Zinzy Waleson Geene

My pastors have a way with words. Bible study on Thursday, and we use every pronoun but he reading Mark 6:1-13. She’s just a carpenter — Mary’s girl. We’ve known her since she was a kid. (…) Who does she think she is? Give me a second, let me hear that again.

I know a biblical story has come alive when I feel my ancestors stand up behind me. Sometimes they feel like a hand on my shoulder. Perhaps a nod I see without turning around. Reading the Bible to the hums of a thousand perspectives.

On Thursday, Mark 6 sounds like a whole choir.

I bet Jesus understood exactly who he was. A barely describable thread of red that held him together.

I’m reading None of the Above, a delight about the intersection of being non-binary and Black. Travis Alabanza knows what they’re talking about, because they’re talking about who they are.

In the precision of the writing, I learn they struggle with exactly that. Not knowing. Their not-knowing is a force field. It can delegitimize, bring doubt where the skin is already a bit too soft for comfort.

When did I know? How do I know? Do I know who I am?

There was not a surrounding conversation because I was just allowed to be present: present in action, without speculation.

I read Travis because I’m going to be the plus one at The Black Archives Book Club in July. The team is better organized than most. There’s even a Spotify playlist for the session. In it, I discover Lafemmebear’s Win. How does something like that have less than 37,000 plays? Have all the woke people with good taste left Spotify by now?

I bet Travis knows it perfectly, the barely describable thread of red holding them together. Evidently, so does Lafemmebear.

Friday is my favorite day of the year: I attend my very first Omek Summit. Seemingly effortlessly, Omek has become the community to which I most eagerly return. Oh, to inhabit spaces filled with people whose lived experiences are similar to mine. The theme this year: the era of the bicultural.

The day is sunny, Tolhuistuin vibrant and gorgeous. I spend the morning and afternoon placing myself in a tradition of Black humans finding their way in White professional spaces. I’ve heard it before, but this time it lands when Kemo says that we have a super power. The era of the Bicultural. But what, exactly, is bicultural about the child of a White mother that grew up in a decided lack of Blackness?

Monday is Ketikoti, and I dress accordingly in blue and white. I buy a unicorn that’s clearly of African descent: brown fur, with a rainbow horn and two big afro poofs. I’m at once a child, and at once the mother of that child who does know the sound of Black girl joy. I see half the attendee list of the Omek Summit there, which makes me feel proud. I see my new neighborhood friend.

On Wednesday, my new neighborhood friend and I meet for coffee. She’s such a power house; a leader in doing the type of work that makes life better for people like us. A big thing is about to take place, and we discuss what it’s going to mean for her and her team. I can tell she’s frightened, but proud.

We’re only new friends, but we’ve known each other for years, in passing. I ask her why I feel so much more connected to non-African Dutch people of color who were adopted than I do to African expats I encounter. She’s everything but surprised. Both initially succumbed to a life lived in White spaces, we now are more capable of finding balance in our social and working lives between people who understand, and… others.

I’ve never been to São Tomé, the island of my father, that great place of unknown to me and it seems most of the people I meet. Whenever I encounter an African from a Lusophone country - which is to say a country that was once, like São Tomé, colonized by the Portuguese - there’s a familiarity I can’t quite pinpoint. As if they’re running into an old school friend.

At the Omek Summit, after dinner, Sofia walked up to me with a man unfamiliar to me. Gosh, I thought, he looks so much like my dad. Sofia knows about me and my questions of belonging. This is Leufigenio, she said. He’s from São Tomé. Like an old school friend, Leuf addressed me in enthusiastic Portuguese.

Barely describable threads of red holding me together.