Second (and Third, and Fourth …) Helpings

Abstract

Until more recently than I’d like to admit, I constructed my identity in direct opposition to the image of the mammy. As a big black girl who loved to smile, I insisted on playing the father, the neighbor, the gardener—anything but the mother—in games of house. When bandanas were fly in high school, I made sure to rock mine in outlandish neon greens, underscored by purple extensions and lipstick the color of blood. Every chance I got, I made sure the second signal the world got from me—after the unmissable sign of my size—was the clear message: I will not take care of you. To this day, I sometimes suck in my bulges and harden my eyes when white toddlers gurgle at me on the bus, their mothers often looking on with ambiguously pleading smiles.