Watch Us Rise(50)

HAIR: NOUN

1. See assimilation.

See smoke from the hot comb crocheting the air, burning a sacred incense.

Your momma parting your hair, bringing iron to nap, “Hold your ear, baby,” she tells you.

So she can press Africa out.

When black girls ask, “Is it real?” Say yes.

When white girls ask, “Can I touch it?” Say no.

2. See natural. Reference Angela Davis, Dorothy Pitman Hughes.

Comb yours out. Twist yours like black licorice, like the lynching rope

used on your ancestors’ necks.

Let it hang

free.

HIPS: NOUN

1. Reference Lucille Clifton and every other big girl who knows how to work a Hula-Hoop.

See Beyoncé. Dance like her in the mirror.

Do not be afraid of all your powers.





2. You will not fit in


most places. Do not

bend, squeeze, contort yourself.

Be big, brown girl.

Big wide smile.

Big wild hair.

Big wondrous hips.

Brown girl, be.





For the past week I have been replaying my performance over and over. How nervous I felt before I did it, how when the audience clapped for me it sounded like a rainstorm moving through the room. How Isaac looked at me like he wanted my body, wanted me. The way Chelsea hugged me so tight afterward. We haven’t seen each other for the past few days. It’s Thanksgiving, and both of our families are serious about holidays. Mrs. Spencer doesn’t even like for Chelsea to use the phone to call friends when it’s family time. Mom agrees. “You see Chelsea just about every day. You can give your family one weekend,” she said to me this morning when I asked what time dinner would be done. Mom assumed I wanted to go over to Chelsea’s, but I was asking because Isaac wants to go to the movies. We don’t have school tomorrow—maybe she’ll let me out of the house then.

The whole brownstone smells like bread. Mom’s buttermilk biscuits are baking in the oven, the last thing she’s making before she calls us to the table. Every year she cooks a feast, and every year she says, “This is the last time I’m doing all this cooking. One of you needs to come in here and learn the recipes so I can retire.” But every time I ask her to teach me how to make stuffing or how to bake her perfect peach cobbler, she never has the time. I don’t think Mom will ever stop cooking. The kitchen is her favorite place in the house. When she cooks, she kicks us out, telling us, “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

But today, she’s at least letting me sit in the kitchen with her. Which feels like a privilege since she kicked Jason and Dad out because they kept asking to taste food as she was cooking. They are playing video games in the spare room upstairs that’s basically Jason’s game room. Mom doesn’t let me help though. I mean, she tries to let me help, but she can’t stop looking over me as I chop the onion. She took the knife out of my hand and said, “No, sweetheart, like this,” and pretty much cut the onion in the same exact way I was cutting, so I just finished and didn’t ask for anything else to do because I know cooking is Mom’s way of taking care of us.

She is standing at the oven, peeking in at her biscuits to see if they are browning when I say, “Mom, do you ever feel like Dad makes you cook, like he expects you to be the one to prepare all the meals?”

“Of course not,” she says. She opens the oven, letting the heat escape. Now that the biscuits are out and sitting on the cooling pad, the kitchen smells even more like fresh bread. “Your dad and I don’t make each other do anything. I like to cook, so I cook. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.” Mom spreads butter on top of the biscuits.

The doorbell rings, and she motions for me to get it. It’s Grandma Gray and Aunt Yolanda. They are always the first to arrive because Grandma does not like to be late, so she shows up about thirty minutes early to everything.

By the end of the day, our home has been visited by too many people to count. Mostly family, but a few members of our church stop by to check on Dad. One of his colleagues from the Schomburg Center comes by with a sweet potato pie from Make My Cake. “Couldn’t come empty handed,” he says. He’s the fifth person that’s come by today, bringing food with him but not staying to eat it. “I just wanted to say hello and see how you were doing,” the man says.

Mom takes the pie and goes into the kitchen, mumbling, “What am I going to do with all this food?” Then, even quieter and with more venom in her tongue, she says, “All these people visiting like this is a wake. He’s not dead yet.”





Chels, wake up,” Mia calls. I’ve been taking my sleeping-and downtime seriously, and since all the drama happening at school, I feel like I’ve just needed a break—from everything. “What are you doing in here?” Mia asks, pulling the covers away from me. “It’s Christmas Eve—we have stuff to do. And dinner tonight. Grandma’s already on her way. Get up!”

I slowly roll out of bed. “I don’t just celebrate Christmas, you know? And I call it a holiday gathering—because I appreciate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as well, to honor the Jewish and African American members of our community,” I say, smiling and proud of myself.

“What do you know about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, Chelsea?”