| older, do you?” she asked in a whisper. She didn’t want my mom to hear. “No, Dianne.” “You need to have a really clear idea of how you’re going to make it out if you don’t want to be poor for the rest of your life. You have to decide what you want to be. Then you have to work really hard,” she whispered. I remember thinking, I just want candy. I couldn’t understand the abstract. I was too young. But something I didn’t have the words for, yet could feel, shifted inside me. “What do I want to be?” The first seed had been planted. Was there a way out? Achieving, becoming “somebody,” became my idea of being alive. I felt that achievement could detox the bad shit. It would detox the poverty. It would detox the fact that I felt less-than, being the only Black family in Central Falls. I could be reborn a successful person. I wanted to achieve more than what my mother had. From age five, because of Dianne, re-creation and reinvention and redefinition became my mission, although I could not have articulated it. She simply was my supernatural ally. Much later, after college, Juilliard, Broadway stages; after first being nominated for awards—Emmy, Oscar, Tony—I could finally actually articulate what that big moment was, prompted by my sister that day. It was the catalyst or agent that provoked a larger question: “Aren’t I somebody NOW?” What do I have to do to be |
time. Africa was an elixir. We ate benachin every day outside the hotel and in the compounds. It was rice, white fish, white sweet potato cooked in the ground and a spicy red sauce on top of the fish. It cost five dalasi, which equaled fifty cents. You brought your own bowl no matter how big and they would fill it up for fifty cents. My greediness followed me from childhood. I could never get enough food so I found the biggest bowl. Women would set up a makeshift shop outside of the hotel. Mostly, you ate with your hands. There were almost never utensils. You would squeeze the palm oil from the food with your right hand and pop it in your mouth. The left hand was used to… well… wipe yourself after going to the bathroom. I couldn’t get with that. We went to an African wrestling match that was more about theater than wrestling. The wrestlers would march around a field with drummers behind them and you would throw them coins. After doing this for the longest time, they would wrestle. The Wolofs had a dance called the “turtle dance” that was the equivalent of twerking. Women would bend over with their butts toward the man and twist, shake, and move at a rapid speed accompanied by not only drums but balafons, which were xylophones, and koras, which were guitars. Drums from goat skin, and batiks were exquisite works of art. Sculptures were carved from mahogany wood |
