A Diasporan’s Prayer For When She Returns Home
The hope is that you will find a place where Black skin is revered, where people who look like you are safe and prosper, where the streets are clean and the potholes and ditches are few.
The hope is that they will welcome you, or at least not hate you for the way you talk and the way you relate, as your pidgin is pitiful and you don’t quite walk with the same assuredness they do.
The hope is that they won’t think you think you’re better because you spent the majority of your life outside the country. And you pray that on your worst day you won’t think you’re better, because the truth is that someone, somewhere, taught you that you were supposed to feel better, thus why you schooled abroad and they didn’t.
The hope is that no one will come out of the wings to haunt you for spending your Sunday cleansing your room with bay leaves and reading City of Girls rather than going to church.
The hope is that you won’t constantly get asked why you’re not married, why you haven’t beautified yourself enough to attract a marriage, why you waited so long to get married, or at the very least why you haven’t yet had a baby (since you’re well past your prime anyway).
The hope is that they’ll understand why you left and they won’t say you squandered away an opportunity that could have been used to your benefit.
The hope is that they will afford you the same respect they give to any white, Indian, Lebanese, Chinese…and let’s just hope that this same regard will be extended to a single youngish Black woman dining alone.
The hope is that you won’t fuck up miserably and treat the culture and her people like the way you did your Halloween candy. Only eating that which you thought tasted best.
But what is hope but a yearning for what has not yet come to pass? For the real hope that you are banking your life on is that with every disappointment you won’t turn sour, unable to carve out a refuge amid the chaos.
To The Diaspora: A Love Letter Series
