For Nancy
There’s a room in my house for Nancy,
Or maybe all the rooms are hers.
Her slave quarters the size of our 8x8 nursery minus the satin sheets and plush pink carpet.
I wonder if her daughter Mahalia was born in those quarters. And how many others shared that space.
Vinyl letters above the crib, spelling out her 7x great grand daughter’s name. Sophia, one of wisdom. Sophia, a girl born 2 centuries later, to a father of East African Refugee descent, and a mother whose traceable lineage stops with her, Nancy. Nancy and Alec. Did they jump a broom? Was there a ceremony? What did Nancy wear?
Twice a day our home smells strong of fair trade African coffee beans, ironically purchased from Target. I shouldn’t buy them from Target, but Millennials are admittedly all about the convenient woke-ness. Protest through black squares, movements via hashtags, and feeling good about purchasing on sale items labeled “fair trade” even when it’s from Target. Fucking Target.
But I imagine Nancy wouldn’t notice the coffee brewing, nor the post graduate diplomas hanging in the office, nor the droning of the dishwasher.
It wouldn’t be the technology or the proof of black opportunity that awed her the most. Besides, our home was the third in my lineage. It was my grandmother Carrie who purchased a home with her husband in 1968 after 30 years of redlining and segregation. It was Carrie who migrated from Alabama to Chicago at just 16 years old. It was Carrie who mopped enough floors to pay for all 5 of her children’s bachelors degrees.
There was an iron outline in the middle of Carrie’s lime green living room carpet. She was ironing the day that King died, and upon hearing the news she dropped the iron in distraught. A lot has changed in that house in the last 50 years, but no one has ever dared to replace that carpet.
There’s a room in my house for Carrie, or maybe all the rooms are hers.
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There’s a safe space in my home for Carrie’s mother, Alberta who died of domestic violence. May she know that we aren’t broken. That her love transcended pain, that four generations live on.
I want Nancy to see the good, the integrated playgrounds and A+ school zones, the inter-racial couple up the street, the mountains of children’s books we don’t have to hide.
I want Nancy to only see this blessed pocket of middle class black opportunity we’ve inherited. I want Nancy to know the shoulders we’ve stood on, the black president we voted for, the laundry lists of black inventors, the good stuff, the #blackexcellence. I smile at Nancy and offer her coffee from the good mugs, hoping she won’t notice the small cracks in the base.
I wonder if she can feel all the things I don’t want her to know.
The arrogance of a generation that claims individual excellence. The tacky thumbs trending hashtags without a mere clap back to those who have collectively taken the right to posses black opportunity. Black excellence is not earned, black opportunity is taken. It’s taken collectively through centuries of struggle, sacrifice and slain lives. I want her to know that I know….that all of these rooms in my house are hers.
I’m embarrassed for her to know how humble we aren’t.
I wonder if she can feel the fear in my breath.
All the names I won’t share with her. All the fallen shoulders we stand on. I won’t say their names for fear that Nancy should learn what’s happening to our people even two centuries later. I don’t want her to know.
I don’t want to share with her the salty tears I’ve shed for too many other mothers, the knowledge that money, education, or moral high ground won’t save our children. The reality that there never has been and there never will be any immunity to racism.
If Nancy’s spirit somehow can penetrate our haint blue southern door, I hope she will whisper to Alberta about this loving union that descended despite her own tragic one.
I want Nancy to know how far we’ve come as a people, that our pediatrician is a black woman, that my mom has taught over a thousand young black kids to read.
I want Nancy to witness me in motherhood with nostalgia of Mahalia’s first steps, to breath in the fresh air and the soundtrack of careless colorblind children playing. I want her to believe that this is it, all of it. That equality has arrived, that racism is extinct, and 2022 is a land of anti-racist educators teaching about more than just MLK in February. That the #blackgirlmagic insta pics of baby Sophia against her plush pink carpet is our whole world. That this tiny snapshot of black opportunity that she and Alec have granted us can transcend everything.
For Nancy, Mahalia, Alberta, Carrie, Niece and my sweet Sophia
