Freeing the Beautiful Black Woman

The letter was in a red envelope leaning against the China vase on the white table next to the staircase, too bright for her to ignore its presence or briefly wonder what it was about and who it was from. She mentally went through a list of her friends who could actually sit down to write a letter instead of phoning or badging into her home and came up with a few names. With a thousand thoughts whirling in her head, Tamisa briefly forgot about the letter and instead looked right through it debating whether a shower or just slouching on the sofa in the lounge would be the perfect ending to the dreadful day she had just had. The more she thought about going to work the next day, the more appealing the prospect of drinking herself to oblivion seemed. No matter how she looked at it, the measly figure they paid her was simply not enough for the workload she had or the stress they put her through. She didn’t think that she could endure her boss ‘subtle sexist remarks or the way he always got inappropriately too close whenever he was talking to her for another year.  It was about time she opened her own firm instead of keeping it safe in the 9 to 5 loop. Drumming her fingers on her briefcase in thought, she was considering a brandy then she remembered something and snorted. If she didn’t suspect that she was pregnant, a stiff drink would be exactly what she needed. On the floor above where she was, she correctly guessed that Sean was playing tag again with Tamuka, their 4-year-old son. She rubbed a hand across her forehead, there was no way that she was going to slip into the bedroom unnoticed and she wasn’t sure she was ready to smile at anyone as yet. Might as well drink cold water since alcohol if off the table she thought grabbing the envelope and heading to the kitchen. She turned it over to see who it was from and stopped in her tracks. Grandma Louise! She had feasted on the letters that her grandma had left for her in the box, so where was this one coming from? She quickly changed her direction deciding to sit in the lounge after all. As soon as she sat down, she pried the envelope open and started reading:

To my granddaughter Tamisa,

I can write you words of love and poems from the time in which I loved with a burning fire but love isn’t everything that I was and if I don’t show you the other parts of me, you will never know your history. Without that, the world can be an unbearable place and changing it without knowing the root will be futile. I’ll tell you of a time when I was just Louise, a woman with a lot of fears but cursed with thoughts and wisdom way beyond my years. A time before I became the grandma who made cookies and knitted scarves but this is more than just my story or the way I saw the world, it’s about Womanhood and the movements surrounding it.

I have always thought that there was beauty in the way the sun shines. The way its rays illuminate the whole earth, flowers bloom in its wake, the sweet smell of rain on dry clay and when photons collide with other elements of nature, a rainbow appears. A beautiful array of colors that serves as a symbol of hope…hope for a better future, something I’m desperately clinging onto because without it, I’m just like a dim star in the expansive universe that sees only what it wants to see. The sun is a beautiful thing but it overshadows me. I’m always present in its light, forever perched up in the blue sky but I am only seen in the night time when most of humanity sleeps. To the Earth, the sun is a generous and selfless giver but it burns Mercury mercilessly and from Neptune, the cast away, it withholds its warmth. Society is the sun in my life drifting from intense heat to the biting cold of indifference. I’m neither Mercury nor Neptune, I’m simply a star that gets to experience the different treatments the sun measures out. There are no constants in my life except fear and the constant weighing of expectations on my shoulders, this is what my youth and part of my adulthood has been like.

 On the outside, I’m a glowing star that men enamored by daughters of Eve spend hours writing about, wishing they could pluck me out of the night sky to hand over to their beloved but never taking a moment to consider whatever it is that I desire for myself. A beautiful woman was born to be loved but when beauty is something that the beholder thinks they deserve even at the expense of the one who has it, then the woman ceases to be human and becomes a mere object of adoration whose feelings can be ignored at will. I am the beautiful and black woman that they have objectified. In subtle ways, they force my descendants and I to live up to an impossible standards of ideality. They cover their perverted desires with humor, passing on snide remarks as if it’s a joke and use technology to create images of women that do not exist in the real world, then measure my worth relative to that image. I am mocked for not having a certain body shape and my sisters are abused for having it. My African hair is too kinky so they spend billions to make it straight and ‘socially acceptable’… I watch as my sisters bleach their skin in a quest to be what society thinks is attractive and fight over male attention like we’re primitive and our very life depends on it when it doesn’t. Pimples are nothing to be ashamed of but I’m forced to mask it all under layers and layers of chemicals. They do it secretly…just like the sun that shines so brightly blocking out the stars, my voice is silenced in the background. Only the night time knows the sound of my tears dropping onto my pillow because I am never good enough…. whatever I do to fit in is just quite never enough. Who can please a society that frequently changes its mind at whim? Society that worships the mere glimpse of perfection and when my light shines through, they marvel at the beauty but never care to look into the dark and lifeless core.

Because I am merely an object of beauty, their hands can grab whatever piece of me that they want. When their hands cannot touch, they ogle and undress me with their minds. A young boy creeps into my room like a thief in the night to fondle me as I sleep and I quiver in fear. It’s not fear for what he is capable of; it is fear for the society that not only harbors criminals but now breeds them. Not only do they breed them, they protect them. Whatever I say, they’ll say it’s my twisted imagination that is in overdrive and feign pity when the crime becomes too great to ignore…when my innocence and womanhood is violated by a child will they finally act but even being a victim is a crime on its own. This child did not learn sexual perversion; he was born into it… born into a world of sexist memes and phonographic material, he is indoctrinated and simply acts out of his belief that women were made for the pleasure and convenience of a man so he feels no shame in objectifying them…

 This is the society that our children will grow up in.

Someone’s son is going to be that monster preying on your little daughter.

It’s oppression for both sexes as it destroys what makes us human.

Like rays of the sun lighting up the whole earth at sunrise, the plague of injustice spreads and tears down all barriers. The monster that we allowed to devour our young girls and boys creates monsters out of them precipitating the collapse of future generations. Because we yearned to pluck the stars, we failed to chase away the darkness. In the years prior to the Women’ suffrage, I was but a young woman in a world where women had been raised to embrace the objectification by men and beauty was a tool they used to gain some form of life. Some wasted away in the brothels under sexual slavery in which they were made to do deplorable things to keep the fickle attentions of men while drilling a hole in his wallet. Others were adorned by the garment of respectability: Marriage. Without that or without children, you were simply not woman enough to fit in with the rest.

If the chains around one’s ankle aren’t visible to the naked eye, how do you free them? If one’s race is the crime and their gender is plagued with injustice then freedom from slavery of the black race was only half the battle, the black woman was not given freedom, she had to fight for it. She is still fighting for it. I leave these words to you, Tamisa because there’s a world of femininity that your brother will never understand. He will never be plagued by fear the way you will be. Your grandfather was a man of many sorrows but he burrowed through manhood with a determination to be a better and happier man, husband and father. There was never day I doubted his love or his ability to provide and protect me in spite of my stubborn insistence that it wasn’t necessary. It is not easy to be committed and adore a woman riddled by a great ambition, if marriage is something you desire, I pray you find a man like your grandfather. One who holds your hand no matter what, lets you in when he is struggling and stands by you even when he doesn’t understand what you are going through.

 I say this so that when the thorns of womanhood graze your heart, you do not diminish the struggles of manhood. Our pains are different but it is still pain. However, men won’t always understand it because they don’t live that reality of constant fear and we can’t hold that against them unless they cause our plight intentionally. Fearing to be out in the dark after sunset…not boarding a taxi because it is full of men, being wary of any hand that lingers and having your opinion dismissed merely because of your gender. You would think when you’re older, it gets better but no, now I worry about my children ad my grandchildren because I know the cruelty that exists in the world. The curse of living your entire life knowing it will happen but just not knowing when the assault will come. It could be on a beautiful, sunny day in which your co-walker just forces himself on you or inside your own home. Or they could destroy your spirit without even laying hands on you, simply using their words. The same mouth that used to utter flowery words and the hands that caressed now mar your face. Can they ever understand the pain of being empowered but not given the freedom to fully utilize that power? Working twice as hard to maintain a leadership position because your femininity is seen as a weakness and having to always assert your power in the corporate world?

The world is not your oyster Tamisa, if you don’t fight for your freedom, it will never be yours. Some people were blessed with the utter lack of ambition, wanting nothing out of life except to be happy with whatever the status quo may be, with others, it is but a desire for simplicity in which a man by their side and children in their arms are enough but you are neither of the two. Unlike your mother, you were cursed with a thirst for more…a burning ambition that you cannot store away to live a mediocre life. Ambition truly comes with a price that has to be paid in full but when you bring it all to fruition, that curse is a blessing. Without that burning desire to persist to the end, history would have never birthed women like Ida B Wells and Anna Julia Cooper. African history would have never known Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt, Mbuya Nehanda, Zimbabwean leader in the Chimurenga war, Yaa Asantewaa the Ghanaian Warrior Queen who led an army against the Britain’s attempt to dominate the Ashanti confederacy, Queen Nanny of Windward Maroons of Jamaica and Kenyan environmentalist, women’s rights activist and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai who founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. Without the actions of these women and many more, participating in politics, science and even being treated as one capable of having a mentally stimulating conversation in a male company would be a far-fetched dream but here we are. Someone dared to dream of a life beyond the household…dreamt of freedom for her daughters and dared to give her sons the opportunity to see the woman as more than just a breeding machine but a capable companion he could fully rely on. Dare to dream Tamisa.

Never apologize for challenging a status quo that suppresses the people, that fear that plagues women should move you to act. Bravery is exhibited by those who have fear but do something to create a safe environment in which fear cannot survive. The life you live now will be a part of history so you cannot be reckless with it, you are part of the movement to women’s emancipation. Historic movements did not end years ago; we’re still moving along on the path to true freedom. A world in which women no longer have to wrestle the system to get the rights and opportunities all humans are entitled to.

Lastly, you will meet people who will question the way you live your life. Others will abandon, badmouth or feel intimidated because of your beliefs. In trying to stop you, they will insinuate that the gender equality movement is a battle of the sexes but I believe that I taught you better than that. You were born a woman, there is so much beauty and nobility in your femininity. The movement is not seeking to be a man, it’s to get freedom to be yourself, to be human, without gender stereotyping or race being the barrier to your happiness.  An environment where you can raise your sons and daughters with love. Society will have written out the whole story of your life before you even live it so embracing change or any deviation from the norm will not be easy but change is inevitable. The journey is hard but to escape being shadowed by the sun, to choose to be something other than a star that shines only at night and be a beautiful black woman who no one can simply have because they desire her, then do something about it. Only when you start living life with honesty and courage will you find happiness. That happiness will spread to everyone around you and your family, should you decide to have one will share in that happiness.

 Love,

Grandma Louise.

Tamisa folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. It had given her so much to think about and so much to be grateful for. The future was still hazy but she knew exactly what she was going to do. She smiled as she listened to the giggles of Sean and Tamuka on the stairs. I have a lot to be grateful for indeed. Now standing under the arc separating the hallway from the lounge, she watched as Sean swung their son onto his shoulders and felt content. Knowing she could come home to every day, a safe haven in a world full of ups and downs. A place where she could lay down her armor and simply give love and be loved. Sean turned and winked at her when he caught sight of her stopping her train of thought. God had answered Grandma Louise’s prayer in more ways than one, when He had rained down His blessings on her, He’d remembered a prayer she never knew about and sent her these two noisy males she wouldn’t give up for anything else. And another that she suspected was being formed in her belly that very moment.

“Mommy! Dad and I played tag today…”

She did not even hear the rest of the tirade of words pouring out of Tamuka’s mouth because she ran over to them and kissed her son’s cheeks. Sean looked at her with a quizzical expression that said what’s going on? There was nothing he wouldn’t do for this woman, he still felt for her as he had the day he’d decided this was the face that he wanted to wake up to every morning.

“What about my kiss?” he teased and watched as she moved to a step lower and kissed him. Someone’s in a good mood he thought to himself.

“Me too…I want another one mommy!” shouted Tamuka and the couple broke off their kiss and started laughing while the clueless child scratched his head in deep thought. Life was never going to be the same.