Peeling back the layers

It wasn’t until I was able to sit with granny’s death, and all that it means to me and my family that I began to really see where my Miss Taken identity began to take form.

When I thanked Granny for the life lessons she taught me, I reminded her that it was she who stood me in front of the mirror and said, “Binah, look at that face. That is the only face you have to please in this lifetime. No matter who you might fall asleep beside, that is the face you have to wake up to. Follow your heart, be true to yourself.”

I told her how necessary that lesson had been for me, how I remember it always, always, I remember what she told me. It was like a magic pill, her wisdom cut through all the learned social behaviors and value added mores and morals of my time, reminding me of an ancient truth “To Thine own self Be True.”

Granny smiled and dreamily reminisced, “Funny”, she said, “I never had to learn that one. I just always knew it. I always knew who I was, and how to be.”

I was happy for her. But then I wondered, I wondered how it was so different for her than it was for her children, and her grandchild (me). The family stories began running through my head.


At the age of ten while babysitting me, my aunt watched as I ate an entire ashtray of cigarette butts.
She did nothing while I turned yellow.
She did nothing as I vomited.
She did nothing as I slipped into unconsciousness.
It wasn’t until I entered the phase of convulsions as my little body succumbed to the ravages of the poison I just ingested that she called out to the adults in the other room.
I asked her about this incident recently, as I couldn’t fathom why I would endure eating an entire ashtray full of butts. She rounded on me with fury and stuttered with barely suppressed rage that she was just a little kid, and didn’t know better.

I don’t buy it.

I remember lovingly tending to my younger sister at the ages of eight through twelve. At age ten, I slapped her full across the face. Maybe I was just a little kid. And yes she was screaming in my face, and yes she was kicking me, but still, I knew I was wrong. And I apologized to her and never ever raised another hand to her again. My tiny two year old sister didn’t even shed a tear. She took the slap, cocked her head and said the most perceptive thing I had ever heard, she said “You’re trying to be just like K.” Our oldest and craziest sister. She was right. The only discipline I ever saw was of the hitting kind. And K. had taken violence to a savant like level.

It was right around this time I had a life altering epiphany about power, respect and intimidation. I vowed I would never ever overpower another human being in my life. That I wanted people to respect me, to follow me because they want to, to leave me because they want to. I did not want to cultivate a culture of intimidation, the science of controlling another being through the application of force and fear. This was the dynamic I saw developing within the confines of our family home. It didn’t take me too long after that to completely break free of this family.
I know I am unusual, but still if I, at ten could come to such an understandings about personal responsibility, I reject my Aunts contention she has no responsibility for her inactions of that fateful day.

I recently went home. I told mom I had an answer for her. I developed my personal truth according to the messages, verbal and non verbal that surrounded me in my earliest years. Those messages of not being wanted, of being feared, of being blamed for other people’s circumstances, well “Mona wouldn’t be sick”… (Papa and Granny) “if it weren’t for that damn baby, Momo would be all mine”, (Auntsi) “If it weren’t for that damn baby, Mom would be mine.” (my brother).

My brother offered me up, like a sacrifice to a crowd of eager wolves. Like my aunt, at the very last moment he changed his mind. I had to defend myself, I had to utilize the self defense moves my mother instilled in me as she taught me to walk, and talk. My fury, my adrenaline rose up and may have shaken my brother from his conviction. Whatever it was that changed his mind, he tearfully, chokingly called me his sister and spirited me out of the house and down the street.

To bottom line it, as my mother would say, I discovered where I had developed that so called personal truth.

I was supposed to be an abortion.

My mother nearly died, giving me life.

My aunt wanted me dead.

My brother wanted me dead.

I was the source of misery. I was poison. I was dangerous.

I was a Miss take.


I calmly explained this to my mother and watched as the shock on her face settled into sadness. It became imperative for me to impress something else upon her.

I told her that while I can see how much my aunt hated me at the time, that I also understood that she was a f*cked up little kid, her hatred of me was born from jealousy, jealousy for the love and attention of my mother, and for that I bear no grudge, I hold no hate for her.

She was so happy to hear that.

I also told her that I feel the same about my brother, who won some measure of my respect by the very fact that he switched, on a dime. When push came to shove he chose me. His brown sister over his white brethren. She was even happier to hear that.

Despite his choice, he lost out on both ends. He became despised by the community he was courting and had to leave town. Simultaneously, despite his late heroism, he also became despised by our family members. A judgment that hurts me personally, because I love him. Mom’s eye’s perked up. “What?” She asked. I said I love him. Always have, always will. He was just a f*cked up little kid too. Just like auntsie, just like you, mom. Just like me. He is us, we are him, that’s that.

There was one difference I wanted to impress upon her. While I love my brother, I do not like my aunt. I don’t hate her, I don’t despise her. I understand her better than she can ever imagine, but I simply don’t like her.

Mom was okay with that.

I began to see exactly how I recreated circumstances and events in my life that would continually feed my delusional beliefs about not being worthy of life, of existence of wearing the mantel of the Human Being. How I called to me people who would continue the patterns of abuse and punishment that started so long ago when I was but an itty bitty thing.

As a teenager of all the boys in town, I chose to fall in love with the grandson of a nazi. I’ll never forget the years of being called “thing” by his racist parents, or his inability to shield me from their hate and prejudice. I remember retaliating at being called subhuman by drawing beautiful black queens. I used photo’s of ebony sculptures for my work. I needed so badly to reconnect to my historically rich roots, my African Mothers, the progenitors of the human race. The rejected and lost mothers, namelessly receding backwards in time.

This was a gift my Granny gave me. Steeped in African culture, she spent the last thirteen years of her career traveling to and from the dark continent bringing me, her darkly beautiful granddaughter stories of my far off ancestral lands, she also brought me sculptures and jewelry to hold for her while she was jet setting around the globe, and once she even brought me a marriage proposal. Ten or twelve goats and a few sheep was my going bride price. Apparently it was very high, especially for a non-African woman. I turned it down.

I see mom was cursed by the same curse that scorched my Granny. Her family could never see her as anything apart from their expectations of her, because of this they could never be anything but disappointed by her. What really bites my cookies is the fact they felt any rights what so ever to judge her. So many people missed out on so much because Granny could never find the strength to be who she was in both private and public.
Instead she did what I’ve been known to do. Cut herself up into pieces. This piece is for her friends, that one for her coworkers, another one for Papa, that piece for Mona, this one for Auntsi and those ones for her grandbabies. Her love for each of us was unique to our specific needs, but the level of love she had was equal, immeasurable and eternal.

When she died, and I met with her friends and family and I heard the stories, I felt the anguish of those who loved her so. But none of them knew her. For some she was a surrogate, for others she was a Madonna perched precariously on a pedestal, for others she was a guiding light, and still others, she was an obstacle. But always within her was a secretive beauty, a dragon bejeweled with power. Power she kept under wraps, for the most part. We all saw parts of her, none of us ever glimpsed the whole of her.

But for me alone, except for maybe Gladys, I accepted granny as she was. Her coffee and cigarette addictions were small potatoes to a girl whose father used needles and whose mother waxed poetic about the joys of mescaline.

I encouraged her to share her memories with me. I patiently waded through hours of narrative, of African lore, of Canadian history, of Louis Riel, Mighty Voice and spotted cow. Of Gladys and Fife and Mariah, of her recollections of early twentieth century culture.

When I got her sufficiently comfortable, I would listen entranced as she recited poetry. Robert Service, and her own. Oh my gawd my Granny was a poet. A story teller, a teacher.

This is why she chose to tell me the things she couldn’t bring herself to tell her own kids. I was safe for her. I gave her a safe place to be, a soft shoulder to cry on and an ear to hear with no possibility of rejection. In return, she gave me the hard won wisdom of her years so that I would never have to walk in her shoes. So I would never have to live the sorrow she lived. So I could go further than the confines she grew up with. Her stories are medicine, they heal me.