Photo Credit: Jessica Felicio via Unsplash

It is the feel and scent of his hand that I remember the most. That fetid smell with the dirty nail bed that covered my young mouth to keep me from screaming. It was a weekend afternoon in the wintertime when my parents and sister and I piled into our blue Chevrolet station wagon to visit relatives. I was ecstatic about our Saturday outing because of the fun I envisioned having with all of my family.

My relatives lived in an old apartment building in Brooklyn. I had family on each floor and when we went to visit them there was an open-door policy. My cousins and I traipsed from house to house, up and down the steps until we tired ourselves out. My heart was so full of joy when I was there …until later that evening.

When it was time to leave, I realized I’d left my wool scarf in my aunt’s apartment. I ran back upstairs to get it, knowing my mother would fuss if I left it behind because I was always losing my scarves. My father had already gone outside to warm up our car and my mother and sister were saying their goodbyes. I reached the top step and turned the corner to go into the unlocked door and that’s when he grabbed me, this young man, all too familiar, who pushed me against the hallway wall and pressed his body hard against mine as he covered my mouth with one hand and held my other hand so tight I thought it would break behind my back.

I tried to scream but my voice was muffled. I struggled frantically to break free, to remove him off of me and that dirty hand from over my mouth. I struggled to breathe. I grew nauseous from the smell of his hand. I felt as if I was going to die and no one would know what happened to me because they were all downstairs.

I heard a guardian angel by way of my sister’s voice calling me to hurry up before they leave me. I heard her footsteps on the stairs as she walked halfway up, my heartbeat slowing down somewhat grateful that my sister’s warning was just a big sister’s idle threat.

He let me go and I ran down the stairs, past my sister, and out of the building into our station wagon. At eleven years old, I was left wondering what I did to deserve that. I never told anyone what happened. Not even my very best friend, with whom I shared everything.

Going to visit my relatives wasn’t the same after that. My laughter, dancing, singing, and freedom to go from floor to floor ceased. In its place was a fear that shook my young being, one that hovered over me like a dark abyss that this person was always lurking in the hallway waiting for me like I was his prey. When I did summon the nerve to go to the top-floor apartment, I’d walk arm in arm with a cousin and made sure they locked the door behind us.

This person’s hand was no longer over my mouth but the memory of his hand ruled my emotions throughout the rest of my childhood, teenhood, and young adulthood. His hand accomplished what it attempted to do which was to silence and shame me into hiding my body as it blossomed into womanhood. His hand became the googly-eyed monster under my bed that I asked my father to check for when I was a little girl and although he said there was nothing under there, I still thought once he was gone it would come back to get me.

It was only when I began to write in my diary to push that memory into the farthest part of my mind that my metamorphosis gradually, like sand in an hourglass, came. Writing became a therapeutic offering to myself as I chipped away at those parts of my life that were so confusing, so ugly, so unkind. I was able to be audacious on my diary pages with the stroke of my pen and I began to write a different ending to that evening, one in which I was a victor and not a victim.

But it took me speaking, refusing to stay silent, that mended those frayed fibers of my tapestry full-on, even after this person died. That arose when I unbolted my wounded heart to talk about what happened with two people, I trusted the most, my sister, and my husband.

That was when my shackles were removed. I cried afterward when they reassured me that I did nothing wrong, that this person was a predator. The little girl still inside of me needed to hear that.

This new audacity through my refusing to be silent through speaking and writing has become my Black woman warrior sword. I share my story, verbally and in a myriad of ways in my fiction and essays, to remind other black women that they never have to mute their voices. Our stories in all of its multitude of colors, the beautiful and the ugly, need to be shared around the kitchen table, in the boardroom, in a quaint café, in the hospital waiting room, or a park bench while we have one eye on our children as they frolic and play; wherever we gather with each other.

For me and many other Black women I grew up with, the need to keep silent was due to how often in the Black community we were told from the time we were young, never to air our “dirty laundry” or “family business.” We were told to sweep it under the rug because there was no reason to stir up any more dust than there already was, to get over it because what’s done is done, or to fall on our knees and give it to the Lord.

It wasn’t that we weren’t loved or our pain didn’t matter, it was just the way things were, how it was passed down from other women through the generations. They meant well, but in encouraging our silence, they caused us to carry a backbreaking weight that wasn’t ours to carry and to pass on an unhealthy rite of passage that would affect our mental wellbeing.

When I reached that pivotal point in my life of pressing unmute, I laid the foundation and then designed the brick pattern for others, especially my daughter, granddaughters, nieces, and all female kin to do the same if someone ever violated their space, their temple, or their mental health.

Once my silence was broken, with my pen and my voice, those monsters I thought were still under my bed, that hand over my mouth, ceased to be.

My Pen and Voice Removed the Hand Over My Mouth