One time when Addie was at my father’s house, she looked at me, with my unruly flaxen hair and peach-crayon-colored skin, and said, “Roy, that ain’t your baby.” Then, as if to prove her point, she addressed me: “Girl, lemme see you dance.” While I was surrounded by music, there wasn’t much dancing in my childhood. My mother didn’t dance; I never saw my siblings dance. My father didn’t dance until later in the eighties, when he took hustle lessons.
In my mind, dancing became a measurement for Black acceptance, for belonging somewhere and to someone—for belonging to my father. I didn’t dance for Addie that day. I didn’t dance much at all after that. I just couldn’t recover from the fear of not dancing “right” for my father. I stood there terrified to move, fearing if I didn’t dance well enough or if I moved the wrong way, it would somehow prove that my father wasn’t my father.
That day at camp, as Hodel, I sang and smiled and pranced about the stage and sang some more. I sang in a very distinct lullaby style. I was good, and everybody knew it. I could hear the loud clapping as I took my bow; it was like another kind of grand music, giving me energy, giving me hope. As I raised my head I saw the widest smile on my father’s face. His smile was like sunshine itself. He walked up to the edge of the stage, his arms filled with a big bouquet of sunny daisies tied with a lavender ribbon. Beaming with pride, he handed me the flowers as if they were a prestigious award. At first we were both too giddy to notice that people were staring at us—and not in a way that felt good, not because I had given the outstanding performance of the night. They were staring because my father was the only Black man in sight, and I belonged to him. That night, the teachers, the parents, and all the other campers learned that my father was a Black man, and I paid the price for it. I got my thunderous applause and I got my flowers, but I never got another major role in a play at that camp again.
Please be at peace father
I’m at peace with you
Bitterness isn’t worth clinging to
After all the anguish we’ve all been through
—“Sunflowers for Alfred Roy”
LIGHT OF MY LIFE
Letting go ain’t easy
Oh, it’s just exceedingly hurtful
’Cause somebody you used to know
Is flinging your world around
And they watch, as you’re falling down, down, down,
Falling down, baby
—“The Art of Letting Go”
“You’ve always been the light of my life.”
My mother told me this over and over when I was a child. I wanted to be her light. I wanted to make her proud. I respected her as a singer and a working mother. I loved her deeply, and, like most kids, I wanted her to be a safe place for me. Above all, I desperately wanted to believe her.
But ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival. I’ve emancipated myself from bondage several times, but there is a cloud of sadness that I suspect will always hang over me, not simply because of my mother but because of our complicated journey together. It has caused me so much pain and confusion. Time has shown me there is no benefit in trying to protect people who never tried to protect me. Time and motherhood have finally given me the courage to honestly face who my mother has been to me.
For me, this is the steepest cliff edge. If I can make it to the other side of this truth, I know there is relief of epic proportions awaiting me. Those people who have hurt me, over and over, whom I have escaped or walled off, are deeply significant in my story, but they are not central to my existence.
Removing myself from toxic people I love has been excruciatingly painful, but once I found the courage (with prayer and professional help, of course), I simply let go and let God. (I’ll add, though, that there’s a huge difference between simple and easy. It ain’t easy, baby.) Yet, there is no “artful” way of letting go of my mother, and our relationship is anything but simple. Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never been only black-and-white—it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions.
Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration, and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s. When I became a mother to Roc and Roe, my heart grew two times over; as my capacity for pure love expanded, the ability to tow heavy pain from my past diminished. Healthy, powerful love did that for me: it illuminated the dark spots and unearthed buried hurt. The new, clear light that emanates from my children’s love now rushes through every artery, every cell, every dark nook and cranny of my being.
Even after all this time, a part of me fantasizes that one of these days my mother will transform into one of the caring mothers I saw on TV as a child, like Carol Brady or Clair Huxtable; that she will suddenly ask me, “Honey, how, was your day?” before she gives me a report on her dog or her bird, or asks me to pay for something or do something—that she will have genuine, sustained interest in me and what I’m doing or feeling. That one day she will know me. That one day my mother will understand me.
To a certain extent, I know how my mother became who she is. Her mother certainly didn’t understand her.
