by Angeline Montauban

My mother and I danced
barefoot on the kitchen floor,
we shook our breasts and hips
our nappy hair to
Ella Fitzgerald.

Every night we slept under each
other’s arms.  I was attached to the scent
she possessed that made me sage and pure.
She liked the way my skin glowed in the dark,
I wished I had her eyes.

She grew sick and vulnerable.
She stopped smiling!  Maybe she hated being
in her fifties or she got tired of me?
She grew indifferent; I felt unattached.
One night I read “Do not go gentle into
that good night” She begged me not to cry.

I spent the night staring at her bloody
underwear, the red dress she adored,
the portrait of Grandfather, she drew.
Two months later she died!

After her death I left
I went to Paris and dated guys
who drove me suicidally wild.
It took me a long time to go home.

by Angeline Montauban

I am a very light-skinned Black woman.
I look white but I am black.
I look European but I am African.

In America, I had to choose
Between White and Black.
I felt forced to select White Supremacy.
I’ve felt forced to suppress, deny, reject
The Black in me.

Passing means: acceptance, good, innocent,
opportunities, beauty. I am choosing not to pass
for White.

I am choosing not to pass for white for all the
Black women who came before me:
Phyllis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and
the Nameless Black women who toiled and survived.

The Black maids, the Black nannies, the Black storekeepers,
The Black mistresses and the Black sharecroppers.

They are vast, they are wide.  They are the oceans.
They were strong and they are beautiful.