AN UNBROKEN MIRROR AND LIGHT:
A Response to Virginia Wolfe's 'A Room of Her Own'

When was the first time that I felt my self, the encasement of being a woman?

I would like to say that it was early in my life. I've heard stories of friends who because they were treated differently than their brothers felt their femaleness early. Maybe if I had brothers my story would have begun some time ago - when pigtails framed my head. But during those times I played with boy-friends as roughly, and delicately, as I did my friends who were girls.

A Tom-boy they would now call me. Then, they called me only with excitement; shouted my name with glee: "Lita!" Their little bow- legs running towards me with hands full of plastic swords, metal cars, and joy. We'd play together.

That welcome call is one of the most pleasant sounds of my childhood. It's like a mixture of my mother's gentle hum and the theme song to The Muppet Show. But more than that even - more than home or silly excitement - it meant the beacon of all children's dreams or destruction. For their voices lifting, "Lita!" also proclaimed: "you are one of us;" "we like you as you are;" "let's play!"

My first encounter with race was a different story. So etched into my Southern being I can not remember one incident in particular that reminded me of my "Blackness." I remember my books full of the Crayola melanized little girls and boys that my mother's hands transformed. I remember the audience filled with eyes of pride as I read my Black history poem. I remember upturned noses of mothers while their children pointed towards me, and called out, "NiggÉ." Those things, and many others, were woven into the fabric of my Southern being, repeatedly reminding me of my Blackness, early.

It would be twenty years later that I felt my femaleness. This time, I would be twenty-six, and in love. Or twenty-six, and loving I suppose, because I know now that being in love requires something more, particularly the other. He looked at me, and with his full brown mouth frowned, said that I was too vocal, too free to be a marrying kind of woman, and that if I quieted my voice, straightened my hair, quelled my desire for the fullness of life, then he might take me home. I must add: I never asked to see his home, or to see my hand adorned with a ring of his. But, I suppose, of course that is all women's desire: to be taken by the arm, presented to someone's mother, and her house. But I digress.

That night, however, I went to my own home. Wounded, and reminded of all the women that I knew who had squeezed their broad selves into Barbie's tiny casing in order to be loved. I was reminded of the distance in their eyes; as if now, touching the world with plastic hands, they could no longer feel or see themselves. I was reminded of their resounding voices muffled through synthetic heads. Sometimes, these eyes, hands, voices had been my own. I went home that night and reached towards the sole light above my mirror, stood a moment, and hesitated before turning it on. I suppose that I was afraid that I would see lack. A woman; yet, not a woman, whole. But that night, in my dark apartment, with the sole light shining on my bare body, I saw flesh. I saw hair, muscles, and sinews that were mine alone. I saw holding arms, standing feet, and a back to be lifted straight and tall. I saw breasts, and eyes, and knees, and ears. I saw a speaking mouth, touching hands, and the pouching of a life holding womb. Then Truth called: "Lita!" Aren't You A Woman?" "Yes!" I responded, resoundingly. "Yes!" And that night, and many nights that followed, we danced, and played together under the light of the moon.

alita

Alita Anderson is a dramatist, writer and visual artist. Anderson's art has been featured at the APEX Museum in Atlanta, Yale University and the Stamford Palace Theater in Stamford, CT. Anderson received her Bachelor's degree from Spelman College and was the first Spelman alumna to attend the Yale University school of Medicine, where she graduated with honors in 2001. Her first book is entitled, On the Other Side: African Americans Tell of Healing. For more information contact: alitaalive@yahoo.com