That Big-Ass Name You Gave Me by Mark Anthony Neal

© Maureen Beitle | Bible Study (1999)That Big-Ass Name You Gave Me (for Elsie E. Neal)
by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
I am still left juxtaposing that image of you at the end--small, fragile, defeated--with the defiant, bombastic yet still tiny figure that I came to know, and would come to know in the stories shared after your demise.  Wish I had known that 16-year-old who stepped out of her momma’s home and up to the Big City.  I can no more come to terms with those last days than I can imagine my own daughters in such a state, yet that is the cycle.
I was/am mad at you.
I say that now, to get it out of the way, as I was never able to get it out of the way when you were alive, because my inability to say it, even think it, cluttered our relationship, as it clutters my memories of you.  
Your granddaughter--the youngest one, the one who who most reminds me of you, the one who is willful and wise beyond her proverbial years--matter-of-factly just asked if I was sad.
I was sad. Not today, or even yesterday, but those other days...you up in a nursing home in the Bronx, me sitting next to you as often as I could, yet unable to reach you.  As a child your biggest gift to me was the attention that you gave me.  And it’s not that I didn’t have my father’s, your husband’s attention, but you seemed to understand, better than any, the caution that was my nature, that I was more than comfortable in the smallness of it all.
You gave me that big name. Used it as a calling card for the possibilities that I would confront.  Many will recall hearing you announce my name before they ever met me.  Whatever Mark Anthony Neal is in the world, you imagined that for me, even if you had no idea what that would look like.  
The name was always bigger than I wanted to be.  Your fear was of not being heard, of not being seen--for real dark-skinned Black girl anxieties, that manifested itself in so many unhealthy ways; the fear of not being taken seriously.  If the world was not gonna take you seriously, they were for damn sure gonna take your baby-boy seriously, with that big-ass name that you made him own as a child. In the end I now realize that I never felt invisible or silenced because I knew you always had my back (even when you tore into it).
I was often embarrassed by the Bigness of your personality, not yet aware of all that it masked, until you took that last breath.  The smallness of you at the end, betrayed the Bigness that was you.  One of your husband’s biggest gifts to me was the example to not be threatened by the Bigness of the woman he chose to share his life with; it has served me well in the home that I share with your two Granddaughters and Daughter-in-Law.
***
You would be proud of both of your granddaughters.  Little doubt you’d be put off a bit by the oldest, who is as emotionally detached from family as her father, your son was, for your time on earth. She too is ambitious and focused, and particularly adept at masking the hurts, sleights, the invisibility born of for real dark-skinned Black girl anxieties that she will never publicly claim--because it’s not her way. Oh what I wouldn’t give for her to spend just an hour with the best of you and your momma. True to her spirit, when I spot her on the pool deck, it’s not because she is one of one-hand-full of Black girls on the deck, but because of the white pearls that always adorn her ears and the smile that matches them.  We all have our mask.
But that other one--the youngest one, the one who who most reminds me of you, the one who is wise and willful beyond her proverbial years--who just matter-of-factly just asked if I was sad--she is, as one person described her, “Black Girl Magic.”  Don’t get me wrong; she is as difficult as you were/are--would have paid some money to watch the two of you go at it.  But as one one of her teachers recently admitted, “she is big on justice,” initially borne out her willing acknowledgement--dark-skinned Black Girl anxieties be damned--that she will not be ignored or rendered invisible, but now, more often or not, it is in the advocacy of others.  She will be the one who will claim you Big, hence her knowingly pushing me to think hard about you on this morning.
***
As I write this, your city is still smoldering (I know New York--The Bronx--was just the place that you lived and raised me, but Baltimore was always your home).  There is a mother who publicly chastised her son, for being up in those rebellious streets; She would not be foreign to you.  I offer no judgement regarding her actions, recalling similar moments in my own childhood, like that night you showed up at that football field, belt in hand, looking for a son, who should have already been home. 

I Thank-God there were not hand-held devices, though the social media of the day, word-of-mouth, guaranteed that more than a few of my peers would recall that moment, much to my embarrassment. I still walk this earth, in part, because of those actions on your part.
I just wish that you had stayed on the earth long enough for me to finally understand why you made those choices, and to thank-you for them.   
I may never live up to that big ass name you gave me; I thank-you for providing the challenge.