wasn't hearing any of it. She told me to go to an AA meeting, and for whatever reason I listened. I was tired of juggling the lies. I told my husband the truth. We managed to work things out and are still married.
It's been sixteen years since I took my last drink. My family is aware that I no longer indulge, but we never discuss it, or the day I walked in with a black eye. I live by all the clichés now: one day at a time, easy does it, turn it over. I attend AA meetings when I can. My cravings have disappeared, but there are moments when I feel that a drink might help ease my anxiety. When that happens, I play out how one drink will lead to another. I play the events straight through. It always ends in pain.
My nose is still broken. If you look closely, there is a tiny scar that marks that day.
Lilliam Rivera is the author of The Education of Margot Sanchez (Simon & Schuster). | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
From Lena Dunham + Jenni Konner. | | | | | | | |  |  | |
No comments:
Post a Comment