When You Call Yourself Names

At 19, I was gone
I ran
Left my country
and a mother who was mostly silent
Escaped a father who was a brute
I got the best of his worst, being the oldest son

Expected to enter law or real estate
Placed in boarding school at the age of nine
I despised it
It was the most expensive school in my country
Though the public school had creative, imaginative teachers
Those kids received a better education
We had pretentiousness, networking and "proper" old school marms
all the way from England
My aunt -who shouldn't have- paid for it all
My father -who shouldn't have- wanted my profound gratitude

I haven't attended any reunions
I did make friends for life
Our bonds are more akin to having survived prison together
When I took my son to visit the school
you could still smell oppression in the wood
I showed him where they made us kneel
Sam Neill, the actor, graduated two years ahead of me
Once a celebrated alumnus, they asked him to return
He refused to come back, ever, unless the caning stopped

I would've been one of those kids on Ritalin
had they been diagnosing such things in my day
I just needed to organize things differently
Always been a copious reader
Always a self-educated learner
I left.
Traveled to Australia. London.
Eventually passed my boards
Took less than six months once I started
Earned a scholarship to art school
My father hadn't allowed me to carry art books or
consider such pursuits but I've always kind of known
Always kind of known

At 24, I called myself an artist
At 24, my life began

Comments

Tiger Pause

At eleven, my daughter's fears were getting mauled by a tiger, injured a car crash and being a victim of rape. We talked a lot over the years about sex, sexuality and patriarchy, music lyrics and power, media, shame and the law, discretion, integrity and the whispered fragility of boys. At sixteen, I rocked her as she wept. Her slender shoulders were violent from crying. One of her friends had been raped. Months ago, but was only beginning to share. Months ago, when she started losing weight, stopped hanging out before pre-calc, and kept exhaustion shadowed beneath her makeup contours. We sat crouched on the stairs leading up to my room. She'd called out my name from the dark hall. Her voice, normally expectant and full, had been small and reaching. I peeled away from my husband to find her on the landing, shaking. My daughter felt helpless and hurt that her friend had gone through so much all alone. That she didn't know. Couldn't have known. That it was so unfair....

Dear Deborah Brown Community School ~ It is quite a feat for a small charter to make national news. It is perversely disappointing, however, to read that a charter school led by two black women is systematically persecuting students of color for celebrating the natural textures of their hair. As an educator, I understand and value the impact of comportment. Indeed, many ills of the contemporary school environment can be aggravated by lax guidelines on conduct and appearance. Nonetheless, your policies against natural hairstyles levels a much more serious attack against your students. Rather than teaching them how to be “presentable,” your policy forces the concept of “acceptable” at a disastrously early age. Yes, the school should vigorously mandate “neat,” “modest” and “respectable.” These are essential expectations. Denying the option of neatly, modestly and respectfully showcasing the heritage of their hair, however, reinforces a wickedly...

Kraken the whip

It. has been. a YEAR since I've sat down to write. From this side of my pen, that is. Writing projects, yes. Scripts for one-woman shows. A children's book. A 11-minute poem that I performed with the Milwaukee Ballet. Nothing to boo hoo about, at all. Except these words weren't, necessarily, for me. I might have etched five poems, but I would have stirred them in a workshop I was leading or supporting. Not sure if that counts as writing for myself. When I started counting on my fingers, my eyes tracking absently across the ceiling, the math was incomprehensible. I thought of friends I'd giggled with about their comparable sex dry spells. A year, girl? A whole year, like twelve months, back to back, f'real? My bad, y'all. In this past year, my best words were tiles for funding mosaics, grants and proposals, strategic plans, contract agreements and curricula, social media posts, text messages -sometimes a panel's worth, and eight trillion emails. ...

...and then...

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