Friday Feature: Penda Smith

Penda Smith is a poet and educator whose work has appeared in Root Work Journal, Huffington Post, Frontier Poetry, and Muzzle Magazine. A former First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she earned her MFA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, Hedgebrook Fellow, and VONA alum; her work explores memory, lineage, and the textures of Black womanhood. She recently quit all her jobs and is preparing to move to South Korea, as she is 27 with no prospects and no children. She loves walking, meditating, reading, and rollerskating.

Obedience

I don’t want to remember you as the woman who forced Islam down my throat, but as the woman who put my siblings and I in private school even though you could not afford it. I want to remember you as the woman who taught me how to cook traditional Senegalese foods: supakanye, theibou jen, theibiop, and a leg of lamb. 

I don’t want to remember you as the woman who yelled, "show me your panties!" Or the woman who watched eight pm arrive without me. Who believed that I came home late because I laid with a boy as if he was my husband. 

I want to say that the woman who sacrificed a lamb seven days after my birth, who named me after my grandmother, Penda Mbaye, was not the same woman who slapped me. Who flicked on the lights, stepped up to me, and pushed me out the door as if I were a thief. I want to rewire my memory. I almost hear you say, "The Bronx is dangerous for a teenage girl, but come here, daughter: You have arrived late, but at least you have arrived."

I want to forget the night you kicked me out because I would not show you my panties. I did not show you my panties because I deserve the privacy of my blood. Did someone ask to see your panties when you were a young girl? 

 Let me remember that salvation is the mother who shoves white rice down her daughter’s throat, who chokes on a fishbone. Let me hold dearly the knowing that mercy is the mother who prays with the same hands she draws blood with. Let me remember that forgiveness is the child who remembers that her mother was once a child. 

I want to remember you as a young girl in 1978 on a beach—perhaps in Ngor, Plage Popenguine, or Plage De Yoff in Senegal. In the sepia photo, you are skinny. You wear large circular glasses, a loose shirt, and a long chiffon skirt that brushes your ankles. I want to remember you as the woman who left Senegal at the tender age of 17 to travel to Mauritania, Los Palmas, then Italy, to buy and resell handbags so that you could provide a living for your mother and two children. Where was your first husband? Did he abandon you?   

Are you afraid that love will always abandon you? Is that why you clung to me? Why you tied me to your back when I was a baby? Why you expected me by your side in the kitchen, even when I needed a stool to see inside the pot? 

***

When I was 17, I prayed to get into college so I could leave home; when you were 17, you prayed for a green card so you could live in America. The American Dream: you would learn English, attend City College, and become a doctor. You would save, and send for your mother and kids. All of you would live together the way the American families lived together in the commercials: A woman pushes a young girl on a swing, they both laugh wildly in the advertisement for baby pampers. The scene of a family eating dinner on Thanksgiving, the mother passing along the slice of turkey to her husband while her two children play footsies. 

You will learn that the American Dream is a dream.

You will not become a doctor. 

You will not get green cards for your family in Senegal. You will create a new family in America, and become a conditional citizen when you marry my father in 1998, and then a permanent citizen three children later.  

You will not push a child on a swing. 

You will work 12 hours at Seamen's Furniture in Harlem. You will not have peaceful Thanksgiving holidays, nor children who get along long enough to play footsies under the table. Your two children from your first marriage will grow up hating you, believing that you abandoned them, though in your eyes, you left to care for them.  

Your three American children will learn to fear the sound of your house key unlocking the door. You will say that it does not matter if your children like you, but they must respect you. You will raise me to be a second mother, and I will resent you for it. 

***

I do not want to remember you as a teenage mother who had to mother her mother, but as a young girl with a hand on her hip, sand in her shoes, as she posed for a picture while behind her, the Dakar sun laughed boisterously. I don't want to write about our suffering entangled in a baobab tree, twisting towards God—our salvation on the edge of a leaf's blade. But I must write about my suffering if I am to suffer less.

If I am to suffer less, I must name my suffering whilst not drown in a quicksand of the self that clings to the pleasure of forgetting. As I write, I remember. As I remember, I sit. As I sit, I shovel my way to the root of my suffering, which is also your suffering.

I breathe in, I breathe out. It was Eid the night you slapped me– the loose skin under your arms shook as you demanded my blood to exit. A good mother sacrifices. A good mother obeys her mother, you tell me, then you spat, "The Bronx is a dangerous place for a girl at night." Then you kicked me out into a dangerous place for a girl at night. Then you let me in a few hours later. Then you did not say my name for days. 

You’d say, "Tell the girl to sweep. Tell the girl to fix my bed. Tell the girl to clean the bathroom. Tell the girl she not going to no open mic. Tell the girl that she needs to learn about the Qu'ran. Tell the girl that Allah knows everything done in the dark. Tell the girl to cover her head when she cooks my food. Tell the girl to say Bismillah when she pour the oil." 

***

It’s the morning of Eid. You wear a white scarf and a purple jalabiya. You dip your croissant in your coffee. Daddy, Issa, and Mariam are asleep. You and I sit at the white picnic table on the balcony. Daddy's work clothes, dumb bells, laundry detergent, and black plastic bags are piled to our left, but before the day is over, Mariam will be tasked with revamping the balcony. You gaze into my eyes as if you have seen me for the first time. 

You ask, "Do you know why we celebrate Eid every year?"

"No, why do we celebrate?" 

Below us, on the main street of 161 street, a bulldozer drills into concrete as if to touch the bottom of the earth while cars and buses move along the road like shackled prisoners. The Bronx, a concrete institution, with little trees, and tall square buildings. Our balcony view is the side profile of another building. I don't need to be downstairs to know that the woman yelling at a man who is presumably her baby father has red hair, lives on the 23rd floor, and can double-dutch her ass off. Nor do I need to see the long line out the welfare office on the corner, or hear the crinkle of plastic as a Mexican fruit vendor drops three apples inside.

“Ibrahim and his wife Hagar wanted a son, but had trouble becoming pregnant. For over twenty-five years, they have begged Allah for a son. Finally, Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. One day, Allah showed Ibrahim in a dream to sacrifice his son. The next day, Ibrahim told Ishmael about the dream, and do you know what Ishmael said?"

I know the story. Both versions. Christians say that it was Sarah and Abraham who begged God for a son; muslims say that it was Ibrahim and his other wife, Hagar, who wanted a son. In the Bible, the son's name is Isaac; in the Qu'ran, it's Ishmael. In both versions, it is a lesson on obeying God's will. Christians celebrate their lives through faith; muslims sacrifice and eat lamb to remember that Ishmael laid down, closed his eyes, and awaited the knife. 

You are passionate and kind when you talk to me about Islam. Your white smile that can bring an alabaster seashell to shame, your raisin hands, thin gray eyebrows, your matching lavender headscarf to cover the onset of alopecia that arrived after you gave birth to Issa. 

It's hard to believe that you are the woman in the picture. Not because you are older, but because the young woman who smiles on a beach smiles like she knows how to let her hair down. Like she knows how to praise God, and also praise the wild animal in her. I want to step inside that photo and hold your hand. I want to watch the Atlantic Ocean sweep the sand, while I ask you questions I am not brave enough to ask you now: Who was your first kiss? How do you know when you're ready for a boyfriend? Did you ever touch yourself as if you were your own wife? Have you ever been attracted to a girl, and still been attracted to a boy? 

But all you can talk about is the Qu'ran and Allah. "Ishmael say to his father, I go willingly. Ibrahim and Ishmael love Allah so much. They go to Moriah, find a stone, then Ishmael lay down." 

Tears well up in your eyes, you set your glasses on the table, and I pass you a napkin. "Ishmael tell to his father, Let me look away. Tie my hands and tie your eyes because if you look or I look, you will not be able to obey Allah."

What kinda God sends a dream demanding them to kill their child? What kinda God gives someone something then takes it away, and why would any child consent to that? If Allah told you to sacrifice me, would you?

Don't answer that.

For now, you drink from your pink Queen coffee mug, smack your lips, and exclaim, "As Ibrahim raise the knife, Allah tell the angel Jibril, Go! Go! Switch the son with this lamb! So that's why we celebrate Eid, why I woke up early this morning right after fajr, so they can kill a lamb. We celebrate to remember how Ibrahim and Ishmael obeyed God. The lamb is holy because it came from heaven."

***

If an ewe has not bonded with her lamb within thirty minutes, she will reject the lamb, and if the lamb does not find another mother, it will not survive. The first shearing of a lamb produces the finest wool a lamb will ever produce, and for that reason, the most valuable.  

The lamb that replaced Ishmael's body died a virgin. Virginity is a commodity that can cleanse sin, commensurate devotion, and please God. I learn that I — like you, like Ibrahim, like Ishmael— am alive to please God. Restlessness boils in my blood, but I don't let you see it. 

"I'm going to an open mic at six. How you want the lamb—" You interrupt me, "You mean Inshallah! If God's willing, you go to the open mic!" You continue, "Save the liver so I can wrap it around my feet."

"Mashallah." 

  Was your first husband gentle? Did he learn your body, kiss upon your high cheekbones as if climbing a mountain, caress your espresso back, and then make love to you as if you were one of Allah's children? Or did he bulldoze into you? Did you clench your teeth, close your eyes, and brace while your body alchemized? How did you know what to do if you waited until marriage? On your wedding night, was there blood on your sheet?

When you married your first husband at 17, did you love him? Or were you just being obedient to your mother? Did you honeymoon somewhere in Dakar overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean, or did you travel to the countryside in Cyprus, where you would take me thirty years later? 

Laabaan, derived from the Wolof word for purification, symbolizes a bride's purity that confirms her virginity until marriage. Our conversation about sex was to not have it. That if I did, my husband would leave me because I was unclean. Why did you assume I wanted a husband?

Unchopped onions, garlic, and bell peppers await in the kitchen. I rise from the picnic table. "Penda, why you always on the go? You don't care about the Qu'ran? This poetry thing will not save you."

To be born into Islam means that an Imam shaved my head, and for seven days, I did not have a name until a lamb was slaughtered. Who was I for seven days? My blood rising to my brown cheeks, a lamb's blood drained in a butcher shop.

Later that evening, there will be an open mic downtown. I could read my poem, "To Be A Black Woman in America," but I will not. I will not take the Manhattan-bound 4 train; I will ride the 4 train to Woodlawn Avenue. A young boy will slobber his tongue on my face as if he were an Ewe licking a lamb. I will memorize his rough hands, how he yanks on my box braids, bites my neck, then kisses me on my forehead and sends me home in a taxi. He is nothing if not a gentleman. I will learn that men are gentlemen until they are not. 

***

A male voice sings, Allahu akbar four times, signaling that it is almost time for the Asr prayer. Before you unfurl your brown and gold prayer rug with a stitched mosque in the center, before you touch your forehead to the mat, you say, "Wherever I go, my mother was there."

You tell me another story. "There was a wedding in Almandies that I really wanted to go to, but my mother said no. But I say okay, I will go anyway, and before she knows it, I will be back. So my friends and I go, and guess what? When I go to the wedding, I fall and hurt myself. My mother knew what was best for me. She never wants anything bad to happen to me. When I finish school, she pick me up. After basketball practice, she pick me up. If I go to a party, she is there, and she would yell, 'Issatou! You know, I'm only so tough on you because you have my mother's name.'"

You walk to your bathroom and motion for me to step inside. You demonstrate wudhu, a cleansing ritual where you wash the right hand three times, then the left. Before you face east in the direction of Mecca, I ask you once more how I should cut up the leg of lamb. 

A good leg of lamb has to marinate in lemon, garlic, Goya, ground habanero, and should be sliced vertically, this I know. To preheat the oven to 350°Fahrenheit, to grind the seasoning and insert it into the cuts, this I know. 

You close the door behind you, then say, "My door lock at eight pm." 

That is all the permission I need to be let out of your line of sight long enough to experiment with what it feels like to be touched in the dark. I do not yet know that I will hate you for not teaching me how to have sex. That I will blame you for all the times that boys will take advantage of me because of my naivety.

In our small tunnel of a kitchen, I chop onions, peel garlic, slice up bell peppers, clean the leg of lamb with water and lemon, pat it dry with a towel, and slice deep pockets into the meat. I stuff grounded parsley, salt, pepper, and Goya, then sprinkle it all over the lamb. Hours pass by, hair sticks to my forehead, sweat sticks my shirt to my back. 

From Daddy's cabinet, I steal a blue razor, hoist my leg on the side of the tub, and bring the blade to my private. To prevent razor bumps and ingrown hairs, you should shave with the grain and not against it. You should not shave right before intercourse. But you do not have to shave if you do not want to. You can wait until marriage, or you cannot. It may hurt, but it doesn't have to. You might bleed, but you need not be afraid of blood. 

***

Outside, the early evening rain is five months pregnant. Swollen breasts water quickens as soft tissue gesticulates in the womb; water carries litter and is clogged in the sewer. Backache and hunger straddle my umbrella— I swipe my MetroCard at Yankee Stadium, run up the stairs, and catch the Woodlawn-bound 4 train. Red explodes like tomatoes in scorching oil. The sun kneels and stabs the sky. 

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