Justine
The daughter I do not have is named Justine. Her name aligns with the proliferation of names beginning with “J” that pepper the leaves on my family tree. I picked out her name long ago, almost since I could read, and I am hopeful that when she grows she will be judicious and wise as her name implies.
Justine looks at me with golden eyes. I plait her long, brown, kinky-curly, fine hair into two skeins, one over each shoulder, the way I wore mine when I was a child. But I won’t turn the braided ends up and tuck them into rubber bands so that they look like the blunt stumps of docked dog tails, the way my mother did me. No. I will spray the loose ends with water and let them curl as they may. When I have more time I will sit with her, mark out her scalp with a pink comb, and make many long braids, so that she appears to have a mane of thin twined ropes of brown. I will watch her braids fly around her head as she runs, colt-like, in the schoolyard with her friends.
The daughter I do not have, my little Justine, has soft honey skin, boney limbs and long legs with knobby knees. She has high cheekbones, our girl we don’t have, and almond-shaped eyes—whether from my Tainos or your Cherokees, I don’t know. Her front teeth are big and square as a beaver’s. They protrude onto her full pink lower lip, which she pokes out when she is sad or mad. Freckles arise like cinnamon specks across her pert nose in the sun.
She is the amalgamation of the past we know and the past we don’t: My Carib-Latino-Dutch-English-“Negro” and your Scotch-Irish-Cherokee-“Negro” – "Negro" being the old name for African-American that appears on the certificates of our own births. She is “light-skinned-ed” like me, like you. She is “high yalla,” “redbone,” “mariney.” Maybe these appellations, these accusations, will disappear from the culture by the time she grows up. Somehow I doubt it. She will have to hear it all, have to let it roll off her back because it means nothing. She didn’t choose her skin or our tangled ethnology.
Justine is a good girl. She will read many books, some too advanced for her age, but I won’t take them from her. She will love music, and I will buy her an iPod and fill it with pop music and jazz and old R&B and smile when she bops around the house with white wires protruding from her ears. Not too loud, though, baby, I will say. When she sings to the music that only she hears, I will be shocked and proud to learn that she has a strong voice that soars on key. She will get good grades in math and science, she will want to be a doctor. She will go out for sports like track and softball. She is the daughter of all daughters and I love her with a mother’s passion.
Justine is the daughter I don’t have, will never have. She is not a ghost, for she was never realized or real. She is an echo of a dream, a shimmering mirage that rises in the heat of my thwarted desire as I traverse the sands of the life I have instead. She is the shoulda-woulda-coulda of my middle age.
You said, I don’t want to us to have a baby right now.
You said, I can’t come to the doctor with you, honey, my schedule is just crazy.
You said, I understand that you have health problems but we have time, don’t get all worked up.
You said, You want to be a mother? You can’t even keep the dog’s water bowl filled.
You said, Not tonight, J, I’m tired.
You said, Stop climbing all over me, what are you, a slut?
You said, I don’t know when I’m coming home, when I’m good and ready.
You said, You know what? I’m tired of this shit.
I put my wedding rings away in a cardboard box next to melted wedding cake fantasies, but my dream of Justine did not die. She stayed with me in other forms, with other names, as I spent time with other men who played but didn’t stay. Years passed and my body gave out, my womb twisted. I had felt a touch of death every month since I was 16, pain growing progressively worse every year, blood draining until I couldn’t see, couldn’t stand, until I lost my color and my strength. Until my doctor said, “Enough.”
The first time they opened me up just to see what was there. The surgeons found knots of pain, balls of confusion, congealed dreams, compacted masses of frustration, repressed screams reduced to orbs of gristle. They found 32 fibroids where 32 babies could have lived and didn’t. My doctor laid them in rows on a surgical tray and photographed them. When I came out of the anesthesia, he handed me the Polaroid. It was too ugly to look at, to keep. So I lost it.
I thought I still had a chance. I ran to men -- sweat standing out on my brow, my breath ragged in my throat, a smile on my face. I wanted to be loved, to be redeemed. I wanted my Justine. I was scarred and blocked inside; only real commitment and costly modern medicine could bring my daughter to bear. The men smelled it on me. They backed away. I lost my resolve. I cried and grew weaker with every phase of the moon.
The second time into surgery they took it all away, scooped me out like a Halloween pumpkin. Twenty-four-seven, three hundred sixty five, I am a scary jack-o-lantern: No seeds, no smile.
I hear you are a proud father. I don’t want to know her name.
