Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

We pull into my high school’s parking lot for the last day I will ever have to smile at these people like I ever belonged here

for the ten minutes it takes Mama and me to get to the stands along the football field / I’m just happy we’re both here / alive

After the pictures are done caught back and forth on opposite sides of the crowded field buzzing with families proud of children they don’t really know

I’m going to my party, after all it was thrown for me, it’s either she comes or she gets on the next train back, cause today is supposed to be about me

told Dad I didn’t feel like being mushy in front of all those people but truth is I just wanted to count my money in peace

Dad says having money brings peace always quotes what seems like his favorite bible verse that says money is the answer to everything money answereth to all matters he says so seriously whenever we talk about dreams or just pulling into a gas station I know you think all I care about is money but you can’t tell me life isn’t easier when you have extra in your pockets bible verses and African proverbs always being the half answers to my questioning but looking down into the pile this time, maybe he’s right

every saturday Dad would take me for my history lesson where I’d learn Yoruba and Igbo songs the teacher would sing for us while giving us moves to travel across the floor

when we didn’t have the money to travel overseas learned rhythms to tell stories learned steps used to ground us began learning how to find home later on in my own skin

When you get too big to be carried when you start wanting things beyond food or a place to sleep when you start needing a way to make sense of everything happening when you start growing further away from what used to be home you go looking for somewhere that lets you be what’s inside your head you go find a way to get back to your own history lesson to your own way of being alive

Dad squeezes my hand and I know I will not miss these prayers in someone else’s name these requests that god stop me these scriptures written by men these memories that no one knows about where I never got to decide maybe leaving this place maybe choosing no longer to hide will set me free one day

When people talk about college they never really talk about how you’re going to change before your whole family’s eyes and they’re not going to be happy about it instead they’ll ask you what’s that thing in your nose? where’d you get those words from? have you forgotten how to call home? when’s the last time you prayed, huh?

Growing up my dad would pray before during and after everything and honestly it was cool until it made us late for things and made me question why we couldn’t do things with our own strength started wondering what my father was so afraid of what was on the other side of amen that was so bad we couldn’t just do it

I had never questioned how the bible was the Word of God when many of the books were written by men whose names sounded American apparently Matthew Mark Luke John Timothy James Peter Paul are the Words of God

Words are powerful unless they’re not biblical unless they’re not written by men unless they’re unlike Jesus’s spit itself why can’t I pray outside of his name? why is my name not enough?

how they taught us to use the pink eraser only if we wanted to forget our mistakes

Except here everybody’s black or brown and I’m not the only one who looks like their parents gave them a name not everyone can pronounce

Ada (Aah-dah!) in the Igbo language means first daughter means oldest girl means pressure means you are expected to do a lot of things you don’t want to do because the honor of this family rests on your back

When sitting by yourself eating food that doesn’t taste like home you eat fast and leave without being noticed

I hear the boom of Dad’s voice wonder if when he warned me about strangers he also meant the police

Nothing is wrong except there is a car with sirens on its roof in our driveway& there are two tall white men standing on our porch& there are two men looking beyond me into our kitchen& there are neighbors peeking out windows at our house& there are huge cops with guns I can see who’ve come to tell me that I’m too loud too much too free

he doesn’t need to know for a moment in the space between the officers and myself there was nothing to protect me

And her first project is me: How to Fix Your Fat American Niece

Hide /hīd/ verb to put or keep out of sight or conceal from the view or notice of others as in when the girls at school point and laugh in my direction I wish that I could hide as in I’m glad Aunty isn’t against makeup cause it’s the only thing helping me hide the hair on my top lip as in when Aunty cooks the stockfish I always close my bedroom door stuff a towel under it tight making Dad and Aunty accuse me of shame ask me what it is I’m trying to hide

But what I discover now is that fire can live in your bones that betrayal can strike the match and light your greatest fears ablaze

The sixth grade was already impossible without Aunty’s return to change everything / now I can’t eat without permission / I can’t watch tv without permission / it’s now my job to clean the kitchen / as the oldest child / as the first daughter / learning her duties as a future wife / and mother / who was going to understand / that all I wanted to learn / was how to make friends / at school

my father too proud to understand being different meant being alone

Dad said he would send me money every month so I could focus on school but I knew he’d use that to control me parents paying for their kids to be in college still try to tell you what to do from across the country

hardwood floors glistening like they were freshly polished for chosen feet

you’re clean

and clean? I already feel anything but

There are things they tell you get easier with time that one day you’ll grow up and be able to take it all they say this is what you have to do to be an adult this is what you have to do to survive you will not own your body you will not own your things you will not own your feelings you belong to the world to them to Him

My daddy never said it was good to fight but if someone was stupid enough to put their finger in my mouth they are looking for me to bite

what’s wrong with a girl wanting to be comfortable what’s wrong with keeping what I had to myself aren’t us girls all on the same team?

on tuesdays and thursdays they make us wear suits to class like robots an outdated conformist ritual of pretend professionalism forced on us black kids if we want success

Whenever, wherever I can learn for free cause I don’t need to pay nobody all that money to do what’s already in my heart

that mouth of yours gon get you in trouble, girl I sometimes ask what about my mouth was trouble

Adults never think that we are listening that us kids can hear the things they say to each other about us the things they say to us about each other they must think we see everything as play

people out here payin thousands of dollars when all they ever need is their feet and a beat

I want to learn from who I want and I do it on my own terms

It’s harder to close out the world when a whole new one is sitting there smiling up at you waiting at your doorstep

when you’re curious wanting to know what it’s like to not let the day rob you of a good night

the thought of her watching me makes my face hot glad I went to the party

like it was something I needed this whole time but didn’t know

dance like you know who the fuck you are!

I

look down again at this ancient five-hundred-page book cracked open only on occasion out of fear of failing wonder what I’m supposed to do with it how I’m supposed to learn something I hate what matters?

I don’t know how to make my body do what it’s so afraid of I don’t know how to try at something knowing I will fail

you start learning how to listen to your body she pauses, again looking up at me and your heart

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

Possession (pos·ses·sion) /pә’zeSHәn/ noun the state of having, owning, or controlling something as in when I forget about the mirrors the windows the eyes looking at me judging me telling me what they think I should do when I forget about the fear of pain of something coming soon to hurt me I am in possession