It took me to a time back in sixth grade. Just being let out from school, we decided to wonder around before going home. Middle school brought freedom not given lightly to elementary schoolers, and there weren't many after-school programs to get involved in. My friends and I wandered around until we were in front of the Brooklyn Public Library. So we decided to play double-dutch. After a couple rounds filled with games, turns, and tricks (pop-up, mumble, typewriter, criss-cross, the kick... you girls remember those?) a white woman walked up to us. She had this incredulous look on her face and her tone mimicked that sentiment. "Oh my goodness" she beamed "I've never seen anything like this! May I take a picture of you guys doing that?" My friends and I sort of stared at each other. She was a stranger but we were out in public so it shouldn't be anything bad. We agreed. My friend, Tasmine, was the best one out of all of us so we let her "jump" for the picture. I was one of two turners. The woman took out her large camera and snapped away, a smile strecthed across her face as if it would stay there forever.
What really struck me was how common in our community double-dutch was and how alien it was to her. It made me think about how normal it was to rummage through my mother's drawers at home for old telephone cords to bring to recess or barbecues or playgrounds or block parties. How it made grown women kick off their work shoes just to bask in the essence of memory, both amazed and pleased that their bodies still remembered the rhythm of the ropes. How you NEVER bought an actual "jump-rope" from the store. To pray that you don't get hit with the rope or a huge welt would form on your skin. How normal it was to claim "zero" so that you got to jump before the person who actually claimed "first". Three jumps for everyone, five if there was a smaller group. If you didn't know how to turn, you learned (I was intially "double-handed" lol). If you couldn't do double-dutch, you did single. I thought about how normal it was to have other girls come up to you, asking you to play and how you'd let them, without hesitation. There were few competitions, but they always ended up melting into afternoons of bliss. No hard feelings. It was easy to make friends through double-dutch. It was something that brought us together. Under this one, simple thing, black girls united, and I wonder if it was that unity that amazed her. That ability to teach, learn, embrace, showcase, and impress through the simple notion of double-dutch. I know that I would be amazed by such a thing, its beauty manifested in children. Little girls with cornrows and braids, plastic beads hanging down each one.
I yearn for a time in which women really could come together like that. I feel so conflicted by posts and pictures of women viciously berating other women, then preaching for us to collaborate in the same token. While I understand that we are no longer children, why can't we unite for something meaningful, for the sake of ourselves? I had a conversation with my mother the other day. I said, "I've been made to feel like, on countless occasions, that this world has no place for me." I already have two strikes against me in this world, black and woman. It is hard not to constantly feel like I don't belong. So, calling all of my sisters, I need you. We need each other. There are bigger things in this world. I once heard someone say jokingly "Damn, it's a shame that the only thing we could get black people to mobilize for is a party." Let's change that. Those hundreds of missing girls in Nigeria? We're talking about them. We're not hiding behind silence. We're trying to do something about it. Let's continue the conversation and bring to light other events such as those. Our women are powerful and we deserve to be in this world.
It may not be as simple and free-spirited as the afternoons spent playing double-dutch, but it is the substance, the sigificance behind unity, that matters the most.
