(10) HE LOVES ME... HE LOVES ME NOT

Malik brought her back from her musing.

“Sista Saadi I was thinking about you this morning.  I began to imagine making love to you but I stopped myself.  I would not ponder those thoughts, out of respect for you and for my queen.  I must remain strong.  I love her.  She is away and hopefully I will see her soon, but sista I do have thoughts of you.”

So he did want her too.  He wanted to lay down with her, to know her, to have knowledge of her “lotus garden”.  Was that all he wanted?  Did he want to travel to the corners of the universe, or did he just want to fuck?

Artist - Megan Holmes

My heart is racing, I am wet, throbbing, wanting, intensely.  Be still and listen, don’t jump so fast.  Be you, not how you think he sees you.  But do I even know how to do that anymore.  Do I know how to be me anymore? I’ve been winging it for so long.

Saadi lived in New York for several years and New York was more cosmopolitan than Black. Though Blacks in the North usually believed they were far ahead of Southern Blacks in freedom awareness, still to Saadi they had lost touch with deep parts of their Afro-centric culture, parts Black people in the South took for granted yet still remembered. During her last semester in grad school Saadi went to Jamaica.  It was like an awakening.  She experienced a re-connection to her African roots.  It felt so natural like she was visiting her cousins down in North Carolina.  She went back more than once.  She fell in love with the culture.  In many ways it felt more natural than American culture.  

It was like she reformed connections to parts of herself, parts that felt very old even ancient. Jamaica was the type of place where she should live. Saadi determined an exciting future; work in Africa or the Caribbean, a home, family with one strong distinct Brutha by her side.  She visited the National School the Arts and met with its Director about working there.  And she fell in love with a Rasta who accepted her religion.  She found out that many of the Rasta teaching were the same as in Buddhism.  She made plans to move there.

But reality had a different scenario in store.  Saadi graduated within a year.  She had a prestigious Master’s Degree in her hand, however she also had a baby in her belly and with no strong distinct brutha by her side.  In fact, she gathered her tail between her legs as she returned home alone.  Saadi put the lost & found sections of herself, her plans, her dreams, and her hopes on hold.  Single parenting, elder caregiving, and economic survival become the priorities.

After a time, she could not ignore that hollow void that the Caribbean had awakened, so she sought out “loc people” thinking they would provide some fulfillment.  She believed they would help relieve Saadi’s thirst for African culture.  She worked with an African dance group while she was pregnant, performing at eight months heavy.  The audience was fascinated by her ability to dance while so pregnant and gave her a loud round of applause when she bowed.  Saadi loved the dancing, she could feel the baby moving inside her as she danced to the drums.  During rehearsals she formed a close friendship with another dancer who hung out frequently at a Loc Shop. She took Saadi with her on one of her visits and introduced her to the regulars.  Saadi was so happy to see them.  She had been lonely for people that loved their African ways and showed it.  She was reminded of the life in the Caribbean that had eluded her grasp.

Many of the loc people’s ways came natural to Saadi, things that were already a part of her lifestyle, a vegetarian diet, African clothes, incense burning, Reggae and African music, books and videos about freedom fighters and Black leaders, American as well as from other cultures of the African Diaspora.  She was sure they would show her the way back to her black consciousness, the consciousness she felt she lost, the one she rediscovered when she was in Jamaica.

Saadi quickly found that it was not like the fantasy in her head.  There were so many rules, how to dress, wear your hair, talk, walk, eat, read, what to watch on TV, and you had to be angry, really angry, all the time.  To Saadi it seemed that in this loc group, a person that wasn’t angry all the time was considered weak and blind.  Saadi knew she was neither weak nor blind.  She had always been a warrior.  Even as a student applying for college her own parents refused to let her travel any further South because they feared her warrior ways would get her lynched.  Saadi did not know how to bow down to the others, the non-blacks.  She did not want to know how to bow down to them, but does being warrior mean being angry, all the time?

Frequently among the loc people there would be lively discussions and debates on politics, culture, and world situations, however, when Saadi brought up Buddhism it often produced an angry reaction.  They would shout something about it being the white man’s religion or even worse the China man’s religion.  Other times they would laugh and look at each other, having that “Poor thing she doesn’t know any better” look in their eyes.  “She’s just another dumb mis-informed Negro.”

They didn’t know.  How could they?  I am just beginning to explore this and to understand it myself and I have been practicing Nichiren Buddhism for many years.  How do I show them how truly its roots connect to Africa too? How Buddhism is free and warrior whether past, present or future?

It got to the point that Saadi couldn’t even bring up Buddhism without being verbally ambushed.  In groups she would frequently side step potential traps on philosophy and dodge landmines about ideology.  In other areas of her life, like work, there was the opposite effect, Saadi was not mainstream enough.  However, her co-workers did seem to accept her difference more readily, at least overtly.

Saadi found points of compromise with her dress and cultural expressions at her job, she called her style Afrocentric corporate attire. She used the same bright colors but in rayons and soft cottons, materials that draped.  Instead of complete tops and bottoms she mixed in trendy blouses and pants, added belts and vests, boots, and various styles of jackets.  It was her own unique expression.  She discovered ways to style her locs so that the conservatives like the white bank officers and Black church elders felt more comfortable around her.  She found that if she did this she had a better chance of presenting her ideas before being perceived stereotypically, a Black woman with Dreadlocks, scary.

The diversity of the worlds she lived in sometimes had Saadi feel as if she walked on the razor’s edge. She would sometimes joke that she was “Sista From Another Planet,” feeling like an outsider in most of her relationships and settings.

Yet each relationship also brought value. There were those times when many of the Loc House sistas would hang out together and go to a Reggae concert.  They would captivate the people at the clubs because everyone would be dressed in African splendor.  They wore their clothes with ease.  You could tell they were not in costume once or twice a year for Kwanzaa or Black History month celebrations.  Saadi’s outfit would be less elaborate because of her Yankee-African style mixture.  Sometimes they would pose as an African or Caribbean delegation.  Saadi would act as the delegate host functioning as interpreter or liaison.   This was lots of fun and would sometimes get them free entry or at least an upgrade in seats at concerts.

The Loc House was the center for a lot of rebel work.  For all of the marches they loaded too many buses for the counting, the Million Man and the Million Woman Marches.  They held dance and drums sessions and they had one of the few African paraphernalia collections in the area.  During Christmas and Kwanzaa this was the place to be.  There were some at the Loc House that showed Saadi “much respect” and she enjoyed being around them.  They taught her a lot of things.  They reminded her of the Rasta elders in Jamaica and West Africans from countries like Ghana who said her Buddhism reminded them of their old religions from before before.  Even though they were unfamiliar with Buddhism they respected her right to practice and saw some connections between religions. Saadi enjoyed when they would dialogue about their philosophies, sharing faith.  These times were golden. Saadi wished it was the same with more of other locs but the number of ridiculing experiences began to escalate.  It was becoming apparent that she would not be able to hang out so much at this Loc House and remain true to herself.