Splintered (VERY in process/progress)

Which side?

That’s what he asked, this man who had become by time and turn best-friend and someone much less and more than a lover. We were sitting in his living room, when gaze unwavering, he posed the question: Which side?

Railing against the injustice of the question, I argued, “Why black women always got to choose either/or? Why are we constantly demanded to split ourselves into pieces easy for you - all those yous - to digest?” As I raised my voice to add to my protest, he interrupted, repeating in staccato: Where would you stand?

It wasn’t the first time that we’d had this conversation and just like all those times before, he’d heard it very clearly in my voice: defeat. Indeed, before the words had fully come out my mouth, I knew my response sounded contrived, more like a diversion than argument.

As I tried to shore up my voice against raging inadequacies to protest again, eyebrows raised, head cocked to the side, he continued, “Jovonne, when the revolution comes – who are you gonna stand with: your black brothers or them?”

They were white women, and his question left no room for ambiguity: which part of you is more true, more important - being black or being a woman? More importantly, since we both know you will choose, can you really dare pretend that you’d choose them over me?

A me more-brave would have allowed her defense to be personal instead of just political: Why do you want me to choose between two essential parts of my self? That me would have asked: how can you dare profess love and demand with the very same tongue that I carve my self into pieces, without apology or remorse? A me less afraid would have responded, perhaps in hushed tones, but still with great resolve: Do I always got to be less than what I am for you to be okay? A me that was more woman than girl simply would not have responded at all.

But I’m not her... Instead stuck somewhere between loyalty and loneliness, with head bowed I slowly, wearily, raised my fist. Instead of feeling empowered and affirmed, with that gesture I felt defeated and so very alone. Just as he suspected, I chose - and I chose him.

Assured of my allegiance, rather his unchallenged domination, he walked back towards the kitchen stooping to pick up the bag of trash he’d put down when I’d begun, feebly, to plead my case. Before walking out the door, he turned back offering his only response – a raised eyebrow and ever so slight shake of his head. His silent message clear: Now, we both knew the answer: You want me, need me. Did we really have to go through all that?

As he turned and left, I remained for a long time, head bowed standing fist still raised, feeling very much in (my) place, still. The strong confident articulate woman I portray when I walk in the streets or travel the halls of Ivy institutions had, effectively, disappeared.

As he heads downstairs to the basement, the dragging bag and his footsteps combine to beat out a cadence to his song of triumph: You’re-mine … and-you-know-it.

* * *


I know that the right answer was not to respond. That solution is not to plea for a more just question, but yet, that is what I’ve done, consistently. And each time the shame and guilt will come as I perpetuate the very un-feminist position to which I object unwaveringly in public. So why do I succumb and submit (in its most powerless sense), here at home, with one who supposedly loves me?

In a dialogue with James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni once remarked, that hers was “a devastating state. I don’t like white people and I’m afraid of black men.” I’ve often wished my feelings were as definite. Perhaps If I simply disliked all white folk, my position would be easier. If I could, like some of the folk back home write them all off with one blue-eyed-devil stroke, I’d at least have a semblance of coherency. My condition has never been so tidy.

While remnants of my youthful militant black-nationalist inclinations linger, I learned long ago to separate my distaste for the actions, and inaction, of the “collective white person” from those with whom I break bread. In white women, in particular, I’ve witnessed the courage necessary not to readily accept the benefits of white privilege, to question and sometimes act to dismantle that which oppresses instead of merely paying lip service to its ills. Not only do I not dislike all of them, there are some who’ve come to inhabit that intimate and exclusive circle of people I care for - deeply. But it’s like this, I like some, have come to care for a few, I would even call some friends - but I’ve never loved a white woman. Certainly, I’d loved a few white girls in youth - but girls are not women and I am no longer a child. I have not given them ready access to my heart, nor fought for their lives. I haven’t sacrificed or cried or chosen or cussed out or been truly vulnerable with white women; they remain strangers.

Yet, in so many ways black men, my men, are equally foreign. Only, them I’ve loved. Woven through the fabric of my life, their presence colors and textures my experience, leaving me irreparably marked. And maybe we can only be loyal to that which we love. My explanation fails to satisfy.

* * *

That night, I dreamt the scene over again. The question echoes: When it comes to the revolution, revolution, revolution … who you gon’ choose?

Grandmothers and aunties, brown sister-friends and mentors of every shade – all of them had been waiting with baited breath for my response. I watch myself, standing alone, eyes squeezed shut as if that will drown out their response.
Again I stand head bowed and fist raised; I am silenced and cowardly even in my dreams. Only, this time as I am not alone. A chorus of exhales follow his retreating steps.

i feel daggers of my white fem compatriots boring holes in me, as they whisper – see, told you they couldn’t be trusted.

Aunties and grandmamas nod in approval, proud that I’d made, for once in my life, an acceptable choice: standing by and defending ‘my man’. None acknowledged, of course, that this man was not, and had never been, mine. And despite years of loving him in the matchboxes of space he reserved for our casual encounters and compromised confessions – he had no desire to be. No, their nods said simply: chile – that don’t matter, don’t matter none at all; neither, were ours. All that matters is he’s there – to have or borrow – for the moment. Satisfied, they turn away, contented with the hope that I’ve finally realized blood is thicker, my arms ain't enough and maybe there’s a little hope that I won’t always be alone. Besides, no matter how quiet it’s kept – lest you forget, you’re a nigger still.

Brown sister-friends, with slated expressions simply look at me. They too respond silently, with shoulders slumped, but not quite defeated, hoping someone else will lead the revolution.

I shudder more from the approval, than the cries of betrayal, feeling once again that I’ve compromised myself. As they leave I become transfixed at the pool of blood gathering round my feet – my clit severed in a single incision. Scalpel still hanging from my hand, my womanhood’s once again been laid upon the altar for sacrifice. I pray, to a god who cannot hear: how will I fix this? Knowing I’m complicit, I plead for a way to re-attach this latest splinter of an already too fragmented me.

* * *

My spirit is weary. I am tired of tiptoeing across icy threads desperately trying to keep the chunks of my dissolving identity in a semi-solid state. Yes, I’m a black woman who loves black men, but I’m also lower class, western, elite by virtue of education more American than I sometimes like, feminist, God-believing and teetering on genius bundle that keeps getting heavier and harder to hold. And being a woman sometimes sets me aflame because I really enjoy being coy, and flirting is fun and the eyes truly hold power and I get a kick out of how that guy almost fell of his seat on the metro following the curve of my calf. But being a woman that does nothing so much as leave (not to follow but lead), whose passions make quiet and silence impossible and who can never go back to girlhood, even if and when it’s demanded because it’s not a place I know - particularly when our theories on what makes you a man (and believe me I want nothing more than for you to be man) operate on different ideologies. Yet, all the while my feminist rivers flow deep, but they may be slowing cuz if her compatriots don’t get some evolution soon and start getting that it’s not now, nor has it ever been about women – but about fallacies of power and fears of love (power’s kryptonite) – then they too will return to the dust from which they came.

But… i’ve only just become a woman a breath ago and the skin has yet to fit well. And while i’ve been black and known it meant something since that little, freckled faced red-headed boy stuck out his tongue and called me nigger (and i’m glad you damn near drowned in the pool – fucker), black stopped being singular and simple when at nine i was told to stop acting white by some supposed experts on blackness, who really pissed me off for having the nerve to demand that i change when they really needed to get that they were the ones who’d been bamboozled (although i understand now that being smashed in tiny boxes labeled black by white hands, they really hadn’t gotten it and it wasn’t all their fault). Maybe separate ain’t so bad when it’s truly equal. And the meaning of the brown i am is daily cracked walking around Paris and London and Cambridge (US & UK), cuz these black folk just aren’t like me – no one smiles, or nods, or acknowledgments that yes, i, like they are really here and it’s going to be ok – except on those rare occasions when their tears fall too watching the hotel full of brown bodies sacrificed to francs and pounds and dollars with no regards for the sense that color is not correlated with the ability to feel or dream or love. But still - there’s no hey sis, or g’on girl, you sure make us proud or life really is a bitch, but i’ll still see you in the morning and so i stand in the ring fighting to hold the stitches of me together and i’m not just tired but angry, because he keeps asking those killing questions and then walks away comforted in that (unnecessary) confirmation that i’m his (don’t you already know that?) and i still feel the daggers, but can find no way to deny their justified whispers – I cannot be trusted. Still, I hope they will hear me as I sing - i’m still growing, be patient - and tell the others, “Wait. Don’t give up on her yet.”

You see, I am working on loving some white women. There is no guarantee of the outcome, but I know too much about loneliness to believe that I can afford to reject any real love. One day i will stand at the crossroads faced with the choice and hearing I will die if I don’t choose, I will halt knowing death is guaranteed even I do. And rather than sacrificing another piece of my self to a battle that will only breed more war, I will turn away, walking towards evolution.


JJB: 2005-2009