About a Prickly Little Black Girl
For two summers in my youth, I went to 4-H summer camp, a privilege afforded to me by my mother and our village of supportive friends and family. My summer camp memories are a hazy amalgam of mosquito bites, moldy life jackets, dance parties, chlorine-stained eyes, and the soft snores of my cabin-mates in the dark. One very clear memory is of a girl from my second and last year at summer camp.
The moment I saw her, I lit up. Buried in a pile of photos pouring out of a cookie tin at my mom’s house is an out-of-focus record of this moment; arms extended, her smile big and bright, she was excited, too. The year before, I was the only Black girl at camp, so I was enthralled at the idea of having a ‘guaranteed’ friend that year. I assumed our shared identities would unite us easily, like it did with my Black female friends at school. As the only girl my age in my neighborhood, summers meant playing with the boys every day. Not that I minded all that much, but the boys had to be coerced or bribed into playing with Barbies, and never talked about the stuff I wanted to talk about. I missed my girlfriends, so at first, my guaranteed new friendship was full of promise for a great summer at camp. However, she quickly became my nemesis. We were constantly at odds. I looked down on her because she wasn’t ‘buttoned up.’ Wild, loud, and braless, everything she did and said pricked me, especially the fact that she was unbothered by my judgement, a method of control that worked so well on me.
She was a cactus. The opposite of what I had been raised to be, she required no approval or condemnation; neither affected her stride. Her only allegiance was to herself, and people liked her anyway. Some hated her, too, but that was no different than my own experience, except I was the only one who was angry, pinned at the neck by frilly socks, pantyhose, itchy dresses, and charm school. Fenced in by expectations of behavior and presentation that falsely promised safety and respect.
Everyone remembers their first real fight. Not the short exchange of blows between siblings at the peak of a shouting match, or fake wrestling matches with our dad, but a real fight. The prickly girl was my first real fight. Stinging, jealous anger rushed out of my heart and into my arms and legs, flailing towards my enemy: a lanky, bright-eyed, dark skinned wild child, either incapable of or uninterested in the black picket fence life I was unwittingly being guided into. Just as much as I had loved the idea of her, I hated her for not being what I wanted, what I thought she was supposed to be.
Boarding the noisy buses to return home, I was still angry, and she was still exuberant, decidedly above and free from the black picket fence I would soon return to. I’ll never forget that prickly feeling. It would rise up my spine to the crown of my head over and over in my younger life; the nearly physical reaction to intangible confines built for me. I was the cactus, not her. I didn’t know yet that the prickly spines on cacti block sunlight, or that there were other lives to be lived. I hadn’t yet heard anyone refer to respectability politics or privilege proximity. I wasn’t yet a feminist. It wasn’t until I started living my own life for myself that I stopped being pricked by the sight of people who were living theirs.
What I understand now that I didn’t back then is my jealousy was not her burden to bear. Her freedom was not the cause of my captivity, nor would dimming her light repair my own. And what I have words for now that I wish I had then is this:
I love you, wild child. I love your indelible spirit and unshakeable confidence. You are worthy of love and respect just as you are, and other people’s responses to your freedom are not your responsibility. You are not a cactus, you are the sun.
Photo Credit: Ellerbee 4-H Camp
