Compost Mary went to Brazil where she had lived and married at one point in her life. Her two grown sons were gone; one living in Mexico, the other a rambler stage tech for festivals and shows. Semi-retired, all Mary had left was her tenant, a tall boomer dude from Huntington Beach who was a volleyball player in his youth. Huntington Beach is a strange place where everyone is either descended from Vikings or Themyscira.
Lurch, as Mary's son referred to him, was not a well person. Something happened to him; a breakdown or loss along the way. He spoke in a lot pseudo science and conspiratorial terminology; Libertarian-adjacent rhetoric. He decorated appliances in his room in tinfoil to deflect toxic microwaves in the atmosphere.
Any fucking around with tinfoil person tends to be on an irrational frequency, not a good science one, but that's cool. I'm a kind and adaptable person.Unfortunately, one week into my stay, Lurch began chatting me up about the 90s when he and his ex-wife would go to ecstatic swinger raves. It took me awhile to catch what was going on because I'm not responsive to a dude's retarded come on. I respond to realness, chile - not affectation or posturing.
After a few of Lurch's anecdotes of white people high in ecstatic sexual revelry, I had to intercede:
" Dude, let me stop you right there." I said, hand up. " I'm not cool with listening to this. I just got back home to deal with my dad and started a new job. And please put your shirt on in the house. It's inappropriate."
" It's hot!" He claimed. I've spent my whole life decoding the treacherous game of man, particularly those who assume corny 90s game is still viable. I think Lurch was still back there, lamenting the bygone days of Moby and The Chemical Brothers. He may have been attractive once, but that was lost like his center. A person who agonizes over how long it takes a Brita pitcher to drip doesn't have much of a center.While she was in Brazil, Compost Mary and I would check in through WhatsApp. When I told her about the interaction with Lurch, her first response was, " Well, he hasn't ever been inappropriate towards me."
She later said to me, jokingly " Maybe if I hadn't rented to the hot mulatta, it wouldn't have been a problem."
This is the kind of shit we have to endure and hear, to be resilient in the face of, including from the mouths of so-called progressives. There's nothing about me that panders to that stereotype. That was her condescending racist perception. We experience a reverb in our heads - What the fuck did you just say?
I endure such word garbage because I am perceived as attractive, low-income ( the genteel way of saying poor ) and therefore, I have something to negotiate my way out of powerlessness, which in turn garners resentment from the women, including straight feminists. It's a distorted social pathology that is rooted in racism, like most things in America.
Compost Mary cut her travel short due to the pandemic and returned home. There I was, stuck with the two of them and their odd symbiotic relationship. She asked that I be more civil towards Lurch since we were living in the same house.
" No.' I said. "I don't have to be civil to anyone who's been inappropriate towards me. Period."
That was me expressing my resilience. I can draw a hard line in the sand with my word sword.
I heard there was a black lady living in Compost Mary's community, married to a white dude. I never saw her come out of her house or on my walks out to the marsh. Not once. My sense was she kept to herself and husband, hiding out from the women.
That sense came from the scrutiny I was subjected to. I left the house regularly to go to work because I had to in order to cope. I was a layered outsider: no pre-existing condition, low-risk age group, non-hippie, and brown. They were all about open hand this and open heart that, as long as I followed their kumbaya rules, didn't take up space, or wasn't perceived as a threat ( or someone who could bring the threat closer )." Excuse me? " I said. "You white people are crazy! I paid you rent, watched your house, and cared for your cat with that creep in my face! Not another cent to you, lady! I'm fuckin out!" ( Channelling Big Mama Thornton over here ).
I'm not playing The Secret Life of Bees or The Help to anyone.
I had secured a spot back in Berkeley and moved in a few days early. I slept on the floor a few nights before I bought a foam mattress and frame from a graduating Cal student. It wasn't ideal, but my landlady was good people. At least I was back in the East Bay, away from Compost Mary's Stepford boomer community of pre-fab mobile homes and dream catchers.I saw Compost Mary a few years ago, coming out of the North Berkeley Bart station as I stopped at an intersection. I knew it was her - her stature similar to Nancy Reagan - big head and a small frame, descendant of midwest pioneers. She saw me, but I turned and drove on. She had shown me her true nature, her disdain, and for that she was dangerous to me. I wasn't a person, but an image of something that reflected her values - as long as I was asexual and complaint towards her.
Without consideration, she added me to the 2020 census when it came to her house. I reported her to the Census Bureau that this was done without my consent. Compost Mary never took responsibility for her racist antics. A week after leaving scary ass Marin, I got a passive-aggressive text.
" It's unfortunate things ended the way they did. I hope we can communicate again in the future."
This is me being resilient into the future: Delete. Blockity block block!
I did what I had to do to keep it together during that time, dealing with Pops' hardheadedness, working 10 hour days with a cohort of people committed to democracy, and content writing on the side. That was my life at the time - keeping myself calm, solitary, mapping a strategic plan to find a store that had toilet paper in stock.
Marin was a bad trip. I ventured out to Petaluma, which was also a bad trip. People were in such a panic. I gathered a lot of intel on the American who has no control over what is happening and can't buy their way out of hard times. We already know that score through history.
"Ma'am, stay back!"
" I heard they're going to declare martial law."
" Did that dude just take all the bottled water? Motherfucker!"
All of that chaos, paranoia, and derision came down to one man - The Goon - the fascistic, incompetent president at the time. Those days were rough, but I believe in my own resolve. I go through whatever the experience is because it's inevitable that it will end or become something else.
I've never been particularly fond of that word, resilient. I often hear it in relation to black women, as though we have it on lock, tethered to our being. We've been resilient for generations. It implies to me that we're doomed to go through the unbearable and yet somehow, bounce back. What if we don't? The resilient in our loneliness and despair.
The word resilience derives from the present participle of the Latin verb resilire, meaning "to jump back" or "to recoil." The base of resilire is salire, a verb meaning "to leap" that also pops up in the etymologies of such sprightly words as sally and somersault.- Miriam-Webster
I was curious what other sisters thought, what they posted, or wrote me in reply. I transcribed what they shared:
A compliment with a smirk
Preface: when I say ‘they’, ‘we’, ‘them’, I’m referring to the dominate, white, conservative, patriarchal, MALE society we live in now.
Resilience is a phrase used by a lot of people which means “wow, despite all the bullshit the world (we) throw at you, you keep overcoming the obstacles. What should have destroyed you or kept you quiet, but did not. Wow”!
It’s the same as calling Black women STRONG. It's truly exhausting. Unfortunately, the only option we have as Black women is to keep fighting, getting back up, being strong snd fucken resilient. If we’re not strong and resilient whose going to save/help, assist us? No one. Black women can’t depend on white women…the only women in our society that have any systemic power, even if that little power they hold is a sliver. A tiny sliver. - Dimitria
In its most simple form, the ability to "bounce back". I see resiliency like a spring. Suppression only creates more power to come out later.
I've never thought about the over use of the word....but it is applied to us because we are constantly suppressed and constantly bouncing back. Think for ourselves, based on our own research, our own scholars, and teach our own children. - Darnisha
Protect yourself
I don't really trust white people, I never have. They want what they want and they'll throw us under the bus to get it. Just pay attention and protect yourself. - Miss Anita.
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