The new
therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the
phone. Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for
patients. You walk down a path bordered on both sides with deer grass and
rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.
At the
front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door
finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get
away from my house. What are you doing in my yard?
It’s as
if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of
speech. And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an
appointment. You have an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything
pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry.
I am so sorry, so, so sorry.
I am so moved by this poem that I can hardly write.
I see Mic or Shamako or my god, Dione walking up to this
house and it breaks my heart.
I see any of my students from my many years of
teaching.
And I see that I have
been the woman inside the house.
Fear runs through this poem on both sides.
There is the newness and the vulnerability of the patient
and the therapist. We know that the speaker has had trauma in his or her life
that was severe enough to seek counseling. The bond is tenuous, forged only by
voice. They have not seen each other. We can also assume that the speaker “sound’s
white” on the phone, which to the lady would only appear “normal.” In her
world, everyone is light skinned. People with darker hues are deemed the “other.”
It may be subtle. Sometimes it is just what is seen on a day to day basis.
I understand. I don’t like that I do, but I do.
The patient follows a path around the woman’s house to the
back entrance but finding it barred by a locked gate, approaches the front door
of the home. As a new patient arriving for counseling it is already disconcerting
to find the entrance locked, but this image evokes Jim Crow, as well. The
patient dares to approach the front door and surprises the woman.
We do not know why the woman answers the door in the manner
that she does, but we feel her fear and anger. She is “a
wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd” guarding her domain.
She does not see the human being in front of her; she sees
someone to be afraid of. This is not someone who reflects her own image of
herself. The woman immediately changes gears when she realizes the mistake she
has made.
“I am so sorry, so, so sorry.”
At least she stops. At least she realizes that her fear is
not only misplaced, but hurtful. In this second excerpt, the pain is not even
acknowledged.
A man
knocked over her son in the subway. You feel your own body wince. He’s okay,
but the son of a bitch kept walking. She says she grabbed the stranger’s arm
and told him to apologize: I told him to look at the boy and apologize. And
yes, you want it to stop, you want the black child pushed to the ground to be
seen, to be helped to his feet and be brushed off, not brushed off by the person that did not
see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a
reflection of himself.
The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind
me like a fleet of bodyguards,
she says, like newly found uncles and brothers.
Solidarity and hope comes through at
the end through the wall of “newly found uncles and brothers.”
There is hope in these poems. Hope and truth. We just don’t
realize the small ways we touch each other’s lives.
I’m still struggling to fight past and “see” clearly. What I
see is pain and fear and lack of understanding.
But I also see hope and beauty.
Onward to a better world.
Namaste’ ya’ll.
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