"You're Not Really Black, Though..."

Right.
I'm not...really.
Really?
Sigh...

"Hereigohavingtoexplainthisagain" I think rolling my eyes internally.
I'm like, 15 or 16, working at the movie theater, and as I take that time to do that invisible eye roll, as young as I am, I patiently explain to, and educate, my fellow popcorn-serving cinema colleague, that while, yes, I was born in Jamaica, raised in good old Broooohken Arroooohhh, and I speak with the appropriate BA affectation, (which means, not "black"?), that I, in fact, can be, and am both.
I am black, and I am Jamaican. My nationality and my race (which I'm learning is a false construct - sigh...what next?) are not one and the same.

It has hit me in the 20+ years since that moment, that that statement indicated that I was palatable...I was not the "black" they were used to or expected. Sigh again...I really never thought about these things until high school, because in my home, they were not discussed. We just KNEW who we were. I don't know if my parents imparted self-worth and self-awareness to us through the umbilical cord or what, but my brother and I GOT IT, and we STILL DO. By virtue of today's climate, this conversation of race and identity has become even more constant for me, but when I was younger, it was nothing I had to talk about as often.

Disclaimer here: Some people don't want to call themselves "black." I appreciate that, but for me, it is not a negative. It is my choice in self-identification. Period. It indicates no lack of self-awareness or any acquiescing to a "slave mentality." Step away from me with that indictment. I'm not conflicted.

I am not American, I am not African, and really, my Jamaican-ness matters more to me than even my color-ness.

Watching Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiechie discuss matters of race, class, womanhood, literature, etc., and hearing Chimamanda saying she has no desire for "policing blackness," I can say I agree 100%.

Why we try to own how others define themselves escapes me. That's not my job or my business. But I understand...it helps provide context and possibly comfort in relating for some. Sorry, I am not striving to make you comfortable. I'm not even sure I need to be comfortable all the time.

So, here I am, approaching 40, and yet, an enigma to so many but myself. :-)  It sort of amuses me when others sit trying to figure me out, because maybe they feel I should be as confused about who and what I am as they are about who I am, and quite likely, who they are.

Recently, it hit me how inundated I've been with this matter of identity in context of race and culture when I was talking with my cousin who lives in Jamaica, about something racial, and she looked at me quizzically, and said succinctly, "Jamaicans don't think about those things." And she was right to a great extent. Certainly some do, but most don't. In that moment, everything in me wanted to go and take a dip in the waters off the coast of my motherland, and wash off these American notions of race and the idea that it matters... In that moment I immediately wished I were as evolved as to not be affected by the climate in this country, and to be able to have the sensibility and clarity that I heard in my cousin, but that's the nature of this beast we call race in America.

So, even as I'm admittedly affected, I'm not unclear about me, and I really don't care to be clearer about anyone else than I am myself.

Really.

Tamarind candy and pigtails

"There once was a girl born on a sunny island who loved tamarind candy, and danced to beat of her heart..."

And often, that girl still dances to the beat of her heart even when she almost can't hear it.

1978 - I see Grandma Bent bend down to whisper words of goodbye to me, and hand me the little bible I still have, inscribed with: "Jesus loves the little children" and other words of blessing from she and Grandpa Bent. I see the sunshine streaming through the airport windows, and I feel that I'm losing SOMETHING, but I don't know what.
I'm going SOMEWHERE, but I don't know where.
I feel the lump in my throat even now, and I can see myself hanging my head in a lack of understanding and a lack of agreement with this shift, but no choice in the matter.
There won't be anymore trips to the airport to eat pepper shrimp and watch planes take off with Auntie Lucy.
No more cherries off of Grandma Bent's tree or going to church with Grandpa Bent.
There won't be anymore waking up to the smell of eggs frying in Grandma Mills' kitchen, or hearing her call my baby bother "Bright Eyes!" in the same voice my mother uses with her grandson today. "Jaaaaaacks'n!" she calls, "Come, Sweet Boy"...Grandma Mills lives on.

There won't be anymore being everyone's baby girl...the first child, grandchild, niece or nephew in the same way I was prior to that day.

And so we take off for Tulsa, where Daddy went to college, to plant ourselves, Jamaicans in a foreign land that will only in part become "home" for me.

At least part of me takes off...The rest is home in Jamaica, waving goodbye as the other half of me disappears into the clouds.
I come, and I begin this life of duality few understand. I straddle two worlds, two mindsets, two sensibilities, listening to two voices.
Jamaica comes into my conversation daily...it lives in my heart and mind constantly, and I am jealous. Jealous of those who still have their accents, when mine left me without my permission.  For THAT voice says WHO you are and WHAT you are...What does mine say?

Sad that I didn't grow up creating the memories my cousins share with each other from "home."

Unsure still that I have a right to say, "I am Jamaican" when I left at three...But I say it anyway!

I'm not yet sure why this was the design...part of me left ashore on the sunny island I love more than my own life, longing...part of me here, still a foreigner to this day, staring 40 in the eyes, always looking back at my "patria" as they say in Spanish...my homeland.

Even now, even to this day, that little me with little pigtails, still stands where I left her on a sunny shore, looking and longing for me to come back and join her in the sunshine, dancing to the beat of our heart, and eating tamarind candy...

"There once was a girl born on a sunny island, who loved tamarind candy, and danced to the beat of her heart..."