“Wòch nan dlo pa konnen doulè wòch nan solèy.”
The rock in the water cannot know the pain of the rock in the sun.
– Haitian Proverb
I am a sparkly eyed baby who doesn’t cry, newly arrived from Haiti with my parents to Central Islip, Long Island. My mother begins to carefully decorate the apartment with her own art, prints from art museums, art created by her grandparents, and specific antique store purchases.
“Everything has to be art. Love to do it; love to see it.”
She nails in a steel oil drum cut-out of a mermaid from her travels in Haiti on the white wall of my bedroom. The mermaid is a blue and purple scaled mermaid with colorful wings who is playing a yellow trumpet. She holds a bikinied small girl with her other hand which is stiff and straight. They both have bright brown rust skin, blue bedazzled hair, and strong, oversized jaws. Her fins have small cut outs where you can see the wall behind it and the girl’s feet are laced up like gladiator shoes.
I go to sleep for nine years looking at this mermaid in her power, swimming through the sea on my wall from my crib, then from a twin bed, until my parents tell me I will have a little sister and I get to move to the bigger room down the hall, and then she looks at it for another ten years. Unknowingly to me, my mother was countering the narratives I learned about beauty and Blackness, and inviting my ancestors to join us in the diaspora with this steel art.
***
It is 2013 and I am twenty-five years old. I add the finishing touches to the deep blue-green accent wall in my new apartment. The accent wall is one of three, but this is my favorite. I’ve painted it a color that is like the deepest parts of the sea: tranquil, warm and cool at the same time. It indicates royalty. It is sensual and serious.
When the walls are dry I look through the box of art, hurriedly packed from my former two-year rental apartment in Washington Heights ten blocks away. I have slowly been taking art from my mother’s house and now I have five whole teeny tiny rooms including a foyer in 680 square feet to decorate. I take the heavy steel cutout of the Haitian mermaid from my mother’s house and place it on the wall. It’s heavy and its edges are sharp and I stare at it for a moment. This item brings up memories of my parents’ fighting. I choose not to think too long about that–The art piece pops, because she is full of colors: oranges and blues and yellows; the metal cutouts allowing the deep blue-green of the wall to counteract the bright brown skin of the mermaid. It fits my curation of an Afro-chic space perfectly.
***
Fifteen minutes outside of Reykjavík, at the swimming pools, they are having a conversation with each other, in the locker room, naked. These girls are seven or eight years old, blonde, Icelandic, cute, lively. I am over here in my big age of thirty-three, covering up my body like a cautious American.
I take a trip every year, and this year I am on my own in this country. I invited my partner to travel with me, but he had to work. I invited my friends, but they are not available. So I book my flights, some AirBnBs, a stick shift rental car, and drive through the newness.
Not only am I keeping my body covered with clothes that I am not yet taking off, but I am preemptively covering up my dark pubic hair. I am stalling, fiddling with my bag, checking my phone, and drinking water. The air smells like chlorine, the locker room is bright from many skylights, and I am new here. Out of my element.
Every other person has glistening, light, blonde hair down below. I know mine is a stark contrast to my skin, and makes me stick out like the supermarket shelf of chickpea cans all facing the same exact way—and someone shoves a refried beans in the middle. That’s me. I’m the refried beans.
I can’t believe the discomfort I have in the presence of children. Innocent, lovely, probably sweet children. Children are what I know. I am a play therapist. I can speak the child’s language of play; I have seen the best and worst sides of children.
But in this locker room right now, they are naked, which I am certainly not used to, and I am in my clothes and they ignore me. I don’t know them, they don’t know me. The girls are naked while they brush their wet hair, continue their lively conversation, and they are comfortable. They know the drill. They must do this on the regular.
I, on the other hand, feel very out of place. I’ve never been to Iceland before, let alone this “pools” situation, and I don’t know where anything is and what the sequence is here. Where exactly are the pools outside of the locker room? Is the sequence a cold pool then hot? Hot then cold? When do you do the medium temperature pool or the steam room? Keep a distance in the water or join others?
***
I am triggered by this trivial Icelandic swimming pool visit because of U.S. history. It sits in my mind and stews in simple, harmless situations. I know about the draining of pools when Black children touched the water. I remember a story from Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, about a Black kid in Ohio in 1951 who was on a baseball team that organized their celebration at the local swimming pool. The lifeguards refused the entry of little Al Bright, because Blacks were not allowed there. His teammates felt bad for him as he sat outside the fence, and they brought him food but returned to their party. Adults negotiated for over an hour to allow him to join the party but there were conditions: all the white kids had to get out and Al would be escorted around the pool. The lifeguard whispered to him, “Whatever you do, don’t touch the water.”
One hundred adults and kids watched the spectacle.
But, I am in Iceland. Not the USA. The institutional racism is less striking here, of course, but the stares are worse. Their eyes follow me like yellowjackets on a sticky summer day. They clearly do not see a lot of people like me; I am a wonder to them. I have never been eye pierced in this way. It feels like a sting, not belonging in this way. Yes, it could be my attention grabbing dark brown locs with highlights or it could be that I am embarrassingly new here, lugging my phone and book to read while they shut their eyes in the water, and wearing my towel to the pools while everyone is comfortable in their naked bodies only carrying a locker key.
My conservative NYC gym has changing rooms for those who don’t want to bear their nakedness in front of others and signs about parents bringing children of the opposite sex into “Family Changing Room.” Protect adult bodies from children’s eyes? Or adult eyes from children’s bodies? The Family Changing Room is for everyone who doesn’t fit in or match our American patriarchal sexist standards.
I also have expertise in this system which I learned during middle school gym class. I have an A plus in taking my underwear and bra off without exposing any “private parts” and without making other people “uncomfortable,” all without touching my bare feet to the floor.
I am awkward in my naked, American body; I am from a Puritanical country in which nakedness is taboo, prohibited, unsuitable. Where we are suspicious of adults too close to children.
I tell myself, It is all in your head. Your body is fine and their bodies are fine and the fact that they can sit on things like benches naked and talk to each other naked is normal; you are the weird one. They are comfortable in their bodies. You should be too.
I stress about the little girls’ discomfort regarding my existence, but I am the only one paying attention to this. Now the girls are dressed and ready to go and they take a final look to make sure they have everything, and then, I am in their vision.
They both take a deep long look at me.
I smile and look away. I am at long last in my swimsuit, wrapped in my towel, covering my tattoos, sandals on my feet because I am afraid of ringworm (more icky gym stories), heading in what I later realize is the wrong direction— toward the reception area and not the pools.
The girls’ stares stab me and I feel more awkward than before. As I clumsily walk out the wrong door to get to the hot pools, the girls, who have paused to dry their swimsuits in the machine, look at me intensely again.
I imagined it before I got undressed, but then it happened for real. Twice.
Maybe they think I am cool, maybe they want to meet me. Maybe they have never seen someone like me.
They are young, but they know I do not belong here.
****
After the swimming pools, I cozy up in my Airbnb overlooking a prairie of ponies in Alftanes, Iceland. I am trying to adjust to this perpetual daylight and hope reading will get me to a semblance of fatigue. I peruse a tourist pamphlet on the bedside table of an Icelandic mermaid who sits on a rock in the sea and attracts sailors with her song. Upon enticement, the sailors disappear forever into the depths of her embrace.
As always, I turn to my own history, my own ancestry, and Google “Black mermaid.” I learn that LaSiren from Haitian Vodou is akin to Mami Wata in the West, Central and Southern Africa. She is powerful, strong-willed, and drowns those who are enticed by her. She is half fish, half human. In many accounts, she is pansexual, queer, and lives with her more masculine lesbian companion, the whale, LaBalenn. Other legends have LaSiren and LaBalenn as the same god with both personalities, offering us the ability to embrace all sides of our sexual and gendered expressions. Sometimes she has the goddess Erzulie’s double personalities of Danto or Freda, all sexually fluid and provocative. Any of her personalities teach us that we don’t have to abide by the strict binaries and modesty our patriarchal society demands.
I wish I had LaSiren’s sensual, confident, and headstrong attributes at the pools. I need her stories to show me my options. That I can be unapologetically clothed or naked in moments of difference. I can stand fierce in my skin and my dark pubes and shed my American thorniness. That my body could be a sexual command or just the body I was born with and can walk freely in.
I am embarrassed at how stodgy and apprehensive I am.
But then again, the perceived sensuality of my darker, curved, black body is exactly why I receive so many stares. I think about LaSiren and her ability to swear at anything that crosses her. Suddenly, it occurs to me, I know LaSiren. She is on the wall in my home in NYC. The colorful mermaid with her trumpet was with me in Washington Heights and waiting for me when I was in Virginia at college. Across from my crib as a baby. My mom, who is fully aware of the story of LaSiren and the harm done to Black bodies, made sure LaSiren is always and always has been with me and in me.
It is the consciousness of the story that I was missing.
I need to learn the stories of the ancestors and embed them into the diaspora.
***
I also read, that night, in a book about Haitian Medicinal Practices, a quote by Joseph Bentivegna, an MD, who said, “The number of faucets in a country is more accurate health indicator than the number of doctors.”
I don’t know who he is or if he is accurate, whether it is preference toward “developed” places, or if this is a true fact. I do know that Haiti is the most underserved country in the western hemisphere in terms of water and sanitation infrastructure by a wide margin.
Only 69% of the population had access to an improved water source and 17% had access to improved sanitation facilities in 2010. Almost every article about Haiti in the last twenty years lists it as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti is not talked about in terms of contributions to society or wealth of spiritual knowledge.
The strength of these stories exists in our Blackness but is covered up by the blanket of white supremacy. Aspects of our culture, myths and legends like LaSiren, disappear. We are now a group known for our poverty adding to the worldwide trope that infects Black diaspora like a virus.
So, I read on about water in Haiti and find that we ask the deities in the sea, LaSiren and LaBalen, for clean, healthy water.
***
The next day, I am running late for a whale watching tour.
I can’t find the location; they call me to confirm; I tell them I am on my way. They come to get me where I have parked and we run run run down to the boat. The whale watchers are all dressed and waiting for me. The guides hand me a suit to put on and goggles and the boat takes off. I am embarrassed, but glad I made it. I hate to waste people’s time, but also hate to waste my money.
Every part of my skin I was so scared of bearing yesterday, is covered by this gigantic water suit. I am in a row on the boat by myself and everyone is looking forward into the nothing. No more stares from unyielding eyes, a departure from the Icelandic stares I have been experiencing.
I have goggles over my large rimmed glasses, a COVID mask on, this gigantic warm suit over my jacket and clothes. It is a beautiful day, but on the water it is all fog. It is so gray, we can’t see anything ahead of us. It is like a nightmare without a horizon, just gray mist blending water and sky. The water is eerily calm and it feels like a movie set.
The boat picks up the pace and I begin smiling intensely. I realize my face has never contorted to this shape before. I can’t believe I almost missed this.
We are flying through the water on this speedboat. We are going fast. Each bump up off of the water makes me smile more. I am solo on this trip with absolute strangers in front of me and behind me on this random boat bouncing through the water at top speed. I am beaming because everyone is facing forward and no one is looking at my silly gigantic grin, because I am in the middle of nowhere in Iceland, because I can’t see anything but fog all around me, and because I feel like a Viking. I feel free.
My mother lived in Norway and traces our lineage back to Brico, a Viking Invader, so she keeps saying “Goddag” when I answer the phone. She thinks it is hilarious. I don’t pay her any mind most times, or bicker with her others, but out here bumping through the sea I decide I am glad she tells me these things that I often disregard because I am out here on the same Nordic waters as my ancestors some thousand years ago. Different technology, different purpose, but I am on the same water. I am also smiling because I hope we don’t die, but I am surrendering to that possibility and laughing through the fear.
We get to the location where the guides typically find the whales and we can’t see anything 70 feet in front of us. We wait patiently a bit, the guide begins to apologize, that sometimes there is no sign of whales, and then all of a sudden, magically, there she is. We see her white belly illuminating underwater, almost glowing. The guide says she is a humpback taking a nap in the water 5 feet away. We are basically floating above her. We are encouraged to ask questions which the guides answer promptly.
She is unfazed by us on boats coming to catch a glimpse of her. Occasionally she rises to let out a huge mist of air, which sounds like a huge, watery fart.
All of a sudden, she jumps up out of the water; her twelve foot wide tail slaps down in a giant flurry, giving us the perfect shot of her beauty and wonder. Her thick flukes are a deep black, under part is chalky, and she disappears in a flirtatious way, knowing we want more but also that we’ve had enough.
The guide tells us it has been one of his top ten sightings during his tours.
I can’t help but wonder if it would have been different if I had not been a little late. The guide thanks me for coming on the trip because had it been a minute earlier, ‘We would have missed it.’ My mother and partner wonder the same thing that night on the phone with me.
“Good thing you were late!”
And, “Sounds like LaBalenn wanted to meet you.”
La Balenn, LaSiren.
***
I learn later that North Atlantic whales migrate between feeding grounds in Nordic countries like Iceland where I am whale watching, and breeding grounds in the tropics, like Haiti, where I was born .
There are not a lot of whale sightings in Haiti but there was one in 2015, and the humpback was very sick. Haitians, of course, were very excited by the presence of such a thing, a huge animal swimming through the water, floating their legends. They did not react with its safety and long life in mind. They saw money, food, and notoriety. The whale died shortly after attempts at retrieving it.
In Iceland, there are folktales about evil whales that swallow boats and fishing people whole, dictating the fishing patterns of those fisher people afraid of encountering one.
LaSiren guards troves of shipwrecked gold at the bottom of the ocean that the weight of LaBalenn anchors her to.
The sea holds the stories. And, in Haiti, our folktales are overtaken by our circumstance.
************
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