Last night before bed I felt Puppy calling for me. After bed, I went to the Gardens where it was waiting and promptly got knocked over by Clifford Puppy. There was lots of playing and giggling and lying over each other and much needed quiet abiding in the Gardens.
Later, Puppy renewed its marks on my arm (which was completely unnecessary, I’ll be marked for the rest of this life) and reminded me there is no place I can go that I will be hidden from it, its pack, or the Warden of the Gardens because of that mark. (Which, in retrospect, was totally necessary.) It did so by engulfing my arm entirely. And I did not flinch, nor was I worried.
Finally, I fell asleep in the Gardens, and woke up briefly to find I was lying in Puppy’s grip. It was a very safe place to be.
I must have been strangely worried about Tumblr last night. After snoozing in the Gardens with Puppy for a while, I dreamt I was sitting at my table, Tumblring away with impunity.
(Before you read further, allow me to remind you, this is only a dream.)
I was holding a reblog-chain conversation with a Tumblrite, but where she was typing with 75% grammatically correct English and 25% slang, I was phonetically typing out AAVE grammar, and typing out the syllables for certain English words as emphasis.
The result, if spoken out loud, would be a normal conversation between two people that spoke English but came from very different parts of the United States of America. Melting pot, indeed.
Until… ~cue dramatic music~
A second Tumblrite jumped into the exchange and began verbally abusing me for making a mockery of black folk in America and don’t I know how I am being racist by making fun of their limited educational resources and don’t I know there are some towns where no one knows grammatically correct English and I need to take my hipster bleach white ass off the Internet because I’m an example of the erasure of blacks on the Internet. Bitch.
Wut.
I took a pic of myself, nappy afro and all, and posted it with the caption of, “Lis’n ‘ere, you stank ass, uppity, unclassed, house bitch. I dun’ no from which of Satan’s shits you dun’ crawled out of, but you’s about t’get shoved back in’t.”
Still typing in AAVE, I cut loose. Who the fuck was this (second) Tumblrite to assume what ethnicity I was? Who the fuck was this person to assume my native language and dialect of that language? I have had my ass beat for half an hour straight for saying the word “ain’t” in earshot of my mother. I had all AAVE terms, grammar, and inflection physically beaten out of me “so I would sound white because that what it takes to succeed”. And now that I know the real reason my mother would not teach me her family’s dialect (hint: I’m only half black), I am determined to reclaim that as well.
I can mimic many an accent, social class, ethnicity, and foreign language dialects. I’ve been told I sound white, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Mexican, Chicano, Spaniard, Jamaican, British, Chav, and German on the phone and in person. I have spent most of my life speaking other people’s language and typing other people’s grammar.
Who the fuck was this sentient constipation to tell me that I wasn’t dark enough to speak Negro. Who the fuck was this ugly bag of mostly water to declare who could speak what dialect and when?
I ain’t git’n no mo’ hits fors bein’ nu’n o’this ‘n nu’n o’that. I will speak grammatically correct English, if I please. ‘N I’s speak Hills Black, if’n I plees. Ain’t a damn thing that no coward ass, sense d’prived, cheese drippin’, cracked taint, piece o’shit is gon’ tell me what I’s can o’can not say or how.
After my diatribe, the dash remained static for a long while. I realized that was the longest I had used AAVE in a single shot, ever. And that the reasons I typed were valid. My mother refused to allow me to learn her dialect because I wasn’t black enough, I would be shaming the family in her eyes, but not because of education. A non-black speaking black was a mockery of those blacks that did.
The last family reunion I was brought to, all my cousins remarked that I sounded so “white”. It was several years before I realized what that meant.
The dash refreshed. The Tumblrite I had been joyously conversing with before reblogged my entire screed. She only added, “You have been educated. Get the fuck out. You’re not the Language Police.”
I reached forward to pour more kerosene on that verbal fire, but I noted the letters in the keyboard were rearranged. They were all missing but five. “D”, “R”, “E”, “A”, and “M” were laying in the middle of the second row.
I cried. I banged the table and cried. But my tears of anger gave way to unquenchable joy. I had typed, and spoken “black English”. All the beatings training to keep me from doing so was broken. The phrasing and the cadence and the portmanteaus and the gestures and the tonal shifts. I had them. And I could speak them without guilt, shame, or fear.
When I woke up, I found I still had the freedom to speak Hills English. I have been waiting all day to see if the (friendly) Tumblrite had shared the dream, but alas, it seems this is all in my head.