I plowed through an online form, annoyed at repeating the same information on form after form after form, a million times a week. Why couldn’t the world centralize this stuff once and for all? Why weren’t these corporations tied in to auto-fill? Why should I donate my vitals to plump up someone’s data base? I plugged in my name and address, checked Black, supplied phone number, copy-pasted my website url. Bla bla bla.
After finishing, I went back through to catch typos. Above the race/ethnicity list, I noticed the instruction: Select all that apply.

What?

All?

Offered an opportunity to be more than singular, I froze. All would provoke a smackdown for stepping out of my place. The one-drop rule insisted I wasn’t enough Not-Black to claim anything other than Black. But the tap of a key was a tiny gesture. Far from earth-shattering, this tap of a key would register less than symbolic on the Richter scale. Less than galled me.

All. I leaned in to the danger, finger poised.

Do it, Dawn.

I checked White.

Energy shot through my spine.

I checked American Indian.

My chest puffed out.

I grew bigger than myself, made whole by ghosts.

My great-grandmother on Mama’s side was white, an Irish immigrant who married a colored man. After she ran back to Ireland, no photos of her found their way into the family album. Great-grandmother disappeared. But her whiteness lived on.

Mama could have passed. That is, if she’d been plucked away from the gaggle of nappy-headed kids trailing behind her calling her Mama. And all of us nappy-headed kids were Mama's color, the Irish woman’s color. I knew too little about her to claim my great-grandmother. I failed to see her in any mirror, or when smoothing lotion onto legs many shades lighter than Africa. Besides my skin color, what other traits did she hand down to me? Maybe I’m outspoken, because she was. Maybe I laugh too loud, because she did. Maybe I cannot tell a joke to save my soul, because she couldn’t. Nameless and faceless, Great-grandmother was more theory, than relation. After I selected all that applied, I felt both her presence and her absence.

My paternal double-great-grandfather was Blackfoot Nation. Isaac Johnson’s image and story are familiar in our family. A Civil War veteran, he peers out from a photo wearing a 19th century suit that reminds me of Gunsmoke. The picture is faded, but clear enough to guess. The lips are not African, neither is the shiny black hair. Further driving home the validity of my cautious claim, photos of his grown daughter, Granny Mum (great-grandmother, Dad's side) make me disoriented. How can I be Black when Granny Mum looked like she’d just walked off the res? How could I be Black when Granny Mum’s features were so classic she looked fake? The cheekbones, The nose. Lips. The long braid down her back. I stopped looking at Granny Mum's picture, and my Black equilibrium returned. Close the family album, and I didn't feel Isaac Johnson or Granny Mum in me. After I selected all that applied, Isaac Johnson and Granny Mum filled my lungs with Blackfoot Nation air.

While writing Blindsided: Essays from the only Black Woman in the Room, I was absorbed in color as though there were only one. I analyzed my black experience. Searched for black people to be black with. My vision was myopic. Black, black, black. Squished and puny, I was unequal to the task of being me.

When I selected all that applied, the ancestors swooped in. Where you been girl? Stand up. We got you.

While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

*****

“There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.”
———Chinua Achebe
——--Things Fall Apart

Our house filled up with uncles when I was a kid. It was confusing. Dad only had one brother, and Mama didn’t have any, but somehow I had enough uncles—all named Youlyingbastard—to fill up the living room. Or was it the kitchen. Between hollering, smoking, and cussing, my uncles would laugh so hard they knocked over tumblers of whatever it was that gave them stinky breath when they belched.

Cigarette smoke floated around the room like a cloud, fighting for space with the hot sticky air coming in through the open windows.

I could sit for hours listening to my uncles’ stories, trying to memorize them, so I could use them if I needed to make somebody laugh. But with all the knee-slapping and name calling, it was hard to catch all the details.

Like when somebody was waving their arms and yelling about the time that fool shot a hole in the fishing boat. After I went to bed, I wondered why they took a gun fishing, and did a gun really fit into a tackle box? So I paid closer attention when that story came around again. And I think maybe it was duck hunting when that fool shot a hole in the boat. Another time, after they shot a pheasant out of the sky, they sent that fool to retrieve the body, like he was one of the hound dogs. That’s what you did with a fool you didn’t want to come with you in the first place.

Before I could figure out if he came back with the pheasant or they left him behind, they were talking about Mamma Fannie walking across the Market Street Bridge (I guess she’d left her horse and buggy at home) the night a stranger came at her saying “I’m gonna get me some black … " something about a cat; it didn’t make any sense to me. Mamma Fannie said, “Come and get it.” She pulled out her gun, and that fool jumped off the bridge. After I went to bed it occurred to me Mamma Fannie lived before any of the uncles in the living room were even born. That fool survived the jump and then time-traveled to the future to mess up my uncles’ hunting trips.

A thank you letter to one of my super fans:

Dear Michael,

Here’s a question for you, since this is the 10th anniversary of Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Can you believe it’s been ten years since we did the Santa Barbara reading together?

You organized the heck out of that … no, no let me rephrase … you produced, directed, MC-d, and acted the heck out of that book launch! Thank you for being multi-talented, on my behalf.

First of all, I could not believe how you found us a venue, with me in Kansas City and you in Santa Barbara. After the third call you made, I was ready to say never mind, because god knows you weren’t getting paid for the effort, and I absolutely hate making phone calls like that. You taught me an unforgettable lesson when you told me making those calls was just part of the process, no big deal. After a few more calls, you found the perfect venue.

Your calm explanation taught me this: just because I hate something, doesn’t mean other people hate the same thing. And this: other people will be happy to do the thing I hate, because they don’t hate it. And therefore this: Ask for help, Dawn!

You changed my whole outlook.

But wait, after you first read Stumbling, you emailed me a two page single spaced response to the book. Michael, I saved that email and refer back to it to remind myself what I’m doing well.

When you told me why “The Inheritance” was your favorite essay, it blew me away—you quoting Aristotle’s “insistence on impeccable structure,” based on your expertise as a professor of drama. I got a college education from studying your analysis.

Puleeez! I am a genius to have a super fan who’s a professor, playwright, producer, promoter. Ahem, and brother.

Did somebody say promoter? I don’t know how many copies of Blindsided and Listicles you bought and then gave away as gifts, spreading my words like Johnny Appleseed. You’d tell me, “My friend so-and-so NEEDS this book.” I’d periodically get surprise emails from your friends, “Michael gave me your book. I love it.” Always exactly when I needed a perk-up.

You’re just what the doctor ordered—a time-release confidence-booster.

And when I say super fan, I’m serious, because your super power is Everywhere-ness, always singing my praises. Not just behind the scenes, but on camera, too. Pop into a Dawn’s Monthly Author Reading, and I’m like a little kid. “Michael’s here! Michael’s here!”

You’re even willing to be recorded and on record till the end of time. At least till the end of YouTube. I’m so proud you let me read an essay to you and have a conversation about Blindsided for an Author on Demand video.

There’s more. (there will always be more, because you are the gift that keeps on giving) You know my whole story about being locked out on the screened-in front porch on East 15th? Right? When you told me East 15th didn’t have a screened-in porch, no porch at all, I could not grasp that reality. After we drove over to the house and proved my misinformation, you inspired the topic of my next book, How To Remember, stories that show how memory works and doesn’t work in the body.
Seriously, I’m one lucky writer and one lucky sister.
Thanks for being a super fan.

Love,
Dawn