The Story of My Back
Photo Credit: Olu Coker
The story of my back is one of unconscious growth – of a very tall girl, trying to fit into squat places. In a snapshot, it’s the high-water uniform pants that could not meet my bony, preteen ankles. Long before I realized how few things were made for girls like me, I was disappointed that Cookies didn’t make pants for girls like me. I was crouching and curling in on my elegantly stretched spine. Overnight, it seemed, I’d grown into a long-legged spider, equal parts pariah and inevitably the center of attention. There was no hiding then from teasing about how tall and skinny I was. My body wanted to hide, but it could not. And it turns out that my spirit was made of the same stubborn stuff.One almost summer day in middle school, I decided to brave a skirt. A girl in my class called me “chicken legs”, and I didn’t know what to say in return. This was a time where I wore sweaters and sweatpants beneath my uniform to mimic the curves the other girls had. And as bad as I felt for myself, there was still a stubborn voice in the back of my head that was pissed.So, I called the girl when I got home. With little preamble, I said “I didn’t like the joke you made today. About … about chicken legs” My voice was tight. There was a stunned silence over the line. Only then did it strike me that this might be an unusual thing to do.In a small voice, she apologized. I hung up.I think this was the first time that I realized that I wouldn’t be the neat-fitting daughter / friend / lover the world wanted me to be. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and yet be invisible at the same time, but life just doesn’t work that way. Like my long, growing torso, what some would call stubbornness and what I would call ambition, could not be hidden away. I’ve always been too curious to be quiet – asking disconcerting questions at Sunday school and way too in sync with the organized aggression of Model UN. I’ve always been the quiet one, except for when I just couldn’t shut up.In high school photos, I’m bent down into the picture frame, afraid of facelessness. Skinny jeans became a thing. I haven’t looked back since. Anyone curious to know why my gargoyle-like shoulders hunched and drew together should have first examined the indie rock lyrics scribbled in the margins of my notebooks that spoke of existential suffering and dry, unfulfilling love. Why? Because 17. That’s why.My sister was married in Jamaica my junior year of high school. In the pictures, I thought I looked like a wilting blade of grass, head bent and at mercy to the wind. On the dance floor, I had my first experience with whining (something like a Caribbean rite of passage). At the time, I figured was not really so up to the task of womanhood if that was what it was all about. As tall as I may have been, I had a child's naïveté.In college, I was a Tall, Black Woman. I mean, I was before and I continued to be afterward, but in college, it became a universally known truth. Every eye caught by my long, brown, legs seemed to demand that I figure out what that meant and act accordingly. I think I was supposed to let myself be watched, acted upon, be subject to intrigue, but mostly silent otherwise. I spent so much time worrying about how to temper my personality. I never considered that perhaps I was cheating myself by calling my gift a curse.Here are the facts.The first letter of my last name is “A”, the second letter is “B”. If any person happened to not notice the ‘5 “11 Black woman in the room, surely they will take notice when the teacher struggles over my mouthful of a name at the very start of the attendance. See me brooding in the corner of the classroom, writing stories in the backs of impractically small notebooks. Trying to disappear into the page.It was a life that chaffed on me daily, but I’m grateful. Because of that lonely time, accompanied by life-altering anxiety and depression, a fire started in me. I began to understand more and more what it meant to be me. I learned what it meant to have professors ask “Where did you learn to write like this?” as if an extraordinary tale lay behind this Black girl who can write. Being looked upon to explain Black people in Renaissance paintings when I’m sure we all read the same damn chapter. I can’t remember when I started folding in on myself, and in on myself and in, like a 4th grader’s paper fortune teller.By the time I graduated from college, I knew what I didn’t want from my life. My time studying abroad during my junior year made me realize how much of the world there is to see, how limitless the possibilities are for each and every human being. Sometimes it can be so good to know that realities exist beyond yours, that lives are being lived in so many different places, in so many different ways. The present reality is not the end all be all. Life will change. But the question is, will you let circumstances shape you? Or will you shape the circumstances?I still slouch sometimes now, but not for too long. Eventually, you’ll see me stretch long again with a yoga-esque sun salutation to my desk, to the world. Today my hair is bigger than ever, and if I can stop anxiously fussing with it while writing, it will be even bigger.I am hypervisible. I am invisible. It’s my job to dance around this in-between world, to live my life fully regardless of whether I am the unique, odd factor or still not good enough. These days, my back is unconcerned with those whose opinions would rest on it and keep me down. It’s unconcerned with the idea of standing tall to look better for others.Now when I stand tall, it’s because I’ve realized that I have nothing to hide, nothing to shrink away from. My body demands that my spirit be just as tall. Who am I to deny this?The body really does carry our experiences. Can anyone relate?