thin skin

©2013-2014 Nemki

I’ve been thinking lately about this essay by Marita Bonner, “On Being a Young—a Woman—and Colored” (1925). Black women have been trying to hold onto their humanity for such a long time, and it makes one so very, very tired. I think I wrote my latest story about a bunny because that’s one way of staying “soft”—same with all the cat videos I post on Facebook. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in human beings these days, and I am working on that. But it’s hard… 

Every part of you becomes bitter.

But—“In Heaven’s name, do not grow bitter. Be bigger than they are”—exhort white friends who have never had to draw breath in a Jim-Crow train. Who have never had petty putrid insult dragged over them—drawing blood—like pebbled sand on your body where the skin is tenderest. On your body where the skin is thinnest and tenderest.

You long to explode and hurt everything white; friendly; unfriendly. But you know that you cannot live with a chip on your shoulder even if you can manage a smile around your eyes—without getting steely and brittle and losing the softness that makes you a woman.

For chips make you bend your body to balance them. And once you bend, you lose your poise, your balance, and the chip gets into you. The real you. You get hard.

…And many things in you can ossify…