In Baltimore, for whatever reason, people lunge into the street. Like this weekend, when a car in front of us swerved, and a man wearing the same colors as the blue-black twilight around him emerged, pedaling towards us. A flash. I dodged him—left, hard, sharp. 

“Wtf. did you see that?”

“I know! That guy almost died. What’s he doing biking in this direction? And at night?! On a main road?”

“No idea. Unnecessary. Did you see how I was a calm serial killer? I didn’t even flinch.”

“Yeah, you just moved into the left lane. Must be the city in you.”

It was Friday the 13th, G’s first night ever in Baltimore, and we’d already almost died twice. All we wanted was Indian food and some good old Baltimore medical. But it seemed, neither of those things was going to happen without significant risk.

We continued down 29th Street and Harford Road, until we got to the light. 

“Where is everyone?” G asked, confused. 

What does he mean? Who is ‘everyone’? But then I realized that the streets were empty. The night swarmed and lurched with more life than the scant pedestrians. If anybody was outside they were waiting for the bus or hanging as if on a marionette off the sidewalk. 

“Probably at home,” I guessed. 

“On a Friday night?”

I looked around. I had to double check. Was the city empty? The lights outside the fire station winked. The buildings were dark inside. Every other streetlight was out. And no one was about. But where he saw absence, I saw undeniable hereness. Just there in that building was the old bike shop where my friend used to work. Over there the gas station I rented my last U-Haul. And here was the office building where I see all my doctors and take all my labs. Where he saw absence, I saw my whole life.

Nine years earlier, I was tagging along with my roommate to a dinner party. We were three hours late. I had never met the host. I’d only heard that he was a model, a wig maker, and a makeup artist. I barely liked makeup and had never worn wigs. I had never met a model. I heard they were snooty, skinny, and unserious. I wasn’t sure I’d like him.

When we arrived at the apartment building, it was late. Well past 9 p.m.; our stomachs calling out like broken engines desperate for repair. 

G opened the door. He was beautiful. Tall like a giraffe. As dark as the monochrome black outfit he wore. The apartment smelled delicious—on the table a spread of pap, chakalaka, and vors—South African staples. My roommate and I had only been living in Cape Town for a month, but we were already very familiar with South African cuisine. We ate with delight. We laughed for hours. Later, we found out that because we were so late, he’d eaten all the food he’d cooked. Then had re-created the meal before we got there. 

Since our first dinner, we haven’t stopped laughing. We watched Paris is Burning and laughed. We walked around the CBD and laughed. I tried his handmaid wigs on and we laughed. 

Over the years, I’d returned to Cape Town to visit him and we’d spend weeks laughing. Then in Tanzania, then New York. The years went by and I’d returned again and again to his homes, but he’d never been to mine. Until now.

As we drove down Saint Paul Street, I could feel his scrutiny. Not on me but on the city. In awe he watched the brownstones, the churches, the train station, the glass windows, and the few pedestrians. 

“This place is different,” G said with genuine intrigue.

By the time we arrived at Sweet 27 in Remington, I was itching to hear his observations. 

We sat at a table towards the back, overlooking the bar. A handful of people were drinking and chatting and keeping the bartenders busy. 

That’s when G told me his theories. His first theory was that the five people outside Turp’s Sports Bar were the same five outside now seated inside the restaurant. His second theory was an extension of his first. That the Baltimore matrix had a mandatory “make five” quota. Meaning that wherever we went like in The Sims or on The Truman Show they added three other people so we’d make five. His third theory was that everyone in the city was gay, trans or gender plural. That, I told him, was not a theory; it was a fact.

“And me?” I asked. “Does being here help you make more sense of who I am?”

“Even less.”

We both laughed. 

When we left the restaurant, I took a left on red. He thought I ran a light. Truth be told, like any Baltimore native, I’m known to run lights. But this time, I had to defend myself. 

“It’s legal to take a left on red here.”

The next day, we walked up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Upton subway station. Just before we got underground, we saw one young man exchange a plastic bag filled with white powder to another young man. It was swift. Like air and fire swept up into the head of a balloon. Then, as we descended into the dark, metallic underbelly of the city, I watched G descend into incredulity. 

“Do we have to pay for this?” he said, miffed. 

“No, a gate is always open.” I said, as we waited for the man in a wheelchair to go through the open portal so we could walk through. 

Below, the matrix persisted. There were exactly five of us underground waiting for the subway. The lights barked and the train winked into view. We got on. A man covered in the sharp basement smell of the train was pointedly rap-ranting. He seemed angry. He was erratic. His words were a string of curses half-rhymed with half phrases. He flailed about the car like those inflatable pink tube men outside of car dealerships. We tried not to laugh, but giggles poured out like libations. He was itching to engage one of us. From Upton to Charles Center we looked in every direction but his. 

By the time we got to Federal Hill to watch the sunset, the park was crowded. A woman in a wedding dress walked ahead of us. A bro on a date with his cheerleader-type gf, spoke loudly. Then, as if the commercials had just ended, the movie came on: the 12 o’clock boys rode down Key Highway, 20, 30, maybe 40 deep—wheels and rubber sticking straight as straw men.

“Wtf.” G said. “That is so unnecessary.” 

His eyes were alight. His eyebrows furrowed. He loved it. I could tell. His expression screamed wonder.  

In Baltimore, for whatever reason, we aren’t like anywhere else. People like to take hacks. When I told G this, he bursted out laughing. 

“If you’d given me a thousand guesses I never would have guessed what that word meant.”

“Yeah, people ask me all the time if they can get a hack.”

“Like a random ride from literally anyone with a car?” he said, giggling. 

At the end of our weekend, he said he wanted to come back. That every time we’d left the house, he’d seen something he’d never seen before. Or hadn’t in a while. That the food was delicious. And the people were distinct. That it felt like home, like Africa, in many ways. Then, I asked him what about the city he sees in me. He gave me a list: 

1. A quiet confidence. Not flashy or pick-me. Just subtle & rooted.
2. Strong point of view. Even when in opposition to others’ ideas.
3. Room to be different, quirky, distinct. Even if my expression of Blackness is not mainstream.
4. A life-sustaining optimism and hope
5. Urge to elevate my voice so I don’t go unseen 
6. A strong direction and focus towards constructive change

I think G gets it. Baltimore is a city of optimists. Of self-assured, down-to-earth & unique individuals. With strong voices that will not go unheard or unseen. People with a serious handle on quirky. Who aren’t afraid to be misunderstood; who pay no mind to judgment. Who, for whatever reason, will lunge into the street (of life) when called (possessed?).

Editor’s note: A previous version included a mention of the 12 o’clock boys riding down Ritchie Highway. The location was in fact Key Highway and has been updated.

I often wonder what Ella Raisin would think. What would she say about all these cars, their long touch screens, their wide wheels? How would she understand the scarcity of trees? Or the ubiquity of fidget toys and tattoos? How would she regard the Bay Bridge, connecting her Eastern Shore world to the Western Shore life? 

Of course, I never met my great great great grandmother, but still I wonder. Born in Talbot County in 1839, nearly 30 years before the end of slavery, what did she see everyday? How much of it was violence?  Tenderness? What fields did she stand in? Were they tobacco or cotton? Was she tall enough to see over them or was she short like my grandmother, her great great granddaughter? And was she even Black?

As a child, every summer, we would cross the bridge into the Eastern Shore. Then we’d drive the short stretch from the Bay Bridge to the tiny town of Oxford. As a child, I knew nothing about the history of the town. Only that my aunt and her family lived there. That she was raised by my great aunt who had lived in that house much longer. And that we were related to many of the families in the neighborhood.

Clara Mae Gibson was born in 1900 to her mother Helen Brummel, the daughter of Ella Raisin. What was Talbot County like for Clara Mae before she had my grandmother? Did she live in the Oxford house? Was the shoreline further back then? Maybe the beach was wider and filled with more shells in more colors. Maybe the town had only a few homes, no post office, no hotel, no restaurants, no museum. Maybe they only got around by foot or horse. Maybe most of the food they ate they grew or caught with their own hands. Even though I spent 18 loving years with my granny, Patricia Gibson, I never got to ask her any questions about her mother.

In one of my favorite Amiri Baraka poems, “Return of the Native,” he opens the poem saying: 

Harlem is vicious

modernism. BangClash.

Vicious the way it’s made.

Can you stand such beauty?

So violent and transforming.

The tree blink naked, being

So few. The women stare 

And are in love with them

selves. The sky sits awake 

over us. Screaming 

At us. No rain.

Sun, hot leaning sun

drives us under it. 

The poem begins as a critique of modernism and the enormous impact that machine has on nature and her progeny. It could even begin, “Baltimore is vicious/modernism,” because the area affected is any that has been impacted by colonialism. But Baraka does not silo beauty away from violence; instead he supposes that they are implicit to living. The sun is cruel in its high hanging beauty, reigning without the reprieve of rain. The trees are scarce and blinking absentia in their absentia. Modernism, it seems, if you look closely, is a constant witness to absence. 

Oxford, Maryland is one of the oldest towns in the entire state. For most of the 1600s, it was one of only two towns that were selected as ports of entry. By the time my grandmothers were growing up, Oxford was a bustling town on the railroad line. It offered oysters in plenty, gorgeous homes, thriving businesses, and all kinds of boaters. Over time, its Black population continued to grow. 

Long before I arrived, the number of Black families and property owners in Oxford significantly dwindled. By the time I got here, it was ongoing. Rumors of Kevin Bacon owning a house in Oxford was weird. But it was personally sad to witness the house across the street from my auntie–owned by her cousin–go into foreclosure. 

I even remember one summer, running into my old high school writing teacher at this restaurant my cousin works at on the wharf. 

What are you doing here? I thought. 

What are you doing here? She asked. 

My family’s from here. We’re visiting my auntie. I said, trying not to sound defensive.

Oh, my husband keeps his boat here. She said. 

His boat? I thought. Aren’t there closer places? places near where you live where he could keep his boat? 

If modernity is a witness to absence, or synonymously erasure, then how much of what we see is actually of here? Baraka’s poem interrogates the land question. Unravels the question of indigeneity. Proves that each probe on and on in a constant tussle with beauty and violence. 

Sites of colonial expansion, enslavement, and other atrocities of forced labor and coercive land dispossession are sites of deep trauma. Generationally, I carry a burden. It’s nowhere near the foreground with which Palestinians are suffering and witnessing genocide right now. But humming in the background of my every day, I can’t help but wonder, where am I? Why?

In the second stanza, Baraka writes:

The place, and place

meant of

black people. Their heavy Egypt. 

(Weird word!) Their minds, mine,

the black hope mine. In Time.

We slide along in pain or too

happy. So much love

for us. All over, so much of

what we need. Can you sing

yourself, your life, your place

on the warm planet earth.

And look at the stones

This stanza sings of place, personhood, and placelessness. Baraka equates the heaviness of erasure from nativity as a collective weight to carry. And in carrying it we also carry the knowledge, the hope, and the time of Blackness. He believes that there is enough of what we need. That homelessness is not a destination but a juncture from which we slide away from as we get closer to love which is self possession which is placeness. He believes we can imagine. And if we can imagine then we can create ourselves into the life and place that is naturally ours. But the journey towards this is not without complete acknowledgement of how we are postured–some of us in constant pain and others behind the mask of “too happy.” Either way, there is no onward without the wisdom of nature–the stones to which we must look.

90 miles. The distance between Oxford and Baltimore. Only 90 miles from where I can trace my matrilineal beginnings, yet sometimes I still feel so far from home. Like the place, and place meant for me is somewhere else or maybe even nowhere at all. 

Though my family’s lived in Baltimore City since the ’50s, only one person out of six aunts and six uncles, and 30-some first cousins owns a home in the city. The lack of ownership brings me back to the land question: why is it so structurally implausible for Black natives to own property in Baltimore? All of the home owners I know in this city are not from this city. Or they are not Black. How can I claim belonging without having a stable place to return? Some questions have no answers. Others have poems and Saida Hartman (nod nod, Lose your Mother) books to re-read. 

How Baraka ends the poem is where I want to end this loop of confusion re: dis/placement. In the last stanza, he celebrates what we share as a people moved and moving about the Earth. Notice here how his language shifts from the concrete to the abstract. As if to suggest that what is earth-based is a source to fuel the spirit. The spirit that anchors itself to belonging through the highways and byways of connection. Wiring itself through witnessing one another alongside our simultaneous witness of absence. 

the hearts the gentle hum

of meaning. Each thing, life 

we have, or love, is meant 

for us in a world like this.

Where we may see ourselves 

all the time. And suffer

in joy, that our lives 

are so familiar. 

For 8 weeks of the year, everyone is jealous of teachers. They scoff while we sleep until 10am on a Monday. They sneer at our stories of mid week beach trips. They gawk as we catch flights and not feelings. For 8 weeks of the year, they are reminded that they’re nothing at all like us.

I saw a meme recently that said, “teachers are not off for the summer; they’re in recovery.” I laughed, then counted the whys.

Item 1: This school year, I developed or worsened several physical and emotional maladies including but not limited to: severe neck pain, intense and sudden migraines (in which the first tell is throwing up and having diarrhea at the same damn time), chaotic ‘I wanna jump off the roof’ depression (thank Allah for Prozac, phew), wrist whatevers (I don’t know what but something tweaking and I can’t put my full weight on hand), and some other stuff I wish would go away but, wake up, teach teach teach, plan, grade, respond respond, remind, repeat!

Item 2: This school year, I spent 10 months with other people’s forthright & very whiny, unable-to-problem-solve children. Some of these children swung at me (playfully?), some crassly accosted me about their grades before the sun was fully up, and each one royally got on my nerves.

Item 3: This year, I spent 10 months dealing with administration and parents who have no idea what my job is or how to do it, but have lots of comments about my performance, and in the case of admin, make egregious and inefficient decisions about the structure of my job. Decisions which, as you can imagine, add more work to my load and lessen their load, ha! 

Item 4: This year, I spent 10 months crying in my office after reporting or hearing reports of kids attempting to unalive themselves, being tossed around foster homes, fighting cancer, fighting each other, etc… 

Item 5: This year, I went to several funerals of very young or very old or very sick loved ones and then immediately had to go back to work the next day and pretend it was normal because my paid days off are severely limited and mental health is a luxury.

So truth be told, after 10 months of “Miss Harris” replacing my body like a re-make of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I need more than 2 months to recover. I need to see doctors. I need to sleep past 5:47 a.m. I need to be irresponsible. I need to not be the example. And I need to talk to people my own age!

Even though sometimes it feels like I’m an unqualified, underpaid doctor at an all-genders prison, I love being a teacher. I am a masochist for learning (it hurts so good!). I am too curious not to be in the classroom, too intense to pick a slower paced job, too deep in inner child work to not see the kids as tiny mirrors of myself. Despite all the other things I could be doing at my hot, young, smart age, I choose teaching. Teaching is relating and relating is loving. It’s all my values mixed up together. It’s an exhortation to remain present, a call to model nurturance, an opportunity to intentionally relate to the very unrelatable, and a way to offer some of the most disenfranchised (yes, children) respect. 

Being a child sucks. You’re broke. Your weird/dumb/controlling/sweet parents make all the rules. You can’t eat what you want. You can’t go where you want. You can’t wear what you want. you’re completely dependent. You have 20 counter-acting emotions in one day. You’ve been alive for like 10 minutes, but everyone acts like you should have a clue what’s going on. You can’t smoke (legally). You can’t drink (legally). And everybody makes a big deal if you have age-appropriate safe sex. 

Fun fact: the day to day is easier when you realize the kids are suffering too. The playing field is leveled. We sit around and stare at each other’s suffering. And then I go, hey, um, okay, maybe you wanna write about it? 

(side note: being an adult sucks, too. But at least I like my body and can afford Chipotle when I want.)

Fun fact: I teach at my high school. Which means, many of my co-workers were once my teachers. 

Isn’t that weird?

Duh, but I like weird. Weird is intimate and full of possibilities. Weird is human. Weird is real. 

So like, what’s it like being on the other side now?

I had no idea teachers were soldiers. #salutetheteachertroops 

And like do the kids have the same teachers you had?

Some of them do and it’s good because I tell them that it’s okay you’re failing cuz in 2009 we ain’t have a clue what she was saying about them equations either, kiddo.

Teachers are as mixed a bag as kids. Some are really genuine and passionate, some are quiet pushovers with rowdy classrooms, some should have retired decades ago because it’s clear that they hate kids, and others should have just been cops. Actually, a lot of them should have just been cops. For some reason the profession attracts an overwhelming stain of “I feel powerless in my life so I’ll hyper fixate on controlling this micro environment and all the little bodies in it for the next 80 minutes muahaha.” 

But all of us are simply people at their job.

People love to talk about teachers who they were traumatized by, and other ways educators fail children, but rarely do I hear the words “policy” or “politicians” or “the completely stupid structure of the American school system” coupled into these critiques.

In one day any one of us is paid less than $30 an hour to do 5 times the amount of work that most of you do in one week at your remote email ping-pong jobs. You might even have working AC and filtered water? Definite lunch breaks? And whoa, dare I even say, numerous at-need or just-for-kicks bathroom breaks? Recently, I read an article about GI and urinary tract related conditions that overwhelmingly plague teachers because of the countless hours we hold in our urine and shit. (Let me tell you, being a full-on adult who’s bled in my swivel chair multiple times is not cute… but genuinely there is no time to change my cup!)

Fun fact: I was a goodie two shoes in high school. Jesus was my best friend and I got double points as a good Christian who hated swear word music and their sexuality. 

Teaching at my high school is like meeting that goodie two shoes babe at the front door every morning and telling them, hey dearie, s’ok,  take them k-swiss jawns off. So i do. I work in proverbial bare feet. I try my best to unmask (while still wearing a KN95). I am myself– I tell jokes because they build bridges. I smile because it costs nothing. I remind them that I don’t have all the answers. It’s 7:45 a.m. on a Tuesday and I’m just a person at my job so no, I do not have a needle and thread or a sewing machine or whatever you think you need from my office so you can tailor your nice pre-ripped jeans that real-ripped in the car this morning. I tease and hope to be teased back. I am honest because most adults lie. I am aggro because sometimes I want to crash out. And I am sweet because I needed someone to be sweet to me. When I was a student there were only 3 black teachers at the school and I took class with 2 of them. Now we work together. Now I get to add to the number. Now I get to try and be the teacher I always wanted. 

Fun fact: My favorite time of the year is the end. 

After answering thousands of emails, managing the emotional/social environment for hundreds of strangers’ kids, creating and presenting new lessons, answering spontaneous questions, troubleshooting solutions to spontaneous problems, reading/editing/giving feedback and grading thousands of pages, being a therapist (the kids love to yap), being a nurse (do you also know how to respond to seizures?), I get to see how much the kids have grown. Some of them are finally writing in paragraphs. Some of them are finally conscientious of structure, pacing, patterns. Some of them are finally able to identify and use complex poetic forms. Everyone grows in some way or another– even if it has nothing to do with the lesson. But, really what I love are the treats. Student X and Student Y baked me a delicious vegan lemon cake, Student R brought me mouth-watering Mexican cookies,  Student W gave me a gift card to Cold Stone, Student O spontaneously drew a pastel portrait of me before heading off to RISD, and an entire class of students put together a watercolor booklet on my desk filled with loving notes re: Miss Harris, Thank you for being a wonderful teacher. 

Somehow after all the blood, sweat, and tears, it means something. For the past 3 years, I’ve taught a kid who doesn’t do anything. Less than nothing, actually. Sleeps all class and lies when the work is due. She’s a talker, too. Loves to participate even though she was asleep during the whole lesson. Loves to play fight with the only straight boy in class, loves to ask me questions that couldn’t be more off topic, loves to submit work equally as off topic. But a few weeks ago, after writing a reflection on what she’s learned this past year, this girl wrote, “I learned that if I don’t do the work, no one else will. It won’t get done. So that means I have to do something, anything. I have to start somewhere. And then little by little I’ll get to the other side.” Ding, ding, ding! The light bulb turns on. The bugle is sounded. We have a winner folks. And that’s why I love the kids– they are all equally capable of growth; they are each winners. 

Work sucks. It’s where we spend more than half our lives. But there was one job in my life where each coworker carries with them a little part of my home.

INT. DAYLIGHT: The depressed college senior gets a call while hungover from a party in NYC that they’ve won a full ride to grad school. Cue: streamers, lights, and a chorus of friends and family cheering.

Actual: The depressed college grad moves home to live with their mom and continues doing school, FKA the thing that’s making them depressed.

During my last semester of undergrad, if depression had a monarchy, I was its queen. I tried therapy, but it’d maxed out on my 8 free visits. So instead, to manage, I’d break into my friend’s house every morning, empty all the blunt butts in her ashtrays, take out the keify flower, and light them on a “gib,” filling a Liter sprite bottle with smoke, and inhale. Then, I’d catch the free city bus from my North Carolina apartment in Carrboro to Chapel Hill.

To my stoner credit, I never missed class. I woke up every morning to watch the light turn blue. I did all of my assignments. I prayed to Time. Time, I’d pray, please, I beg, get me through this. I promise, Time, if I get through this I will never do school again. Just one day at you, Time. Just one.

In late winter, my mom called me.

“Jay,”

“Ma?”

“You should apply to UB for grad school. They have a full ride fellowship for the MFA.”

“Seriously? I don’t wanna go to grad school though, ma.”

“I know Jay, but it’s for writing. Like the only thing you’ve ever actually wanted to do.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“No, you write.” She said.

I was awarded the fellowship. I worked out the summer in Carrboro at a very tasty, yet very racist Greek restaurant, and hid every paycheck under my mattress. When I moved back in with Mom, I had no car, no job, and only one real friend in the city.

The second week I came back to Baltimore, I deposited all my summer checks and bought a car.

But, the first week, I applied to jobs.

At that time, my mom was nearly 30 years into working as a law librarian at the University of Baltimore. I had grown up between North Charles Street and Maryland Avenue, wandering aisles on tort codes and divorce law, in the old student commons— yes, the one that has been recently converted into a cop training facility (heaves; pukes).

One night, before grad school began, I was spending the night with my mom at her job when my high school best friend texted me:

Yo, my friend just tweeted that there’s an opening at The Charles; you should get an app.

I felt a spark. A three-prong plug put into a wall. A zing towards employment. A ping in the vicinity of money. Immediately, I walked the four blocks from UB to The Charles Theatre.

Most love stories have two versions—the cinematic and the way things actually happened. But there was one time in my life completely eclipsed in cinema.

Cue: fairy lights, a saxophone, rose petals. At the the counter, a sweet faced 19-year-old hands me an application. I smile and thank him. He’s shy, quiet, withholding except for a grin that spans the wingspan of his face.

I filled out the application on the spot and returned it to one of the managers. The next day, I got called in for an interview.

The Interview:

“Why do you want to work here?”

“I love movies. I used to come here for the Film Fest.”

“What is your favorite movie?”

“Um, definitely Wes Anderson something” (I lied, but the manager seems like he would like that answer.)

“Your availability?”

“Whenever you need me.”

“Experience?”

“Waitressing and barista-ing.”

“Working interview?”

“Sign me up.”

As soon as the interview ended, I saw that same young sweet-faced boy working at concessions. I went up to him.

“Hey,” I said, peering into his empty tip jar, “I’m Jalynn.”

“I’m Jalen” he responds, looking me blankly in the face.

Is he mocking me?

“No, I’m Jalynn.”

“Yeah, and I’m Jalen too.”

“Oh,” my curiosity growing, “so how is it working here? How do they treat us?” I emphasized the last word so he knows I mean skinfolk.

“I don’t know; it’s only my third day out here.”

A few days later, I worked my first shift. Behind the concessions counter with me was a 16-year-old white boy who had recently dropped out of BSA (“Yeah, f- high school. No one needs it,” he’d say) and a mid 20s Black guy with long locks (“You wanna smoke?” he’d say). On our break, we put in an order at Lost City Diner (R.I.P) and I followed them to an alleyway to enjoy what white boy called “That Afghani.”

At the end of the night, through a zooted haze, I scooped popcorn, filled fizzy drinks to the brim, and lazily counted the change. My drawer was short.

“Don’t let it happen again,” Manager said.

By the end of the first month, Jalen and I had become good friends. Every time I walked into work, he’d immediately get this silly grin on his face. I had begun telling my friends there was a boy at work who had a crush on me.

When the movies went on, there’d be two hours to shoot the shit until the next rush. During these breaks, I would read, eat, and laugh— in that order.

At that time, minimum wage was $10.10 and hour. Which, with the neighbor-employee 50% discount, I could afford two crepes at Sofi’s Crepes for every hour of work at The Charles. When I wasn’t filling my mouth with food or my mind with books, Jalen and I would film “The Jaelyn Show.”

Tickled by sharing a name and a zodiac sign, we had spontaneously begun shooting videos of us like two slap-happy 9-year-olds at a sleepover.

Episode 9: When the Jaelyns asks nonsensical questions like, Do you know what it’s like to be committed to frog?

Episode 12: When the Jaelyns change the marquees between theatre 4 and 5.

Episode 35: Our birthday season turn-up at The Crown (before the club’s radical facelift)

Episode 100: When Jalen had his wisdom teeth taken out and the swelling in his cheeks is the size of a football.

Episode 140: When Jalen interviews me about my “Met Gala” outfit (pictured above).

One day, I needed to know if he liked me liked me or if he just wanted to be my sister.

Cut to: EXT. Sofi’s Crepes. Two Jaelyns outside, enjoying their crepes during break.

Jalen: Yeah so Beyoncé said love is love so that’s the first tattoo I want.

Me: That’s gay. Are you gay?

Jalen: No

Me: C’mon, I’m gay. It’s fun. You’re gay. Stop lying.

Jalen: Ummmm.

After outing him, we went from good friends to blood sisters. I took him to his first Pride. I introduced him to his first butch queen sisters. But our love story is just one of many Charles love stories.

I worked there at a time when each of us was duplicate— there were two Yusefs, two Bens, two Jalens. I learned how love affairs with coworkers always end badly; and I learned that embezzlement is the flavor of this glorious city (yes, the manager who kept telling me my drawer was short, was just shorting the drawer); I learned that it’s easy to love someone with my own name.

Each person I met there is still a wholesome, love-filled pal today. Just last week, Jalen and I went to see Willow Smith at the Enoch Pratt Central branch. We saw two other Charles alumni walking in. We greeted like distant cousins. I see fierce beauty and artists in each of us. Maybe we’re the real Charlie’s Angels?

“Are you me?” Number 2 asks Number 1. They both laugh as if it’s an inside joke. Number 1 repeats Number 2’s question. Giggles spills over, water boils.

My nephews are children. At an age where it’s neither embarrassing nor irresponsible to be naive. Their questions are hopeful, considerate, curious. At five and three they consider. Who is me and what is you and how are we one or many and where is me and you if you and me are here with one another but not one another or are we? 

The ease at which they ask this question is not the ease with which this question visits me, at night, lying alone in pitch black silence, considering with myself, “are you me?” 

Adolescent development is a bag of greens I’ve yet to wash and chop up. The most I can grasp is the truth that I was there, a youth growing swiftly and clumsily into the centaur of adulthood– half tax-abiding; half thumb-sucking. Then, there are the examples from my life. As a high school school teacher. The boys roaming in packs, scribbling on the board or balloons phallic symbols and phrases; the girls, their edges laid with wax, their wanting to know if, “Miss Harris will you get a nipple piercing with me?” Some of it is for shock, some of it is for release. Some of it is because I am young, and I look within the belief that we can relate. Because all they want is to relate. Then, there are examples from the reading, in the class I’m taking this semester at CCBC, PSYC 219, “adolescent psychology.” Developing children need emotional attunement, developing children require attention and support, developing children are forming an identity. Yet, living development, witnessing development, and reading about development hasn’t helped me answer Number 2’s question.

If you ask me, I’ll tell you I know who I am. First born’s last born. Woodlawn raised. The youngest of three.  The early writer, earlier reader. The teacher. The book designer. The panAfricanist. The bird feeder. The mushroom grower. The spiritualist suspicious of spiritualism. The lover of big and little flavors. The chronic thinker, chronic worrier, chronic hider. But there’s more. There are questions. Where do I belong? Where do I go? What choices have I made? Are my choices making me? What am I not seeing? How should I make my money? How much do I value wealth? Partnership? Am I strong enough? Can I forgive? Why do I feel disconnected? Can I ask for help? How do I ask? Act? Account? Made of questions, I slink through the day, confident and sure and also lost and knowing nothing. 

A few years ago, I made one decision that’s shaped the course of everything after: I decided to live alone. I felt crowded. Surrounded. Insulated in a way I was convinced was no longer serving me. So I got a studio between Druid Hill and Mondawmin. And that first year was like summer. I was under employed. Sleeping late into the day. Walking daily. Cooking new recipes. Taking music as medicine. Inviting friends over, going over to friends’. The space was a gift. Until my bestie neighbors moved away, I got dumped. Then, my best friend from childhood moved away, then my grandaddy died. Then, after the rent embezzlement scandal, I moved to the East side. And now when I come home– the light winking out above Lake Montebello, Cricket meowing as welcome or need, the absence feels crowded; insulating in a way that I’m not sure is serving me anymore. 

I open Time Passages. It reads:

 “Pluto in the fourth house gives you an intense desire for emotional security. Your security needs may manifest as a fixation for a place to reside which can be completely safe, or controlled. You have a strong survival urge, and are likely to go through many changes in your relationship to your home environment as you go through life. As a defense, you may be obsessively attached to making a home environment for yourself that is exactly the way you want it. There could be a tendency for dictatorial behavior on the home front, or other compulsive behavior in search of safety and security such as seeking isolation rather than sharing.” 

Before I read this I thought my desire for a home of my own was about creating structure and an introverted need for managing socialization. But I didn’t notice how quickly it just became about control and belonging. 

In the “Control” music video, Janet Jackson’s parents don’t want her to move out. She’s about to leave the house for a gig, but both of her parents weigh into her. She resists. She’s smothered, she must get out on her own. She’s done with other people’s rules, plans, provisions. She needs to make her own. She gets in her jeep about to pull off. But her band pulls up behind her. They tell her to get in, they’re driving her to the gig. Janet Jackson gets on stage and sings, “I’m in control, never gonna stop/ Control, to get what I want/ Control, I like to have a lot/ Control, now I’m all grown up.” Perhaps control is a cousin to growing up. Perhaps my obsession with making a home is because I can’t shake the parent in my head. Perhaps I need to explore it all to truly know who I am.

Number 2 is very concerned with who is and isn’t. He is matter of fact, pragmatic. He builds mini structures out of blocks, Legos, puzzle pieces. He wants the parts to take shape, to make a complete picture.

“Gigi,” he asks my mom, pointing to an old photograph. “Is she dead?” 

Or, playing in the yard he’ll come to the phone and say, “Dad is in the shed. Mom is in the kitchen. Both Gigi’s parents are dead.” 

Being concerned with place, consciousness, and cohesion send me into an existential spiral. But Number 2 takes it in stride. He observes and asks. He states his findings, confidently. When I was young, I was nothing like him. I didn’t believe the adults could answer my questions. I gravitated towards books. Here, I thought, It’s all here and more. Ironically, a book asks that same question, Are you me? The answers are as deep and varied as the characters; the narratives themselves.

For many years, I thought who I was was my family or the stuff that I did. Then, it became how I kept and made home. How naive? But maybe that’s the point. To discover the layers of your own naivety. To turn to the adults or the text. To ask questions about the journey and see that the answers, rarely resolute, mostly in flux, all depend on the journey within your narrative. 

When, too sore from existential questions, and I needed to be reminded of who I am, I used to call my grandad. But now I call my mom. She’s lying down watching T.V with Number 3 crawling over her chest. Number 1 in the background reading the next book in the series. Number 2 facing the screen squeaking my name. “Are you me?” I ask him. He pouts or he smiles and always says no. I like his answer. 

Can I have you all to my shelf, because you’ve got FINE written all over you. Let’s find love between the covers because you’re good for my circulation. We’re PRATTically meant for eachother. 

Did you also see these book-related puns Enoch Pratt put in their most recent publication? How tender is it that we live in a city where even our library loves love.

Step 1. Read books 

My grandfather had some strange ideas about love. In 1960, a year after my mom was born, he had two other children by two other women. He was 18. Both women lived around the corner from Dolphin Street, where my mom was born. He thought, meh, it’ll figure itself out. And it did. I grew up with all of my aunts and uncles and their moms. 

This weekend, I visited my cousin and we talked a lot about love. He said, hearing me talk, I’m a mix of old school and new school. A boomer’s mind in a millenial/genz cusp’s body. He says I need to be less judgemental and more open to what love can look like. 

My friends have some strange ideas about love. My one friend is convinced Skip Marley is her side piece. My other friend is convinced she’s a foster girlfriend– the girl guys date before they meet the actual love of their life. 

I think, and I’m not sure, but I suspect that maybe there isn’t a love of my life. Or, that I already met him. And he died a few months ago. It wasn’t romantic, because he was my grandfather. We were so much of each other. And yet, complete opposites. It was pure, simple, true, and connected. He used to say, don’t forget to give me my medicine. Which meant, Don’t forget to call me. We talked everyday. I needed my medicine too.

Step 2. Stop telling people your dead grandfather was the love of your life. 

Cacao is supposed to open the heart. I first learned this at a nudist retreat in the Poconos back in 2020. I took the round bitter charm into my mouth and winced. And now, My Skip Marley friend and I occasionally have cacao ceremonies after divining for guidance using I Ching. I hate the taste of anything remotely chocolate. I drink it anyway.

Step 3. Open your heart.

I am chronically single. I don’t often meet people I like. Most people bore me.  

Person 1: A serial fantasist looking for a pretty robot wrapped in flesh, but not a real person. 

Person 2: A serial monogamist (or polygamist) looking for a warm body because they’ve been too busy in and out of relationships to have developed their own personality 

Person 3: Doesn’t like to read. 

Person 4: Seems normal but has very irritating quirks (i.e. policing everything you eat or not clipping their toenails so they’re always knifing you in the bed)

My track record is every 3 years. It takes that long. But who wants to wait one thousand nine hundred and ninety five days to feel something?

Maybe I’m not dating the right way. Maybe I need to be more of a pick-me. Maybe I need to facetime their mother before agreeing to coffee. I’m a bottom feeder when it comes to dating. I give out my number. And wait for a text. Most people want to text you to death. I have a job; I don’t have time. Just call me. Other people don’t want to meet up. Others are just looking to sleep around. Which is cool, but I don’t want a stranger touching me. And speaking of strangers, did I mention I don’t trust them? Yeah, I think I do better with a recommendation. Got any?

Step 3. Go off referrals 

One thing that frustrates me about our culture is its preoccupation with romantic love as the only kind of love that matters. This is why most people are awful friends. 

I love friendship. I might have the most friends an adult person can have. People are always saying it’s so hard to make friends as an adult. I disagree. I make new friends every year. 

Knowing a person takes years. People aren’t fantasies. People are really complex. That’s what I love most: getting to know someone through the seasons. 

My best friend says friendship is forever because you don’t have to want the same thing. For example, if I want to live in Spain and you want to live in Dundalk, we can still be friends. Or if I want a baby and you never want a baby, we can still be friends. But romantic relationships don’t work that way. 

I like to talk to my friends about our relationship; about how we’re relating. 

My one friend said it makes her uncomfortable because she only talks to her husband like that. 

I agree. It makes me uncomfortable too. But I don’t know how to be in a relationship with someone I care about and not tell them the truth. Even if it takes me years. It’s that or I’ll walk away. 

Step 4. Focus on friendship. 

I also don’t trust people who don’t have long friendships. That’s a red flag. Like what happened that nobody from your life over the years remains? Were you too focused on a romantic relationship? Or were you just not interested in someone after they showed their person-ness? I believe it’s important that people see you over time in a less high stakes-first last-and-forever kind of way. 

I love lesbians. I am one. But I don’t trust u-haulers. Or really any couple who breathes each other like air. The only codependent relationship I want to be in is reading and writing. 

Step 5. Work through your trust issues. 

Romantic relationships are triggering. They bring up insecurities, emotions, behaviors that need to come out. And, you hope they’re coming out alongside a healing, supportive, trustworthy person, but that’s not always the case. 

I want to be empowered in a relationship. Not critiqued or held under a microscope. 

I want to be with someone emotionally attuning. Someone who isn’t constantly choking on the same wounding I’m aspirating on. I want to be with someone with a driver’s license and a car. 

I think one reason my “dating life”– FKA a series of 3 month situationships–  is the way it is is because I don’t date up. I date what’s there. I ride the Ferris wheel until I wonder why I’m nauseous from going in circles.

I guess it means I have to believe that relationships can be fun? And that I should put myself out there and be vulnerable? Pfft. 

Step 6. Change core limiting beliefs 

I love my friends. We talk about love all the time.

Each of us believes we should want what we want and not decide what we want is not wantable before wanting it. 

Step 7. Wait. 

My mother is always teaching me things she’s never taught me. A few months back she came to my apartment and said:

“If you straighten out your shower curtain after you wash, it’ll dry and won’t collect so much dirt.”

So brilliant! I had no idea. Who could teach me something so simple and smart other than my mom?

Last week, I spent the whole week with my mom. She taught me so many things I never knew. 

“When you wash your coat, don’t put it in the dryer. Just hang it to dry. And then, spray this stuff on it, it’ll be easier for the dirt to come off when you wash it next.”

“We have to color the plastic on the rough side so when we put it in the oven the shrinky paper will take the color better. Watch the shrinky curl and shrink. You’ll know it’s done when it’s flat.”

“Your great great grandmother was a white woman. And my grandma was considered a mulatto.”

“Before I had my kids, I was agnostic. I didn’t like all the hootin’ and hollerin’ at my aunt’s church. Or how poor people would get poorer giving their money away to tithing. But then I found The Church. And I liked how much structure it provided. So I stayed to raise my kids in the same environment. Because there was no structure where I grew up. But after all this time, I think I’m agnostic again.”

The only holidays my mom believes in are birthdays. Because of this we never did Christmas. I did not grow up amassing every far fetched and fleeting thing I wished onto a piece of paper. We still joke that my mom is the Grinch. (Which is actually very ironic because she happens to be the most generous person I’ve ever met.)

I know you must be dying to know, were we Jehovah’s Witnesses? That’s about the second question I’d get returning to school after winter break. 

“Hey, so what did you get?”

“Nothing. My family doesn’t do Christmas”

“Nothing? Wait. Are you a Jehovah’s Witness?”

No, we weren’t Witnesses. We were Church of Christ-ers. I could argue that an off-brand conservative church feels a bit worse ‘cause how do I explain how strange it is? Here’s a short list: 

• Women aren’t allowed to serve, preach, be deacons or elders. 
• In order to be saved, you must be totally immersed in water. Even an inch out of the water disqualifies you from the kingdom of god. And. Never. Mention. Sprinkling. You might as well just go straight to hell.
• Of course, no premarital coitus.
• Anyone of the LGBTQIA alphabet community is safer on a Sesame Street episode than inside of a COC building. 
• Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose after three days of being stone cold dead to then die again and come back on a nondescript day in the ever-nearing ever-not-now future and…

Think similar to the Duggars. Think Harry Potter is the devil. Think child marriages. Think pedos. Think. Scoff. Gasp. Furrow. 

To her credit, my mom is one of the most progressive Boomers I know. When I came out to her, she took a college class on gender and sex and then joined the DEI committee at her job. She uses all my friends’ pronouns correctly. And she’s not just a Boomer who tries to “stay woke” for the sake of not being canceled. She’s a huge nerd and reader who has always been very anti-establishment. That’s why she homeschooled us for so many years. (And it’s also why she stopped cooking soon after getting married (which reminds me of this poem I love by Brazilian poet Cristiane Sobral)).

But this church she found in the late 80s was odd. She was baptized into a Black congregation, but soon after I was born, we moved. And we started going to a church with kids from our homeschool group. The congregation out in Laurel, Maryland, was icicle white. Whiteboard white. White as the inside of an Oreo. In those early days, there were only about three other Black families. 

All of my early concessions of what a home is, how it should be, who should be in it, how it should be kept, who should keep it, and how it comes into being are rooted in this Biblical soil.

Every summer I’d go to COC Christian camp. (One summer my friend and I were kicked off the talent night stage for singing Christian songs in the persona of British Christian rock stars we aptly named The Little Skittles. Apparently, we were “teasing god.” But why would we write original holier than thou lyrics? Design our own costumes? Rehearse for hours if we weren’t as serious as the afterlife?) And I loved it. The mountain air. The endless hikes. The snakes and beehopper mosquitos. The sportsball competitions. Memorizing entire books of the Bible for “perks”– extra concessions, blue ribbons, certificates in cursive. I loved it. Except when they started talking about boys. A healthy snuff of stuff we learned during devo was all about how to grow up, get married, and make a home and a man happy. Yawn. 

Last week, my mom and I went to Crystal Bridges, a museum in Northwest Arkansas, about 9 miles from where she lives now. 

The museum sits over a lake and folds out like an accordion. The sun was up. People were out. The museum was free. I ran into a cat on the walk to the building. All the signs were glowing green GO.

Then, out of the rear of an opaque red glass sculpture, I saw her. A girl I’d known since I was 5. Who I hadn’t seen since 18. It all came flooding back. She was with her husband and his parents. She was glowing and very pregnant. I stared for too long, thought to ignore her, then my mom blew up my spot.

“Is that a [Duggars-adjacent] kid?!” 

Museum Girl turned around. Then, got so red she looked like an apple.

I played it cool. Having perfected the “I’m totally okay even though I’m totally uncomfortable but I gotta seem normal so these whites don’t read any aggressive or dismissive” vibe. 

“Happy belated birthday. I was just thinking on the 28th that it was your birthday (and how much fun it was going to Build-a-Bear every year). How’s your family? Where do you live now? How long are you in town? When are you due? Enjoy your time here!” 

But internally, I was spiraling. Like one of those noodles from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. All those steamy cabin nights drenched in pitch black (who needs electricity?) dreaming of husband and home, suddenly returning. My Little Self scoffing; hot with shame.  How come you aren’t married, Jay? Where are your kids? Where is your house? Where is your man? You’ve failed. We were supposed to be normal so we could have it all.

But is that having it all? At the age of 20, I stopped going to church. I started thinking for myself.

Because I wanted to wear shorts above my knees! To kiss girls like Katy Perry! To have my womb to myself! To drink real wine and not just concord communion juice! To have premarital sex!

What those girls had stashed into their marriage chests, I’d thrown out with the baby and the bath water. 

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still want some of those things. Or really, just what those things symbolize: structure. Stability. 

All the girls I was close to growing up are married with 1-4 children or expecting. I was a bridesmaid the summer before college. I watched a truly hideous 29 year-old man court my 17 year-old friend. I survived. None of the pedos got to me. Nor their sons. The worst thing that ever happened to me at COC was begging my friend to tell her mom that her older brother was molesting her and her sisters. The worst thing that ever happened to me was the preacher saying my hair looked like brillo pads. The worst thing that ever happened to me at church was believing. 

And then there was the time me and Museum Girl were playing on a public playground in Howard County when we were like 8 or 10. We’d gone on a long walk from her house. It felt like 5 miles, but probably was only 3. We’d packed water and snacks into these really raggedy drawstring bags big corps like to give away to tweens. We walked and walked until we discovered this playground. Nothing fancy. Just a mesh of metal monkey bars and plastic yellow slides. We sat on the top platform and ate crackers when all of sudden, a cop showed up. I hadn’t seen him coming, but he walked towards us with purpose. I froze. 

When he got close enough, he looked at me and said, “do you have something in your bag?” 

I was confused. Anything in my bag? Duh, why would I carry an empty bag?

“Something in my bag? Um yeah, my cellphone and some water and snacks.”

Museum Girl said nothing. 

“Don’t play with me. Do you have something in your bag?” 

He was becoming more and more upset. I didn’t get it. I’d answered the question. I had something in my bag. Water and snacks and my phone. What did he want?

I repeated myself and said, “Do you have something specific in mind? You can look if you want.” He grabbed my bag and looked through it. Disappointed he said something to the effect of, “Someone reported teenagers around here with drugs. You should go home.” We went home. I felt so bad the entire walk back. He thought I had drugs on me? Museum Girl kept insisting that he was just doing his job; trying to keep us safe. But I didn’t feel safe. I felt violated. Targeted. Interrogated. 

When I was in college, 12 year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by a cop on a playground. I thought about that day. How scared I was. How it didn’t make sense. How insistent the cop was that I was dangerous. And how disappointed he was when he discovered that I wasn’t. 

My life is so different now. I don’t go to church. I make a point to not be the only Black person in a room (and if I’m going to be, I probably won’t go). I don’t even carry ugly drawstring bags anymore. 

But one thing hasn’t changed: my mom is still my home. Unlike the church, she loves me without condition. And it’s fun to spend a week with her. For every hurt I hold onto from childhood, I forgive her for this one. She was doing her best. After being raised by the ’60s/’70s king of Sandtown, my mom just wanted me to have what she didn’t have: structure. That, and time to read in the afternoons. And I’m proud of her for giving me both the reason and the resolve to turn towards myself <3

My demand is simple. To sleep. To rest through the night. To wake up just before the sun rises, and dress – quietly. To enjoy the blackness smiling into blue. But Erica doesn’t agree. Nor Don. And especially Sharonda. 

I have never called the cops. I don’t believe in the police state, the carceral system, inviting them into or around my home or person. So you can imagine how scared I must’ve been. At 2 a.m., peeled like an orange from the warm sleeve of sleep, when my bell rings once. Then, loud banging on the apartment building door. The knocking hurried as angry as little feet. The walls of my apartment shaking. Someone trying to break in. 

Don and Sharonda are friends. Have been for 15 years. That’s what I learn when, after a week of living under Don, I ask Sharonda if she can talk to him about the noise. The every day and every night scuffling. The fighting. The yelling. The throwing. The strange chemical smell coming through the vents. Objects falling, furniture moving, bodies jumping, music blaring – all night. 

Sharonda says: They just moved from a house, it’ll take some adjustments. 

Sharonda says: You’re not used to living beneath someone. You need to get used to the noise. 

Sharonda says: Don would never hit a woman; he’s my friend.

Sharonda says: Maybe if we get him carpet that will help. 

Don invites me up. After getting several pleading notes from me, he knocks on my door. “I want you to meet my girlfriend,” Don says. Reluctantly, I follow him. When we get to the top of the steps, I feel discomfort as loud as the inside of a steam engine. I take one step inside the door and keep it open. Erica, tall, dark-skinned, and skinny as a rail, smiles weakly. “Hello,” she says while putting up a painting on the wall. “Sorry about the noise,” she says. “We’ll get better.” Don chimes in. “See, she’s putting the apartment together – that’s all. You can hang out with us if you want,” he says, smiling crudely. I swallow hard. Mumble something about leaving, half run back to my apartment. They know where I live, I think. I’ll never escape them, I worry. 

Before Don & Erica, there was M.  M used to live in that same apartment. M was quiet, thoughtful, and hardworking. M got up every day to go to work. M never had spontaneous parties at 5 a.m. M went to bed and slept through the night. M never knocked on my door and cornered me in my home. M didn’t need carpet. M was easy to live under. 

I have migraines. They always begin the same. I don’t sleep the night before. I struggle to get out of bed. Time passes and so does my window for breakfast. I drive to work and then suddenly, the light is too much. My eye winces on an image and sneezes it up. Everything is backwards and crinkled like used napkins. I cannot focus on the road. Actually, I cannot see at all except for vague shapes and shadows. I park at school and run to my office to make coffee. Except I am too late. The nausea has already begun. The diarrhea is coming. I vomit in the office trash can. On my way to the bathroom, a student calls after me. “Miss Harris?” they say. I look at them and then away. I know their face, but I have no idea what their name is. Actually, come to think of it, I cannot remember anyone’s name. What is my name? I think. You are Jalynn. Ja-lin. Jay-land.  I finally make it to the bathroom and pull on the door knob. But for some reason, I can’t open it. Oh no, my hand is going numb. I force my hand on the door. Then, when I get back to my office, I down two Excedrin and wait. But by this time it’s too late. The numbness has already spread up my arm. I should leave to go home. But I stay. Because I can not see. And, because I don’t want to go back to the noise. 

Erica & Don like to smoke. Sometimes their smoke alarm goes off for hours. At first it’s tobacco striking through the hallways. The “please don’t smoke” sign dimly taped on the apartment building door. And then there’s another burn. A chemical smell coming from the vents in my bathroom. At night, when I shower the smell blasts over me like fog. I gag and open my windows. What is that? I think. It smells like college. Frat parties at D1 schools. New York City Saturday nights. In the bathrooms after the drag show. It smells like white lines not snorted but burned. 

Before Sharonda there was B. B showed me the apartment. Its high ceilings, full-sized kitchen, and long hallway. The long wall of cabinets, large tub, and hardwood floors. All of it captivated me. “I like this place,” I tell B. “Except, I have a lot of plants and there’s not enough light here.” “Hold that thought,” B says. He leaves the apartment and I follow him. Across the hall there is another door. He opens the door to a wide room with two wall-length windows. “This is my office right now, but you can have this room too. It’s a perfect room for a writer.” And I see it: the next great American novel written here – in this eggshell blue light-drinking cave. “I’ll take it,” I say. 

Eight months later, I get home from a walk and there’s a note on my door. It reads: you need to sign a new lease with us. Sincerely, Motivated Money Makers LLC. I’m suspicious. B never told me he was no longer the property manager. I look up the company. It is not registered anywhere. But there is a Facebook page. It belongs to a woman who sells more products than a Japanese vending machine. She sells events and credit repair and lead & home inspections and make up. Every service ends with one resolute word: “consultant.” I take a picture and send a message to my friend, “Motivated Money Makers, huh? Sounds like a scam, right?” I throw the paper away. 

B says if the person behind Motivated Money Makers is named Sharonda, then it is true, I have a new property manager. But that’s odd, B says, she got this job back in December. And you’re saying she’s just reached out to you? Hmmm. 

When Sharonda and I meet, she’s with another woman and a man. These are her business partners. But two months later, there is still no website or portal to send the rent money. And Sharonda says the woman and man are no longer working for her. She tells me not to email the original email. Instead, text her if I have a maintenance request. Instead, Cash App her the rent. I do not Cash App her the rent. I write a check every month. Then, after pushing, she gets me to Zelle her the rent. 

One night, my CO2 alarm starts squealing. I panic and open up all my doors and windows. I don’t want my cat to suffocate. I stand outside and the men come quickly. Sirens blaring, yellow jumpsuits, red hats. “It’s broken,” they say. “But it won’t shut off automatically. You’ll have to smash it against a wall so it’ll turn off.” “Can’t you just take it with you?” I ask. “No, but you’ll need your landlord to order a new one.” “Erhm,” I say, “I don’t want to smash it.” “Why – aren’t you angry about something?” I am, I think, but I’m too tired to do anything about it. 

I tell Sharonda. Sharonda never orders a new CO2 detector. Just like she never orders carpet. Just like she never gets Don & Erica to quiet down. Actually, come to think of it, I haven’t heard from Sharonda since August. Hmmm. 

Don & Erica like to fight. Whenever I see Don sulking on the stoop after a fight, he likes to assure me, “I would never hit her. She just likes to egg me on.” This week they’re broken up. I know so because my next-door neighbor says he saw her packing her things into plastic bags while pleading “no, no, no.” “Did you see the sirens the week before? They woke me up,” my neighbor asks. “No,” I say, “what were the police doing here?” “I don’t know,” he says. “The lights woke me up. Somebody must have called because they were fighting.”

I have never called the cops. I don’t believe in the police state, the carceral system, inviting them into or around my home or person. So you can imagine how scared I must’ve been, at 2 a.m., when I called the cops. 

-911 what’s your emergency?

-Hi, yes, someone is trying to break into my apartment building. 

-Can you see the person? Can you give us a description. 

-No, I can’t see them. I don’t feel safe. I’m not going out there to look. 

– Can you tell me us anything about the person?

– I can hear their voice. It’s a black woman.

I don’t tell them I know the voice, especially yelling. That it’s Erica.  

In the morning, I wake up and the door is broken; cracked open like a split. The glass is shattered. And a breeze whips through the door like water through a straw. I need to move. I can’t live like this. I call Sharonda. 

-Miss Harris, what’s wrong? 

-Someone tried to break in last night and the door is broken. It was Don’s girlfriend. 

-Oh, wow. 

-Can you get someone out here to fix the door?

-I will, Sharonda says. 

Seven days later, the door is still broken. I need to find the property owner, J. But I don’t have his number. I only have his first name. I ask my neighbor, “do you have J’s number?” “I found it as soon as you left last time, but I can’t seem to find it right now.: “It’s ok, just call me when you find it.” I go on a walk. When I come back, there’s a man standing on my doorstep. 

-Hi. Oh, you’re the guy who saved me from the bees nest in my kitchen this summer! 

– Yes, so happy you’re here. I was just looking for you.

– I’m J.

– J! I have been looking for you. I need to tell you I’m moving out. I can’t do this anymore. 

– Good. J says. And stop giving Sharonda your money, she’s been embezzling. I haven’t gotten any rent money to pay the mortgage since summer. 

I gasp. Of course. Motivated Money Makers, LLC. It was all in the name. 

Grandaddy and I talk every day.

Two years ago, he called me and said, “Just Us, when you get a chance, I want a white cap with the words ‘Genie First born’ on it.” It was a weekday and the birds were up. We had buried my uncle Junie, his son and namesake, just 3 months prior. Still somehow the sun, despite the muted colors of grief, had just begun to show itself again. 

I took out the Canon film camera my granny’s last husband had given me nearly a decade prior. When he handed it to me he warned, “She doesn’t have much time – capture her.” (We were in Niagara Falls, Canada about to go into the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. And no, I could not believe in an Earth without Granny. But I took as many pictures as I could. She died a year later.) I promptly loaded film into my camera and headed out. But when I was already on his Reservoir Hill block I realized I’d left the camera in my apartment. 

“Assalamualaikum, Just Us,” I said, opening my trunk and then skipped the 7 steps up to his apartment and grabbed his wheelchair. It took all my tiny muscles in concert to lift his chair into my hatchback. Then, I went back to get him, offering my hand as a steady rail to help him walk down the steps. 

Truth be told, I hadn’t been to Mondawmin in years. I had retired from my life in malls after learning Granny’s greatest lesson: that all the good things are in thrift stores. Besides who goes to Mondawmin after they unceremoniously took away the Target? And yes, we all love Auntie Anne’s pretzels, but they don’t hit much if you’re not celebrating getting your license at the DMV. 

I parked at the entrance closest to Planet Fitness and pushed him up the ramp and into the mall. We wandered a bit, getting our bearings. Forever 21 was closing, but the Great Cookie was thriving. Shoe City was still there, but no one was inside. After about 10 minutes, we hadn’t found the hat shop, but we had asked the jeweler if he could fix Grandaddy’s watch. We were quoted an exorbitant price and scurried away. Then, finally, we saw what we needed– Lids. 

As a Muslim man, an esteemed elder, and our family’s deified patriarch, Grandaddy doesn’t go anywhere without having his head covered. Kufis, bucket hats, caps, fedoras, boaters, you name it he wears it. We scoped out the hats. Then up top, behind the SpongeBob snapback, he saw it. 

“That one,” he said, pointing to a plain white cap. “Ask that lady if she can put your mom’s name on it.” We spent some time picking out a font and text color. He settled on black text with an ornamental, but not sentimental, typeface. While the cashier ran the hat through the machine Grandaddy talked shit to another patron. (Shit talking is an ancient form of camaraderie-building that I’m pretty sure Grandaddy invented.)

Last month, I drove Grandaddy and myself down to Easton for the day. I love going down to Southern Maryland. My matrilineage, since the 1800s, were all born on a tiny little peninsula on the big peninsula in a town called Oxford. Oxford is a waterfront town where everyone knows each other, no one can drive above 15 mph, and rich white people store their boats for the summer.

Last month, one of my big cousins was having a party to celebrate the memories of his paternal aunts and uncles – many of whom have died suddenly in the last few years. But it also happened to be his mom’s – my mother’s sister’s – birthday as well. So, I threw Granddaddy’s chair into the backseat, buckled up, and rode us from the Western shore across the Bay Bridge to Easton. We listened to Lauryn Hill most of the way there. (“God, I love that Laryn Hill,” he said. “She’s got some kind of voice.”) When we got there, there were balloons, streamers, loud music, lots of food, a huge tent and tables. Everyone was celebrating the memory of a loved one all while wishing my aunt a happy birthday. It’s ironic isn’t it? Within the celebration of life there is always more life. 

A lot of life feels learning how to live without the ones you love. A few days after our Eastern Shore trip, Grandaddy got sick. Since then he’s been on a circuit of hospital, rehab, hospital. Seeing his health decline so rapidly and dramatically reminds me of that first winter without Junie. Without James. Without Tricia.

This past weekend, I went to visit Grandaddy at the hospital. Of course, he was wearing a hat. This time a denim bucket hat like one of those dancers in pantsula music videos. My mom switched out his hat for a red cap. And taped a sharpie next to his bed with a sign that read, “please sign his hat.” I wrote my name, the name he gave me/us: Just Us. 

Grandaddy says he gave me that name one day when we were talking on the phone when I was about six or seven. “I was in this drug program,” he says, “and we were talking about how your brother is nicknamed Tall Pall and your other brother Jesus and you needed a name. So that’s when one of us settled on Just Us and it sounded just right. ‘Cause it’s true, it’s just you and me; it’s just us. It stuck.” 

In the early 40s, Grandaddy was born to Heavy Man and Honey in Raleigh, North Carolina. But soon his parents went back to Camden, South Carolina where he was raised. For the first few years of his life, he worked on a plantation as a sharecropper, where I did confirm he was literally singing “Wade in the Water.” He knew all about riding mules and picking cotton. He traveled back and forth from Camden to Baltimore where he had lots of family. Eventually, he dropped out of school sometime before 8th grade and moved with his family to Baltimore. Four years later, he and my granny had my momma, and named her after the great Italian actress Gina Lolabrigida. For the next four decades he kept having children. Totaling a whopping 12 kids by 5 different women. The true miracle is that all of his kids were raised by many of these women; that all of his kids speak to one another multiple times a week; and love each other deeply like the basketball team that they are.

The nickname Genie didn’t come into my mom’s life until much later. If you ask Grandaddy why he started calling my mom Genie, he’ll say: 

“I changed her name because if you mess with her– if you rub her– be careful ‘cause she’ll come right out the bottle!”

Family is a silent letter that changes the whole word. If you take out the h in home, what’s left is om. Om is the greatest spiritual utterance. A solid symbol. A life fulfilling mantra. My family is my greatest home. They are the water I breathe and the air I drink. They are loud, aggressive and achingly sweet. They are in recovery of addiction and reliable accountants. They are expert cussers and talented musicians and dancers. And not to mention, they are in mass and amassing more love every day. 

So if you meet a Forman or a Gibson in Baltimore or in Oxford, you’re meeting my cousin. Tell them I asked about them. Tell them I love them. 

We need to have a serious conversation about Baltimore City drivers. The gas-pedaling, rubber-rubbing, wheel-whipping metal riders. Or as my friend Jalen would say, the bippers – those who are able to flexibly move through life. Or as I would say, those who wield the wheel with the energy of cats after using the litter box; which is to say, Baltimore City bippers have a serious case of the zoomies. No direction, but fast. No law, but furious. And unfortunately, it stands to trial, there is no one and nothing as consistently threatening as those with temporary tags. 

In Baltimore City, if you see someone with temporary tags you should hide your kids and your wife. Most of the time you don’t even need to see the back of the car to know that the person speeding in your rearview mirror has temporary tags. If you’re unfamiliar with noticing temporary tag bippers here are some things to ask yourself: is the car driving twice as fast as the speed limit? Is the car unaware of straight lines? Is the car unaccustomed to using one lane? Does the car not acknowledge traffic lights or any laws? Does the driver seem totally okay with ending your life or their own in a metal ton motorized gun? If the answer is yes to one or all of these, then you have in fact crossed paths with a temporary tag bipper. 

When I was a kid, my parents had matching silver cars. I don’t know the make or model, but maybe from this image, you do? Rolling up to church, the mall, the penn relays, the thrift store and getting out of one of two very shiny silver wheels was the most I felt like a celebrity. The cars were slick in the way grand marquees were but minus the cop feeling. They shone like oversized quarters and rode smooth as hair grease. Big bodied and long like canoes, these cars had leather seats that nestled me into many quick and deep naps. 

But what was most surprising about these cars were not their parts, but their drivers– my parents– two very straight-laced Bible-pushing nine-to-fivers; an IT dude and a library lady. But true to their West Baltimore roots, they had purchased slick cars to show off. 

The other day, one of my friends posted a video of what looked like an impromptu car show on North Avenue and Mount Royal. Cars with decked out rims, big wheels nearly 15 feet off the ground, passengers hanging out the window wearing pink ski masks, and Tate Kobang blasting. Were they racing or were they riding? Who knows. One thing was for sure, they were showing off. 

I walk Druid Hill Park frequently. A lot of the time there’s these smoke fogged car shows happening right by Safety City. Whole neighborhoods of bippers showing out and off the work they’ve done to their cars. The fog so thick you think it was smoke from Canadian wildfires. Cars iced out in mechanical drip so impressive you’d think it was Fashion Week for metal. Dozens of people hanging out of or alongside cars or making donuts in the asphalt of the parking lot or grazing their hands over studded rims or just simply drinking 40s while blasting K-Swift mixes from behind tinted windows.

I’ve never seen more accidents than at the intersection of Gwynn Falls Parkway and Auchentoroly Terrace. The loud crash of metal on metal. The splash of a bumper on a pole. The screams of people, children. Just last week, I was walking to the park and a child was sobbing in his mother’s arms. The other drivers talked to the police in hushed tones. Both cars crumpled like smashed origami. Why do we love our cars? Tricked out and doing tricks. Why do we love showing off our cars more than we do our children?

When I moved back to Baltimore, I knew I needed a car. As much as I love public transit, our city is not the city for consistent bus schedules or cross city-county rides. (The Red Line, oh the Red Line!). So I asked my Uncle Junie if he could take me out to look. We drove all the way from his house in Edmondson Village straight down Liberty Road. Eventually we spotted a used car lot. I narrowed down the cars based on how much I had to spend. That’s when I saw it: a 2006 white Chrysler Sebring. It had 99K miles on it and front bumper rounded like a pout. The body of the car was long like my parents’ silver cars. Immediately, I called Uncle Junie over to inspect. 

-Does it look good, Uncle?

-Yeah, looks good Jay. 

We went inside to inquire. There were only 3 people working there– one on the phones, one working the lot, and one who seemed to be doing a mix of both. 

-Can I see the MD inspection? 

-Sure. Tomorrow when you come back. 

-Can we see the car history? The VIN?

-Sure. Tomorrow when you come back. 

-Why doesn’t the radio work? 

-Sure. Tomorrow when you come back. 

The next day, Uncle Junie took me to the bank. I took out all the money I’d made waitressing that summer–$2500. We drove back to the used car lot. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have gone back the second day. But I was in haste. I needed wheels. I never saw the inspection paperwork. Never got the car history. Never knew until later the radio was an electrical issue that would cost me an extra $600 to fix. Never knew Uncle Junie ain’t know nothing about cars. 

With temporary tags, the lot guy drove us off the lot. The only thing I remember about that ride was it was fast and furious. We rode like a tsunami. We rode without regard to traffic lights or laws. We rode in two lanes and not straight. We rode until we hit an office suite in Catonsville where he handed over the “MD inspection papers” and this couple–his friends– handed over my tags.

I think about that car a lot. I think about the 2 years we spent together riding up and down Route 40. I think about the time I had to sleep in that car after a drunk night out. I think about how near the end, that car would just silently shut itself off in the middle of driving. 

I think about that car when it’s late at night, and I’m in Upton or Charles Village trying to get back home, stuck at a 3 minute red light. I think, What would my Sebring do? Then, I count the red light as a stop sign and roll straight through. 

My life in a body consists of two substances: water and friendship. Water cleanses me as sweetly as squeegee boys do window shields— yes, liquid drawn heart and all. Friendship allows me to grow as firmly as the ancient gingko trees growing around the city— their wide leaves like palms spread out in high-fives. A healthy dose of both is the sculptor’s hand to the stone; I am boasted, shaped roughly in preparation for finer form. In turn, I must boast about them, because genuinely, I must admit, Baltimore has given me the best friends in the world.

Last week, I was taking an online writing course for teachers. The facilitator asked, “Outside of being a teacher, who are you?” While everyone spoke meaningfully about being parents, wives and coaches—to which I nibbled on my nails thinking, gee, if I’m none of these things then am I anything?—one woman was brave enough to say, “I am a friend.”

In a society where romantic partnership, parenthood, and employment are dominant markers of “somebodiness” I often get caught up like a fish in a haggling hook. I am miffed by the myths. I worry singleness is close to nothingness. I worry the only antidote is a romantic relationship soaring me ever after into the rainbow skies of somebodiness. But this woman from the workshop was proud. Proud to admit that she is in fact, a friend. And oh, how I loved her response. Because, yes, friendship. The true ever after!

There is no home without the homies. Six years ago, when I came back to Baltimore, I moved in with my best friend: my mom. At 5’4″ my mom is a giant. She is a woman committed to service as a means of growing finer. With 30+ years as a librarian— abridged resume: Goddard Space Center, BCPL, and University of Baltimore— not only can she stand for hours on end unperturbed as a gargoyle, she will also go the distance to find you the information you need. Ask her for a book on swimming and she’ll find you the CCBC class to match. Ask her for a ride home and she’ll take you every week. Ask her for a hug and she’ll give you her heart without condition. Oh, and you’ll never see her more serious than when she’s being a friend. Luckily, she’s the oldest of 12 other Baltimore babies who happen to also be excellent friends– of mine, to one another, and to others.

There is no friendship without the swelling chain of captivity. Hear me out. Cisheteropatriarchy loves captivity. It legislates, supports and codifies captivity. Anti abortion laws? Nom nom nom. Animal labor? Another helping please! Assigning people a gender at birth? Oh, boy it’s Christmas! And never forget, schools. (Don’t get me wrong. I love schools. Teachers are the most precious gift to humanity. But school systems? School boards? Allocation of funds? Curricula? Grades? Superintendents? I’d rather hire a fourth grader to do my taxes…)

I met my best friend in a Baltimore County high school. Imagine the meet-cutes of Netflix, but in between the brown brick of a jail and a Five Guys. Here enters me– a lowly freshman wearing the Bible like a purse. Then, Imani, a sophomore transfer reflecting the fluorescent light of the hallway off her braces. Dramatically, these two nerds collide in a flurry of journal pages and Italo Calvino quotes. There’s a dirty rolling backpack in the background. A rogue rolling G2 pen. A pad before the diva cup revolution. Sorry, we both say. Or Watch where you’re going! Or Do you wanna read together? The bell rings. We’re late to class. “Zebra” by Beach House plays as the opening credits roll.

Years later, we’re still here, adult children of emotionally immature parents, reminiscing about that Artscape with the giant waffle or the Virgin Mobile FreeFest year where we almost saw Das Racist mere minutes before they broke up. (Note: we did see Big Sean before he was a father and CeeLo Green before he was on that show that makes no one famous; I’ll be her friend forever).

There are no friendships without chance. Years ago, as a very eager and broke grad student, I was looking for work. My bestie sent me a tweet from a Charles Theater employee that said: we takin applications. Immediately I walked from UB to The Charles. I filled out the app on the spot. A few days later, I came in for an interview. Just before meeting the manager, I walked up to one of the only other Black people on shift that day. “Tell me,” I said, “the truth. How do they treat us here?” He said, “I dont know. This only my second day out here.” “Okay that’s honest. I’m Jalynn by the way.” I reached out my hand and introduced myself. Then, he said, “I’m Jalen.” I looked at him, peeved, because I thought he was trying to make a joke. “No,” I said, “that’s my name.” “Yeah, and that’s my name too.” Years later, we go everywhere together and people always say, “Hey! It’s the Jalynns!”

Friends are rescuers, trauma bonded binders, respites in the storm. Friends are growers, not showers. Friends are tightly wound smudge sticks and loose leaf tea. And friendship is what this city is made of. And you, reader, how did you meet your Baltimore friends? Do you know what they do for a living? If so, is it a regular part of your conversations/ hangouts? If you share a vocation with a friend, do you do that together? i.e. Writers do you write together? What does a good friend mean to you?

Chances are, if you’re from Baltimore, you probably don’t care what your friends do for a living. Our friendships aren’t about work. They’re about play. Sure, we love a well paid collaboration. But I’ve not met one person from here who’s concern with friendship is purely for network building. No, people here just want to be friends because simply we love hanging out (and because we don’t wanna keep running into our exes without a solid buffer of friends around us all the time).

I love my friends more and more the longer I get to love them. Like the eternally opened turnstiles in the Baltimore metro– you never have to pay for friendship, you just keep on through. I love friendship because, like the construction around Druid Hill Park, I have a really strong feeling it’ll never end.

As much as I love Philadelphia, I want that name for us. But since the city of brotherly love is taken, could we be the city of nonbinary friendshipping? The city of gender nonconforming huggers? The city of maternally motivated cherishing?

There is no home without the homies. People come to Baltimore because of something— a job, a home, a lover. Others of us are born here. But all of us stay because of the people we meet. And when–or if–the time comes to move, people always come back. What other city can claim this pull? A pull so deep and irresistible it’s oceanic. And we are its ridah girls in a silver breasted submarine plummeting to the bottom.

After my first semester of college, I knew one thing: I wanted to live alone.

Unlike intimacy, puberty, and cutting my own toenails, sharing space was not something compulsory, nor alchemic to my glow up. Dragging myself through the burning coals of somebody else’s elseness made me no diamond, no soror. Rather it made me ornery and out late into the night to avoid the other’s bedtime rituals.

And had I mentioned to anyone, I had mentioned to myself, my particular disdain for certain body odors. Musks were out. Egg smells were out. Haven’t showered in 2 days, out. And it seemed, my roommate at the time– a big-eyed blond sniffly band geek from Asheboro, North Carolina– wore each smell like a crown. Not to mention her boyfriend, who you can only imagine, reader, smelled like the boy version of an 18 year old band geek. 

There are many versions of this story,– how I got to North Carolina; the full ride letter I received in July while at church camp in Northern Minnesota; how I registered for the last freshmen orientation in August; how quickly I packed up my whole life and moved, with no liquid cash, knowing no one, to Chapel Hill for four years– but none as interesting as how I left Kernan. 

Known primarily for the hospital at the end of its drive, Kernan sits gently at the border between west county and west city. Baltimore, like no other place, holds these dualities of inner and outer with the robust closeness of a child to its mother’s bosom. I could walk to the city from my house, but the county claimed me through and educationally through. I could blissfully enjoy Leakin Park with my friends, but in true county naivety– with no knowledge of its history of body dumping. I could even, like Adnan and Hae Min, spend hours after school at Woodlawn Library, and think only of how if I got kicked out how much shame that would bring my mother because she worked there.

Throughout my years on Kernan Drive, I wasn’t an only child, but I had been a latchkey kid. Both of my older brothers had moved away. And soon after, my mom and I, in the middle of the night like Mary and Joseph carriaging to the inn, packed up all our stuff and moved out of my dad’s house. The house on Kernan had been ours for years. My dad had bought it in the early aughts with the intention of renovating, flipping , and cashing it in for a healthy green check. But it never happened. And the house sat in its own dust for years, until mom and I sought its asylum. 

The three bedroom house sat up a short, but very steep hill. Two stories of red brick with a side yard and a down-sloping parking space. It faced north and brought in very little light. It was crusted with bushes and high grass and what I can only guess was an eastern red cedar tree that loomed over everything. I lived in the attic, which meant my room was the width of the entire house. It smelled of belated cat pee and dead wood. I had a walk-in closet that reached to the tonsils of the house. I covered my attic slanted walls with clippings of album covers and strange phrases from magazines the library had retired. There was a built-in dresser I cluttered with cheap plastic jewelry and photos of my friends from summer camps. Oh, and lots and lots of duct tape wallets I had made.

It was in that house, that for the first time, I stood over a mirror trying to fit in a tampon. It was in that house I pined after my first girl crush, my neighbor whom I spent most my after-school hours with. It was in that house I ate alone, read alone, homeworked alone, and cried. Alone. 

The May after we moved in, mom and I decided that for our birthday, we were going to bring some light into the house. We couldn’t flip the house around to face south so we decided on another plan: to paint the living room sherbet orange. This is my happiest memory in that house– the two of us up to our necks in paint, rolling over the drab green and coating everything in orange. For hours we painted and giggled and dipped our rollers back into the orange sun. 

“Get that spot!” 

“Oh, don’t forget that corner!” 

“It looks so good, let’s start on the next wall!” 

Maybe it was the fumes or the joy of our own personal holiday or maybe it was the simple therapy of the color itself, but whatever it was, we were elated painting those walls. And coming home to it again and again served us well. 

Mostly, Mom worked. Literally all day and all night, from 9 a.m. in the morning to 11 p.m. and most every weekend a month besides one. For that reason, we didn’t spend much time together. So I filled my teenage years with OPP– other people’s parents, in other people’s homes, with other people’s children. And not to forget: Jesus. I was deep into the holy roller life. During the week I was fed, driven, and even clothed by OPP and on the weekends and Wednesday nights I was at church, drinking in all the juices of an everlasting Christ. But when I wasn’t after school kicking a soccer ball around a field or praying the gay away in the pews, I was home alone. And I hated it. 

If I hadn’t started writing this, I may have forgotten why we left Kernan. But now, I remember. Dad’s house, the house I grew up in, was being foreclosed. And Mom didn’t want him houseless. So she said we would move into an apartment in Owings Mills and let him have the Kernan home. And as stealthily as we had entered, we packed up all our things and left. 

So reader, you can imagine my surprise, my mistrust, when after one semester at college I discovered I really wanted to live alone. That was 10 years ago. And for most of the last decade, I’ve lived in that distrust. Because how can a lonely person trust the lonely desire to live alone? On the surface it seems cowardly; at arm’s length it seems re-traumatizing.

But last year, I took the plunge. I messed up the plan. I told my best friend, only months after we moved into our apartment, that I wanted to live alone. And I have. For nearly a year now, I have spent every day coming home to myself in the shape of things– the pothos atop my cupboard, the curly tailed cat on my bed, the long hallway that licks the heels of my full-sized kitchen. I have cried more this year than any year. I have walked just as much. I have had all the space to feel, to mess, to listen.

I love listening. The deep rumble of motor bikes from the street, the firm hush of rain at my window, the growl of a lawn being mowed somewhere just beyond the alley. And then there’s me, my mind, sloshing around in its herenesses. All mine. To myself. Letting me feel through whatever and for as long and with every ounce of loving kindness I can extend. It’s kismet this me and me. My me and I. Here, in Woodbrook or Mondawmin or whatever you want to call it, I know I’m in the right place and it’s me by my side, present and pushing, happy and showing up everyday to feed, hold, and shit as the animal I am. 

One thing you wouldn’t know just by looking at me: I’ve been to hell. It’s true. I’ve walked its hot slick cobblestones. I’ve wandered its church-stained halls smelling of old rubber toys and rotting wood. I’ve seen its jungles. I’ve watched its trees shed skin like snakes; its grasses sprout yellow and short with death. In hell, I was kind. I threw back balls over the fences and knelt down to tie the shoes of those who couldn’t do for themselves. Worst of all, I’ve met Satan. I even worked for her. I’ve gotten up long before the sun and driven into her hot belly city, just to take notes on “how to” and “why not.” Then, with hands cracked from the chill of the fire, and a mouth covered firmly with cloth, I’d teach the children woefully enrolled in her school. 

One thing you might not know just by looking at the city: hell is in Fells Point. It’s true. It’s in walking distance from the Sandlot, only a stone’s throw away from Pitango, and shares a building with a physical therapy office.

After my glorious stint as an enumerator for the 2020 Decennial Census Bureau, I was unemployed. And not “funemployed” as I’ve seen a lot of millennials caption on the internet. There was nothing fun about it. Often, I’d wake up from a dream about a conversation I had one night 4 years ago with a science PhD who rattled off an abbreviated list of the 1,200 jobs he applied to before landing one at Hopkins only to move two years later when the gig was up and the search began again. And there was the one about that other recent MFA grad, just like me,  who spent months applying to teaching positions only to land an adjunct load as long as the Nile and still cash out just below the poverty line.

Awaking from one of these nightmares on a Tuesday, riddled with anxiety and pending bankruptcy, I decided it was time to apply to jobs. I sat down at the kitchen table, the light streaming in high-yellow through the orange curtain, and my hands sweating like a plum. I began with Indeed. Luckily, I had taught some classes in grad school, so I figured maybe I should look for teaching jobs.

I scrolled through the listings. I uploaded my resume and cover letter. I pressed enter three times. I tasted the sweat over my lip. I looked up and the light had shifted to tanning bed orange. I was exhausted. I took a nap. 

You know that saying about the devil in a blue dress? Or the one where it’s sunny outside and the rain comes and it’s the devil beating his wife? Well, only 3 days later, the sun was shining and my phone rang. A blue song. A lot like rain. And loud in the sunny dress of the day.  Nervously, I answered. 

-Hi, we’d like to interview you for the job at [hell]. 

– Me?! Er–, yes, of course.

-Can you come in tomorrow? 

-Tomorrow? 

– Tomorrow!

–Tomorrow.  

Touring hell, you would never know where you were. You would mistake the red brick for health. The greenhouse for growth. The children as a sign that there were systems in place to educate and protect them. I had learned about logical fallacies in high school, but was never taught to regard a playground as a slippery slope. 

At the end of the interview with the head of school, I met with the woman I would be replacing. She was pregnant and for the length of her maternity leave, I was to be her long-term sub. 

-So you want the job for the whole year? 

– Me?! I thought I was just here until you came back?

– Oh, they don’t know this, but I’m definitely not NOT NOT coming back. 

And it followed. I accepted the offer. I’d teach 5th- 8th grade with 2 sections of English Language Arts (ELA), a planning period, and 2 sections of Geography.

On my first day, at drop-off in the morning, I introduced myself to the other teachers and asked each one the same question: how do you like it here? To which all, but two, replied, I just started two months ago. Strange, I thought. And why were the two outliers immigrants? 

(Not so quickly, I caught on. Hell was a lot like Jonestown, Guyana. It was powered by the underclass. Its recruits were the desperate, the hungry and the brown. If, like hell, Jim could have sponsored Visas for immigrants he would have. But Jim had no true bank to back (or feed) his cult. But hell? Hell had it all.) 

On my first day, I was asked to come into the office. Here I met Satan. Like most oligarchies Satan was not the head-of-school, but rather a close colleague – an on-the-surface jolly white woman who wore pink – a color as close to red as any. She spoke incessantly and flamboyantly, talking wildly with her hands as if she were swatting at the flies that made their home in her. 

-I was wondering! Would you actually mind teaching 3rd-8th grade ELA! And no geography! It’ll be easier! 

– Me?! Er– but what will I teach them? 

– Oh you know! Stuff! Look on Teachers Pay Teachers! Look at the Common Core! 

Let’s pause here. Imagine you just found out you’re pregnant and you need an abortion. You call your local abortion fund hotline and say, hey, I’m in crisis. Can you help me? What should I do? And the person on the other side says, you know the constitution right? Yeah, look at that. And when you’re done, dig into the Bill of Rights. Would that be helpful? No. It’s as helpful a response as “look at the Common Core.” Again, slow to it and very naïve, I caught on: this school had no curriculum, no materials, no nurse, no counselor, and not nearly enough educators. 

(Months later, working diligently in the upper section of the office, I sent an email to Satan asking for an agenda for our weekly meeting. A meeting that consistently cut into the only 30 minutes I had all day to plan my lessons, do my grades, and answer emails from the helicopter parents. 

– Oh my god! She’s so rude! Very overconfident! Who does she think she is! She can’t talk to us like this! 

Satan was malfunctioning. She didn’t appreciate my question. And I didn’t appreciate her. Not how she arrived late to school every day to spend the few remaining hours gossiping, like a turtle on a log, about the teachers whom she had no real plan to support. 

After letting her talk for a while, 

– Hey, I can hear you talking about me. 

– Oh! We weren’t! Talking about you!

But I did it and I was kind. Despite the pandemic raging. Despite 3-4th being in one classroom. Despite the 5th grade girls fighting each other like sisters. Despite 6th-8th grade being in one classroom. Despite teaching hybrid – online and in-person – to an audience of very sometimey and mostly asleep attendees. Despite acting as the nurse, the counselor, and the teacher of six grades of children. I did it and I was kind. 

And then, my uncle Junie died. And, heartbroken, I sent the head of school a text. 

– Hi, I need to take off tomorrow to attend my uncle’s funeral. 

– Hmm… are you sure? We don’t have anyone to cover you. We’d have to close the classroom and as you know, that’s the entire middle school. Can you write a letter to the parents explaining this? 

– Me?! 

And the day after. 

-Who DIED?! Somebody you loVED IS DEAD!! (an adult)

-Yeah, we heard somebody DIED, Miss Lynn. (a child) 

– Mhmmm. Oh, someone died! You must be sooooo SAd!!! (satan)

Just like hell has an entrance it also has an exit. At the end of the year, I got fired. The owners of the school thought it was my time. I agreed. Apparently, I wasn’t dif-fer-en-tia-ting enough! (Satan’s words). Apparently, the whole time I was supposed to be assessing each individual child’s need, creating a lesson for each one, and teaching at the exact pace they needed to be taught at.

After letting me go, they brought me into the office. I had this strange feeling. A mix of dread and relief. The kind you get after taking a really big dump. 

– Yeah it’s a tough job, but thanks for working here. 

– Yeah! I couldn’t do it! 

I had all these thoughts, okay, but neither of you ever sat in on any of my lessons. I was never observed. I was never offered any feedback. I was never even given teaching materials. But then I thought of freedom. What it would feel like to drive away from those hot coals. To taste the quenching sting of cold water again. To see a playground and trust its joy. To no longer daily gnash my teeth at the fishy smell of the Harbor. And then, I did something that surprised myself. 

– Thank you for the opportunity. I said. Because I knew I had survived. Despite, despite, despite. 

When I moved to Brookfield Avenue, it was nothing like the worn sock weather of Chapel Hill. Nor was it anything as gorgeous as Cape Town– the wind alone did not howl as a chorus of mothers crying out in service to the Lord. But, in its own way Brookfield did sing, its beauty a resounding instrument in the city of charm.

Perhaps my fascination with Brookfield was because it was a street and it had been some time since I’d lived on a street. My past included a train station in Rosebank, Cape Town; then later, an apartment complex that stretched out like 50 horizontal arms, finger to finger, on a lawn in Chapel Hill.

And my most recent living arrangement was the community of older folks I had moved from in Catonsville with my mom which was, like most condo-villages, a box with one entrance and one exit. Noise came in only from other apartments or the drunken wanderings of patrons after Loafer’s Bar and Grill closed for the night.

But Brookfield was different–a proper street with a beginning, middle, and end. And in the beginning of living there, I believed my whole life had been waiting to unwind on that street. In the middle, I believed I could get away with murder. And in the end, I left–thinking if I left the pandemic home then maybe I could leave the pandemic. 

I guess I’d be reducing the stage if I didn’t mention Whitelock Street. My 6-foot-long window faced that street. And from it I could see the signs “Brookfield Ave.” and “Whitelock St.” crossed like a holy thing on a metal pole. And across from it, the garden that filled every weekend with Black people growing food on Fridays, practicing yoga on Saturdays, and learning tai chi on Sundays. As if the holy cross on metal was a place to gather as a vaccine for the pandemic. 

In my opinion, a proper street has two things: 1. its own thru road and 2. cars traveling from one end of the day to the next. Meeting both requirements, Brookfield Avenue had its own special addition–congruous with much of Baltimore city planning–it was a one-way street.

My reverence for one-way streets developed a decade earlier. When, before I could drive, my eldest brother was driving us back from a house show in Pigtown. We’d trekked out to the city from our mom’s place in Owings Mills to see a vocal group, a Christian couple, sing in a now-demolished row house to an audience of 20 friends and two strangers–us, the only Black people. It was late at night and Jordan, a mere year into his license with no city driving experience, hooked a right onto West Franklin. Now, if you know anything about that elbow patch between MLK and 40 West, there is no right on West Franklin. Suddenly, a rush of headlights screamed towards us. Beeeep! Beeeeep! Jordan, panicked but quick thinking, whipped the car onto a patch of grass on the side (a patch that no longer exists, but in its heyday saved our life). From then on it seemed to me, advisable to always note which streets had hovered above it like a black halo two crucial words: One-Way. I bowed down to the arrow, circled in red and stricken through. 

So imagine my delight while apartment hunting in Reservoir Hill I saw Brookfield Avenue crowned with that same nod towards a unilateral direction. Ah, I thought–an electrical current running through me like a wire–look! it’s an intellectual thru line from one axis to another. An opportunity to head in one direction. A funnel that when poured into goes out the other end. Two weeks later, I moved in. 

The day after moving, I drove to Arkansas to move my mother into her forever retirement community: Jordan’s house. A month later, when I came back to Brookfield, I dropped my bags into the foyer, looked at my roommate–the philodendron he hung from the hook, the kitchen and its overhanging pendant light, the TV mounted to the wall shining “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”–and felt that same electric current. “I feel like my whole life has been heading towards this one moment, in this apartment,” I said out loud. He looked at me, amused and puzzled, as if thinking, It’s just Reservoir Hill, Jalynn. Not the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art. But for some reason, I felt like dumbass Rocky at the bottom of the steps looking up. Raw egg floating in my belly; egging me up and up. 

Other than the occasional hiccup of construction, Brookfield mostly operated as such–the beginning of my adult life; a street going in one direction. 

In August, I entered the field. Which is to say about a week into living there I got a call about my application with the United States Census. Training started and I had a lot of paperwork to fill out. My first day out was mean. Humidity punched me from all sides. Upper 90s, clad head to toe in pandemic attire: a set of rubber gloves, a cotton mask (before we knew better), and a face shield with a blue strap. My thick soled hiking boots, ankle-length pants, quarter-sleeved t-shirt, and cross-bodied bag gathering, then sealing in heat. I looked like a walking street light, a trudging recycling bin upended from behind the Patient First. 

I looked at my docket for the day. My first home was in my building. Despite my nerves, I asked all the questions. Who you got living in here? Are they your biological, adopted, or foster children? Is you a man or a woman? You owning or renting? The questions were ridiculous, but the pay was almost $30/ hour, so I was happy to sweat.

Three months of walking work taught me about every nook and granny (ha!) of Reservoir Hill. Something about the walking filled me with joy. Or maybe, it was the rehearsed script I repeated again and again. Or maybe it was the views because, not to brag, I’ve been in Res Hill’s Burj Khalifa more times than I can count. Lakeview Towers is 15 floors high, winged by two not-always working elevators, and every kind of person to ever “person” living within. When I first went to enumerate Lakeview Towers I was told I needed to show the director proof that I had business there. I looked at my hands sweating in rubber and my “2020 Census Bureau” bag digging a mean moat into my neck. I’ll come back tomorrow, I said. 

The next day, I did. They let me in. I was given an elevator badge that unlocked all the floors. I knocked and I knocked. I left notes letting them know I’d be back. I knocked some more. A man came out and said, “Why would I participate? I can’t even vote.” I felt bad. He must’ve been incarcerated, I thought. I felt like a cop. I fingered my imaginary badge and decided to cop or cap; I lied. But if I count you, you’ll count. I smiled–my mask masking the sneer.

Another time a hard-of-hearing elderly man opened his door. “Are you Hispanic?” I asked. Huh, he squinted. “Are you Hispanic?” I repeated, enunciating my words. “HUHHHH,” he said. “ARE YOU HISPANIC?!!” I yelled. Suddenly his neighbor opened his door and yelled back, “No, he’s not Hispanic!” I marked him down.

By the end of my time with the census the most amazing thing happened. Well, two things. One, I had developed a white man’s propensity for getting anyone to talk to me. It was weird and I loved it. I could take a tense interaction and in less than three minutes not only smooth things over, but get the respondent to answer all of my questions.

The exception to this was the napping respondent. One day on Callow Avenue, I woke up a sleeping man. The bear emerged from his den, squinting, then growling, “Go away!” I proffered my rehearsed line, “Sorry to disturb you sir but I’m here to fill out your census.” “Not now!” The bear yelled, slamming the door in my face. I left him my sweetly threatening “I’ll be back” note.

A few days later, he was on my docket again. I knocked and knocked. I heard him rumbling towards me. I tensed knowing what was coming. He opened the door. “Hello, I’m Jalynn with the Census Bureau here to do your 2020 census.” He squinted at me, then his eyes widened. And the second thing happened. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I’m happy you came back. My wife said I didn’t need to be so mean. I’m sorry. I was just napping after work. How can I help?” I stumbled, flustered. A grown man had never apologized to me. I actually hadn’t ever heard of such a thing. I felt like I had pushed feminism ahead a whole decade. I smiled behind the cloth. “Thanks, sir. Now, this won’t take much time. I just have to ask you a few questions.”

The other day, I was walking around my neighborhood and saw an elephant. Behind the gate on the southwest side of Druid Hill Park, there he was: tall as a tree and walking. Slowly. Too slow. I slowed.

I hadn’t seen an elephant through the gate in years. Not since the early days of COVID when I was unemployed and walking, daily, the perimeter of the zoo. He was alone. And ashy. His back was covered in what I assume is the same stuff clouding my hands when they’re dry. Except his ash coat was brown like dirt. He was with no one. Not another elephant nor a person. And even though we were in the middle of Baltimore City, this is what I thought was weird: neither of his ears was flapping.

It reminded me that, as a child, my “special fact” was that I could wiggle my ears. (I forgot I could do that). Knowing how specific a muscle that is to control, I’ve always been so excited to see elephants at the zoo. Because they were always flapping their ears. But not this one. It was a Monday in the middle of the winter during the first week of the year and there were no flies to swat.

I didn’t grip the gate. I didn’t yell his name, Elephant elephant! I didn’t walk to the entrance and demand that he, like every safari creature in Baltimore City, be let go, and especially because it was the middle of winter on a Monday during the first week of the year. I just stood there and watched him. Deep in thought. Walking the perimeter of his pen with the slow gait of The Mondays. What was he thinking about? What was he feeling?

From an early age, I’ve distrusted my feelings. Partially because I was a baby jock who learned somewhere between the 400m and 800m dash that there was no feeling that couldn’t be warded off, or at least largely medicated, by a ramped up heart rate. And when I wasn’t running, my feelings felt like wet socks. They tasted like ear wax. I’d spit one out and it would be too loud, too harsh, too mean, no one could hear me.

Then I tried not spitting at all. I held my feelings in. I held a pen. (Much like one holds a sword). I slashed the page. I wrote all night like some people cry. I wrote myself to sleep. I wrote it all down. And I mean literally: since the age of 8, I’ve kept a journal of every year, every season of my life. That’s why I know it was in the 5th grade that I discovered violence.

I was at a new school. After having spent two years at Johnnycake Elementary School and enduring what can only be described as incessant jealousy from all the other kids– no, my hair was not permed straight; Yes, I could and would do long division with ease– I begged my mom to enroll me somewhere, anywhere else.

My desperation to leave Johnnycake was two fold: 1.) Because I could no longer sell my oven-baked hand-beaded jewelry sets with the likes of my co-owner and then-”best friend” Angie without having to accept the fact that she was largely unserious though perpetually taking ownership for my business plans and 2.) Because I had been homeschooled until I was spontaneously enrolled in elementary school and thought perhaps my mom, having seen me suffer for two whole years, would do the right thing and put me out of my misery and send me back to my room to study.

Both things happened, but not in the way that I planned. The first of which came to a head at my 4th grade birthday party. Angie and I were scootering around our neighborhood. And, as we went down a steep hill, I fell off my scooter. The metal heel hit the top of my foot. Clank! All I saw was white bone. Then slowly, blood began to cover the hole and pour out. I cried. Angie looked at me, frightened, and scootered back to my house where the rest of my birthday party was happening.

I laid there on the sidewalk crying and bleeding and crying and bleeding. Minutes passed. Then half an hour. And no one came. I looked around. No one was coming.

I hobbled back to my house. I saw first my parents chattering away and then, their shock at the state of my body, and next, I saw Angie, nonchalantly, smugly even, eating a hotdog covered in mustard. She didn’t tell you I fell? I cried. No, no, no, we had no idea, They cooed.

So my mother put me out of my misery. She enrolled me in the closest private school to our house. And 5 months in, one afternoon, somebody said something about my momma. And I discovered violence.

Kai was one of two Black boys in our class. We were in the middle of a lesson when I noticed something smelled funny. I looked down and saw Kai’s shoes were off. Your feet stink! I exclaimed. To which, he said, Just like yo momma! And, if it weren’t for my meticulous journaling, I would have thought I reacted impassionately and hit him of my own accord. But last year, while parsing through my 5th grade year, I found that instead of retaliating, I did what any good natured 10-year-old would– I tattled. Then asked, Can I hit him? Ms. Dixon, our teacher, a 54-year-old fast-talking white woman who was aggressively Team Jalynn, said nothing–she did not shake her head no, she did not pull me aside, she simply, wordlessly looked at me with eyes that said, What are you gonna do about it? So I made a choice: I backhanded him.

Ahhhhhh and it felt good! From there on I decided that I was a fighter. I would never back down. I would never be bullied from the front of the bus by a kid who yelled–cowardly– from the back of the bus about how horrendously ugly and undone my hair was. Yeah, and you smell like rats in a basket of urine! I’d yell. To which he would say, Yo momma! And we all know how that ends.

For the last 3 years, I’ve lived 400 meters from the elephants in the nation’s third-oldest zoo. Almost thrice weekly I walk the entire perimeter of the zoo, while talking to myself, always out loud, about the many anxieties rattling me. This past summer, on a walk, I had an epiphany: I want to stop fighting.

I wish I could tell you why. I suspect it has something to do with the strange cross section between movement and catharsis. Or perhaps it’s the sobriety of living alone for the first time ever. Or perhaps it was because I realized, suddenly and all at once, just how tired I am. Tired of not totally trusting my feelings. Tired of fighting all the while winning nothing; protected from nothing. So, I thought, instead of fighting, I should just, feel?

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my highly spiritual grandparents is that if you see an animal, trust it’s medicine. Here, enters the elephant. She can’t run. She’s too big. She’s 16,000 pounds and 13 feet high. She’s shy and curious. Her skin is rough and ornate like rings on a tree. She’s the oldest living matriarch who communicates in subsonic rumbles lower than that which a human can hear.

And, despite her heft, there is no feeling, no pain, no longing that is too big for her to feel. Too big to be contained by the Earth. In fact, her sensitive feet have a inch-thick shock absorber that allows her to bear her own weight for long periods of time.

I am the elephant. Or at least, I intend to heed her medicine. There is no need to fight, when I can just trust; feel.