Love Letter to My Matrilineage

My grandaddy was a rapist. I imagine he was so many more things, but because he was a rapist and the covenant of secrecies have been kept, I cannot know him until I know him as this. Until I speak him as a rapist.

He has been with me my whole life. Haunting me with his secret seductions, terrorising me through my mother’s emotional unavailability, rejecting me through my grandmother’s indifference towards me. He has lived in my waking life and cloaked himself in many forms in my dream life.

Last night, he came to me. He came through me. But when I think of it, he came before last night. He came in the verbal scuffle of my mom’s suppressed rage that trickles out as disappointment and dismissal when she engages me. He came to me through her admonishment of my value as a good granddaughter. Through her unwillingness to ask for what she needs so she doesn’t have to martyr herself. He lives through her. He lives in me. He has been with us through my grandmother’s screams and curses at night as she slowly makes her way to the realm beyond this one, seemingly trapped in a life that was no life at all for her and not quite ready to know anything different.

My mother says to me that she thinks I cared about my other grandma more. I respond that I KNEW my other grandmother and she knew me. I don’t know my mother’s mother, other than in the knowing that I don’t know how I came to know that she was raped and bore my mother as a marker of such. That her life, my mother’s life and in certain ways my life have been marked by a known unknown. The known stranger that has rendered 2 generations ghosts to themselves and ghosts to me. I have seen these ghosts my whole life. I SEE the walking dead. I know them well even when they can’t see me. I have walked among them as a choice as a decision because there have been times where their fates were indiscernible from my own. I know better. I have known better for quite some time now. I have chosen to live amongst the living while hosting the dead. I straddle these lands. I have made home in these lands and the lands in between them.

Last night, I dreamt of my grandma V’s house. Of a looming sense of danger and violation, of the loudness of the silence next door, to that semidetached home- that home that shares a wall with more secrets. That home that houses its own secrets. That home of passive witnessing. I approached the home that I knew, that is so familiar, but I left my own child behind. There was something there for me, but nothing for her. I knew this without knowing why I knew it. I approached from a place of offering, offering of my services, offering of assistance, offering whatever would allow me to be close to what was mine to witness inside of this place that was familiar but populated with people who were utterly unfamiliar to me.

She let me in after stolen glances with a man who wasn’t usually there. I had been there before. She had received my help with the children before, but today was different. There was a tentativeness. The children didn’t recognise me. I had known not to bring my own child. She offered that I could enter only if I was there to help HER. She needed help taping. I entered. I asked where to start. We entered the kitchen. She was there, an adolescent girl was there and a middle aged woman was there. YOU were there, this time masquerading as a young adult male son of the woman who let me in. The woman I came to see. I didn’t recognise you at first, at least not consciously. The task was to help put tape on the gifts that were wrapped. The tightly and neatly wrapped gifts that were being wrapped right there in the kitchen for anyone to see. I let her know that I was no good at wrapping gifts, at neatly concealing the surprises that lay in wait, but I could cut the tape and hand it to those who were more aligned with such pursuits.

I was left to what I could offer. I watched you. I watched him. I watched the adolescent woman and the older woman. All connected and yet not visibly related. The adolescent girl disappeared leaving me to complete the tight wrapping and to tape. I should have seen this as a sign, as a foreshadowing, after all, I’m no good at tightly wrapping and sealing. There was small talk. The older woman, you and her are all actors. You have been for decades now. It doesn’t surprise me. There is something familiar in the skill of becoming characters, characters of yourselves and characters of each other. I am your audience. Is this an audition? Who is directing this clearly orchestrated scene. You grab me and bring me close to your face. I still don’t quite know who you are, but I know the terror, I know the fear, but I am not afraid. I meet you in your eyes. I feel the coldness on my neck. You are aroused and excited by this show of dominance, this demonstration right here at the table, with her there to witness but seemingly oblivious to this showing. I am curious about this. I can see each and everyone of you but it seems as though I am not seen. Does she want to see me? What does she get out of this show? You have a kitchen knife, I instruct you that if you are planning on slashing my throat it is better that you move the knife 2 inches to the right, there is a better artery there to get more blood splatter for your buck. My voice in unaffected. I am clear about my directions. You are curious. You move the knife as per my instructions. My fortitude and indifference to you is unwavering. I feel your breath. I see your hand now. It is the handle pressed into my neck and YOU are holding the blade, the point is now directed at the first layer of your skin on your neck. You are confused and delighted at the discovery. I am clear about what is happening. You let out a sound that betrays your ecstasy and return to wrapping gifts and discussing acting and mastering a quebecois accent. While I still wasn’t quite sure who you were at this point, you became very clear about who I AM. It is settled.

In the next dream, I am walking down a dark street. The energy of my child is my companion even though the form of the being next to me was not her. I pause within the line of sight of the apartment. WAIT. I see it, I see YOU again- this time in the form of a jackal-rabbit-hyena hybrid. I feel the primal in the air, the animalistic, the reptilian brain. I wait. You are joined by the form of you that you took in the last dream- the young, well coiffed to a black male aesthetic white man. Interesting. You let yourself into the apartment building. I will not be entering. I don’t want to be seen. I wait. Your jackal-hyene-rabbit forms returns outside on the deck of the entrance as if waiting for me, as if you had no interest in ambushing me. I note this. I will not be ambushed, but I will not be entering. I take out my phone to capture a picture of this primal form. My phone feels like a camera of the 35mm type in my hands. It is dark. I don’t wish to use flash. It is time to walk away, I move along the street. The street that is a street I know in Brooklyn. I wave for my brother to come the longer way, but he insists that his place is in the other direction. I am aware of this, but I also am aware that YOU walked in that direction and I am concerned that my brother will meet you unprepared. He isn’t used to tracking you the way that I am. He doesn’t know you in any of your forms the way I know you. He doesn’t yet know that there is nothing to fear inside of the depths of fear that you parade as. I try to convince him. He is annoyed with me. He doesn’t see what I see. He doesn’t know what I know. We are siblings so close but so far from each other. I see Joel, but Joel doesn’t see me. I wish to be seen by him to make myself seen by him. I follow him. He enters the apartment building next to mine. I devise a plan that will increase the likely hood of being available to meet so that he may be the one to see me even though I still recognise him. Why do I want him to see me so badly. I am aware of my manipulation tactics. I wonder if this is yet another way that YOU take form-this time in me. It is time. Time for me to face what is mine to face at my own apartment. I enter gingerly, still hoping to avoid and somehow sneak past my destiny. I am grabbed and dragged into the adjacent apartment. I recognise YOU now, I know for sure it is you now. It is in the sexualised aggression, the conquering, the hubris that I recognise you clearest. There you are, knife in hand. I am rendered bare chested. No shirt, no bra. No more knife. I SEE you in the guise of the nice white guy, the aesthetically attractive but wholly emotionally unavailable demon you are. I face you. Unbothered and declarative. I surrender under one condition, that you state your intentions wholly and intentionally. You cannot violate me without my consent and with my consent it is no longer the violation you so desperately thirst for. My condition remains. I am unmoved and yet moving everything including time and space. You will bow to my condition. You will state your intention and explain yourself. You will take NOTHING. I have nothing you can take only that which I WILLINGLY give- for good reason or not. You are rendered a puddle of confused emotions. You use my bare chest to confess your depravities. YOU have surrendered.This version of you, this form is unfamiliar to me, however the power of this version and form of me is wholly recognisable to me. It is me, in my highest form, sustained. It is the penetrating, inescapable power of me. I do not need to disavow you, grandfather. I claim you, my love claims you in a fullness I have never gotten to be with in the waking or the sleeping realm. Today, I experience my own fullness while facing you. I invite you to do the same. Until then, you are not welcome here unless it is service of MY highest good. Those are my conditions. Meet them or be rendered null in my existences.

Post Script:

You robbed my mother of a mother and you robbed me of a mother and grandmother, You will not rob me of my own mothering of myself and my Child. It is DONE!

Mom and grandma D. I will come back for you from this reclaimed place. I trust that you will meet me where it is most accessible…in my dreamscapes. Until then, I will hold the healing for our line. He cannot control us any longer. Join me when you are ready.