Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Black art, she’d always said, did not have to be representational or realistic to be political. The power of art to speak to you sometimes lay in its unwillingness to be penned into one thing. It was the kind of argument that had always made me look at Mama and think: She cannot be penned into one thing, either.

As for me, I craved order and rationality. I needed to understand. Not understanding was knocking me clear off my feet.

It baffled me how hatred and goodness could coexist. The world was an enigma. My country was an enigma. Still, she was mine. And I loved every square inch of her.

India and Erica. Though very different, there was no mistaking it: The sisters were soulfully connected.

The Williams sisters. Two of the greatest loves of my life. And two of my greatest heartbreaks. They are both the reason I never had biological children and the reason I found it in my heart to love and mother you. I never had confidence in my ability to mother, but my love for them has endured over the years.

At one time, I might have judged her theft. Poverty did not warrant disobedience to God, our pastor had warned on more than one occasion. But I was glad she had done what she had to survive.

“Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.”

Didn’t she understand that family was so much more than blood? It was shared experience and history and pain. Those girls were as much my family now as they were hers.

Here is what I do know. You done touched us in a way that no one ever did. And for that, I’m grateful. But you got some things in your heart to work out. I see that. I know that. Take it to the Lord, Civil. He will answer.”

The Williamses had always fed my soul, even when I did not know I was hungry. It occurs to me that I have received more from them than I ever could have given.

I have not seen them in decades, but these women are my family and I am theirs. I was struggling with how I would make up for lost time, but now I know the time was not lost at all. It is just passed. Thankfully, there is more of it. Not as much as I would have liked. But more.

needed to talk to her, to tell her I understood how a person could get so caught up in doing good that they forgot that the people they served had lives of their own.

“You free, Civil. Use your freedom to change as many lives as you can.”

On the horizon behind me is my community—Montgomery, Centennial Hill, my friends and loved ones—all here in this place that birthed me. This is your lineage, my dear daughter, your history. More powerful than blood. The story of those sisters and what happened in Montgomery in 1973 is a history you share with people you have never even met. They are your family as much as I am your family.