Who Speaks for Her? by Prisoner K
I think about my mother. She raised six kids, not to mention a variety of fosters. Mom had one of the biggest hearts. Like many, she suffered in silence. And she was brave as fuck. Once, she left our 16th floor project apartment to go to the supermarket up the street. During the elevator ride down, a thug pulled a knife on Mom. He demanded money. (I thank God that’s all he wanted.) She gave it to him.
After, Mom stayed on the elevator, went back upstairs, got more money, and went food shopping.
When she told me the story later, I was stunned. I asked, “How could you do that?”
I’d certainly had my share of weapons drawn on me, from a very young age. I remember the fear coursing through me.
Mom said, as if it were obvious, “We still have to eat.”
My sister was robbed by gunpoint on those same elevators soon after. She didn’t leave the house for three weeks. My girl was brave too. Yet, that incident nearly broke her…
The women in my life have always been strong, far stronger than I could pretend to be. My daughter refused to depend on anybody. Not even her parents. Or so I thought. I learned after she passed, she turned to her mother a few times for help. The one time I found out she needed help it was solely by accident. I took great pride as Father coming to her aid. I still do.
I know now my darling little girl was in deep pain, both emotional and physical. She never shared that.
The fact is our women — all our women — suffer. Men suffer too, but women do so with a lot more strength than we do. They do it without the indignity, the puffery. Women bypass the bravado and glide rhythmlessly with grace. They do it every day. After all, women suffer us, don’t they?
Women fight every day and every night. They fight to raise our children. They fight men. They fight for equal pay. They fight drug addiction. They fight to be respected. They fight for equal rights. They fight to be beautiful (lucky us!).
And they fight for us. It’s said behind every strong man is a strong woman…
If it were appropriate, I’d use an irony emoji at the end of that last thought. They fight for us. Why are they fighting us? Why are we (yeah, I’m talking about us men) forcing them to fight against us and with us?
Clockwise: Coco Chanel, CJ Walker (driving), Jane Austen, Jerrie Mock, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mother Theresa
Woman is either the Madonna or the Whore. Or Bitch. Forced to live on the edges of a realm that refuses to acknowledge their diversity. Women are flawed and complex. They are not angels or demons.
They share equal workloads for unequal pay. They don’t hear why won’t he stop, instead they’re asked, why do you stay. As if the man shouldn’t have to answer for his actions. It’s not just he had no right, it’s well, were you drinking?
Never has any species had so much weight placed on their shoulders. They are held accountable for their poverty, their rapes, their domestic violence, their pregnancy and abortions, their harassment. They get credit for fixing men but men are almost always written out of the narrative for breaking women.
The Man has done everything in their power to wrest control from … well … everyone. Like everyone else the Man has oppressed, women lived with it. Until they didn’t. Thankfully. Go through history and you’ll find, no matter a woman’s alleged place in society, there was always one little lady (is that sexist?) who refused to fit the mold the Man forced on them.
S.M. Burche and Mamie Fossett are on record as being the first female sheriffs in the Old West.
Kathy Sullivan was the first woman to walk in space.
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm is immortalized for being the first African-American woman in Congress and the first woman and African-American to campaign for president of the United States.
Hilary Clinton is the first woman to run for president of the United States.
Geraldine "Jerrie" Mock was the first pilot to fly around the world by themselves.
Madam CJ Walker and Annie Malone are listed among the world’s first female millionaires.
I’m sorry. I have to stop. There’s no end to this. The women who have changed the world? This list goes on forever. Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, Marie Curie, Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Jessica Ennis-Hill.
I want to include my mother.
And yours.
Clockwise: Shirley Chisholm, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, Marie Curie
I remember Mom and her friends, sitting in the kitchen, laughing and joking, drinking and smoking. Listening to Aretha. They probably listened to other artists too but Retha sticks in my mind. Not so much because I can recall hearing her at those times. More so, it’s that, on a psychological level, I associate the singer (that emotion-wrenched voice, the urban pain) with the black women that surrounded me. Strong, suffering, pained, struggling, and trying so hard to be good at heart.
As an adult and a parent now, I have a better grasp of what those women endured. This is not hubris. I’m talking about looking back, as a man and father having a better comprehension of unjust politics and social mores.
They suffered in silence. Mom got up every morning and did what she was supposed to, completely unnoticed by the world. So many women have done so, do so now, and will continue to do so. Suffer in silence.
And they change the world. All of them.
Prisoner K is a working technical writer. He values his and his family’s privacy and like John has read Kafka’s The Trial, thus the pseudonym.