Finding Me

by Viola Davis

running me down and throwing projectiles at me wasn’t enough for them. Their vitriolic screams were aimed at the target of their hate. They threw, “You ugly, Black nigger. You’re so fucking ugly. Fuck you!”

“Don’t you ever call me fucking Black! I’m not Black! I’m Portuguese!!!” And he punched me in the arm, really hard. He looked down, ashamed at being called out. As if I exposed the ugliest, most painful truth.

This was a woman with six kids. She didn’t have time to go to school every day and fight our battles. She absolutely needed me to know how to defend myself. Even if she had to threaten me into doing it.

Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.

I felt ugly. I felt unwanted, even by God. I wanted so badly to fit into this world, but instead I was being spit out like vomit. Who I was offended them. The memory burrowed itself inside me and metastasized.

I love staring at my mom. I take in every detail of her face, hands, skin. I see all the scars. Some I remember from abuse she endured, and some I don’t. The sore left arm. The scar on her right forearm made by my dad ripping her arm open. Scars on her face, legs . . . Scars.

“He wanted to experiment on you. He said he was gonna break ya legs to see if they grew straight. But I saw how he was looking at me. I ain’t dumb. He saw that I was poor and Black. I took you from that hospital.

When I was young, I thought, perhaps arrogantly, that I could do better than my mom. I was going to slay dragons. Be stronger and more confident. I wasn’t going to run from bad memories. I would be a “hero,” an overcomer. But you know the saying, “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy.”

We would get to Patricia’s apartment and she answered the door naked, which absolutely traumatized me. Shut me right down. She in no way attempted to cover up, neither her naked ass nor her ill intentions with my father.

Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake. It could be something that happened forty years ago, but it remains alive, present.

Achieving, becoming “somebody,” became my idea of being alive. I felt that achievement could detox the bad shit. It would detox the poverty. It would detox the fact that I felt less-than, being the only Black family in Central Falls. I could be reborn a successful person. I wanted to achieve more than what my mother had.

There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black. The weight of generational trauma and having to fight for your basic needs doesn’t leave room for anything else. You just believe you’re the leftovers.

Also, I was too busy sanitizing the character flaws of people in general. There was just a basic understanding that they (everyone else) were better. They were victims of unfortunate circumstances and needed love and healing. I, however, was just born bad.

We were devastated. The loss of any pet is hard, but it’s especially hard when they serve a larger purpose that is fulfilling the deficit of loyalty and love.