So the white guy I argued with about my book
said he was just giving me some good advice
from his experience as an empath
I said I don’t need your advice
I have reasons for talking about race and gender in the interpersonal
He said he was just trying to help me.
I’ll offer this nonsequitur
Winnie Mandela died a few years ago
She had great impact on me
I read she was nobility
But then the difference between her and how Princess Diana was treated
Everyone accepted and loved Diana’s silent/passive status
She was allowed to be gorgeous
No one ever associated her with that colonial stain
There are moments in the recent Winnie Mandela documentary
that stand out to me
where she buried her face in her hands and screamed out
I’ve been betrayed
the other moment was when she said she was
the only ANC member brought to TRC
and made to testify
Nelson Mandela forgave a nation
but he could never forgive her.
What was done to Winnie is done to other Black women
and working artists
Black women fighting to give language/resistance
but it only matters when a celebrity says or does it.
At Cape Coast Castle in Ghana after you’ve passed
The Door of No Return
there is a plaque donated to the Castle by Black tribal elders
It reads:
May we never sell ourselves into slavery again
But it is Again.
UNTITLED
Say what you want about my mother/I know
her cruelty knew no bounds
neglect
never a warm hug
kind word
every year when school came/fall
I looked at the flyers of back-to-school clothes
Nothing
I wore rags/hand-me-downs
As soon as I worked she made me pay rent
and that was the message engraved into me
instead of being taught responsibility
I was taught I owed
her rent
the ground I stood on and had no rights
My father’s neglect
The patches put over his eyes
not to see
never a book
nothing
She suffered from mental illness
was selfish
Through blinds
Through stories I get glimpses
Say what you want but she is the greatest fighter
She is going now
She cobbles out a life from the women she watches on housewives shows
Their competition
Her neighbor buys a wreath
My mother buys a bigger one
She tells my father when I visit
Strike up the barbeque
She buys corn
pretends it’s a party
I see she has lost weight this visit
the depression she believes there is a man coming
to destroy things
and there are bugs
She constantly buys poison
I know I can’t talk to her about depression/the drugs
So I say as gently as I can
Keep your spirits up/then you will gain back the weight
On the morning I am leaving
She dresses up in nice clothes
And a pair of coral earrings I gave her
She said she’d been skipping meals
But on the morning before I left
perhaps just as a child to show me
She piled her plate full of scrambled eggs with ketchup
and she ate.
RUTH VICK
I was reticent about posting about my
first mother’s death on FB
We weren’t close
and you know the attention-seeking
nature of it all
But then I felt less bad
when somebody posted about their
missing pet
The condolences concerns
were far reaching
And then I thought another Black woman
died today in agony
Poor Black and alone
My aunt said the wake was pathetic
There was no one there
Said she left after 5 or 10 minutes
Her brother’s first wife
My adoptive mom
My father called me to say she was
Being buried an hour before I went on stage
He needed someone to talk to
I think they said she was cremated
I was surprised I felt as much as I did
Given her life-long absence
I know now in retrospect she was fleeing
for her life
from abuse
She tried to take me
but that failed
If you see your father, she said
Don’t go near him
But I was four and must have
missed him so bad
When I saw the car I screamed Daddy
and ran to him
Get in, he said
and we drove away after he’d
chased her into the house
And said I’m taking her/I’m
taking your daughter away.
My father remarried
and his new wife forbade me
from seeing her
I was six
I know though she was sick with many
things for a long time
I know she adopted another daughter
to replace me
But I know I was part of my first mother’s agony
on her death bed
I know I was that pain aching her bones
Her stomach her head
I was that baby ghost
I was that beloved
I know somewhere she blamed herself
It’s always the woman’s fault
My father was a monster I know
But he was the parent I knew
I didn’t ask for condolences on FB
I asked people instead to say her name
Ruth Vick.
THERE IS ME/THERE IS MY MOTHER
It is courageous/
I am doing that thing now my mother/stepmother could not do.
She tried.
She practiced.
I will never forget the blue suitcase/a square that looked
almost like an attaché case/only larger
It was always the same song and dance routine
whenever she fought with my father
She’d pull the blue suitcase out of her closet
She’d pack the case
Leaving it to sit by the door
She’d scream to my father, I’m leaving you
and then the bullet
I’m also taking your daughter
You’re coming with me right?
I really had no choice
I knew she wouldn’t leave
and I’d be stuck with her wrath
I wanted her to go
I wanted to stay with my father but I couldn’t say that
My mother tried but never made it further than the stairwell
Maybe once she made it down the stairs and
he dragged her back
Call the police, she commanded to my six-year-old self
Maybe once or twice she made it down to the parking lot
and into their car/the emerald green Impala
Maybe he clung to the side of the car door and threatened
As Toni Morrison once described in Beloved
Besides the main character Sethe
There was a girl so traumatized by her sister’s ghost
A baby whose throat was slit by her mother
She could never get past the yard
I imagine how many slaves tried/as opposed to got away
How many made it down to the garden or potato patch
With thoughts and sights on freedom but turned back for fear/
How many as I have got trapped, could never get their foot loose.
My mother practiced but could never escape.
I see the end results/a depression that can’t be overcome.
Mental illness left untreated
That eats away her brain.
She believes there are bugs
and a man who comes to the house and steals from her
She buys poison and puts it down daily
The worst part is that through abuse she’s been made into
a man’s raggedy doll
So I am doing
