Don't Cry for Me

by Daniel Black

I was horrified at the arbitrary nature of his life. Only then did I understand his harsh, insensitive demeanor. In some ways, he envied the life he had provided for his children. He, too, had wanted knowledge, travel, enlightenment, but such was laughable for a dark black boy in the 1940s. So he hoped for me. Yet my freedom angered him.

love wasn’t a requirement of men in my day. It wasn’t a man’s achievement. In the sixties, when you were born, love was a woman’s passion, a mother’s hope. Fathers had far different obsessions: food, shelter, clothing, protection.

Slavery did a number on black people. We haven’t survived it yet. The institution is over, but its aftereffects still linger.

we lived lives of desperate hope, afraid that white people’s disapproval equaled our destruction. Everything we did, whether we were aware or not, we did with white people in mind. Our life’s aim was to make them believe we had value and worth, so we spent our nights trying to figure out what they liked, then spent our days trying to do it. We still haven’t pleased them, and truth is, we never will.

Elders were callous and unfeeling, as if afraid to love us. Slavery had left them that way.

I never knew death could consume you like that. Grandma begged me to say something, but had I opened my mouth, I would’ve wailed uncontrollably, so I kept my grief inside.

Now I see why you and your mother read so much. It makes you think, makes you see things you can’t see, and that was my problem. I had all kinds of opinions, but I couldn’t see a damn thing.

Hurt is worse than anger, you know. Anger dwells in the head, then fades. Hurt lingers in the soul. It rearranges your feelings without your permission. It blinds you.

I knew black labor had built America, but I didn’t know how black pride had been stripped from our flesh in the process. We had worked, hundreds of years, for absolutely nothing. I couldn’t conceive of that. It was like going to a job every day, but never getting paid.

Knowledge is a funny thing, Isaac. It informs by exposing. It shows you precisely how much you don’t know.

Years later, I realized I had prayed the wrong prayer. I should’ve asked God to send me to you, but I didn’t. So I spent years waiting for you—while you’ve spent a lifetime waiting for me.

All I wanted was to look you in the face and tell you I’m sorry. I had wounded you beyond my capacity to heal you.

I never knew how to love. I dreamed of it, but I never experienced it. What I knew was pain. So that’s what I gave you. I’d never seen a black life free from it, so my job as a father, I assumed, was to prepare your back for the load. I hope that, after you read this, you’ll return my pain to me.

Love doesn’t make us perfect; it makes us want to be. By the time you discover this, your imperfections have done their damage.

Don’t cry for me, son. I’ve cried enough for myself. And have no regrets about us. There is nothing for which you are to blame,

You must learn to uproot unwanted seeds without destroying the entire harvest. This is the son’s lesson. Nurture good sprouts, Isaac. Toss weeds aside and never think of them again. Just remember that sprouts and weeds are planted together, and weeds have a valuable function. They teach you what to avoid, what not to embrace. There is no good planting without them.