I was the quirky kid—the one who always had that little extra flair about her. I wanted my hair to be styled a little differently from the rest, my clothes from a store off the beaten path, my shoes a little shinier than the Buster Browns everyone else was rocking—part of my eagerness, early on, to stand out from my peers and be my own, unique, individual person. I’m grateful my mother recognized this early on and agreed to entertain that particular desire of mine—no doubt in part because as a single mother, she really didn’t have the time or the inclination to fuss over which way I wore my hair or how many prints and patterns I wore all at one time, though she insisted I be neat, presentable, and respectable. “You’re not gonna be out here embarrassing me,” she always vowed as she smoothed out the wrinkles on my outfits, or chastised me for forgetting to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” when addressed by grown-ups. What’s more, she encouraged my unique style sense and, occasionally, even helped along my peculiar fashion sensibilities. This was true even when I needed new clothes, which we sometimes couldn’t afford to buy. It was nothing for my mother, an amateur seamstress who always went to work with her clothes starched to perfection, to whip up a new outfit for me and let me style it in an interesting, fresh way. Countless times, she’d take me by the hand and lead me to the huge file cabinets in our local department store, where there was a treasure of sewing patterns waiting to be mined. I remember one pattern in particular practically calling my first, middle, and last names from that metal drawer.
“What about this one!” I exclaimed, shoving a small envelope with a picture of the outfit I desired into her hand. It was glorious: a three-piece suit featuring a vest with boxy shoulders and pants with decidedly less flare in the hem than what everyone was wearing, plus a matching skirt that skimmed the knee. It looked nothing like the long, lacey, patchwork dresses I saw girls my age wearing, or the painfully corny pullover sweaters and matching pants that were in style back then—the ones that had pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh and all the other popular cartoon characters of the day splayed across the most putrid colors one could conjure up for children’s wear. No, this pattern that I’d picked was a standout among standouts—a veritable star that I needed to shine brightly in both my closet and in my fourth-grade class.
“You like that?” my mom asked, taking the envelope into her own hand and holding it up to the light. She nodded her approval. “It is pretty. I have some fabric at the house that’s just right for this.” She checked the price and, upon determining the pattern met both her budget and approval, marched it to the register, with me skipping behind her, a big, cheesy grin spread across my face as I plotted when I would show off the outfit at school.
It took my mother only about a week to pull together the three pieces with the material she had tucked in her sewing kit: a bundle of maroon, pink, and white plaid jersey knit that she’d found on sale and tucked away months earlier. Every night after work, she would arrive home from her job, prepare dinner, check over my homework, and then hunch her body over the sewing machine. The whir of the needle clicking against the metal of the Singer made her fingers vibrate as she gently guided the material; I’d lie on the floor on my belly, my hands cupping my face, fascinated by the slow, easy dance she did as her foot pushed down on the pedal and she leaned in to the fabric.
Finally, one Monday, my outfit was ready for its school debut. My cornrows were laid, the beads in them clacking. Mommy could throw down on that sewing machine, please believe that; my ensemble fit perfectly, and I couldn’t wait to show off her work. I looked good.
My mother was in the kitchen, fixing me one of her signature egg sandwiches for breakfast when I rounded the corner out of my room and headed her way. She caught sight of me strutting and beaming out of the corner of her eye, and then turned her full body around to greet me with her warm hug. Her eyebrows, furrowed, betrayed her uneasiness with my style choice. “Taraji, baby, why you got on the vest, the pants, and the skirt?”
Ignoring the concerned look on her face, I twirled around with my arms swinging behind me, proud. “Isn’t it perfect?” I asked, giggling.
My mother gave herself a verbal pat on the back: “I did sew it up nice,” she said. “But I didn’t mean for you to wear it all at the same time, baby.”
She didn’t stop me from going to school like that, though. I wanted to wear every piece at the same damn time, and my mother, ever the encourager, took me by the hand and walked me into my fourth-grade class, kissed me good-bye, and let me swag exactly like I wanted, sending a clear, powerful message that if I liked it, she loved it. I think she dug that her little girl had her own sense of style—that the way I assembled my outfits and fashioned my hair was the easiest and purest expression of my own voice.
• • •
Being your own self—having a voice—was critical in the hood. I came of age at the dawn of the crack epidemic, when a cocktail of societal ills—high crime rates, poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic joblessness, pick your poison—left countless Washington, DC, folks in peril, living on the margins in some of the most vulnerable and dangerous neighborhoods in America. Fighting your way through the pain of that, gasping for air when you’re buried to the top of your head in lack with no sign of surplus, can leave you feeling some kind of way. Sometimes helpless. A lot of times hopeless. Like no one gives a good hot damn whether you suffocate to death or you breathe again. Still, even and especially when you feel helpless, it’s your ability to be seen and heard that gives you power where you feel like you have none. Even in the darkest places, you exist. Walk through any street in the hood and you’ll see what I’m talking about: boys trotting down the sidewalks, their pants sagging defiantly low and their beards and their attitudes thicker and thornier than a rosebush in full bloom; girls with a mass of hot-pink, sea-blue, and fire-engine-red streaks in their hair, nails long, sculpted, and covered in colorful, intricate designs waving animatedly in the air as they get lost in chatter about the day’s happenings. Everything about those kids screams, “I’m here, I’m feeling myself, and you’re going to feel me, too.” The respect for that in-your-face style is grudging—it’s sometimes even dismissed as tacky. But really, that one black kid doing that weird thing with his pants or his hair is the very definition of trendsetting; the mainstream’s first reaction to it is “What in the hell are you wearing?” Years later, it’s cool as hell on a Kardashian. Where I come from, we don’t need to wait for that validation. As a community, we prize creativity, even and especially if the world we live in isn’t quick to reward it. In the hood, having a voice, then, is freedom.
It’s also a black thing. Let’s keep it real: collectively, we can be a loud, rowdy bunch, particularly and especially among ourselves. I know, this is a stereotype unfairly but typically saddled on the backs of black people; being loud talkers, laughers, and jokesters, dressing flamboyantly and saying exactly what’s on your mind when it crosses your mind isn’t the sole province of people with brown skin, and race doesn’t dictate volume. I’ve seen my fair share of white, Latino, and Asian folk get loud, too. But get yourself around some black folk when our guard is down and we’re around people we care about and our love is filling the space: all bets are off. We can be some loud-ass people.