Anything, Everything and Nothing

Circle and Star Motif via Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Every day I was excited to enter my first-grade classroom. Finally, free from the shadows of my cousins and the chaos of our mothers seemingly building the parenthood plane as they flew it. That six-year-old girl was shy but took pride in being the line leader. However, that semblance of power wasn’t a badge of honor but a consequence of barely standing more than 38.5 inches tall. On most days, she marched to the clank of rainbow-colored beads adorning her head while mumbling the lyrics to “U.N.I.T.Y” by Queen Latifah — expletives and all.

In this same classroom, it was also discovered that I was “gifted,” and I began to see the eagerness in the eyes of the adults around me. Suddenly, it mattered who my best friend was.

“Maybe, you should hang out with someone you could read with,” I often heard. I became a token of intelligence. No one cared if I wanted to perfect my Double Dutch jumps or practice braiding hair. I had to have more than those “Black girl” skills. My teachers would marvel at how quickly I got through long division. A substitute once made me read Oliver Twist aloud as he quizzed me for comprehension because he couldn’t believe it was on my reading list already. His shock was my resentment for having a Jamaican auntie, who made me spend hours reading the dictionary and writing sentences with each word for context. A punishment for every time I dared utter ebonics in her home. She never came to America with less than a full carry-on for us to speak broken English or reenact rap videos like we had no “brought-upsy.”

There was little expectation for Black kids growing up in the Bronx back then. Especially a little girl from a broken home with teenage parents. No matter the season, I could feel the heat of embarrassment as other parents looked at the unabashed swagger of my twentysomething mother, picking me up in a mini skirt. But once those parents learned that I was smart? The judging gazes turned into adulation, hoping my intellect would rub off on their children. Everyone had expectations for me that were more about themselves. It was about me changing the trajectory of their lives by making something of myself. On the playground during dismissal, I first learned how invisibility works, despite all eyes on me, especially when one’s American Dream is riddled with asterisks.

I sat in the second row of my classroom, closest to the left side, by our makeshift book nook. I remember staring out of the window and daydreaming about being one of the kids in a rap video. Ms. Carter interrupted my thought to reassert the question I did not hear her ask me.

“Christina, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

The answer was simple. I wanted to talk to rappers like they did on Yo! MTV Raps. But, when I gave my answer, Ms. Carter quickly responded I could do so much more than that. I had the chance to be the first doctor in my family. So, I promptly told her, “Yeah, I want to be a pediatrician.”

My petite teacher grinned, not knowing back home in Jamaica that my granduncles were doctors. I only made mention of being a pediatrician because mine was a Black woman who always took such good care of me. Dr. Smith knew I was smart, but she was one person who would ask about all the cool things I discovered while reading VIBE magazine since my previous check-up. I also appreciated the hushed tone she would use to avoid offending me when my mom worried about how thin I was or how often I wet the bed. I guess being a decent person could be worth striving for.

“Everyone had expectations for me that were more about themselves. It was about me changing the trajectory of their lives by making something of myself. On the playground during dismissal, I first learned how invisibility works, despite all eyes on me, especially when one’s American Dream is riddled with asterisks.”

I sat in the first row near my teacher’s desk in seventh grade. Now that I attended a better school, I was one of a few Black kids in my class. I missed Double Dutch tournaments and talking to my friends about whatever rap song we caught on Hot 97. All that got traded in for soft rock, non-Black kids who believed the criss-cross parts in my braids were bald spots, and becoming people’s first and only Black friend. I was invisible again.

We were given an assignment in English class to write an engaging personal essay. I had just procured a May 1997 issue of Paper Magazine from my classmate’s older sister. It was a few years old, and she had no use for it since “rap wasn’t really her thing.” My queen mother, Lil’ Kim, was on the cover, and she was in conversation with bell hooks (whose radical feminism later make my personality). I remember being too young and curious about the explicit lyrics and daring fashion icon from New York City who looked like the women in my life.

So, I took inspiration from hooks and Kim’s candid conversation and wrote about one Thanksgiving that went awry in my home. It was my favorite holiday because 20 people would cram into our three-bedroom apartment and have the time of their lives. In my piece, I spoke candidly about the arguments and exclaimed how my cousin’s jokes made me piss myself. The essay missed its mark, even though I thought it belonged alongside all those short stories I read in books my mom bought on 125th street in Harlem.

The essay earned me a C- for crude language, lack of imagination, and inappropriateness. It was the lowest grade I had ever received in my life. I hid it from my mother, who frequently asked where the other two points were if I brought home a 98 on an exam. I was hurt and confused about what was improper about my work. Especially since my classmates routinely yelled at their parents and moved around the Upper East Side as if they were remaking the movie Kids.

“When the song ended, our teacher told the class to let Bob Marley serve as an example to use history to become anything you want to be.”

Our next big project was in social studies, the assignment was to make a mobile art display of an international culture. Instinctively, I prepared an elaborate piece on Jamaica. During the presentation, instead of actively learning that ackee is our national fruit, someone brought up Bob Marley. My teacher remarked about his song “Buffalo Soldier” and how it could be tied to our coming lesson on Black US cavalry regiments who fought in the American Indian Wars. She asked if I had ever heard the song, and I nodded my head yes. After which, my next assignment was to bring in my mother’s CD to play for my classmates, who, even as young teens, equated Mr. Marley with weed.

I obliged, and when I met my mother at work following the school day, I told her of the task and asked to borrow her CD. I cried myself to sleep that night. Invisible yet again to the world around me.

The next day, I played the song during our social studies period. None of them understood Bob’s connection between survival and Black resistance. How could they? When the song ended, our teacher told the class to let Bob Marley serve as an example to use history to become anything you want to be.

That teacher failed to realize that she and almost everyone like her didn’t believe that for me. I was too busy changing masks at home, school, with my friends back in the Bronx, and at the homes of my rich white friends. I rarely dreamed about more than never being seen. A Black, intelligent, gorgeous, fatherless girl with a family from a small island trying to survive and thrive in the US can’t just become anything. Not with the weight of multiple asterisks marking her.