This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America(38)

Her name was Irie Thomas, and she was an older cousin of one of my former best friends. Six years my senior, she had grown up with her grandmother in an apartment that my real estate agent mother had sold to them. Like many teenagers, she was rebellious, and I never had much to say to her when I was young, partially because I was afraid of her. Her most striking trait was her eyes: intense, dark brown, able to focus without blinking.

By the time I was applying for college, she’d had a child and was starting to frequent my Pentecostal church, initially sitting in the farthest pew and only socializing with a very few people. But her eyes were friendlier, with a more consistent smile balanced between them. She was glad to see me and I her. She wanted to know if I had talked to Ruby lately, and I wanted to know how she was able to squeeze a healthy baby out of her petite body. We exchanged numbers and began to talk regularly.

Despite being a student at one of the worst high schools in South Jersey, I was confident about my college chances. I was in the top 5 percent of my class, I had taken several advanced placement courses, and I had received a competitive score on the SATs. I was extremely private about where I was applying, even with my parents. I had it all planned out. On April 1, I would get my acceptance to an Ivy League school—or to a couple—and drive down to my father’s house with a cake in the passenger seat, iced with the names of the schools where I had been accepted. I wouldn’t even call him. I’d just surprise him, and then afterwards he, my mother, and I would all get dinner and then stroll along the Atlantic City boardwalk in a celebration of my new life’s trajectory. But it did not happen that way. Emerson College: Accepted. Duh, of course. That was my backup school. University of Miami: Accepted, with an academic scholarship. Duh, of course. That was my other backup school. New York University: Rejected. Wait, what? It wasn’t exactly a backup, but then not necessarily a reach. It’s okay. I didn’t want to be in a place with no campus, anyway. Yale: Rejected. Okay, I guess. I loved the campus, but there are still more. Columbia: Rejected. Columbia, too? I . . . Okay. Okay, I guess. Harvard: Waitlist. No. If you are just going to reject me, reject me. By the time Princeton let me know I was on the waitlist, I was completely gutted and in a catatonic state. Tears fell from my eyes, but I could not feel them rolling down my cheeks. My sadness paralyzed me. My mother tried encouraging me, and then she pulled out the phone cord from the jack so I wouldn’t get calls that I didn’t want to answer. She had all sorts of suggestions about how I could run away from the disappointment of this day. My father eventually called her cell phone, wondering why he could not reach the house, and my mother told him what was going on. He wanted to speak to me, but I refused. I could hardly speak to anyone. It’s not that Emerson and Miami weren’t good schools—they were great schools. I could’ve studied writing with the best teachers at Emerson. The University of Miami gave me a merit scholarship, which was going to alleviate the financial burden since my then-sick stepfather, our family’s breadwinner, had stopped working and my mother was his caretaker. But I just thought for sure that I’d get into at least one Ivy League school.

The following week, I discovered that a fellow classmate and friend had been accepted to Harvard, his dream school. Our beloved English teacher, Mrs. C, threw him a party after school at which I mostly remained silent while picking at my pretzels and cheese puffs. My friends understood how sad I was. One of them told me to be patient, that it wasn’t technically over, but that year Harvard had over 700 names on the waitlist; Princeton, 1,400. I had been sending letters with updates of my accomplishments to the Harvard admissions team; Princeton did not even encourage this kind of follow-up, so I painfully stayed silent. There was no way that I would get into either of them unless a miracle happened.



Once Irie heard the news, we began to speak every night, and she would listen to me talking (or, more accurately, blubbering through my tears). Her concluding prayers were always long and intricate, and as she prayed I could feel my chest expanding, my breathing becoming less labored. She prayed for peace, discernment, strength, and, above all, God’s will to be done. I hated the last part. What if God didn’t want what I wanted? But towards the end of a month of consistent prayer and communion, while deep under my covers one night, I prayed for strength, and for God’s will to be done. The words poured out of me like water. I surrendered because I discovered that I had no other choice. That was when He met me where I was.

Soon afterwards, Irie called me up and said, “You are going to hear something on Wednesday at noon. Do you receive it?”

In disbelief, I answered, “What do you mean?”

She repeated her question again, this time with more urgency. I agreed, and then she hung up.

I grew up recognizing the power of women in my church. Pentecostalism is a “charismatic renewal” movement within Christianity that emphasizes a direct and personal relationship with God, and although men might have occupied more positions as preachers and reverends, women’s spiritual talents were more evident. For years, I had watched women prophesy to other women, men, the homeless, and drug addicts after peering down at them from the pulpit. I had seen women place their hands on people’s heads and watched those people, who were sometimes two or three times the size of those women, fall on the ground, speaking in tongues—a sacred language that is believed to be only comprehended by God—and waving their hands around before an usher covered them with a white cloth. Men, women, children, and infants would clamor to reach the front of the church, many crying, many shaking, a few falling over, all with their eyes closed. Speakers would also move in and out of the crowd, pinpoint someone, move towards that person, and prophesy to him or her. We called these women who had the gift of healing and prophesy, whether through touch, prayer, or anointing olive oil before giving it to someone in need, “prayer warriors.” Sometimes prayer warriors would form circles with other women whenever they needed God to make a move in a given situation. Other times, they would claim vivid dreams that foretold the future.