Holding Space

My sister used to always tell me she remembered seeing a gaggle of geese waddling outside the gates, or maybe they were ducks. If the memory of a seven-year-old serves us right, there was also a vending machine in the visitation room that sold these radioactive-looking bagged cheeseburgers and Powerade. For some reason, I’d always associated prisons with chips. Either way, I don’t quite remember much.

Yet, for some reason, I can’t seem to stop thinking about them. About all that happens “in between.” All the “unseen” bits during the lost time or, time stolen, rather.

Some days it would take us over three hours on a train and a shuttle bus to get there. We’d spend a couple hours just waiting for all visitors to get patted down and screened, standing in a yard, in between these two huge doors that would slam shut — one closing off the “real world” behind us and the other opening up to a room full of fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and uncles, lined up in beige jumpsuits, awaiting our presence.

There’s something suffocating about holding spaces, their liminality. But, at least inside, Mami says, there were crayons and games for us.

I’ve never really thought about the abnormal parts of my childhood. Mami always did a good job of keeping us happy. I’d never felt a lack.

But there’s something different about college, when you’re confronted with all these different realities and alternative familial dynamics. Suddenly, you’re realizing that not every little girl grew up thinking daddy worked far away or developed a fondness for a yellow canary named Tweety just because their father drew him once on a t-shirt.

Now, I’ve found myself writing a thesis about memories that don’t even quite feel like my own.

I’ve tasked myself with understanding the intersections of hospital and prison architecture and their implications on the Black psyche. In other words, I’m trying to make sense of my family’s experiences.

Don’t be mistaken, though. This isn’t just another retelling of my own circumstances, per se, but rather about a grappling I’ve been left with — a fear I’ve developed as a result of lived experiences and exploitative news clips. The flattening of Black ontology solely into Black erasure.

For some reason, I can’t help but feel drawn to every other Black man in my father’s shoes. Not from a place of mourning or missing him, but out of curiosity and a complicated empathy.

***

As I ferociously typed out his name and clicked the first link available, a page on the Innocence Project, a countdown timer glowed ominously back at me. It read, “Time left until execution: 00 Days 00 Hours 00 Minutes 00 Seconds.”

Despite over nearly 1 million signatures to halt his execution, the state of Missouri allowed the murder of Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniels, also known as Marcellus Williams.

How do I describe the realization that humans have rationalized their own hubris, justified playing God?

At least with the Climate Clock in New York, I know it’s a countdown of when we’re all screwed. There’s this impending sense of collective doom, a generation of kids who’d been dealt shitty cards by the ones before it.

But no one tells you how to cope with a modern-day lynching.

Nobody tells the little girl inside you that struggle, incarceration, and death are not fated for you and everyone you’ve let yourself love.

And, yes, of course, I know that. I’m not oblivious to the fact that I’m writing this from my Harvard dorm. But do I really?

“Beyond a reasonable doubt,” to me, is as tangible as the sun — you can catch its rays, feel its warmth on your skin, but, like Icarus, can never quite get close enough to touch it. And, for once, sitting at my computer in a dimly-lit studio, I understood that. I knew where I stood in the world.

In my little chrysalis, time stood still, while everyone else’s day just kept going.

Would you believe me if I told you why, some days, I don’t want children? Would you laugh if I told you why I panic when my boyfriend or my sister doesn’t answer my messages? Would it be wrong to tell you how tiring Black love is when Black loss is the prophecy the media has played out for me?

The part people forget is that he, too, had a little kid who might have grown up remembering the ducks, the burgers, and the crayons. Perhaps his son also got hand drawn sketches of his baby photos or shirts covered in cartoon drawings, so big they could fit like nightgowns.

It’s odd having to humanize someone. I don’t know how to convince the rest of the world that he didn’t have to die. Call it dramatic, but it’s exhausting growing up feeling the weight of loving Black beings and Black bodies enough to compensate for all those who don’t.

And so, even if I were to mourn this loss alone, I would do it as my duty. Because Marcellus is mine. Every Black man on my screen ends up belonging to me, becoming me — owner of my dreams and my nightmares.

Whether I like it or not, we’re all still tethered together. And each person I learn to love, I can’t help but anticipate their loss. Time, for me, is borrowed. If not borrowed, stolen, owned by this other entity that isn’t me.

***

Yet, to that, I say, oh well.

To that I say, what’s mine will always belong to me. I mean, what fun would it be conceding? Settling for survival? Falling for an image of my reality that’s been painted by them and not us?

For me, to choose stolen smiles, borrowed memories, and potentially ill-fated love is to participate in the reclamation of Black ontology. To choose to love my Blackness and indiscriminately pursue Black love is to choose my liberation.

As Williams wrote,

“there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…

– amidst sounds of buzzing

chirps

crickets

the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind

fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon

how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own –

finally love.”

I’d always forget my heartbeat to remember theirs — everyone who is and has become mine.

— Associate Magazine Editor Ciana J. King can be reached at ciana.king@thecrimson.com.