Southern Hygiene

“Mama don’t want niggers
stinkin’ up the house.”

That’s what she said,
her arm barring the door,
while my friend and I
stood stranded on the porch
between two Natchez crape myrtles.
White blooms bursting like fireworks,
perfume so thick it gagged me.

I sniffed my shirt in secret.
Was I dirty? Did I stink?
The blossom’s odor burned my nose like shame.
My friend stared down at the wooden slats,
his whole body folding in on itself.

This was North Georgia,
the new millennium through Southern filters.
Heat clinging like wet towels,
packed dirt under trampolines,
voices sharp with sweetness,
blades hidden in honey.

I learned early: you can’t give them a reason.
Wash, wash, wash again
until you’re scolded about the water bill.
Showers became my religion.
Morning. Night. Sometimes both.
Soapy water was my baptism.
Deodorant was worn like armor.
Cologne used to camouflage.
and Cocoa butter... always cocoa butter.

Because if they couldn’t smell me,
maybe they couldn’t see me.

While a smell could betray,
So could words.
I went to war with language.
Kept it proper.
Clipped my tongue sharp as a razor.
Read until my eyes bled:
Steinbeck, Tolkien, Rimbaud, Baldwin,
Faulkner stacked on Bradbury,
Shakespeare’s crown beside Hughes’s blues.

I devoured every voice
so mine could never be called ignorant.
I wanted to speak like a cathedral,
not a shack.
Wanted to sound better than
in rooms I’d never be invited into.
The South gave me no choice:
blend in or be punished.

So, I polished vowels,
hid slang in closets,
smiled when they said
“you’re not like the others.”
And died a little each time.

Their boys stank of sweat and dirt
and still they were golden,
careless, forgiven.
I had to be immaculate.
Not a wrinkle. Not a stain.
One slip and I was prophecy fulfilled:
the dirty half-breed,
the mistake.

So I built myself airtight.
Smelled clean. Spoke clean.
And they clapped.
“You’re so well spoken for a…”
“One of the good ones.”
“So respectable.”

Compliments carved with knives.
Every pat on the back
was a quiet fear
of what they thought I should have been,
what I buried to survive.

But airtight means no air.

Now, older,
I stand again at that porch.
Crape myrtles still drape their sweetness
like cheap perfume over Southern rot.
I smell the blossoms.
I smell myself.
No disguise.
No shame.

I am Black.
I am White.
I am Spanish.
I am all of it, all at once.

The scent of cocoa butter and laundry soap,
fried chicken grease and café con leche,
rain on red clay,
sweat on a guitar strap.
I am drawl and the grammar book,
slang and sonnet.
The boy crouched beneath falling water,
and the man who now stands in the fire
unflinching, unconsumed.

Now I wash because I want to.
Read because I love it.
Let my shirt wrinkle.
Let my hair curl.
Let my laugh carry across the street.

I am not stinking up the house.
I am the house.

Walls made from four bloodlines.
Roof tiled with the bindings of every book I ate.
Floors polished with water from every shower I took.
A house breathing its own air,
sweet with survival.

Between the crape myrtles,
I breathe deep
blossoms, self, everything.

And I love it all.