I.

I am no older than 6 when I decide to tell you. already skilled in implosion, I hold it in until I can’t anymore. I cry to you about the bullies in 5th grade who have stained my kindergarten year with cruelty. You are no older than 15 when you sashay your Pisces self to my bus stop after school to fight my battle. Your fight gear: a silky Morehouse jersey, basketball shorts and a maroon pageboy covering your crown of long dookie braids. The braids are half done, only halfway to their hood glory. Your ammo: just a brazen mouthpiece but you’re not above violence either. It’s many years later before “icon” will enter the zeitgeist of language. It will be too easily applied, quickly becoming passé. Right now, you simply represent coolness. You are 90s black and 90s perfection. See: Shalika in Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) or Iesha in Poetic Justice (John Singleton, 1993) or Dana in Friday (F. Gary Gray, 1995).

II.

I want to curl under you and be with-child with you and grow with my first niece and you. I am about 8 years old going on 80 but your pregnant belly takes me back to an infancy. I stand back, still in arms reach, as your body grows becoming big as the earth. You are 18 and already your own planet; a Mars to me. An eclectic, charming Leo giving the sun some competition. You introduce me to the soundtrack. That sweet, secret menu that reveals about the film what the cast and crew couldn’t; that lagniappe. Michael Jordan is finding unlikely opposition in beastly otherworldlies (Space Jam, Malcolm D. Lee, 1996). Monica is in her own galaxy singing something ‘bout bringing the moon. I don’t understand what she means but I understand how she feels. And I want to listen forever as you become a mom. I want to read you with big, careful eyes like I do the credits. I want to read you until you go dark and even then, I want to ponder your darkness, go to that place with you.

III.

On some nights you are kind enough to gift me the room to watch my movies in solitude. You know that girls need room for their things. Their tears, their transformation and bleeding. Alone in that room, VHS buzzing, I fall in love with film over and over. I fall in love with the underdogs first. The villains next. Last and least, I develop a soft spot for the damsel in distress. I think, how genius to lure a man via designed weakness in exchange for his attention. I want to learn that, to disguise myself as weak. You are a live oak, spreading, claiming all the room. You’re 17 and already a master at disguising yourself, changing form. I’m 11 and you make it a mission to teach me everything about being a girl including the disguise but all I can do is be water. A Capricorn and a Cancer.

ii.

On Tumbleweeds (Gavin O’Connor, 1999)

I always cry during the beach scene because the daughter, Ava, is the happiest she’s been the entire film. These are not tears of joy nor is Ava joyful. She is only neatly pacified. The way you satiate an infant with a nightride or a toddler with a nightlamp. Ava has gotten a promise of stability, a hope that inspires dance in the pug-nosed teen. She is two years older than me so she should be smarter, I think. I tense my body in preparation for the fallout, the death of a promise. “The letdown will only last a second Ava,” I want to tell her. I want to tell her I know something about longing too. But longing is too nuanced an emotion for an 11 year old. Really, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed for her. She’ll wise up. Become her own hero.

a read: those born under the sign of cancer are known to be the most loyal of all the zodiac. highly emotional and percipient, cancers pick up on any slight shift in energy. at the sign of attack, betrayal or injustice, these crabby creatures will first retreat then use their pincers if need be. beware: cancers are not ones to be slighted. these moon-ruled crabs have a dark side.

day of the week: sunday

color: silver

body part: stomach

iii .

How long can you wander without being caught? I keep asking that about the mother, Mary Jo Walker. It’s my way of advocating for Ava. I want the fairytale for her too. I think it’s pity I feel for this girl but pity is too nuanced an emotion for an 11 year old. I just want her to learn to take rejection like me: swift. Instead, she keeps aching for her own demise. I don’t stick around for her heartache, for a rescue that will never be. Mary Jo, flighty and unreliable, becomes my new number 1. I want her to survive because she fights to keep parts of her self for herself. I want to learn that, to be my own hero. Ava, nice enough albeit naïve, can’t accept that her mother isn’t interested in motherhood, not the way it looks in movies. Mary Jo:  a wildflower, raging water. Ava:  a tree planted by waters. A Cancer and a Capricorn.

iv.

There is a phenomenon in art, really human nature, that fascinates me. It happens when we feel so strongly about another's action, it’s as if it’s happening to us. A spontaneous twinning. An amplified empathy fueled by selfishness or self-preservation. We want them to survive this impending devastation, the death of her is the death of us. How we so easily go from stranger to siamese.

v.

On Nights in Cabiria, (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Cabiria is unlike any woman character in American film, at least not in that same era. I am so used to women in film being porcelain dolls. Cabiria is a monster truck of a woman. Selling sex, repeatedly falling for scrubs, dismissing her friendships with other women. She is a bra off, last call kinda girl. Unabashedly woman. Haggard but inexplicably youthful. Lovesick, still painfully hopeful. It hurts to watch her wonder down dead end after another. As the viewer I am privy to a foreshadowing that Cabiria could see as well, if only she got out of her own way. But she can’t be stopped. And I don’t learn this till much later, that a woman hellbent on self-destruction will do just that. Cabiria does it shamelessly, tirelessly---like it’s her fucking assignment. She slowly kills herself, overdosing on unrequited love as if pills or a pistol won’t get it done faster. Again, I don’t learn this until much later, that women play the long game with suicide. We want to bleed out right until the darkness sets in. It makes us feel alive. Married and emotionally unavailable men are hard to resist during this return. Really, any dangerous scenario that presents itself is our prey even as we fall prey to it. Cabiria has figured out something devastating and gorgeous. She understands that in order to create a new self, she must give her self over to one thing completely. Even if that thing is forbidden, especially if that thing is forbidden. Cabiria spends her nights trekking through Italian streets, hoping to die. Consequently, hoping to be reborn. When they say “girls just wanna have fun,” this is what they mean.

IV.

You spend years trying to make the world pay for your girlhood. One that was marred by teasing and social favoritism of which you received the short end. I stand back, far back, in awe as you destroy the earth as you know it. I spend my last year as a pre-teen prepping for a painful transformation into teenhood. I don’t allow myself permission to have meltdowns and let it all go. Women who do, women like you, are the unlikely heroes. You are only a few years older but the way you sling chairs across cafeterias at boys daring them to say another word…you kick and scream and have such a way of being a raging Libra. Really, it is impressive the way you are willing to perish in your own arson. A wild way of going down with the ship. You are Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) exacting revenge on her terrorists post-prom. Except, in your story you don’t soak in animal blood. You are the blood, just barely beating your bullies to the punch. You react a second too soon---enough time to be painted a villain. Timing is everything. One second later, you would be the damsel but waiting to be rescued is much harder than it looks. You take the killshot, no questions asked. Not now. Not later. I am excited to see more women like you in film. Kym in Rachel at the Wedding (Johnathan Demme, 2008). Mavis in Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011). Lila/Eve in Lila & Eve (Charles Stone III, 2015). Women who attempt to take everyone down with them.

V.

I don’t mean to watch the xxx rated flick it just kinda happens. Porn still feels underground to me but soon it’ll be so mainstream you can upload your amateur video to the worldwide web. For now it still seems elite, exclusive even. But it is not exclusive, in fact, it is the most public secret. Porn stars are non-celebrated celebrities. I watch carefully as Cherokee reverses her illustrious bottom onto a playful Wesley Pipes. He is in a long lineage of pun named porn stars. His remains one of my favorites---it was almost too easy. His playful approach to performance and Cherokee’s methodical movements make a classic collaboration. Cherokee’s ass is, at that time, unprecedented. In less than 10 years, her ass will serve as a model of ideal feminine physique, to be widely recreated by plastic surgeons. It is difficult to not want what she has but it’s even harder to imagine what life must be like with it.

ii.

I don’t think it’s right but I think you’re right: a perfect Virgo. I have yet to understand that every older sister is not a big sister. I’m freshly 17, in the bowels of grief from losing a sister (ref: III) and still very much afraid of sex. The idea, the potential outcome, the pain even. All of it makes me want to run and hide. I have built up a foolproof defense against boys and men. In fact, I almost hate them. But when you tell me to dress up in small orange shorts and a halter top, I just think we’re playing dress up like girls do. When you tell me to pose for your friend, face down and ass up, I become Cherokee. It is the only thing left to do in that moment. The other option, saying no, seems like the little girl thing to do. When he snaps pictures with his early model digital camera, a deep sense of shame and humiliation swallow me up. But you’re here and you’re eight years older so maybe I’m just being a kid and need to grow up. Maybe this is all my body is ever meant to do. Be a thing for men to feed on, critique, dispose of.

iii.

I am in love with sisters and cinema and escapism. I keep falling in love with everything. It is no wonder I grow to admire women with a streak of violence. 70s cinema is full of sisters fighting off danger, sisters going towards danger. It is everything. It’s not just Foxy Brown ( Jack Hill, 1974) though she is a formidable forerunner. Thumper (Diamonds Are Forever, Guy Hamilton, 1971 ) is a favorite as well. She too is remarkably smooth and cut-throat. There is an entire legion of women, across time and genre, who form a family tree of cinematic bad bitches. Finding strength in numbers, double-teaming the bad guy, dying side by side––death never looked so pretty. Stony and Cleo and Frankie and Tee Tee (Set It Off, F. Gary Gray, 1996) force this country to look them in their eyes. Bernadette and Gloria and Savannah and Robin (Waiting To Exhale, Forest Whitaker, 1995)  stare down their imperfections and determine they are still worthy of love. 

VI.

There is a different kind of danger too. It’s the kind some women can’t avoid, like loyal moths to dying flames. I am no older than 13 when I notice how you play with fire. I don’t mean to but I notice everything about you. You’re 11 years my senior and a Cancer like me. I’ve made you a celebrity in my mind so, yes, I notice everything about you. Your extra wide and perfectly spaced gap. Your hips that hold babies as if that’s what hips are made for. The look in your husband’s eyes that gives me the bad goosebumps. I think to kill him only because i’m worried he will kill you first. There’s hope, though, that maybe a physical death doesn’t have to be the outcome. Maybe, I pray, you will run for your life like Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush or Tina Turner to the Ramada (What’s Love Got to Do with It, Brian Gibson, 1993). If running is too exhausting I pray, maybe, you’ll go into a self-mandated witness protection like Laura Burney (Sleeping with the Enemy, Joseph Ruben, 1991). I know you’re not brave enough yet but one day, I pray, you’ll get sick and tired like my girl Slim Hiller (Enough, Michael Apted, 2002). I pray that our mama is right when she says a woman can be tired enough to run.

ii.

And I don’t learn this til much later, that a woman hellbent on liberating herself will do just that. She will find comfort in endings because at least it’s over, freeing up space for a new Self. See: Mary Jo Walker. See: Stony in Mexico. See: Tina Turner. See: Cabiria dancing in the streets to the rhythm of nothing. Everything.

Volume 28, Issue 8-9-10 / August 2024 Essays   black women   personal film criticism   strong women   women in cinema