Who will protect the Black babies?
Some time ago, I went to pick apples from an orchard. I went with a group of friends to enjoy the last few days of summer.
The sun was shining and the apples were fresh. We laughed by a pumpkin patch. We picked some spiced donuts to go.
As we walked out of the trees, I heard a wail.
In the distance, a boy's wagon had tipped over. There was no one to help him. He stood too far away, but I had already begun to reach for him. My eyes locked on him. My body turned to help him.
He was alone. He couldn't have been older than four.
My eyes scanned the crowd. Conversation flowed and carried on like the cider from the kegs.
It was if there wasn't a child screaming for help.
I walked closer and closer, my pace quickening to cross the field to help this baby.
Moments later, his grandmother appeared at his side at the bottom of the hill.
She looked at me and smiled.
"He'll be alright," she said with a nod.
"Y'all take care now," I called back.
I left the orchard and went grocery shopping.
Somewhere between the oatmeal and cereal echoed another wail.
Another boy–not older than six–glanced around for help.
His arms couldn't reach the cart handles. His infant sister was precariously posed in a seat.
People milled around him as he continued to ask for help. It was as if he were invisible. Someone pushed past him, speeding up the inevitable. A short second later, he was holding his sister upside down by her legs.
I caught her seconds before disaster and placed her in the cart he was struggling to hold in place.
"Can I stand by you 'til your parents come?"
He nodded politely as we stood.
A beat later, his mother turned the corner.
"Thank you, girl, " she said with a smile.
"He'll be alright," I said back.
She nodded politely before they scooted away.
I headed to checkout and rushed to campus to finish up some work.
As I walked home, I came across two preteen girls–one with blue braids, one with pink. Blue Braids hovered at her friend’s side, hands on the handlebars, guiding her as she wobbled on the bike.
"Always keep your fingers near the brakes when you go," Blue Braids said to her friend. She directed Pink Braids forward with care, Blue Braids's eyes never leaving her friend.
Pink Braids squealed with excitement and fear.
"You better not let me fall," she shouted to her friend.
"You'll be alright," Blue Braids said with a laugh.
Pink Braids pedaled a bit more, her eyes trained on the pavement as she complained.
She was mid-complaint as Blue Braids quietly released the handles and let her go.
I drifted back to my side of the sidewalk and stole one last look: Blue Braids was chasing after her, both girls skidding to a shaky but harmless stop.
I walked until I reached my bus stop. I glanced down at my phone: a video of Cynthia Erivo lit up my screen, her arm flung out to shield her friend. I could count the lifetimes in the seconds before security reached her side.
And in the post was Cynthia, small and trembling, her arms wrapped around her friend, her eyes frantic. She looked like she wished she could fold those arms around herself instead.
Beneath the post, comments poured in: "Cynthia is so strong." "I wish I had a friend like Cynthia." "Bodyguard Erivo!"
Then came the reaction images, one after another: reaction picture after reaction GIF, meme after looping video of Black women, served up as the perfect shorthand for everyone else’s emotions. How expected, I thought.
These online images of these women—never posted by these women—become a joke: as if Cynthia, shaking and terrified and forced into the role of protector, were something to laugh about.
Some of the GIFs didn’t even look real. I think a few of them were AI.
I put my phone away and headed home, steeling myself for my evening plans.
I stared at the mirror in silence, my mind churning to begin the careful calculus of the night out.
The chaos started as I got ready, mirror as it always does. The night out begins in front of a full-length mirror with overhead lighting that punishes indiscriminately and downcasts my eyes, slurring my name before I can hide behind concealer. That’s when I start to craft my argument: hemline, waistline, neckline, skin tone, body tone.
Every piece of fabric becomes a plea. Cleavage becomes a tool of persuasion. After all, what’s flirty on someone else is obscene on me. There’s the tense negotiation of the shoes: my calves look great in these heels, but sneakers mean no pain tomorrow. And God forbid I sweat–the shiny glow on a golden tan is the glisten of beauty, but sweat on dark skin gets filed under "unhygienic" before I've even passed the bouncer. Even the choice of lipstick is a referendum on my right to take up space.
I go out because even after all that, I want to. I go out because I'm sexy and I know it, and some good music would be nice after a week of meetings, papers, and mentoring students. I go out because I’ve crafted my look with surgical precision.
But the club is not neutral ground. The club is church and market and coliseum all at once, and my body is always moments from the lions' jaws.
Because even when I am the best dressed, even when I look undeniably good, there’s the unspoken gamble of whether that beauty is enough. Enough to be deemed attractive, attractive enough to be safe.
And so I craft my argument to become the girl who is safe. I arrange myself to become her, the one who is always protected, who everyone assumes the best of, whose wail is always heard–who I will never be able to imitate.
Because of her, there is always a tightness in my chest–a watchfulness I cannot put down. A burden braided from alertness, awareness, and the quiet ache of knowing too much. There is a softness I’ve never worn. a kind of carefreeness I watch from a distance, like sunlight filtering through glass I can’t quite grasp. Because there has never been a single day in my life when someone looked at me and saw a human. There has never been a moment when I was not the predator and the prey. Never a moment where I moved through space expecting to be seen, understood, or even gently tolerated.
To be someone like me at a bar and preserve my sanity is to accept that nothing I do, nothing I am, will ever be as singularly beloved as her letting her hair down. It doesn't matter how grand I am: the content of my character will never match society's obsession with her. I will always pale in comparison to her straight hair and skinny waist, perfectly rapping to Nicki's verse in "Monster."
It only gets worse when you're a heavyweight. Not heavyweight like thick or curvy–which I most definitely am–but a heavyweight as in: no matter how much I have, I stay sober enough to mother you.
Mother is always grabbing water cups, always saying, "That's your last one, bud." Always in charge of booking the Ubers thirty minutes before the club closes, and surge prices hit. Always closing tabs, adding stops, pulling friends away from strangers.
It's the only time a five-foot woman gets called a "tank."
You might think it's a self-imposed struggle. You might ask why I don't just stop doing whatever this thing is that I'm complaining about. There's no one voice telling me that I have to do anything. There is no voice saying I am unsafe.
But there is silence. And in that silence, my wail drowns.
In that silence, I am everything and nothing.
I am the beauty standard and the ugliest. I am the dependable grown woman and the dumb, slack-jawed girl. I am the coolest and the most embarrassing. I am the oldest, wisest, stillest soul, and the loud, inappropriate, vulgar laugh.
I am the Unimportant and the Definer: every interaction rests upon the quiet fact of my existence, even as that fact goes unrecognized. I am somehow the most important and the most uncared for; the backdrop and the anchor.
Time passes as I pray that I must be deeply misunderstood to go this unnoticed. That my allure must be so frightening and so divine to elicit such a lack of reaction. That surely you are all good people with wax-filled ears that can't hear me cry.
That you will hear the Black baby wail the next time.
But no matter how I master the beat, hold my liquor, laugh at the right time, I will never be enough.
And she will win the night out and every moment afterward. I will never quite be her, even as I dance like her, sing her songs, and tell her jokes.
The sun will rise, and begin my mourning. I'll mourn the playlists the DJ never played—the ones he could have played had he been more adventurous, had he seen the “Play Afrobeats” note on my phone, glowing like scripture before the eyes of the nonbeliever. I'll mourn the compliments I might’ve received if you had been honest with yourselves. I'll mourn about the world I could've lived in, if only you were all braver and better.
Though I know that my shouts–my prayer–will never reach the heavens. It'll all land on deaf ears and amount to nothing.
Because nothing would have changed. To change would require a rupture, a true genesis–something new happening under the same sun that’s shone on the faces of disappointed people like me for eons. The same sun that warmed Eden watched Eve as she begged that snake to tell her she could be more–that she was more even if the world hadn't seen it. It watched and shone bright as she was punished for wanting some fruit.
I can never transcend shade. Not here. Not anywhere. Not yet.
So when I sat there, sober in the Uber, surrounded by friends, my body tired but my mind spinning, I imagined.
I imagined what it must be like to be trusting of this world. I imagined a world where beauty is no longer rationed by shade, and safety doesn’t have a skin tone.
I imagined, and pictured, and prayed, and hoped all while the night grew heavier on my shoulders, the air grew putrid with the rot of your hatred, scarring and searing like dark skin exposed in the blistering sun.
Source: Who will protect the Black babies?
