Around the Way Girl Page 3

  Building that backstory for Cookie helped me really see her. It helped me see me, too. Soon enough, I was tossing a middle finger to the notion that playing Cookie would take me right back to that place in my career when casting directors were telling me no because I was too “edgy.” Bitch, please, check your résumé, I finally said to myself. Literally, you’ve done it all except put on a cape, get on a wire, and fly. You got this.

  And I do. I’m not saying I’m invincible. I don’t walk around completely fearlessly. Skiing, for example, looks amazing, but I have no intention of climbing into a ski suit, pulling goggles over my eyes, and flinging my body off the side of a mountain. That’s a fear I’m not interested in overcoming. Same thing with skydiving: I will not be jumping out of anyone’s airplane and flying headfirst at 120 miles per hour toward the ground with nothing more than a piece of fabric to keep me from crashing into the hard concrete. I’m scared of rodents. And snakes. Don’t care for spiders too much, either.

  But when it comes to something that stokes my passion, and to things that mean something to me, I tend not to lean on fear. Like my daddy said: fear is a liar. I make a point of calling its bluff.

  2

  Authentic

  I had a mass of thick, tight, kinky curls growing out of my head, and just the thought of my mother pulling that huge, black comb with the wide teeth through my tender tendrils would make me tear up. I couldn’t stand hair day. Sundays would roll around and my mother would assemble her tools, her comb, shampoo, towel, the blow dryer, and that big jar of Afro Sheen hair grease, and I would take off running and screaming as if Freddy Krueger’s razor fingers were coming for my scalp. Every week, it felt as if a serial killer were pushing me down on a plump pile of pillows atop a set of thick, yellow pages phone books, using her knees like a vise to hold me still while she spent hours shanking my head.

  “Shut up all that noise, Taraji,” my mother would snap as I shrunk and shrieked under the sharp edge of the comb’s tooth, which she used to part my hair into tiny sections that, over the course of hours, she would braid into a mass of fantastic cornrow creations. Sniffling, I’d wipe the tears streaking down my cheeks and just sit there, praying to sweet baby Jesus in the manger, Jehovah, Buddha, Big Bird, and any other deity I thought could hear my cry to give me the strength to make it through.

  Still, I’d always manage, as I choked back my tears, to give some kind of direction on how I wanted my hair styled. As early as the first grade, I commanded some agency over my crown and glory, even if it hurt like hell. “Mommy,” I’d whimper, “can you make the braids swoop up and to the side so I can wear them in a ponytail with the dark blue beads?” Mommy would oblige the request, no doubt in part to quiet me down, but also because she was intent on extending to me the autonomy I craved.

  I was the quirky kid—the one who always had that little extra flair about her. I wanted my hair to be styled a little differently from the rest, my clothes from a store off the beaten path, my shoes a little shinier than the Buster Browns everyone else was rocking—part of my eagerness, early on, to stand out from my peers and be my own, unique, individual person. I’m grateful my mother recognized this early on and agreed to entertain that particular desire of mine—no doubt in part because as a single mother, she really didn’t have the time or the inclination to fuss over which way I wore my hair or how many prints and patterns I wore all at one time, though she insisted I be neat, presentable, and respectable. “You’re not gonna be out here embarrassing me,” she always vowed as she smoothed out the wrinkles on my outfits, or chastised me for forgetting to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” when addressed by grown-ups. What’s more, she encouraged my unique style sense and, occasionally, even helped along my peculiar fashion sensibilities. This was true even when I needed new clothes, which we sometimes couldn’t afford to buy. It was nothing for my mother, an amateur seamstress who always went to work with her clothes starched to perfection, to whip up a new outfit for me and let me style it in an interesting, fresh way. Countless times, she’d take me by the hand and lead me to the huge file cabinets in our local department store, where there was a treasure of sewing patterns waiting to be mined. I remember one pattern in particular practically calling my first, middle, and last names from that metal drawer.

  “What about this one!” I exclaimed, shoving a small envelope with a picture of the outfit I desired into her hand. It was glorious: a three-piece suit featuring a vest with boxy shoulders and pants with decidedly less flare in the hem than what everyone was wearing, plus a matching skirt that skimmed the knee. It looked nothing like the long, lacey, patchwork dresses I saw girls my age wearing, or the painfully corny pullover sweaters and matching pants that were in style back then—the ones that had pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh and all the other popular cartoon characters of the day splayed across the most putrid colors one could conjure up for children’s wear. No, this pattern that I’d picked was a standout among standouts—a veritable star that I needed to shine brightly in both my closet and in my fourth-grade class.

  “You like that?” my mom asked, taking the envelope into her own hand and holding it up to the light. She nodded her approval. “It is pretty. I have some fabric at the house that’s just right for this.” She checked the price and, upon determining the pattern met both her budget and approval, marched it to the register, with me skipping behind her, a big, cheesy grin spread across my face as I plotted when I would show off the outfit at school.

  It took my mother only about a week to pull together the three pieces with the material she had tucked in her sewing kit: a bundle of maroon, pink, and white plaid jersey knit that she’d found on sale and tucked away months earlier. Every night after work, she would arrive home from her job, prepare dinner, check over my homework, and then hunch her body over the sewing machine. The whir of the needle clicking against the metal of the Singer made her fingers vibrate as she gently guided the material; I’d lie on the floor on my belly, my hands cupping my face, fascinated by the slow, easy dance she did as her foot pushed down on the pedal and she leaned in to the fabric.

  Finally, one Monday, my outfit was ready for its school debut. My cornrows were laid, the beads in them clacking. Mommy could throw down on that sewing machine, please believe that; my ensemble fit perfectly, and I couldn’t wait to show off her work. I looked good.

  My mother was in the kitchen, fixing me one of her signature egg sandwiches for breakfast when I rounded the corner out of my room and headed her way. She caught sight of me strutting and beaming out of the corner of her eye, and then turned her full body around to greet me with her warm hug. Her eyebrows, furrowed, betrayed her uneasiness with my style choice. “Taraji, baby, why you got on the vest, the pants, and the skirt?”

  Ignoring the concerned look on her face, I twirled around with my arms swinging behind me, proud. “Isn’t it perfect?” I asked, giggling.

  My mother gave herself a verbal pat on the back: “I did sew it up nice,” she said. “But I didn’t mean for you to wear it all at the same time, baby.”

  She didn’t stop me from going to school like that, though. I wanted to wear every piece at the same damn time, and my mother, ever the encourager, took me by the hand and walked me into my fourth-grade class, kissed me good-bye, and let me swag exactly like I wanted, sending a clear, powerful message that if I liked it, she loved it. I think she dug that her little girl had her own sense of style—that the way I assembled my outfits and fashioned my hair was the easiest and purest expression of my own voice.

  • • •

  Being your own self—having a voice—was critical in the hood. I came of age at the dawn of the crack epidemic, when a cocktail of societal ills—high crime rates, poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic joblessness, pick your poison—left countless Washington, DC, folks in peril, living on the margins in some of the most vulnerable and dangerous neighborhoods in America. Fighting your way through the pain of that, gasping for air when you’re buried t
o the top of your head in lack with no sign of surplus, can leave you feeling some kind of way. Sometimes helpless. A lot of times hopeless. Like no one gives a good hot damn whether you suffocate to death or you breathe again. Still, even and especially when you feel helpless, it’s your ability to be seen and heard that gives you power where you feel like you have none. Even in the darkest places, you exist. Walk through any street in the hood and you’ll see what I’m talking about: boys trotting down the sidewalks, their pants sagging defiantly low and their beards and their attitudes thicker and thornier than a rosebush in full bloom; girls with a mass of hot-pink, sea-blue, and fire-engine-red streaks in their hair, nails long, sculpted, and covered in colorful, intricate designs waving animatedly in the air as they get lost in chatter about the day’s happenings. Everything about those kids screams, “I’m here, I’m feeling myself, and you’re going to feel me, too.” The respect for that in-your-face style is grudging—it’s sometimes even dismissed as tacky. But really, that one black kid doing that weird thing with his pants or his hair is the very definition of trendsetting; the mainstream’s first reaction to it is “What in the hell are you wearing?” Years later, it’s cool as hell on a Kardashian. Where I come from, we don’t need to wait for that validation. As a community, we prize creativity, even and especially if the world we live in isn’t quick to reward it. In the hood, having a voice, then, is freedom.

  It’s also a black thing. Let’s keep it real: collectively, we can be a loud, rowdy bunch, particularly and especially among ourselves. I know, this is a stereotype unfairly but typically saddled on the backs of black people; being loud talkers, laughers, and jokesters, dressing flamboyantly and saying exactly what’s on your mind when it crosses your mind isn’t the sole province of people with brown skin, and race doesn’t dictate volume. I’ve seen my fair share of white, Latino, and Asian folk get loud, too. But get yourself around some black folk when our guard is down and we’re around people we care about and our love is filling the space: all bets are off. We can be some loud-ass people.

  This was certainly true of my family. We were—and remain to this day—a close-knit crew of trash-talkers: lovers of the put-down, quick with the verbal jab rooted in honesty, love, and a heap of foolery. Whether it was a backyard barbecue at my aunt’s house out in the suburbs, or my grandmother’s kitchen on the eve of a big Thanksgiving family dinner, or the living room couch in the two-bedroom apartment my mother and I shared, my cousins, aunties, grandmothers, parents, and most everyone else who shared our DNA and our space would have all those within earshot in stitches.

  I lived for the annual family summer vacation in Ocean City precisely for this reason. Every year, my father’s parents would rent a house in this resort town on the Maryland coast, pile my cousins and me in the back of their ride, and lead the caravan of cars filled with family headed for a week on the beach. Deep into the night, stomachs full with crab cakes and, for the grown-ups, a cocktail or two, there would be fist-bumping and yelling and lots of handclapping to the beat of every syllable in every word uttered, plenty of full-on belly laughs, and furious head nodding, too. From moment to moment, the adults could be alternately arguing and laughing about the efficacy of welfare, the beauty of The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” who could get off the coldest put-down in a game of The Dozens, and who always underbid in a raucous game of Spades. No matter the topic, no matter how heated the conversation got, we’d all end the night spent but richer for the experience—happy, with just enough salve to keep our souls right for whatever was to come when we got back home.

  Of course, sour language was mixed in; it accentuated the emotion of whatever was being expressed. Like anger (“that bitch had the nerve to look at me like I was in the wrong”), surprise (“what the fuck?”), frustration (“that shit got on my last nerve”), and joy (“you hear how she sang that muthafuckin’ note?”). Sometimes, these words just made the joke sound better, or elevated the social commentary. Of course, we kids weren’t allowed to say those words, but no one thought twice about saying them in front of us. And I learned from example in which social settings it was okay to curse: in front of family and friends, it was cool, but if mixed company was involved, or if we were in a business setting, offensive language mostly got tucked away.

  The one who made himself an exception to that rule? My dad. He was particularly fond of the word “nigga.” He called everybody that word. It was his thing—a term of endearment for those he loved and liked, an exclamation point for the ignorant people who tap-danced on his last good nerve, a pronoun that perfectly described pretty much anybody who crossed his path. I was “lil’ nigga.” His siblings, my mother, my teachers—all niggas. He even called an old white lady “nigga” to her face when she tried to cut him at the grocery store register. “Nigga, you see us standing here on this line, right?” Dad was the king of “no filter,” and everybody just rolled with it.

  Well, most everybody. I was about age twelve when I learned some serious and much-needed social cues about how my father expressed himself in public settings and the appropriateness of it all. This was around the time that my father, on the mend from being out of work as a metal fabricator, ended up cleaning toilets at the football stadium—the only job he could find. He didn’t apologize for that or make excuses; he just took himself to work, collected his check, saved up for a new place so he could move out of his green van, and made the best of his situation, turning all the ugliness that came with his homelessness into something beautiful just for me. My best memories from Dad’s job at the stadium were when he’d get tickets and take me to the games. One game I particularly remember. It was the Cowboys versus the Redskins, the ultimate rivalry. I had on a snowsuit because it was the dead of winter, and I was carrying a sign my dad made for me that he encouraged me to wave to cheer on our beloved home team. I see now how inappropriate it was, a cowboy hat resting on cowboy boots, minus the body that was supposed to be wearing them, and emblazoned on the poster board were these words: THE REDSKINS ARE GOING TO KICK THE SHIT OUT OF THE COWBOYS! I thought our sign was so funny, and it was especially cool that my dad let me march all around the stadium holding it high above my head. I didn’t realize it was inappropriate until a fellow fan, some older lady with a prune face and a sour demeanor, turned eight shades of red and literally sucked in her breath loud enough for two stadium rows to hear it above the din of the cheering crowd. “Oh my goodness!” she gasped.

  For a brief moment, I lowered that crazy sign, thinking, man, maybe it isn’t cool for a twelve-year-old to be carrying a sign with expletives on it. But one look at my dad and I stood firm in my truth: the shit was funny. I waved it like a flag for the rest of the game.

  Sometimes, though, my father’s candor didn’t always feel good or right. My dad had a special knack for digging in the softest spots, and when he did, his tongue left marks. I still wince when I think about that one time when he chastised me in public for having dirty hair. By then, I had wrested full control over my hair styling; my mother put a relaxer in it fairly early on to help ease the detangling process (less pain for me, less work for her), but then handed the job over to me completely when I was about ten years old and fully capable of coaxing my hair into the popular hairstyles of the day. I was washing, blow drying, and pulling my mane into ponytails, yes, but also the little girl version of the Farrah Fawcett, the mushroom, the asymmetrical bobs à la Salt-n-Pepa (you name it, I did it). Eventually I got so nice with the curling irons that I graduated to styling my friends’ hair, too—a skill that I would later put to work while in college to make some serious cash doing the ’dos of my fellow classmates who couldn’t afford to hit up the professional salon but still wanted their hair styled.

  Back when I was doing my own hair in elementary school, I discovered fairly quickly what every black girl knows to be true: the more time between the times I shampooed it, the better the curl would hold. Thick, kinky hair, even in its relaxed state, thrives on the oily buildup that comes
when it’s not wet, and my hair was no exception, so I’d go two weeks sometimes without washing it. Most times, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But when it was hot and that Washington, DC, humidity got hold to my head, I did tend to sweat, which would make unwashed hair, full of styling gel, grease, and a bunch of other products, smell a little ripe. A stinky head was not what you wanted around my dad, he of no filters, he who didn’t give a damn about hurt feelings. We were on a hot, crowded city bus one day, headed for my school, when my father, who rode with me that day as a treat, humiliated me for having hair that, while curled to perfection, was ripe from having gone almost three weeks without seeing water and shampoo. I was snuggled in his armpit, enjoying the feel of his strong arm around my shoulder, when, his face scrunched, my father sniffed my scalp, put me in a chokehold, and let it whirl: “Why does your scalp smell like goat ass?”

  Goat ass.

  You have to understand the devastation of having your daddy call you out on a crowded public bus, in the middle of Washington, DC, on a school route through the projects. We were sitting in the back, and my father’s voice, loud as if he had a megaphone in hand, filled every empty space between the laughter and noisy chatter among all the Billy Badasses riding to school with us. He said it so loud, I was sure even folks in the two, three cars ahead of the bus heard him. A hush fell over every tongue, all those bubble heads turned, wide eyes searching for the person behind the insult and especially for the target of said slight. I shrunk down as low as I could in that seat, but I couldn’t escape the judgment and ridicule from my peers. Everybody was laughing so hard, I was mortified. I tell you this, though: I learned never to go a week without washing my hair.