The Blueprint

by Rae Giana Rashad

That’s how I measured my life now. Instead of days, hours, and minutes, time was broken into two—when I belonged to Bastien and when I didn’t. I was fifteen when he decided he had to have me. Sixteen when he became obsessed with running his fingertips over discontinuities in my body—between my lips and fingers and toes—like these natural separations were cracks he needed to fill with himself.

THE PATH WE WALKED TO BECOME Black women wasn’t straight; it was a loop. Starting from nowhere, it brought you back to nowhere. A man at one end, a man at the other, humming the same song, “It’s just a body. Nothing special.” If that were true, why did they want it? Why couldn’t it belong to me? Mama called it child’s want, something you grow out of. But the moment I recognized this loop existed, I poked holes at it to find an exit.

From six years old to fifteen, Mrs. Guidry trained you to survive men. After fifteen, school was no longer necessary for Black girls, Descendants of Slavery, DoS.

A white man’s signature on a certificate of emancipation can free you from all men. Never take him at his word. Get him to write it or it’s not real. Never ask for that signature. Asking could make things go wrong. A smart girl made men believe everything good was his idea.

A Black girl gives and gives, why is she wrong when she takes? If you had to have a cage, it was better to have a beautiful one. Wasn’t it?

I would never know how it felt to walk boldly because this world wasn’t mine. My tears would never be a weapon. There was no patience for my softness, my wounds, my unraveling. There was no protection for me, a Black girl, no tender touch, no consideration for a delicate exterior. No space to scream.

I decided then to never love a man, not when his absence singed edges of you, creating different versions that not even your mirror double recognized.

You can’t have freedom while lying in the bed of a man who writes laws to oppress you.”

THE COUNCILMEN SAID A NATION WAS only as strong as its hold on its women. They had to squeeze the life out of women’s liberations movements, give it no air, they said. It begins at home with the wives.

The best way to love someone is to want a beautiful life for them, however they find it.”

Darkness always leaves a side door open. That’s what I would tell my daughter. Be loud. If you make yourself too small and soft, you would slip your own chains around your wrists without noticing.