I don’t write about those things anymore. I feel tired. I hear one hundred voices yelling the same words. I wonder if there are too many. I wonder if that should mean that it's all over.
I know that it still turns my belly to think about what those men called my father on his way home from the store.
That word will always remind me of my hair- the way I used to hide behind it, choppy and fragile, the way I used to pray that it would swing in a ponytail like the other (white) girls at my school. Ugly, that's how it felt. Like a girl trying to be an object.
I know that I still monitor my speech sometimes, still omit certain songs from my playlists out of fear of being a stereotype. I fear being that which you expect from me- after he yelled at me, I did the dishes in secret. I waited until he left to clean the house.
My identity is stitched from one hundred tiny pieces- I am female, I am brown, I kissed the girls in my daycare and went to AA meetings with my mother.
These are small things, things which shrink me in a conversation, things which build me.
I love spilling them, preparing my words for war- but when I’m in a room full of people who are bigger than me, my throat just shrinks smaller. All I can feel is their eyes, not seeing me. My voice will never sound right to them, always warped before it hits their ears.
I tell myself that this is not expression, that this is a hypocrisy. But still, I remember my hair- I remember how the internalized hatred made me hold onto it like it was the only thing keeping me alive.
I remember moving into the new (white) school and swearing off my braids, my big hairstyles and my favorite hoop earrings. I remember my father coming home after those men jumped him.
I remember my friend, the one from Egypt, how her mother yelled at her the whole car ride home for leaving the house without shaving her legs.
I remember, and I shudder. I remember, and I say nothing.
