Living Gender

“Gender is not something you wear; It is in you. It is lived in your body.”

I try to pull away from my cousin as he holds my finger above the flame. “Trust me.” His young, barely teenage hand grabs the back of my little neck. Our eyes meet.

There is a certainty in him that I admire: an openness despite being on this earth for seven years longer than I have, or perhaps because of it. His thumb scratches the flint, feeding the red into the yellow and blue that dance above the lighter. My eyes grow wide as my finger passes through the flame. I grab it back protectively, stumbling away as he lets go of me.

At a safe distance, I examine it closely, waiting for my skin to start bubbling with pain. But it never changes; remains the same as it's always been. I walk back over to him, giving him my finger. “Do it again.” In a trance this time, I watch my skin touch the fueled ember of energy, feeling its heat though it doesn’t burn. My eyes grow wide, the image of the flame filling my eyes with light.

**********

You are not supposed to feel like that. You don't. You do not feel. You absorb the images, the harmony of sounds, the emotion, the feeling. You do not feel. You see it, them. They are not real. They are images on a TV. Images that you are not supposed to see. The glow lighting the room and casting shadows over your eyes. You know that this is not meant for your eight-year-old mind, that you should not be reacting or exploring so you pretend to be asleep, though the memory burns deep into you.

Their bodies move with your eyes and your hand running over the curves of your own body. His rock hard, heavy over hers. Your soft hand, heavy over your own. You do not feel. She is not real.

**********

“Boys,” Coach Brian's voice carries over the entirety of Carter Park from the outfield where we are practicing. From the the parking lot where the parents sit, chatting and waiting for their kids to finish, you can see the groups of prepubescent football players, packaged like little men in their pads. The Chelsea Devils Pop Warner A through E Teams are spread out on the patches of grass between the baseball diamonds. Out here, on the the other side of the fence, we are on our own. “If you tap the females on anything other than their hips, they will turn around. And they will hit you.”

Meagan and I look at each other. High pitched male voices giggle around us. In my pads, there is no difference between me and them. Not on the surface. My tied up hair, flattened female jockstrap, and c-cup that I tie down with sports bras and ace bandages are hidden beneath the same shoulder pads and helmet that they wear.

“Down.” The chatter stops immediately as we take our positions. I get down into a three-point stance, weight on my front foot, ready to explode. I look across from me, lifting my head as high as it can go so that I can see the eyes of the guy in front of me. I was terrified of this once. His broad frame, defined with the lines of muscles, and I would tell myself that the harder I hit him, the less it would hurt. I feel a hand tap my right hip.

“Set.” His hands open underneath me and my hand reaches out to grab the ball. I can feel my protruding shoulder bones shift beneath my shoulder pads. Even being eleven years old, I could not meet the 145 pound weight limit for thirteen year old boys. Being two to three inches taller with an extra fifteen pounds on my chest, I can not make cut off for the A-team while staying strong enough to compete. The weight that I have lost to be able to play on the team is visible under the bags of clothes that I drape over my body when I do not have these pads to hide them; the armor that gives me the confidence to fight them.

“Go!” The whistle blows and my body reacts. I shove the ball away between my legs, handing it to him. He has it now and I need to protect him. I stay low, put my face mask into the chest of the guy who my eyes have been focused on and drive him to the right. Push. Hit him. Keep him away. At least until the whistle blows.

**********

Skeletons of trees surrounded me. It was November, I think. Cold bit our delicate limbs turning our skim dimly pink rather than pale. We were just off the path but close enough to still see it if we were to peer around the tree. The bark was rough on my back but her lips were soft. She clasped onto me trying to stay warm.

It's supposed to make you hot right? Sweaty enough to steam the windows of a car at night. I looked into her eyes, searching for the answer in her. How is this supposed to work?

I lay down on the leaves, leaning against the tree, not knowing what to do. She lay down on top of me; a fifteen year old who was two years younger than me. A month before, surrounded by friends in a pile of leaves, I had felt her hand crawl under my shirt for the first time. There was a hunger in her that I did not quite understand and now I was watching her unbutton my pants. “Are you sure?” She gave me one last chance.

**********

Hands beat down on my sides as I curl, protecting my chest and face. Gasps of air alternate between waves of crying and I stop moving, stop trying. This is fetal position.

The memory comes back with the tone of his voice though it is no longer aimed at me. “I grind my teeth too. I do it when I’m stressed.” Anthony's eleven year old voice reflects mine, bearing more during his short time of being alive than many ever do.

“When you’re stressed,” my dad responds sarcastically, stripping him of the value of his existence with just a few words. “You are a stress.”

I watch what he heard cut into him, emotion spilling like blood congealing until the healing process builds new walls; armor. No one sees the flame burning in his eyes; the scenes, the hatred, and the potential that they dim, trying to assert their pride. If they could look into him and see his memory of his dad, belt around his arm, going behind the tv or his grandfather throwing a chair into the ceiling, or the days that he spent locked in his room would they continue to chip away at his security. He learns to hit back harder with every blow he takes.

“Daddy,” I begin, attempting to stand up for him, and my body freezes, anticipating the impact.

**********

I worked to appreciate their body; our dynamic. Their thick hands engulfed mine. They work them gently up my arm and down my torso, until, finally, coming to rest around my waist. They squeeze gently pulling my body to them. Their thigh parts my legs and presses into me.

I feel myself leave. My muscles relax and everything else comes naturally, I guess. I hide in the comfort of their weight that they hold over me.

They reach for it, breaking my trance for a moment, and situate it in their boxer briefs before working their way down me. I watch them peel back the top of my boxers to find the red and black of lacy panties underneath. Their breathing stops as they look up into my eyes and I realize that I am back inside myself. They take the panties into their teeth, letting the air flow out of them in a sigh. Or is it a moan? I'm not sure because I don't think I have ever experienced what I see on their face before.

It scares me, slightly.

**********

“Anthony what the hell happened to your face,” I ask, examining the red dot that lies between his cheek bone and eye.

“I shot myself with a bb gun.” My hand grabs the back of his neck as my cousin did mine years before. “Don't ever...” They would say to us, taking control. It's about survival.

“Don't you ever..” There was a difference in the power, that authority asserted with his voice and his hands. He will always be right. I can never fight back.

**********

I run my hands over my own body, feeling the way that these shorts and this shirt accentuate these curves. Hips, usually hidden, beckoning attention that I normally shy away from. I find a timid strength slowly chipping its way through the insecurity that I wear on my body.

My arms automatically pull them up and propel them under me simultaneously. Thighs spread on either side of them. Thick, strong. I hold their arms down above their head, teasing them with the brush of my lips. “Don't touch me.” I whisper softly into their neck so that they can feel my breath. I gently hold my body over them strategically. They can only imagine the way I feel even

though

they are

so

close.

I leave their hands, limp above their head, and slowly begin lifting my shirt. I watch their eyes grow wide trying to figure out what they love about this so much. I still do not understand this.. desire.

As I lower my armor, the slight vibration of vulnerability runs up my spine. I have always been stuck; hiding my body and the things I place in it, take from it. But taking it from and giving it to them in this moment, I harness that pulse in my chest, ready to explode into this comfort.

Their thick fingertips graze my bare shoulder. For the first time, that fragility that I hid beneath thick shoulder pads, barring their strength from taking this confidence away, makes me feel.. beautiful.

**********

“You got it Asia!!!” Voices cheer as she pulls herself up onto the first beam, holding onto the vertical branch she is climbing with both arms.

“Woo!” She celebrates. It is her second time on the tower today. The first time she made it half way to the first landing, but, with the encouragement of her teammates, she is back on the wooden structure standing in a small break in the New Hampshire trees. She turns her head to see where she has made it to and immediately tenses up. “Oh shit, get me down.”

“Are you sure? Don't worry, Asia. We got you,” her belay team promises, attempting to make her more comfortable.

“Yes, I'm done,” she replies.

“Look at the one near your knee,” I hear one of my girls yell. I look up at Brandy making her way through the array of wood and rope toward the top. The girls on the ground are watching her attentively, pulling rope in swiftly as she climbs and yelling words of encouragement while she tries to find new places to grab onto.

There is a group of girls on all three sides of the alpine tower. I hear the other group helping Dezy get over an awkwardly placed metal wire two thirds of the way up the alpine tower.

“You got it Dezy,” I yell in her general direction. I watch her body finagling its way. Her frustration is apparent in the short tone of her voice but her teammates keep her focused. Using all her strength, she propels her thin muscular frame up past the obstacle.

“Sit back in your harness,” I hear from Asia's group right before they begin slowly lowering her. “You did it!”

“I made it all the way up there?” The fear in her eyes is met with a tinge of awe as she looks up at the spot from the ground.

Watching the girls that I'm now coaching, I can’t help but remember when I was them.

“We can do this girls!” I would encourage as our coaches always did. I can see the platform and a rope in front of me. Our task was to get the whole team of young women and a bucket of water over to another platform without touching the ground. After the past two seasons, the leadership position that once felt so foreign to me was becoming more natural. “Who wants to go first?” I ask seeing that there were people in the group who were nervous about swinging on the rope.

“Bzzzzz.” The sound of my coach, Paige, making a buzzing noise, caught my attention. As my curiosity pulled my head toward the sound, I saw her come up beside me and pinch my pinny with two fingers. “A mosquito has taken away your voice,” she said.

“Ugh.” My hands flew into the air in frustration as I thought desperately about how to help my teammates. Ideas ran through my head. “Mmm mmm hmm mm mmm.” The noises came out of my closed mouth as I frantically gestured with my hands trying to communicate my suggestions to my teammates.

An eruption of excitement brings my attention back to my group. Fifty feet above us, Brandy is pulling herself over the top platform. “Slack!” She yells.

I hurry over to Ashley. “Let a little out,” I say, patting the top of her back where it meets her neck. Her hands slide an arms length of the rope keeping Brandy safe back through the belay device.

I looked up at Brandy's legs looking for a place to get more leverage. Her arms pull the rest of her body up onto the platform and she immediately goes over to help Dezy the rest of the way up.

“Toot that thang up mammi make it roll...” The chorus of voices resound off the trees. Brandy and Dezy begin dancing and a few of the girls on the ground join in. Their developing curves move with a confidence that I am just beginning to embody.

As my girls celebrate their victories, I harness the pride in their eyes. Their struggle to find who they are, fight, and lift each other up reveals a strength that emerges out of more than just self-protection. Dezy and Brandy sit back down on the side of the platform and the belay team pulls up the slack. I feel my stomach drop as I remember that moment right before the solid wood is replaced by fifty feet of air below you. Out here the rope connecting us is the only support, the only armor, we have. Ashley holds her rope down on the break. “I got you. You ready?”

Step behind: Part 2

Whenever I talk about my experience with MetroLacrosse, I always seem to talk about the youth I work with. I talk about their potential and their hardships. I talk about how I have learned from them and with them in different capacities. I tell everyone about the influence that MetroLacrosse has on young people's lives because I have seen it, and I have lived it. But for some reason, living it is only a distant memory. I played with Metro from 2002, the second year it existed, to 2005, the year they helped me get into boarding school.

It came at the perfect time; when I needed that outlet of exploding, loving, and excelling at what I was doing. We were a brand new team: Chelsea Charge Silver. None of us had heard of lacrosse until they brought sticks to gym class that fall.

Sometimes, I would attack and other times fall away from that consuming feeling in my chest that I, years later, recognized as the panic attacks my mom always gets. It paused the words, drown out the screams, and gave me control over what beatings I was willing to take. Bring it. It was not the wolves from my dreams chasing me; I simply fought for each ball, each hit, each fall that I got right up from and continued on. Stuck in memories I cannot escape to this day, my only out was to play so I got lost in it.

Everyone always tells me that the only group they would never work with is middle schoolers. The attitude, no respect or concept of rules is not what they'd choose to get themselves into. I'm not sure if I even formed many memories of spring seasons. In a state where I was too weak from not eating, the experience itself was a blur. Only minor details and feelings have stayed with me.

It came naturally, my body flowing to the beat like my words when I'm rapping on the bus to and from games. I never sat in middle space, headed to the back to rap or the front searching for something to cut with. Dis fights over nothing, only ending in love.

“You ready J-No,” I'd taunt from the restraining line before the draw.

“Bring it!” She'd bang her stick against the poles of the net.

At first, the ball was my goal. Get the ball, take a shot. Everyone on the field was simply an obstacle until I could learn to find faith in others.

I could fight and take my stance in the midst of teammates becoming opponents. I learned to work with everyone as I went from spring season to summer camps. Every goal became a victory because whether it was our team who scored or we got scored on, we saw each other grow and improve. We pushed each other farther.

“No!!!”

I remember inching closer to the goal. Open shot. Just me and her.

“No! Vic!”

I shot at Jen's feet as she jumped into the air. Score.

“You scared of me?” I'd run over and tap her helmet before heading back to the restraining line. “You got this shit. Get ready. I'm comin for you again.”

We left together. The three of us headed to boarding school two hours away, but Adriana and I came back every summer. I can still hear her laugh; the sarcastic little snicker that interrupts your conversations and the motion of her eyebrows when she got serious.

Four years later, I sat among familiar faces. My generation, our mentors, and the youth we now coached. The cool wood and stone of the church set the tone as the slideshow played. I couldn't stay, siting and watching the pictures appear and fade with the people going up to the casket. We left, trying to find something to eat. “I saw her you know,” Sadiki said in the booth of a run down sub shop in Chelsea Square. “I called her an asshole, said see you later, and its done. That's all I need.” His words resonate in me.

I never realized it more than I did that night getting a slice of pizza with a boy that I hardly ever talked to before. We are a part of this, all of us, as AD was before Ortho Evra produced the blood clot that took her life. There was passion in every word she said and she brought it into every moment that she worked with those kids. She loved life. It emanated from her; her presence addictive whether it was positive that day, that moment, or she was pissed. She was never afraid, never backed down from a dis, never allowed anyone to lower her voice, her passion. She loved her team. This community, these people meant everything.

Step behind: Part 1

“Lets go,” Coach Brian yells. “Nice job out there.”

His face glows under the florescent lights illuminating the field. It is not quite dark yet. The sky continues to change from a brilliant collage of purples, pinks and reds to deep blue as the world beyond the field darkens.

“Vic.” Brian points my attention to the field. The ref is standing on the 44-yard line, feet together, waiting for me to throw him the game ball.

“Here.” I use all my might to toss it to him and pull my hands back into my sleeves as I watch my team come out of the huddle. Part of me wishes I was out there with them: the Chelsea Devils Pop Warner A-team, national champions in 2000, a team I was supposed to be on. Now, a year later, I am here on the sideline of our playoff game and things are not going so well for us. I look at the down markers. Third and five.

When I first got injured, holding the down markers was my job. With my left arm still in a sling, I would hold one end of the ten-yard chain, then graduated to the ball marker once it started to heal. Now, I am in charge of the game ball while the team is on defense. I've had it a lot this game.

“Let's go Devils!” I hear the crowd cheer. Carlos, the fullback, makes the first down. For the week or so that I played this year, they had me running the ball. I tug at my jersey, attempting to keep in more heat around my thighs. Number 42. A fullback's number. The number Coach Mike wore in high school. I need to be worthy of it, he told me when they gave me the position.

Be worthy.

It's my third year playing for the Devils, though I only actually played on C-team. Little boys, just hitting double-digits, packaged like miniature men. I was offensive tackle. Hit the player in front of you. That's the assignment. On the line. Protect the ball. Hit him.

Tweet!! The whistle blows, closing the half. I glance up at the scoreboard. 7-0. Them.

The team brings it in as I make my way to the ref. He tosses me the ball. I clasp onto it with both hands, cradling it to my body, right hand over left, as if receiving a handoff. “Hold onto it or you'll lose it.” Brian's voice echos in my head as I see his hand come down on the ball of each player. “Even standing off to the side, you hold the ball like your life depends on it." His face is red from the strain in his voice. "Keep a strong grip and protect it.”

The role comes naturally. Protecting. It is the first Thursday of the month which means my aunt will have visitation Saturday. It will be another normal first weekend of the month; wait in the shadows while Auntie Hannah goes to pick Leanna up, go out to eat, possibly go to the movies, eat, buy snacks on the way home, eat, and watch Bill Cosby, Coyote Ugly, and Big Mama's house while finishing a carton of ice cream each. Food intake does not matter for those two days, or at least it didn't before Jane began weighing her when she got home on Sunday. I pull the ball closer. Just two more days.

“Alright boys,” Brian yells getting the teams attention. “And ladies. This is what it comes down to.” His voice is strong. Deep. A working man with a worn face and calloused hands. I look around at the sea of 13-year old faces. I know none of them from anything but the context of football. I am the only person in my grade. Twelve years old in a sea of young men and only one other thirteen year old girl in a men's locker room. Bundled in my Chelsea Devil's jacket and loose fitting jeans, my long hair is all that gives away the fact that I am not supposed to be here.

In my pads, there is no difference between me and them. Not on the surface. My tied up hair, flattened female jockstrap, and c-cup that I tie down with sports bras and ace bandages are hidden beneath the same shoulder pads and helmet that they wear. I can even hide how my shoulder bones protrude now that I have lost enough weight to play on the team. Being two to three inches taller with an extra fifteen pounds on my chest, I can not make the male twelve year old's standard of 125 pounds. I have enough trouble meeting the 145 cut off for the A-team while staying strong enough to compete.

I always wonder if I would be different if I could take the weight from my chest and transplant it into the muscles in my arms. Strength is a skewed concept, portrayed as controlled and constant. In a world where consistency and safety are no guarantee; where the beatings can begin at any time; where every moment someone is gone you wonder if you will ever see them alive; where home is just as terrifying as the idea of not having a place to rest your head at night, strength is a process that has no logic, just a foundation to build off of.

My obsession with monitoring my food intake has solidified itself. Some would call that self-control, a means to a goal that I am working to achieve. But instead, I am a twelve year old with an injured arm, no chance of keeping up and an emptiness in more than her stomach who will never play football again.

“Lets go!” Brian is done talking and the team runs past me on their way out to the field. I cradle the ball in my right arm as I follow behind them, wondering briefly if this is the end of my time as a Chelsea Devil football player.

Two more days. My thoughts shift back. I need to be strong.

Strength

You wanna know why I come off as passive aggressive? When I feel like I'm being forced into a masculine role that I'm not comfortable being in I don't know how to stick up for myself. Masculine strength is something that has harmed so many of the women in my life. including me. It has taken being around people who let me be who I am (yes a soft butch but also a WOMAN) to realize that that's the part of me that I really draw strength from. I HATE that because I come off as butch my strength can only be seen as coming from masculinity. Since when does femme not mean strength, a strength that, unlike masculinity, will continue to both stand on its own and bolster others. Women may be victimized but we are not victims; we refuse to be. I'd rather die than ever make someone feel the way I have been made to feel by masculine strength and pride. So until I can be what I have always been, something in between, I will be silenced by you.

Story of Selves

I relive all of these moments; I hear them, see them, feel them. I write them. I let them spill across pages and pages like blood congealing into words too perfect to be me. I tumble back and forth between people and worlds that I live. My words have changed with the person I am, or possibly, just changed me, like rain soaking the hardest of dried clay until it is soft enough to be shaped. I work to craft these words, to paint a picture of myself, who I was and who I am, in order to get you to understand.

Through my writing for this class, I have worked to try to find a voice that will get people to recognize the lives and struggles of inner city youth. I struggle with portraying myself as a whole person because of the complexity of how I have become who I am today. I want to make my writing accessible to both an academic audience and the community that I'm writing about but, lost within all of that, I also don't know how to explain who I am in relation to my community.

For my second personal essay I wrote about my struggle with speech and language growing up but in looking back at it I realize how difficult it still is to put my home, my childhood and my experiences into words never mind be able to convey how I feel about them. I took you, the academic, through my experience at the Undoing Racism conference in Springfield, and showed you my reactions to the somewhat academic material and environment. I highlighted language, both within the workshop itself and in my reactions through memories that make me extremely aware of my difficulty speaking like rapping on the bus to and from lacrosse games, asking Dorothy what all the words she was using meant, people misunderstanding what I said in Tinson's class and how this language and environment was stifling to me:

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything.
I know.
You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.
I feel
your energy

your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power.

It is

silencing. (Personal Essay, p5-6)

I included my poem because that was always my way of speaking. Written word, no rules or limitations as to how it needs to be structured, how it needs to be said, just me flowing to the beat of the thoughts in my head. I never thought in words when I was younger, I thought in pictures and feelings, whether they were real or imagined, sometimes I didn't know the difference. With poetry I didn't have to know the difference; I could show you the wolves chasing me through streets that I picture so vividly, streets that I walked down every day on my way back and forth from school though I didn't know them at the time. I was six. I don't remember leaving. I don't know if I actually saw my father punch holes in the wall around my mom's head but I see it anyways. I remember the shadow of his truck and my mom taking us around the corner to hide. I don't remember my mom being there, I just remember the wolves.

When I explain it like this, without the metaphors or the ambiguity, the academic will see it very differently from the way I would look at it. I am not writing for people to figure out why I dissociate or get reality mixed up with things that never happened. I don't want to be analyzed, I just want to be heard.

I think that was what I was trying to illustrate in Essay 3 when I talked about my professor's reaction to a poem I wrote. She said simply, “very powerful” and I tried to explain the impact of the reader's response on someone who is willing to share such intimate details of their life:

Death is the same now as it was then
my sister’s best friend
saw her mom’s boy friend...
Yesenia was six years old
searching apartments to see if anyone was home
He tried to kill himself after he slit her mom’s throat
They try to be strong for her. No one denies what we know.
But at the funeral there was a room for the kids
Everyone said we were too young to see the casket

And it continues as we grow
Friends stay the night cuz they cant go home
And we start figuring more and more out on our own
We are all that each other has to decipher their lies
They cant deal with what really goes on in our lives
I remember what my best friend once said
She woke up with her baby sitter’s boyfriend in her bed
Her eyes retreat back to the world when she was seven
Her words resonate in me, “I just can’t go through that again” (Essay 3, p3).

Saying that it is important to know when the writer needs help with the content of the actual essay and when they need someone to help them through the therapeutic aspect of what they are talking about. This poem was a reaction to another piece of writing, The Private Worlds of Dying Children by Myra Bluebond-Langner. In reading about her observations of how children with leukemia found out information I reminisced on my own experiences:

I hide under the dining room table pretending to play
Listening hard to hear what they have to say
The heavy air makes it hard for me to breathe
The carpet I slide across burns my knees
I take in what Im not supposed to know
The learning process is slow but if I just don’t show
that every word they say I absorb...
the adults play too with their double-edged swords
I emerge from beneath the table...no longer sheltered
My curiosity remains...my voice left unheard (Essay 3, p3).

I tried to connect to the story in a real and personal way. When asked, “But how did it make you feel? Write about that.” The only response I can think of is that I feel like that same little kid. I go back to that place and that mindset. I become that person again, a person who I feel like I have lost and am desperately trying to recover but can't for the same reasons that I wrote about in the poem. My life has transformed from being a kid sitting under the table listening to the adults talk, oblivious to us and the lives we live as kids, to sitting in class listening to people talk about this author and that theory and the way all these things work with and against each other, unable to understand the lives of the people they are talking about. In the poem I resist the adult world, emphasizing the need for youth to support each other, the overall ignorance of adults and my fear of inevitably becoming one and perpetuating the same system:

And we deal with it, helping each other through tough times
Adults oblivious to the signs
We know every little detail that goes on in their world
Will we be the same way when its our turn? (Essay 3, p3).

The same can be said for my relationship with academia. I feel as though my community should have its own support system, that academia is ignorant of the real issues going on in my community and I am terrified of perpetuating a dynamic that silences young voices.

At the end of my personal essay, I wrapped up with a situation where confronted with a person who was scared to speak up just as I had been for so long, I finally found my voice in order to help him not lose his. I feel as though the ending, while it may seem contrived, was really an accurate portrayal of who I am and the message I want to get across. In responding to the man who was afraid to speak up because he did not want to offend anyone I told him that,

“As scary as it is to put yourself out there, not talking about it only helps to perpetuate system that we're talking about...This is why were here. To understand each other and work through our thoughts. We need to be able to make mistakes, we need to be able to confront them progressively and we need to be able to learn from them. Its all a necessary part of confronting the system” (Personal Essay, p7).

To accurately portray who I am now, I needed to show that I was ready to speak up, if not for myself than for others, because that was what the paper was, speaking up for unheard voices; I needed to show the way I used vocabulary and was able to speak intelligently when I did speak; I needed to show how scared I was, and still am, to speak up in that group (“I laugh, taking a deep breath, trying to stop my voice from shaking” (Personal Essay, p7)); and I needed to show that even after saying it, I went back to being the observer that I have always been. The problem, however is I do not set it up in a way that allows the reader to understand all of that because the person that I was does not have a voice.

The person I was has never had a voice. As a youth in an urban neighborhood, with a very traditional Italian family, a thick Boston accent, a limited vocabulary and having learned english though broken Spanish and Italian, I always felt like no matter how smart I was or what I had to offer I would never get people to understand me. Now, I realize that that is what is missing from my essay.

Upon realizing this, however, I am faced with another dilemma. My story is not about finding my voice; it is about all of the voices that go unheard. While writing, I knew this on some level. The part that I used to attempt to portray the person I was then illustrates the struggle to be heard in a place like where I grew up:

Laughing voices and loudness fills the air. I see people moving up and down over the tops of the seats. I sit curled up at the back of the bus. I am one of the leaders of the team. I know this. On the field I take charge but here, in these social settings, I am passive. I sit back and watch them battle it out. There insults back and forth, a dap and congrats for the illest line dropped. It’s outrageous what we say to each other yet put down, we lift others up, uncaring that we are at the bottom because were having fun. In the end, we know that nothing will change because we know how not to take offense. The music starts and I jump in. Every word flows, listened to time after time, in pain and in happiness, the same rhymes…connecting. Words of meaning. Surrounded by people who know the same feelings and a similar way of life. Then I curl back up again assuming my place until the game starts and I zone into my own world, escaping everything else, concentrating on the ball and letting my body just move naturally, the way my mouth does when I'm rapping. But it was all abandoned for a world of hierarchy and concentration on useless information..(Personal Essay, p1-2).

In looking at this in conjunction with the poem I wrote, I feel like I could really portray the difference between my voice as a child and the voice I have now but in order to do so, I need to somehow get the voices to acknowledge each other.

Every time I go home I become more aware of how I am changing. The first weekend I went home this year was for my friend Adriana's funeral. I sat in the pews of the church among my friends and watched the slide show of photos of her play over and over and over.. remembering the little Chelsea girl with the big attitude that she has always been and seeing the beautiful, smart young woman she was growing to be. We had both gotten into private schools the same year through the lacrosse program we were a part of and come back to coach at the camps we had been going to since middle school together.

Among her family, friends and teammates who contributed something to the eulogy, her advisor from Concord Academy shared his memories of Adriana. He illustrated who she was when she first got to Concord, telling the story of how she had been the only one to take him up on the proposal that his freshman class, after watching the seniors give their final speeches at the end of the year, should write what they would want to say when it comes to be their turn. He read to us some of the less provocative parts and I laughed harder than I thought possible at a funeral. I could hear her say the words, picture her exaggerated body movements and feel her sarcasm. “This is what you're going to leave people with?” he asked her. She smiled. There is no doubt in my mind that she would have gotten up in front of that school and said every word she wrote on those papers. Thats who she was, a Chelsea girl with an attitude and a voice that was never afraid to speak whether or not it was taken seriously. “As I got to know Adriana better, I realized that I really didn't know much about Chelsea. One day I tried to ask her about it. I saw what Chelsea made her but I wanted to know what it meant to her.” He paused for a second. People at private institutions always seem to be so great at giving speeches. “She just smiled at me and giggled. She never explained it, all I know about Chelsea was what I saw in her.” In those few short paragraphs, he nearly brought her back to life. He explained how at the end of her senior year he had given her speech back to her only to be met with the reaction, “You actually kept that.”

The I can show you at this point in my life will never completely be who I was as a child. I can tell you stories for weeks, show you snapshots of my past, family, friends, enemies, teachers and coaches. I can show you Chelsea High School, pointing out the boy's locker room that I had to be escorted through in elementary school for weigh-ins before pop warner foot ball games; the same locker room that my little sister lost her virginity in her freshman year. I can take you up the stairs that I blacked out at the top of every day and into the hall where my best friend told me she had tried to kill herself after her mom pushed her down a flight of stairs. I can explain how different my house was when I taught my little sister how to play lacrosse out on the street or when two more grand parents, or my cousin, or a friend moved in.

But I can never bring that part of me back to life because I will always be interacting with that person as the person I am now. I will always see my community within a greater context. The streets that I grew up playing touch football on are the same streets subject to police profiling. The diverse schools that I went to, where during my freshman year I was informed by my history teacher that racism and the KKK still exist, were all part of a system that work to control black and brown bodies in the name of education. My memories of my cousin stealing my mom's medicine after living with us for a month, court hearings for the custody of his daughter, and child social services showing up at my house were all a part of this larger fucked up system that makes our lives more complicated and less valued. I have grown up as both a part of this system and a part of this community, neither of which really acknowledge each other.

I was recently talking to a professor who was helping me rewrite a paper for his class. “It'll help if you tighten all this up,” he said, explaining about the structure of the paper.
“What do you mean by tighten it up?”
“Well for one...” He turned to the next to last page and pointed at one of the paragraphs. “Stop talking to me like were on the bus to Springfield.”
I laughed, thinking about this essay which I had been working on right before going to the meeting. “But I hate analytical writing.”
“Hey, listen. You're gonna have to use it at times.”
“Sometimes its just too hard to try to get my ideas across using academic language and I have to try to figure out how to make it understandable.”
“This is you're training ground. Someday you're going to need to write a grant proposal for an organization asking for fifty dollars, which isn't a lot of money for organizations.”
“It can be.” I chime in with a smile.
“It doesn't mean you're a different person when you go back home. I go home and I'm not a professor anymore. I mean, they recognize it and everything I've accomplished but they wanna know that your always learning and bringing it back. Otherwise what was the point of sending you to college.”

Being at Hampshire and going to Deerfield Academy and the Mountain School have opened my eyes to more than I ever could have imagined learning about. Growing and changing has always made me feel as though I am leaving a part of myself behind and, in my writing, sometimes I do leave that part of me out. I rewrote my poem from my personal essay to try to explore the ways that I can work to incorporate both my voice now and my voice as a child:

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything
I know.
You
do not
know everything.
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.

Don't wanna

hear it?

That's fine.

After all

I was born

in this city

where light

only shines

on the street,

right?

So

I'll spit

for you

from the back

of bus seats

classrooms

curbs

these words

flow

but are

seldom heard

over you.

You must

know best

You must

know me best

right?

Cuz you

continue to

tell me

who I am.

And what

these streets

mean.
I feel
your energy

your 'presence'
expanding
into my community
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying

my emotion
thoughts

beliefs.

Its the

only way to

get you

to take me

seriously.

By adding my voice as a youth, talking about what my voice is and transferring it to why I have had to change it, the reader is able to better understand not only how I feel but how I relate to the academic world.

As a child, I searched and scraped for the words to not just write but speak. My writing was a jumbled mess of figuring out how to say things, how to describe but as I've gotten older my writing has taken on a new purpose. I do not just write to reflect on or work though things I have witnessed or difficult experiences that I've had in my life, though I do do those too. I write to make a point and make you think. Being able to tell my own story while getting the reader to think critically about a concept on a larger scale is a weird middle ground to walk on especially in a world where academia is more valued. Without fusing the world of academics with the practice of storytelling we will never create change. My voice means nothing if it cannot speak for others.

Silent Conversation

Its the language.
Threatening, problematic, race/age/anti-semit --ism, oppressed, silenced, aware.
Words are tossed around the circle drawing my eyes toward the voices. Matti, one of the facilitators of the Undoing Racism Conference, is in the middle of the room. He points at the board, the left side, written in black, is what we would think if we saw a person in a grocery line using food stamps, the right, written in red, is what you would overhear the couple behind you saying.
“This is the language we are given to explain the world around us.” He uses his hands and body to emphasize what he's saying, occasionally going over and touching the red side of the paper. “The language that we use influences how we treat each other and what we have to use is a language that only allows us to access the worst in our communities. So then by using that language, you are then working for the system.” He pauses for a second, looking at the faces around the room. “I want you to understand..”
I bask in the sound of his accent as he speaks, the strength of his voice. It takes me back home.

Laughing voices and loudness fills the air. I see people moving up and down over the tops of the seats. I sit curled up at the back of the bus. I am one of the leaders of the team. I know this. On the field I take charge but here, in these social settings, I am passive. I sit back and watch them battle it out. There insults back and forth, a dap and congrats for the illest line dropped. It’s outrageous what we say to each other yet put down, we lift others up, uncaring that we are at the bottom because were having fun. In the end, we know that nothing will change because we know how not to take offense. The music starts and I jump in. Every word flows, listened to time after time, in pain and in happiness, the same rhymes…connecting. Words of meaning. Surrounded by people who know the same feelings and a similar way of life. Then I curl back up again assuming my place until the game starts and I zone into my own world, escaping everything else, concentrating on the ball and letting my body just move naturally, the way my mouth does when I'm rapping. But it was all abandoned for a world of hierarchy and concentration on useless information..
“Look at the first amendment.” Annie, another facilitator, steps forward and back, her fingers intertwined, cupping her hands and opening back up as she speaks. “Article 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereas the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” She pauses. “Incarceration is slavery. It says it right there in the thirteenth amendment.” She hits the paper with the back of her hand as she speaks. “Who here has learned about the thirteenth amendment? Even those who have access to it need the tools to really be able to understand it correctly.” She steps back to the board. “It goes back to the language,” she says touching the side written in red.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“It always took you so long to say something. We'd be waiting for you to finish for like 5 minutes.” Stanton remembers our sophomore english class. It was my first year at Deerfield Academy, a private boarding school in New England.
I remember too. I remember searching desperately to find the words to express what I was thinking. “Um...what's it called?” I would say, trying to articulate myself. I over exaggerated my pronunciation, unaware that my accent was slowly fading away. I remember the nights I spent talking to Dorothy, asking her what words meant after each thought she expressed. “I'm really glad that you ask me what things mean instead of just pretending that you know what I'm talking about,” she said to me one time. “Its refreshing.” I asked Dorothy about everything, soaking in her words and her knowledge...her vocabulary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“We are going to take a break for dinner and then come back,” Annie states ending her sh-peal. “Are there any more comments before we go?”
One of the ladies at the back left corner raises her hand. “I just wanted to say that it makes me so happy to see all of the young people here not only for being here but actively participating in all of this. It's really amazing.”
I hear breaths around me breath in deeply. Nia raises her hand to respond. “I know that that was meant to be a compliment but as a 'young person' in the group, it makes me feel like I'm not expected to have the ability to understand and articulate myself as well as the older people in the room.
An argument erupts.
“In the group that I am a part of we call ourselves youth in order to stop perpetuating power dynamics between the staff and the participants,” Nilani says.
“We need to be responsible for our interpretations,” Matti responds.
“Escapism,” is stated.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
'Systematic Oppression' is scrawled, almost illegible, on the board. It is all beginning to make more sense. I soak in the information as Tinson preaches, “People of color cannot be racist against white people.” I let the idea sit with me.
We are the loudest group in the stands. Little boys are standing, their lacrosse sticks up, waiting for a shirt to be thrown into the crowd. Most of us are facing each other, half paying attention to the game. The metal of the benches sends chills through my body. I pull my jacket tighter around me. The sun is just starting to set behind the stadium making it hard to look toward the field. “Look at Austin!” Sadiki says. A few of us look down at the sideline where Austin Hightower is standing, stick cocked back, ready to launch a t-shirt. The little boys start screaming and glancing over at the scoreboard to see if the camera is heading toward them. “I fucking hate white people.” Sadiki says looking toward the kid's parents. “People got a fuckin starin problem.”
I wonder how long it would take to really piss them off; How obnoxious we'd have to be. Even though I feel like it wouldn't take much, I wonder if they'd ever even have the balls to say anything to us, never mind have the balls to say it to our face.
Dorika, who is sitting in the row above me, looks over to my sister and I. “He doesn't mean you guys,” she says.
Her sister, Kerley, chimes in, “Vicky and Didi don't count; they're hispanic.”
The roar of voices brings me back to my class. I get lost in the debate. Comments fly back and forth. It is getting easier for me to understand them. I know at least half of the words that they are using and could probably use a few of them myself if I tried. I look at the faces around the room, listening intently, gears turning. These kids are probably just like the kids at Deerfield. They've probably been trained for this environment from the day that they were born, given the opportunity to be whatever they want to be and the tools and skils that they need to get there.
I raise my hand. Tinson calls on me after a few more comments. By the time my turn comes what I have to say is a little less on topic than it was originally. “I also just wanted to point out that we should be aware that there are youth of color in the inner city who, like, aren't aware of all the stuff we're talking about here and don't have any opportunity to learn it. “
As my voice goes silent, the tension in the room becomes palpable. It's like the peak of a 97 degree day that slowly grows more humid throughout the morning.
“We don't all live in the inner cities,” one of the girls across the table says.
My chest tightens. “Thats not what I said. I said there are people whose communities and lives we are talking about who have never heard of any of the stuff that..” My sentence trails off, my breaths growing faster as I begin to panic.
Words flow from each of our mouths into a steaming puddle consuming the table between us. “Now, hold on.” Tinson waves his hand trying to get everyone's attention. “Hold on. Explain what you mean. Speak you truth.”
Someone chimes in. “ Yea, speak your truth.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I write:
The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything.
I know.
You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.
I feel
your energy
your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power.
It is
silencing.
I want to give people the voice that society has taken from them. I will not allow my voice to be silenced in the process.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As we finally disperse for dinner, the tension in the air brings me back to that classroom, that conversation that happened first semester of first year in Framing Blackness.
I was silent for half of the walk back to the dorm. The crisp, fall air blew around our hair and the leaves with a bite that made us walk with our hands shoved deep into our pockets.“What are you doing for the rest of the day?” Rae asked me. Papers, readings, classes organized in categories flashed through my head.
My mind was hazy, part of me was still in the classroom having a conversation. “I have a ton of.. ugh..what's it called?”
Rae looked at me and laughed. “What's it called?”she said sarcastically, putting the emphasis on the -alled.
“What?” I questioned, a little annoyed with her making fun of my inability to speak.
“You always sat that...'What's it called?' Its funny.
I thought for a second. “My dad always says it. Probably cuz thats how its translated from italian or cuz when he's trying to think of how to say something its cuz he doesn't know how to say it in English.” I had never really thought about that before..
We came back together after dinner and tried to sort things out. People talked, listened, debated, accepted, and apologized but the tension did not seem to be relenting.
“I just..I feel as though this is something that I need to say and need to put out there to the group.” One of the men began speaking. “I don't really know what to do at this point because I'm so afraid of offending someone now, especially as a white man in this group and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I came here to participate and be vocal and now I feel like I need to just sit back in the shadows so that I don't offend anyone. And I..” He opened his hands that were palms together in front of him, as if in prayer.
My hand went up. I waited for Matti to point at me before I began speaking. “I know how real it is to afraid of offending someone. If you think this is bad, I can assure you that Hampshire College is worse.” I laugh, taking a deep breath, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “I feel like I've spent the last year working up the courage to be able to talk about these subjects in groups. As scary as it is to put yourself out there, not talking about it only helps to perpetuate system that were talking about.” I lean forward, putting my elbows on my knees and looking at the man who had spoken up, occasionally glancing around the room. “This is why were here. To understand each other and work through our thoughts. We need to be able to make mistakes, we need to be able to confront them progressively and we need to be able to learn from them. Its all a necessary part of confronting the system.”
I take another deep breath. “Thanks you,” Annie says, though her statement is not necessarily directed at me. I sit back in my chair and continue to observe, as I do. I have said my piece.

Your language is my world blurred by the lens you see it through

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything
I know

You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.

I feel
your energy
your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power