Clarity Is a Gift
Music accompaniment:
Heat: “Summertime” DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince | “Cruel Summer” Bananarama
Vibes: “Mad” Solange | “Make it Home” Tobe Nwigwe
Summer 2019 was like the opening to DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime,” full of heat and anticipation. My hot girl summer. Two years out of my relationship, and one year out of my old job—both of which had felt like certain stagnation—I indulged myself. Nails done. Hair done. Wax done. I shopped vintage slips, wearing them around my apartment like a sexy housedress, the sensation of the silky material brushing against my skin a reminder of my sensuality. I socialized, meeting friends for dinners alfresco and palomas at The Bluebird. I kissed a new lover against my car under the glow of a streetlight. I went to a wine festival in Havre de Grace—a historic waterfront town in Maryland—with one of my girls. Later her cousin remarked that I looked lighter, happier.
That summer my Cali girls switched the game up and flew out to Baltimore to see me. Spike Lee was hosting a block party to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movie, Do the Right Thing, the same weekend as their arrival. I gathered up my sister and a couple of local friends. We rented a minivan and hit the New Jersey Turnpike cruising under blue skies with clouds as fluffy as cotton candy. Perfect weather for the next to last day of June, low humidity with hints of a breeze.
We arrived right at the beginning. Folks were out, but the crowd wasn’t tight yet. Vendors lined the block selling headwraps, bedazzled hand fans, and cold drinks. We strolled past menfolk standing in front of a bodega smoking cigarettes and twisting open bottles of water. The music led us to the stage which was framed in Do the Right Thing banners. We clustered together taking selfies. Then gazed up at a canvas painting draped on the side of a building; Radio Raheem with his boombox was the centerpiece.
An hour in and the crowd was thicker, but not claustrophobic. We posted up to the right of the stage and danced in a circle. The music was poppin’: Surface’s ’80s hit, “Happy” to Biggie’s ’90s classic “Warning.” Bubbles cascaded from an open apartment window above us. The crowd was a mix of races just like in the movie: Black folks, Asian folks, white folks, and Latinx folks. An accidental shoulder bump was met with a smile and a nod. Some looked like they’d stepped straight from the movie wearing oversized gold bamboo earrings, electric-blue and lime-green biker shorts, Brooklyn biker hats, straw fedoras, Africa medallions. Their crowns were fresh too, from cornrows to cascading blonde locs, to curly twist-outs, to red afro-puffs, to baldies, and tight buns with smoothed baby hair. We watched the actors from the movie step on stage and reminisce with Spike Lee who presided over the event rocking his Sal’s Pizzeria button-down. We became one when we raised our fists in the air as Chuck D stepped to the mic and performed, “Fight the Power.”
Do the Right Thing takes place on one day, on one block—the block where we stood with raised fists—on the hottest day of summer. The heat, a character, underscoring the racial tensions that come to a head by the end of the day, a day in the life of the people who live and work on that block whose lives, at first glance, seem unremarkable but unfold to reveal love, lust, loss, wistfulness, regret, and anger. Emotional sparks that erupt when Radio Raheem gets choked out by the police. The close-up of his sneakered feet twitching into stillness remains seared in my memory thirty years later.
* * *
Fast forward a year and the pandemic-summer conjures Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer.” The song opens the “Jig-a-Bobo” episode of the horror TV show Lovecraft Country. That summer, just like this episode, was cruel, humid, and heavy. There were no haircuts. No mani/pedis. No block parties. Rather, a return to my natural state, and gradual descent into anxiety and unending solitude. The world was plagued by the Coronavirus. Governors around the country enacted stay-at-home orders. Schools closed. Libraries closed. Restaurants closed. Playgrounds abandoned and cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Post-apocalyptic. Hand sanitizer and toilet paper became precious commodities. Hugs became hazardous to your health. At the time, one of my brothers and his family lived in the same apartment community, so we created our own bubble. For months they were the only people I saw in person.
There was so much going on in the world, and yet I felt disconnected like I was witnessing everything from a great distance. When the pandemic first started, I’d turn on the news each night after work. While the anchors dissected every detail about the virus, one side of the screen showed the number of mounting deaths and hospitalizations. Meanwhile 45, the president, downplayed the virus’ very existence. In the early days, New York City was leading the nation in deaths and hospitalizations. Overhead news footage aired of refrigerated freight trucks stuffed behind a hospital, full of the dead. My brother called from Brooklyn, fear edging his voice, and told me the numbers were so high he refused to go outside. One evening, I turned on the news just as the report cut to a scene of hospital workers in hazmat suits at a field hospital in Central Park. I clutched my chest and only then did I realize I had been holding my breath. I switched to Cartoon Network and inhaled deep, exhaling slow. If I wanted to avoid the quicksand of panic, I could not watch the news. I still had to get up, work, feed the cat, cook. I did what I had to and kept it moving.
The days got longer and hotter. Memorial Day, the gateway to fun in the sun, arrived with little fanfare. There were no barbecues, and the community pool was closed indefinitely. By nightfall, the minutiae of the day were eclipsed by the heartrending news of George Floyd’s murder. Yet another Black person killed by a cop. This time in Minneapolis. This time the weapon a knee to the neck. This time the cavalier disdain for Black life put into sharper relief through the lens of a pandemic.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do we were forced to bear witness. Protests erupted all over the country and around the world demanding our collective attention. I watched everything unfold on the TV from the safety of my home. I felt guilty not being out there, but I’ve never been a marcher, not one to raise my voice. But still I wondered how I could be of service. I spent so much time pondering this with no resolution; I became despondent.
A friend called while I sat at my dining room table—my office since the pandemic—struggling to focus. She asked how I was doing. The simple gesture of her question disarmed me, and tears welled up, dormant vulnerability grasping for the light. Avoiding the hovering spiral of depression had become a balancing act. Melancholy so close I felt its hot breath on my neck, ready to strike if I surrendered to the helplessness, anger, and sorrow I held in my body. I said to my friend, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She said, “You’re grieving,” and suggested I take the day off.
I walked the nature trails near my apartment complex and considered her words. Grieving is something you do for people you know—or at least that’s what I always thought. I picked a soft patch of grass, sunk to the ground, and cried.
How can I articulate what it feels like to be Black in America?
The anger I felt years ago in college—during the Rudy Giuliani days of “stop and frisk” in New York—when my friends and I were pulled over by the cops? They wanted to know why we—four Black girls in a car—were in a “high crime area” of the Bronx. They didn’t believe that our friend was from the neighborhood, kept questioning us even after she showed her driver’s license. Yes, we had picked up several dime bags of green at a nearby bodega after stopping at her mom’s house. No, we were not trying to go to jail over $30 worth of weed. Stop and frisk. If we had been searched, we would have been arrested.
How can I articulate what it feels like to be Black in America?
The “how to get pulled over by the cops” talk Dad had with me and my sister was necessary, but wouldn’t necessarily save our lives. That night in the Bronx one of the cops pulled out his gun when I, forgetting Dad’s lesson, leaned over to zip up my backpack. He said, “I just want to make it home to my family.” What did he think I was capable of?
This experience could’ve ended my life or the life of someone I love.
How can I articulate what it feels like to be Black in America?
My brother reminded me of the time cops drove up on our grandmother’s lawn when they spotted him and our cousin sitting on the front steps. He said Mom-Mom came striding out of the house demanding to know what happened, and when it was clear her grandchildren were just being harassed, she said, “Get the fuck off my lawn.” Another time he and a friend were walking to a gas station when a cop pulled up on them, asked what they were doing, then shoved a gun in his mouth threatening to “blow his head off.” A radio call ended this confrontation.
My brother told me in summertime it was routine for him and our cousin to tell their friends, “It’s warm outside, we’re going to get stopped by the police.” A warning not to ride dirty.
These moments exist in my body on a cellular level.
* * *
Last summer it was heartening to witness so many people pour into the streets given the real dangers of the pandemic. The fact remained that a man had lost his life at the hands of police, and nothing will bring him back. He was not the first, nor will he be the last. This truth is evident: Radio Raheem’s death, while fictional, was based on a violent reality that has existed since the birth of this nation. So, it was difficult to process folks claiming shock: surprised by this recorded murder, surprised by the brutality, surprised by the indifference toward Black lives. A part of me wanted to extend grace, to understand this perspective, to not allow my cynicism space to grow. I listened to Solange and she reminded me that no, “You got the right to be mad.”
“I wish a ma’fucka would” became my mantra. The roll call for the death of Black people at the hands of police—who are almost always cleared of charges—is so deep and vast that a statement of shock from self-professed allies angered me more than someone calling me nigger. Fake symbols of allegiance—black boxes of “solidarity,” corporate commercials saying, “we stand with you”— made me grit my teeth. Still do. There was a mad scurry not to be seen as “problematic.” But a lot of it was show, a tap dance with jazz hands.
When the tempest in my chest threatened to send me down the rabbit hole, I decided to venture out and go see Mom. I drove up to her place in Harford County, Maryland, where I grew up.
When I exited 95 at Joppatowne, I saw an F150 on steroids in my rearview. I tensed. The driver was a bald white man who looked to be in his early sixties. His front dash littered with MAGA hats; truck bed winged with flags the size of a twin sheet. He switched lanes driving past me, and then I saw them. One had an image of 45’s head on Rambo’s body complete with red bandana and holding a machine gun. The other said, “Blue Lives Matter.”
Though fear trickled down my spine, I remembered racism served straight up is clarity.
And clarity is a gift.
Fake allies are as insidious as the Coronavirus.
Fact is I have five brothers. Fact is I was with three of them years ago when they were profiled by a white liberal-leaning independent bookstore owner in Havre de Grace. Liberal-leaning is important here because some of these folks like to say, “I’m not racist.” They perform allyship and probably giggled when 45’s base was referred to as a “basket of deplorables.” Yet they will tell a group of middle-school-aged Black boys with their twenty-something-year-old sister that they cannot enter their bookstore without an adult present, even as we watch the same number of white youths browse the store with no supervision.
These so-called “allies” are some of the same folks saying “I just want the world to go back to normal.” I even said it to myself. But what is normal? And to whom?
Normal is the news saying a disproportionate number of Black folks die from the virus because they’re in “essential” yet low paying jobs. Normal is the murder of Black folks by those sworn to protect them. Do the Right Thing was released in July of 1989, and we are still bearing witness to Radio Raheem’s murder over and over again.
So no, not back to normal. I set an intention not to say this anymore. The fact is we will never go back to what we were before. We shouldn’t want to.
My spirit moved me to reach out to my brothers. I texted them, “You are kings and I love you.”
* * *
I picked my way through the dense undergrowth of malaise and resentment built up all summer, pushing aside the low-hanging branches of well-intentioned folk who ask me how they can help. I reach a clearing where I have space to think outside the noise in the streets as seen through my TV and in the hallways of Instagram and Twitter. Turning the lens outside in. It dawns on me that I need to model the behavior I want to see in the world. I need to ensure that I show up in spaces and don’t cause harm. I need to check myself before I comment on what others may or may not be doing: no more respectability politics, code-switching, or considering the white gaze.
What feeds my spirit?
My one-year-old nephew’s delight carrying a cereal box cut-out of Tony the Tiger in his chubby hands.
Sunlight slanting across my living room around 3pm each day.
The tender green shoot of a new leaf on my palm plant.
Deer grazing daily on the hill outside my dining room window.
Letters reconnecting me to a friend I haven’t seen or spoken to in at least a decade.
The group of Black women artists whose fellowship is like water on parched lips during these hot months.
The baby powder scent of my cat’s fur.
The magic of fireflies twinkling in the trees.
The nocturnal musings of Questlove lulling me to sleep most nights.
These bits of joy sustain me, preventing my slip into the abyss.
I harken back to the previous summer—the one full of heat and anticipation—when I emerged from my chrysalis, shedding the stagnation of my old life and welcoming the new. I embraced my physical being, celebrating my body and desires. Even in the midst of the loss, sorrow, and emotional fatigue of pandemic-summer I continued to bloom, this time tilling the soil of my inner life. I delved into my fledgling spirituality further cultivating the whisper-from-within, that truth-telling voice of clarity. I vowed to be intentional. I vowed to be okay with being quiet when reflection is in order. I vowed to honor life as the gift it is because “Cruel Summer” reminded me that life is fleeting, and I can only control how I choose to be present in this world.
It’s summertime again, and although the virus is still here, I’m used to living with it. Summer 2019 seems like it’s from a sepia-toned time from way back when. I’m not ready to be at a crowded block party but if the pool opens, I’m there. You’ll find me perched on a lounge chair, my pink and purple striped beach towel under me, soaking up the sun, with a book in hand. I’ll be the one in the corner pocket right by the five-foot end checking out the sights behind my sunglasses.
Cija (pronounced Kia) Jefferson (@cijasquips) is the author of Sonic Memories/and other essays. She is a writer and an academic advisor at Maryland Institute College of Art. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing has been featured in multiple publications, including Sisters From AARP, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and Baltimore Style. Her essay, "Summer in a Bottle," was nominated for Best of the Net 2019.