“Mother, where do you live? In the sky? The clouds? The sea? Show me your face. Give me a sign.
We rise… We rise.
Afraid of myself. A god, he seems to me. What else is life but being near you? Do they suspect? Oh, to be given to you. You to me. I will be faithful to you. True. Two no more. One. One.
I am… I am.”
-Pocahontas (The New World)
While traveling through India for a month, there is one image that I felt I could not lift my camera to capture. I saw the tableau while walking down a large New Delhi avenue. The day was hot, dusty, and nothing new had yet appeared. I mean, it was all new, but it was all the same level of new. Nothing outstandingly new—until this moment. My gaze drifted down the rue and fixed onto a dark woman wrapped in a colorful sari marching with 4 or 5 children around her. She looked poor, India poor, and something told me that these children were hers and may have come from a life of prostitution, perhaps, but at least within a very hard existence. Although the woman’s life came across as heavy, I could not help but notice how an internal force made each step powerful and light. Her countenance was that of a queen. Her soul aflame and pure. She never looked down at her children, who kept pace. She only stared forward in the direction in which she intended to move. Below, on the right, keeping just in front of her, was a young boy. Perhaps 5 or 6. He looked up to his mother in pure adoration. As if looking at her face was looking at the face of God. I knew that look because that is how I once saw my own mother. Yet our final days together were anything but a submission to her. I too knew in which direction I wanted to move, and I was willing to fight for my right to choose.
You may remember that my mother transferred me from my arts high school at the beginning of my junior year. Now once again a mere mortal, I quickly acclimated to the new environment and all of its rules. A world in which stereotypes held true. Most moved to the rhythm of bells with little purpose other than to one day escape. But where to? I had no idea of what existed outside of my small world.
My only comfort within this triumphant display of power by my mother was that I got my old friends back. They welcomed me back as if I hadn’t disappeared for two years. Yet, I never could tell them the truth of what caused my return and what had been lost. I simply created another story, another persona, that had to be managed. Another self that wasn’t quite all me.
This version of me didn’t know about love and never talked about anyone I liked. I always held a minor role in group discussions. Grateful I at least had a group to call mine. It was the best defense against being bullied in a new school. Our suburban community in Maryland was growing rougher every year as more inner city kids moved in. Though the kids looked like me, they often would comment on the way I spoke or did things. Always a bit too proper for them. Too “white.”
Yet, it was often the boys who were rough around the edges that drew my attention. The ones who took risks, dared to break rules, and had a call of adventure about them. Those were always the boys for me, even if they didn’t know it. They often criticized me, not knowing that I idolized them. I was too afraid to speak. Too afraid to show my true colors for fear I would be punished.
That’s how I also felt at home. Nowhere and no one was safe. For example, there was the time my step-father decided to man me up by dragging me down the stairs. My mother was in the bath at the time. I remember him pulling me and me screaming for him to stop. My mother, a victim of abuse by my biological father, burst through the bathroom door and told my stepfather off. I can only imagine the memories that flooded her mind when she heard me screaming. The inner terror of reliving her past trauma and telling the man she was hoping would be her dream come true to stop hurting her child. From that moment on, that is what I became to him, her child. If I wanted anything, I was always told to ask my mother.
When it came to punishment, my dad didn’t always wait on my mother to take charge. One day, like many, I committed yet another offense. But this one must have been pretty bad because my father asked me to go out back and get a branch from a tree. Knowing I would likely be hit with it, I went and got the driest stick I could find. One that would have easily cracked if I was too rough with it. My dad looked at the stick and said, “No. Go get me a nice young and flexible branch.” Thought stopped and I did as he said. When my father was done, I was bleeding from long cuts on my back like a slave. Past traumas lived again and again and again.
The next day, when going out to play, my friends asked who it was they had heard screaming at my house. I don’t remember the excuse I came created. I just know I did before changing the subject and playing as if nothing had happened. Erasing any part of me that could appear hurt or shamed.
Past hurts unhealed creating more pain is the game. Passing into me into you. My mother was no exception. Her power was in her no. It was often dealt out when I asked for, well, anything. There was no rhyme or reason. It was like a leash she could pull at any moment, yanking me back into place. Reminding me who was in charge.
Perhaps it explains why I took to abusing my dog, Napoleon. I too would yank his leash when he tried to move too quickly. Wanting to get too far away from me. Perhaps wanting to leave me? Yank! A quick and hard pull of the choke collar, causing his 25 pound body to fly backwards in the air towards me. I can’t forgive myself for it now. The memories are my punishment. Who could blame him for wanting to run away. As he ran, I would sometimes cry because even he did not love me. He always preferred any other location in the house than my room. And when he was forced to go by my parents, I made him pay.
Numb. So numb.
I’ve lost my way.
Help me.
At some point in high school, I opened the glove compartment box of my mother’s car and found the album “Memories” by Barbra Streisand. The image on the tape looked very different from the jazz and R&B covers I was used to at the time, so I gave it a try. Love. I loved her from the first song. Her voice. Her emotions. So beautiful. So alive. Barbara Streisand became an idol, a god of sorts, in my life. She could do no wrong. With her, a new mother figure was born.
What sealed my relationship with Barbra wasn’t necessarily her voice, but her films. They made me believe I had options in life. Fun, meaningful, and glamorous options. I would often check my father’s newspaper for the TV listings and scan for her films. No matter the time, I would sneak downstairs to see her. Taking in every gesture and look she made in on the screen. I remember sneaking to the basement in the early hours of the morning to see a film that created an important inner shift in me: YENTL. In the dark, I found myself in this Eastern European Jewish girl who longed to learn about God but was denied because she was female. When her father dies, she cuts her hair and pretends to be male to be allowed to study. It works and the story becomes a huge wonderful mess as a love triangle forms. By the end of the closing song, my world had changed. I could finally see a way out. I had to get out.
Although my mother was not always the warmest, she knew me well. Her grasp could be firm, but another side often opened a door to help me find my way: allowing me to audition for my arts high school, allowing me to join a kids journalism organization in DC, the Barbra Streisand tape, and even buying me Barbra Streisand’s concert on VHS. When my mom’s photo was exchanged for one of Babs, she may have had regrets about this. Angry yet again. Over time I learned to use her anger. Learned how to wield and maneuver it with cutting words as quickly as she. How to instantly change myself from soft white smoke in underbrush to blazing wildfire. Calm brook to frozen lake. Impenetrable. Almost.
There was the day she found me downstairs watching “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan. The film revolves around the relationships of first and second generation Chinese American mothers and daughters. And God knows I was more the daughter in my household than my sister. As I watched, my mother sat next to me and everything within began to turn into ice. Emotions no longer able to move. Cold. Within this state of survival, I calmly got up from my seat and went upstairs to my bedroom. Leaving my mother alone to watch the film. The thought of it brings tears to my eyes now, but it was the only way I could safely make my escape.
As I learned to fight against my parents and the church, something within began to shift and morph. I began to become…more. To feel an inner world that was so much deeper than the one I had before. As I took blow after blow, i one day found myself hysterically laughing in my mother’s face as she threatened to hurt me, unconsciously tapping into something unseen. I mean, what in me made me laugh? Holding up my hands to block her hits, I could not stop. I felt insane. She looked at me as if I was and stopped swinging. On a calmer day, while listening to a talk at the Kingdom Hall, my mind started to tell me a story. A pretty good story, so I began to write. It was about a treasure. But this treasure had to be found within. The map needed was an internal map. I remember my mom looking over at me writing away, no longer listening to what was being said to the congregation. She allowed me to keep writing. Had she known what was really happening, she may have snatched my pen and paper immediately.