The Matriarch(s)

I nearly failed my Evidence midterm last fall. Not because I'm stupid, but because that was the final weekend of [insert events that took place in Masquerades]. I met with my professor after the midterm review. She was a Black woman from Texas, accent and all. She asked why I performed so poorly on the exam, and I poured my heart out. She looked at me and I felt something move in her spirit.

"You gotta stop thinking about that boy. Let him go."

It sounded like stereotypical, surface-level, post-breakup advice, but this felt way more stern. It was like God himself spoke through this woman I had only known for 8 weeks. What confirmed that this was God's doing was that after what felt like a 20-minute loving lecture from my Grandma, she asked if I wanted to pray with her. Though I decided to step away from organized religion, I'd be a complete fool to turn down a soulful prayer from an older, Southern Black woman.

Somehow, that wasn't the only elder I encountered in the Fall of 2019. There was also the TSA Pre-Check lady who called me out for wanting to take the easy route after law school. I've come to realize that messages and guidance come to me in the form of Black women and flying creatures. That's probably because the Universe has been paying attention and knows what I trust and what I'm skeptical of, and what I do and don't respond to.

Black women have been the foundation of my very existence since before I was born. My mother, a single mom and first-generation American, was the first in my immediate family to go to college. My Grandma, an Afro-Latina born on a farm in Antigua, had already migrated to a new country, gotten married, had a child, and helped her husband run his businesses by the time she was my age. My Great-Grandmother, who I'm biologically related to but who adopted my Grandma, had also migrated from Antigua and made sure that anyone else who came to New York was taken care of and had everything set up when they got there. Despite all of our unique ambitions, the one thing we all knew was how to take care of ourselves and those around us.

Unfortunately for the women before me, the latter was always prioritized over the former. Even before she passed, my Grandma always stressed to me to "take care of [my] mother and brother," and it used to bother me. Why did she never tell me to take care of myself? Why did she and everyone else in my family always just assume I would be okay? I'll admit, there were quite a few times when I was not okay. I know it was never malicious, but I realize now what was really going on. People didn't ask my Grandma if she was genuinely okay. And that's not anyone's fault, it's not like we all ignored her or anything. And I'm not talking about my family either, we loved her dearly and we all still miss her to this day. We always checked in with her. I'm talking about the people outside of our family who knew my Grandma only as a Prayer Warrior, a term I've learned to dislike.

For people unfamiliar with church life, a Prayer Warrior is someone who is notorious within your community for praying the most powerfully descriptive and heartful prayers you've ever heard. Being in the room with them while they pray is an incredibly moving experience. However, most people approach Prayer Warriors the same way they approach psychics and shamans: What can you do for me? And what's even worse is that Prayer Warriors are typically not paid at all. Their gifts are seen as something to be shared for free and to be done with nothing but the joy of serving God and others, so compensation is never discussed. And for 21 years, that's how I saw people treat my Grandmother. She was incredibly powerful and I never doubted that, and I know that God would always take care of her, but I never liked how people leeched onto her and expected her to help. I remember being furious on the day of her funeral when people would walk up to the casket, grip the hand of her corpse, and start crying for her to come back. I understand her impact, but they weren't family. My mom can tell you stories of how her friends back in the '80s would ask her if they could talk to her mom for "advice" and somehow up on the phone for hours ending with a solid prayer. I got a glimpse of it when my first college roommate met my Grandma and could sense her spirit upon their first interaction. And even when I was forced to balance grieving over her passing while comforting my grieving mother and brother, I got a small taste of what her daily life was like--tending to others before herself.

To this day, there are times where I pray that I could be even a fraction of the woman that my Grandmother was. But what would that look like? Would that be finally possessing the internal strength that I always imagined she had? Or would it be learning to "balance" the needs and wants of others above my own? Is that the most free way to live? Would I be allowed to be strong for myself, or would that be too selfish? If I'm not allowed to save myself, is anyone going to save me at all?