My 10th grade English Lit teacher cannot pronounce my name. Ironic? I know.
So, on the third week of class, I hold my breath and listen as he gets through the roll call of Howards, Johnsons, and Jacksons, slowly approaching the K surnames. I feel the silence building around me as everyone prepares to hear his latest attempt. I’m the homeroom punchline. Whatever he calls me today will last through lunch. I may hear it once or twice on the bus if I’m extremely unlucky. So I close my eyes, hoping I can go far enough away inside my head that I won’t hear anything at all. Praying that when my eyes open again, the bell will have rung or the school announcements will interrupt. Instead, they open to laughing and fluorescent lights frying above me as I’m sinking down at my desk.
“No, she’s here,” snickered a blonde, freckled girl as she turned to stare at me along with the rest of the class.
“Well then, she needs to answer if she wants to be marked present! Quantesha Knight!” he said more confidently.
The class erupted over my pain. I glared at the ceiling wishing I could burn a hole in it. Wishing every time I felt this anguish my mama got a good pinch on the elbow for subjecting me to this lifelong punishment.
To be clear, my name is Quintessa. (kwin·teh·suh)
“Like the wine?” a suburban mom at the PTA meeting once blurted out in horror as she looked me over for signs of alcoholism.
“No, it’s latin. Like quintessential or quintessence. It’s a common SAT word,” I quipped.
“Oh! I knew that,” she blushed, before pretending like she was suddenly more interested in the reading mural on the wall next to me.
The piercing laughter from the classroom pops me out of this memory as well. The teacher’s high off this reaction and is now just calling every Q name he knows.
“Quisha? Quentieria? Are you here or not?” he asked again to another chuckle from his audience.
“It’s phonetic,” I snapped back.
“What was that?” the teacher asked.
“It’s phonetic. It sounds exactly like it’s written,” I added, calmly but the “ooh’s” from my classmates changed the tone of my words.
“Come here, Knight,” he ordered.
That same chorus of icy interjections followed me up to the teacher’s desk as he angrily scribbled on a pink slip an entire scenario that included more words than I’d ever said in his class the whole semester. There was no mention of the fact that he’d just publicly humiliated me in front of a classroom of twenty fifteen-year-olds. But one word on the subject line glared out of the dull black ink at me.
Disruptive.
I stared at it like it was written in Wingdings as I carry it up to the front office and slid into one of the blue plastic chairs outside the principal’s door. The school announcements finally chimed in over my head as a senior reminds me to “Make it a great day or not, the choice is totally up to you.”
Quintessence. I saw in a dictionary once that it means “the most perfect example of something”. I hoped it would tell me what that something was that I was supposed to be. Whatever it is, I don’t believe it’s disruptive. Sometimes, I think they switched me up at the hospital the day I was born. Perhaps there was another little Black baby girl born at the same time as me. She was probably high-spirited and carefree. Daring and confident. She would have lived a life that earned this name. Either way, this was my name now and I needed to make it fit me. If I was going to live with it, it couldn’t be a weapon in the mouth of strangers.
The next day in class, I am alert. As is the rest of the class, waiting to see what performance they’ll get from today. I sit patiently through the roster and wait to be called. In the air that lingers between Ryleigh Keogh’s last name and my first, I take my cue.
“Here! It’s Tess, just…call me Tess,” I correct before anything can be said.
The class looks disappointed, but I’m okay with the lack of response as the teacher continues to call Oliver Lambert.
Later, we’re all silent as an old projector plays The Crucible on a faded screen stretched over the whiteboard. I’m burrowed in my hoodie at my desk in the chilly air-conditioned room, as Daniel Day Lewis cries out, “Because it is my name! I cannot have another in my life!” I don’t realize it, but I’m crying.
***
I’m twenty-three years old when I first read a Warsan Shire poem glowing from a Tumblr post in my college dorm room one night. I’m a writer now but try as I might, I cannot make Tess a writer. It doesn’t belong to me anymore. I try to add an “a” to the end, but it still doesn’t sound like mine on paper. I’m submitting my first short story and the moniker I’ve used for almost a decade sits incomplete next to the strong words I’ve written. I’ve taken a break from the anxiety-inducing submit button on the next tab over, to stare at memes from Black Twitter and random quotes when I suddenly see it.
“Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” – Warsan Shire
I immediately save it to my desktop. I hang it above my Facebook profile. I share it on Twitter and Instagram. This is my flag now. Every Black girl with a name like mine needs to hear this. I feel like the universe has finally offered me a sign to move on confidently. I’m drunk on a feeling of pride I’ve never known. It submits my work for me. It wants me to put my full name on everything from now on. I write it out in print and cursive. I tried it in different fonts. It’s beautiful. It’s mine.
Somewhere in the bustle of lunch hour at work the next day, that pride has dissipated. We’re fifteen tickets back in the kitchen and we have a full house out front. A glass of diet Pepsi and another of sweet tea are sloshing around in my outstretched arms as I finally reach the busy booth in front of me.
“There you go,” I announce as the glasses clink to the table. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thank you, Theresa!” says the wide-faced lady with paper-thin curls as she waves me off with her red manicure.
“Ha! Actually, it’s Tessa,” I laugh off as I tap my name tag.
“Oh well, I like Theresa better,” she laughs back as the table joins her.
And I wish I could move on from that spot. I wish I could be quiet or submissive. But that’s not who I am at all.
“Bless your heart,” I drawl out with a quick smirk, “But, it’s Tessa. It’s actually short for Quintessa,” I finish with a proud twang that trips over the T and puts an extra emphasis on the “sah.”
As if stunned to see that I’m still standing there she looks me up and down.
“Well isn’t that…unique,” she winces over the word, giving it a sour new meaning.
“It is. It really is,” I say with pride, ignoring the intention completely as I tucked a towel into my apron.
“I think it’s beautiful,” adds the Black lady across from her, thoughtfully.
“Thank you,” I say, as I move on to clean the next table.
By the end of the shift, my name tag mades its way into the trash.
***
Quintessa has taught me patience, confidence, and pride throughout the years. I’ve learned that I cannot condense myself for others. She’s taught me to speak up for myself and other uncomfortable lessons about microaggressions, racism, and how this world is going to view me. If I didn’t form a strong perception of myself, I would only get glimpses of who I am through the eyes of everyone else.
I like to think of names as horcruxes (minus the dark magic). I believe they’re tied to you the moment you decide they’re yours. Every time you create a new one, it takes a piece of your soul with you. I will always have three. Tess is a family name, lovingly given to me by my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Tessa is for friendships that have earned my trust. Quintessa is my birth name. Don’t tell the others, but she’s my favorite. She’s a good strong name and she can stand all by herself like Beyonce or Zendaya. She’s the first thing I ever owned in this world that was truly mine and the last thing that will leave.
For me, she’s immortal as she will one day outlive me. She’ll make her rounds across the internet holding strings of words that I’ve strung together, hopefully leading more little Black girls to epiphanies where they find their voices as well. I’m hoping to make her a household name at least once before I go. Until then, I know she’ll settle in pages at the library in books of fantasy and mystery waiting for her next reader to enjoy.
She will be carried with love on the lips of every person that she’s made an impression on. And one day, she might even find her way into a 10th grade English literature textbook.
************
Are you a writer? We’re looking for short stories and personal essays to feature on our digital and print platforms. Click HERE to find out how.
