A hand on my knee

When he placed his hand firmly on my knee for the second time, after my skillful maneuvering to remove it only moments before, I had an inkling that things were not going to end well. The little boy that had been relegated to the flatbed portion of the truck despite plenty of room in the cabin was no longer a buffer and we…we were driving through the bush far off the clay-packed ruts that passed for a road. 

The driver stopped the truck, the suddenness of it jerking me forward in my seat, and told me he couldn’t take me the rest of the way. More angry than scared in that moment, with the thorny bushes poking through my skirt and the sun beating down on my head, I cursed him. I cursed him as I walked several kilometers to the school I was visiting nestled in the hill I’d been deposited on.

Earlier, when he had stopped to ask me if I needed a ride, he seemed vaguely familiar. He was someone from the expansive village that was to be my Peace Corps home for two years. That he recognized me immediately was no surprise, everyone knew me - not-quite-leghowa (white person/foreigner) but definitely not local- I was destined to be known and  to never know everyone. 

When he'd slowed down and pointed out the shops he owned in the village, smiled and acknowledged my host family, and then offered me a ride, I jumped at the chance to shorten my commute and get to know someone from my community better. The cutie in the front seat, staring in the curious way all of the children in the village stared at me, sealed the deal. 

Never mind in America I would never climb in a strange man’s car, small child present or not, in the village context it seemed reasonable. And so I tried to skootch the little one over only to hear him directed to the back of the truck. 

Now we were two. 

The story could have ended so much worse. Rather than walking through the bush with no trail to guide me and arriving late to the school, I could not have arrived at all. 

Rage welled up in me, not fear, although in the coming months the incident would feed my fear. 

Being female has always made me …aware. Wherever I am in the world I understand that there are certain vulnerabilities both real and perceived. I maneuver the world with this in mind; not necessarily at the forefront of my mind but definitely there.

In the early months of my time in South Africa, my vulnerabilities  almost drove me home. More than homesickness and limited resources (no electricity or running water) fear crept into my mind in tiny increments and then with blurring speed. 

Everything in South Africa was new to me. I was fascinated by the newness. Like a small child waving hello to everyone and everything, I wanted to experience my surroundings. Coupled with the fact that while I am a black woman, nothing about me announced me as anything but foreign. So I drew attention. Children stared, women asked if I was a missionary or a student (I always had a book with me), and men proposed. This was my reality on foot, on khumbis (minivan taxis), at the market,  at the local police station.

Even after the newness factor wore itself to normalcy for me, I was still an anomaly in the village, on local transpiration, wherever I went. Reading was often interrupted by questions. Where are you from? Why are you here? What religion are you? Are you married? People greeted me constantly- partly because greeting is a cultural norm and partly because everyone remembers the random leghowa in the village. Everyone remembers and so people were offended if I didn’t remember them form a khumbi ride 6 months ago in a different city. 

There were a lot of questions an comments bred from curiosity and then there was harassment.

Marriage proposals from complete strangers started off funny, I assumed they were excuses to speak to me. But sometimes they weren’t jokes and laughter or a “no thank you” inspired hostility and entitlement. My American-ness posed its own problems. The common assumption about American women is that we are promiscuous. Coupled with the absence of family, I was untethered. I was a sexual object outside the accepted cultural norms of behavior. 

The absence of tethering made it possible for the police at my local police station, to feel me up when I arrived to introduce myself as a safety measure- the irony was not lost on me. That interaction with the police prevented me from calling for help when a khumbi driver in Louis Trichardt felt me up, running his hands from my torso beside my breasts and down to my legs. Those things are what stopped me from doing anything but freezing up inside when a man I met at the Reed Dance Ceremony in Swaziland extended a handshake too long and circled his finger in my palm, refusing to release it, in a common if adolescent request for sex.

Getting banished from the truck in the middle of the bush happened before I experienced most of those other things; back when everything, including harassment, was still new to me. So it didn’t scare me, not the way it scared the teachers at my school I was going to visit. Of course they were scared for different reasons. They were fearful for the American in me. Fearful that I would lose my way or stumble and fall in the bush. Fearful that my delicate Western ways would falter under African conditions. No one mentioned a man’s hand on my knee and neither did I.

About six months into my life in South Africa, with almost two more years before me, I contemplated coming home. 

Sitting on the khumbi in Petersburg, waiting for it to fill and begin the journey back to my village, a man sat beside me and attempted to strike up conversation. I kept my head bowed, pretended to read, pretended to be deaf and unable to feel his hand tapping me lightly on the shoulder. Two hours later, on the last leg of my journey home I relaxed a little. And in relaxing, I realized that same man was on this khumbi. Realized he was someone from my village. Realized he had only been trying to say hello and I had treated him like a ghost – invisible and unwanted. 

Fear had driven me so far from myself, so far from the reason I travel. How could I experience a country if I couldn’t or wouldn’t experience the people? And of course, how do you experience people if you are too wrapped up in fear?

With time I figured out how to navigate my fear. Figured out how to tether myself to my host-family, how to use humor as deflection, how to weave myself into cultural norms instead of floating outside of them. I made friends. I asked questions. I trusted my gut. With time the fear receded into memories, but not the strongest memories of my time in South Africa. Not stronger than Hunadi giving me a bowl filled with homemade biltong when she learned I didn't have any meat at my house, or Naniki sliding through the fence to discuss books, or Mr. Mokopo making me dinner. Not more than my host-mother sticking her finger in my hand-whipped lemon meringue pie to assure me it wasn't cooked yet (it was), or Magajedi laughing at me as I stood on a chair crying about the rat she'd purposely trapped in the kitchen with us.

Fear, like that man’s hand on my knee, was pushed aside and I was left to chart my own path forward.

DailyPost prompt: Safety First

Overlapping

I am guilty of apologizing. I don’t mean the good kind, the kind that shows that I was wrong or inconsiderate to someone (although I try to be a good apologist where that is concerned), I mean the kneejerk additive to my language when I have an opinion or what I have to say might disappoint. I mean the kind that reflects some internal need to take up less space.

It is funny to think of brash and opinionated me as suffering from such a thing but I do. I’ve noticed it recently in emails, “I’m sorry, but you missed the deadline…”, “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t fit with the plan…”. I considered it a courtesy, a politeness in a world that often forgets its manners. 

But I’ve been reading articles lately that speak to the over-representation of apologetic language in women’s speech and how we are perceived because of it. 

Without fail, the response to this observation is that "women are just wired that way. Women are nurturing." If that is how women are wired then why would I try to stop "apologizing" since I'm wired to do so? Doesn't that mean I'm trying to  adopt maleness?                     

                                                                 

I don’t believe that to gain equality women should have to adopt the mannerisms that have been labeled as “manly” to be successful. Equally, I do not believe we should adopt the ones that women have been saddled with because…women. Unfortunately, sometimes these behaviors are snakes eating their tails. Do women apologize because we are told, in a million subtle and explicit ways, that women should be polite and likable or are we polite and likable because we are women? 

We are taught to be quiet, and “ladylike”, and considerate, we are told to be compliant and chaste. The idea of our maternal instincts is pushed to the forefront to guide/shame us into behaviors that we may not possess, or if we do, we may not want to exhibit. It can ingrain itself. A few months ago I found myself in a middle seat sandwiched between two men on a packed flight. Neither yielded the armrests and I found myself reluctant to push the issue. And yes, you can insert here my own agency and personal choice not to voice a complaint, but I’m not alone.

I suspect our generalized behavior (of course there are women who do not fall in this category) comes from social indoctrination. Part of the reason I suspect conditioning over genetics is that I find I have adopted parallel behavioral tics as a result of my blackness. Society has strict definitions. For women, the "appropriate" behaviors are those that people are convinced are the very foundation of femaleness, the opposite holds true for blackness. With blackness, the acceptability protocol is a stricter and narrower definition of whiteness. 

Wade in here with me for a moment.

I know how blackness is received in this country (if you need a primer check here, here, here, and here) and as a result I am always aware of my language and demeanor. I am aware of the space I inhabit and how others might feel about the space I inhabit. I have adopted a specific way of being in the world based on all of those things. Would I have been this me if those rules weren’t thrust at me from every direction – I’ll never know.

The messages directed at blackness are not the same as the ones telegraphed to women but they share similar threads. Threads of "acceptability". To be acceptably black my use of language, my clothing, my posture, my ability to swallow insults - subtle and not- about people who look like me, are essential. I can (and do) move away from aspects of what people's idea of "appropriate blackness" is, but there are consequences for doing so. 

There are labels.  For women..."Slut," "Easy," "Stuck up," "Bitch."

For black people..."Uppity," "Angry," "Ignorant," "Ghetto," 'Nigger."

There are actions. For women, you are catcalled, paid less, raped.

For black people, you are less likely to be hired, arrested, murdered. 

The restrictive space that society "allows" my blackness, my womaness, can be stifling. The rules are limiting of the true expression of who I am, who I strive to be, the parts of myself that can safely flourish. Who I am permitted to be based on my interwoven demographics, both black and woman, sometimes feels like a tiny space. Like every step I take, every expression, is a revolutionary action. And, I suppose, it is.

I won't miss the Cosby Show

I don’t listen to R Kelley. Even on the radio. It is my silent protest against a pedophile. Avoiding Michael Jackson is more difficult. He is an institution to most Americans and beyond reproach…at least people seem to think he is beyond reproach. Woody Allen is easier for me, I don’t like him and don’t have any inclination to watch his movies and I wouldn’t know Roman Polanski if he slapped me on the butt and called me sweetheart. 

All of those men have the horrible distinction of being accused (and widely believed), if not convicted, of being sexual abusers/rapists of some kind. And with their lack of convictions trailing behind them, and their “genius” pushed out in front of them, there has been an extended debate about whether their personal lives should detract from their artistic ones.

One of my oldest friends asked me about Bill Cosby today. My immediate answer was that he’s a rapist asshole and I followed that by acknowledging that we, societally, support rape culture. We are so busy fretting about Bill Cosby’s legacy and discussing the impact his greatness has had on comedy and television and black people…I wonder who the hell is worrying about the impact his raping has had on his victims.

While I don’t believe a person is only the worst thing that they have done, I am conflicted when the worst thing you have done leaves a string of traumatized victims in your wake while you were able to bask in money and fame. Absolution of those crimes because of money and fame seems despicable.

The truth is, if someone makes amazing art, sings like an angel, or portrays the human condition in film in a way that moves people…the art does live on. The art doesn’t change because our knowledge of the person changes. But damn, our support of that person should.

I grew up with the Cosby Show. I’m of that generation. It was lovely to see a family on TV that so closely resembled mine, a brown family that just like the white ones, had a happy ending at the end of the half hour. But giving a generation a warm-and-fuzzy in the 80s doesn’t absolve Bill Cosby of his Quaalude-filled past, and it certainly isn’t more important than the horror he’s thrust on a trail of women so extensive it is has tipped the scales into a full blown crowd.

I know the dangers of convicting someone before all of the evidence is in, but this isn’t a legal proceeding, Bill Cosby has managed to evade those,  all that is left is the court of public opinion. And for those that believe that 40 women’s voices aren’t enough proof of wrong doing, Bill Cosby’s admission should be. But if nostalgia, of a pretend father as the head of a pretend family espousing values that in real life he shat on, takes precedence over real women then…well…I don’t have words…

If we continue to worship at the altar of Mr. Pudding Pops because he broke new ground so many decades ago then we are telling me and every woman before and after me, it doesn’t matter if someone violates our bodies and minds, as long as he’s funny or talented or rich when he’s doing it. I have three nieces…and I’ll be damned if I let them learn that lesson from me. I’ll call it rape and him a rapist and politely decline his reruns.