about my rights

I’m looking for a way to quote June Jordan in my unfinished essay that’s due this month. I searched for a poem I thought I’d read—“Breathing Room”—but realized I had misremembered it. Living Room is Jordan’s 1985 collection that includes the poem “Moving Towards Home:”

…I need to speak about home

I need to speak about living room

where the land is not bullied and beaten into

a tombstone

I need to speak about living room

where the talk will take place in my language

I need to speak about living room

where my children will grow without horror

I need to speak about living room where the men

of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five

are not

marched into a roundup that leads to the grave

I need to talk about living room

where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud

for my loved ones

where I must not ask where is Abu Fadi

because he will be there beside me

I need to talk about living room

because I need to talk about home

I was born a Black woman

and now

I am become a Palestinian

against the relentless laughter of evil

there is less and less living room

and where are my loved ones?

It is time to make our way home.

I usually feel safe at home and I spend a lot of time here. But on Monday the handyman who lives with his family in the basement of my building blindsided me in the nearby bodega with a kiss to the cheek. I was horrified—and disgusted—and yet I didn’t hit him or curse him out. I recovered enough to accept his thanks for the end-of-year tip I slid under his door over the holidays. Then I walked out of the store fuming, furious, and fed up. Almost a year ago this same Black man did something else inappropriate and unwanted; once again, I was shocked and simply avoided him for a long while. He was *in* my apartment at the time—in my bedroom plastering the wall. And even though I knew the answer, I wondered why he felt he had the right to put his hands on me. I’m friendly with everyone in my building—my neighbors, the doormen, the porter, the Super. And NO ONE has ever touched me. I’m not to blame, I know that, but I keep thinking that maybe if I’d said something then—maybe if I’d reported it to the management company or threatened to—he wouldn’t have felt he could walk up without warning and put his lips on me this week. I’m getting upset again as I type this and I hope I can channel this rage into The Return, but male entitlement isn’t fictional and far more serious assaults against women take place every minute of every day in this world. And I hate to admit it, but I guess I’ve been lucky. I’m 42 and I can only think of one other time when I had to deal with something like this. When a white guy in college grabbed my ass on the dance floor my freshman year, my football player friends took care of it for me. They demanded an apology, I got it, and then I went home. I was one of just two or three Black girls at my college and I’m sure that had something to do with why *I* was assaulted by that white guy. And the male friends who menaced him into an apology were white, too—and they would never have assaulted a woman that way. I think. Which is why they were my friends. I don’t have many men in my life these days and that’s a deliberate decision that lowers my stress levels. Occasionally I see friends posting warnings on their Facebook feed: “Make one more sexist comment and you WILL be deleted.” I don’t have those kinds of comments in my feed because I don’t have those kinds of men in my online community. And I guess I should be glad that this incident has upset me so much—if this happened to me more often, I’d be “used to it.” I work almost exclusively with women and the few men I encounter on school visits are exceedingly polite because I’m their guest. And they’re professional—and decent. And there are almost always kids around; maybe they know there would be consequences if they disrespected me. I haven’t yet decided whether I want to write a letter and inform the co-op board. As usual, I’m partly worried about “making trouble” for this handyman: he’s Black and the board is all-white. I don’t owe him anything and the next day I did tell him—in front of his boss—not to ever touch me again. But now I don’t want to be anywhere near him and THIS IS MY HOME. This is the space where I’m supposed to feel safe and at ease. When you’re a woman, where is your living room if not at home?

Back to my essay. “I can’t breathe…”