No Country for Old Dragons

“It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the oppressed or oppressor, an oppressive society will dehumanize and degenerate everyone involved.”

-Lorraine Hansberry 

When I started writing July’s edition of “Sipping Lovely,” I was in a different headspace. I just came back from New York, a state that was my home for eight years. I belong to it as much as it belongs to me, New York, that is, like the niggah who sang Santana to my bones, ate sweet soppressata off my spine, but could never really commit to me. Nor me to him. We were deeply infatuated with each other, New York and I, frolicked through the deep subways of each other’s minds, kissed white zin between each other’s toes but then I found gewürztraminer, and he found god.  

CUT TO BLACK

This post is supposed to be about my nostalgic time in Harlem, the bountiful, loquacious African women who braided my hair, the pet’nat I bought right next door from the salon. 

“They let you drink wine while you get your hair braided,” the woman working at the wine shop said (Of course, my hair was already done).

I was supposed to tell you about eating a delicious, freshly made mortadella sandwich I picked up from DiPalo’s in Little Italy after my corkscrew was confiscated at JFK. 

I was supposed to tell you about earthing in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, no black person in sight, remembering the best Jamaican oxtail spot on Myrtle Avenue and when my older brother and I drank a case of Heineken there for my 21st birthday. 

CUT TO BLACK

I had decided to take a break from the news though as an editor, it’s my job to be tapped in, but like many black people across this nation, black people who have decided to take long sabbaticals away from this country of their birth, and black people who have decided to never come back to The United States, I needed a beat. 

Ah, even Jesus stopped weeping. My well had officially runneth dry. I couldn’t see one more selfie of a black man or woman or child who was murdered by the police and function as a “normal” citizen of the world.

What I know to be true is that when the spirit is forced out of the body the way a copper-brass-led bullet forces the spirit out of a body, that act releases a nocuous, ominous energy into the atmosphere. Not unlike when oil spills into the ocean or when disease finds route in breath-filled contact, we are all affected. Not just black people, not just Sonya Massey’s family, all of us. 

The air is polluted with breathless breath–spirits tossed out, chased out–the ones we hear about, the ones we don’t. And, so, here we are again. 

Here we are again and again and again. 

When Ajike Owens was shot and killed in front of her son by a racist neighbor a year and approximately one month ago, I remember feeling a chill as I read about the circumstances. But the world had changed since the last mass chill that ran down humanity’s back. Pandemic’s gone, so George Floyd’s cry for his mama is forgotten. Some folks are still wearing masks over their faces, most wear them over their hearts. White people who were allies or pretending to be allies or who were allies because it was on trend to be allies got tired. Imagine having that kind of choice. The choice to be tired. The choice to check out permanently.

If you’ve been reading my writing, you know that I have written many times about how exhausting racism is. But there’s no running for us. Try as I may to hide in Tulum and Playa del Carmen and New Kingston, you can’t run away from it. It’s in the air. Sonya Massey is part of the air we breathe now. Her murderer became one with her the moment he took her from herself.

How do I know these things? I’m a descendant of a people who know, who’ve always known.  

Just like I know it is a mistake to kill the iguanas. I haven’t seen one iguana in the last few weeks. I usually see them every day on these Miami streets. They are magnificent creatures, regal even. On my old campus, they were mandarin orange, sometimes teal and looked like dragons. 

After my mother died (her name was also Sonia), my dear friend Natasha and I started going on “Sistah Sonia” walks to honor my mother’s life. My mother never learned to drive, so my favorite childhood memories are of walking with her to Woolworth’s in downtown Miami, buying Garcia sausages from street vendors. 

When she got sick, she wasn’t able to walk, so this is our tribute to her, walking on the Venetian Causeway, cradled by the beautiful bay. One year, as we approached a park where people often sit and watch the boats, we were welcomed by a fleet of iguanas–no less than 15 of them. It was a sight to behold–a scene left out of Game of Thrones or some marvelous work not yet written. It felt like a divine offering (though Natasha didn’t think so). 

I don’t think I’ll see a scene like that again. Since Miami’s massive demographic shift, all the people moving here from all over the world during and after the pandemic, the iguanas are being hunted. New residents are appalled by their presence. I suppose some old ones are, too. But where does the hunted find peace?