Here's the second in the Washington Post series. Its about Felicia, a
young black lesbian growing up in a gritty urban area. The context
may seem quite different from that of Michael in the first story -
downbeat city rather than small town America. But the problems are no
less, just substitute homophobic young men for the homophobic
evangelicals that Michael had to face.
Felicia might seem to have an advantage in one way. A paternalistic
society can scorn gay men as weak and inferior, but aggressive butch
lesbians can sometimes gain some standing simply by tapping into
masculine confidence. But as this story shows, its a severely limited
standing, always liable to turn from acceptance to hate and violence
at this 'unnaturalness'.
It can also lead to unexpected and, ultimately, damaging reactions
from women as this passage shows:
"Felicia herself is a mirage. Some straight women are so starved for
companionship on the loveless boulevards of Newark that they overlook
her gender. Seeing her ball cap and the hip-hop slouch, feeling her
charm and attentiveness, they squeeze their eyes and imagine. It is
almost always Felicia who pays the emotional price."
This would really resonate with some of my lesbian friends. Many of
them have experienced becoming the focus of a very intense passion
from women who seemed to be till then quite straight. And perhaps
they are because often these women hardly seem to be lesbian or
evince much interest in other lesbians - its the confidence and
independence of this one lesbian that draws them. So they throw
themselves at them and my friends have usually been swept off their
feet and finally go along.
Only to find themselves on an insane emotional rollercoaster. Because
very few of these women ever seem to want to follow things through
right to the end. They'll have the affair, they'll come out to their
friends and family (which is what differentiates them from most
married men who have a gay fling, but keep mum about it), there's
chaos, confusion, turmoil... and at the end of it all, they go back
to their families - usually citing their inability to leave their
children - and my lesbian friends are left wondering what hit them.
So all you guys who moan about being shortchanged by married men,
remember it happens to women too!
Vikram
Braving the Streets Her Way
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 3, 2004; Page A01
Part III
The belt buckle says SEXY. The silk jersey says Denver Nuggets. Both
are laid out on the bed as Felicia Holt stands at the ironing board,
trying to press some perfection into her Friday night. Her T-shirt is
fresh from the store package and goes on warm. Two dabs of Egyptian
musk oil on the neck. Hair braided short like an NBA star. A do-rag
carefully tied over her braids.
A voice rolls down the hall. "Felicia, is your room clean?"
"Yeah, Ma."
Felicia picks a cap from her vast collection on the dresser and
stands in front of the mirror. With sleepy eyes and a smooth jaw, she
cocks her chin with satisfaction. What stares back is the creamiest
thug on the block.
To be a young lesbian from the trash-blown and violent streets of
Newark takes a measure of imagination. Felicia uses a soapy
toothbrush to buff her Timberlands, diligently and delicately, still
believing that a Friday night can hold some wonder. She contemplates
the splendor of Jersey Gardens mall until she remembers the weekend
crowds on a city bus, everyone packed like sardines and breathing
each others' necks.
"No seats," Felicia says, fastening her rainbow necklace. "I got a
date, and I don't want her to stand."
What is gay America? It is this 17-year-old who lives with her mother
and two teenage sisters in an apartment on working-class Eckert
Avenue. There is a Bible on the coffee table and fish frying in the
kitchen. With no cell phone to receive text messages, Felicia keeps
her folded love notes in a shoe box. I just want to kick it with you,
one girl writes.
In courtrooms, statehouses and city halls across the country, a
historic battle is being fought over the expansion of rights for gay
people. Far below the revolution is Felicia Holt, whose life is as
hidden from the national debate as her box of stashed love notes. She
cares less about wedding bells than dodging stray bullets and
storefront preachers who keep the word "abomination" on the tips of
their tongues, reserved for the likes of this high school senior now
pulling the brim of her hat low over one eye.
Newark. Brick City. Twenty-eight percent living in poverty, 54
percent African American, 30 percent Hispanic, Newark is just a $1.50
PATH train ride from Manhattan, but Felicia hardly ever crosses the
river. Her world is Newark and she knows every inch of it, every
shortcut through every vacant field. The Pabst brewery has been
boarded up since her childhood, but the giant bottle on the roof is
still the neighborhood North Star.
Leafy suburbs have after-school gay organizations and parent support
groups. Felicia's Newark has nothing. On Friday nights, a rattletrap
teen dance hall called the African Globe is the one beacon in an
otherwise empty landscape for gay teenagers. They descend by the
hundreds, Felicia among them, waiting to get inside their dingy
sanctuary.
Felicia felt none of the windfall of victory many American gays
experienced last year when the U.S. Supreme Court decriminalized
homosexual relations between adults, or when the Massachusetts high
court allowed gays to marry in that state. Getting married was
someone else's dream. Felicia was more worried about staying alive.
Survival is a part of everyday Newark, but for Felicia it intensified
in May 2003 with the killing of her friend, a 15-year-old lesbian
named Sakia Gunn, who was at a bus stop downtown when she rejected a
man's pickup attempt with the declaration that she was gay. A fight
followed and Sakia was stabbed to death.
The slaying was Newark's version of Matthew Shepard, the gay college
student found beaten and lashed to a fence post in 1998 in Wyoming.
In Shepard's case, gay and lesbian organizations flew into the town
of Laramie to maximize the political moment. President Bill Clinton
spoke out against the hate crime, and in New York thousands of
protesters marched down Fifth Avenue. No such forces rallied around
the poor black teenager from Newark.
When Felicia heard the news about Sakia, she hurried downtown to the
bus stop where her friend had been killed. Dozens of other young
black lesbians were already gathered at the corner of Broad and
Market, and more kept arriving, bringing Knicks jerseys, Mass candles
and cardboard eulogies that said "Stop the Killing" or "Rest Your
Head, Baby Girl." The shrine grew in gaudiness and emotion, and not
even rain or darkness sent the mourners home. The teenagers clung to
the patch of bloody sidewalk in a stubbornness that suggested a
political awakening.
The vigil was just the start. A few days later, nearly 400 marched
from the bus shelter to City Hall, demanding that Newark Mayor Sharpe
James do more to protect gay youths. By the day of her funeral, Sakia
Gunn had become a martyr. Perry's Funeral Home had prepared for only
a modest crowd, but hours before the service began, young people were
lining up to view Sakia's body in a small room upstairs. She was laid
out in a blue tracksuit. When the 1 p.m. service started, the funeral
director, Samuel Arnold, glanced out the window and all he could see,
on the lawn and up and down Mercer Street in front, were young
people. He guessed there were 2,000 mourners standing outside.
Before the coffin lid closed, a friend of Sakia's dropped in a white-
gold necklace that spelled in cursive script "Lesbian Pride."
After the funeral, Felicia took stock of her life. She looked like
Sakia, dressed like Sakia and braided her hair like Sakia. The smart
thing would've been to ditch the men's clothing and rainbow gear.
That struck Felicia as cowardly, if not disingenuous. She decided to
go out into the world just as she was.
In the year after Sakia's death, The Washington Post spent hundreds
of hours in Newark with Felicia, her family, her friends and her
teachers. The events and direct quotes that appear in this story were
witnessed by this reporter, unless otherwise noted.
The thumpty-thump of rap is how she seems, but deep down Felicia is
old school. Her earliest memories are of the R&B music that her
parents, before the divorce, listened to as they drove around with
her in a car seat. The songs today are about Glocks and bitches, but
Felicia clings to Patti LaBelle. Her eyelashes curl like a fawn's.
She has milk-chocolate skin as smooth as blown glass. A cubic
zirconium glints from her left earlobe. Felicia can strut with the
best of them, talking about what girl she "souped" or "smashed,"
Timbs unlaced and "yo, yo, yo," but her ankle socks say "Hug Me."
When her mother was hospitalized last year with pneumonia, Felicia
was so frightened that she wore a dress for her senior photo, knowing
it was the one gift that could cheer up her ailing mom. Then it was
back to the T-shirts that hung like bedsheets at her kneecaps.
Felicia's natural state is a tomboy state: jumbo clothes, inhaling
bags of ranch chips, storing a rolled-up chemistry notebook in her
back pocket and giving girls playful headlocks in the halls at West
Side High School. Even in the sixth grade, she knew she was
different. Her sisters wore foxy lingerie and gold chains, but
Felicia felt right -- deeply right -- in sports bras and undershirts
known as "wife beaters." She went swirly watching Aaliyah videos. The
grooves of her yearnings cut deeper. She told no one. She'd spent
enough Sundays in church pews to know that homosexuality is
considered a sin. The preachers said it was a choice, something that
could be overcome with prayer and willpower; the matter seemed out of
Felicia's hands.
"I didn't choose nothin'," she says. "It choosed me."
In the 1950s, a black lesbian who identified with masculine traits
and clothes would have been called butch or a bulldagger. Growing up,
Felicia heard the word clucked in gossip -- bulldagger -- and just
hearing it sent a ripple of curiosity. Now it seems old-fashioned to
Felicia, even though she is the modern-day version of it.
Felicia describes herself as an "A-G," short for "aggressive." Her
body is 100 percent female, but she has a masculine approach to life.
She prefers women who are ultra-feminine: hoop earrings, tight jeans
and French-wrap nails. Felicia finds zero attraction in another A-
G. "They're my peoples, not my girls," she says.
Identifying strictly as butch or femme has diminished in recent
generations of lesbians, but human sexual identity is fluid and there
are infinite ways to express it. What comes naturally to Felicia --
despite her delicate features and hormonal moodiness -- is letting
her khakis ride low around her boxers.
Wearing men's clothes is not enough. Felicia believes she must also
display the traits of strength and invincibility that women
supposedly want in men. She mimics all the distorted and magnified
qualities of manhood. In Felicia's neighborhood, a public performance
of bravado is mandatory for survival. "You gotta represent," Felicia
says. "It just goes with the territory."
Being an A-G is a double-edged sword. At times, Felicia experiences a
respect unknown by most women, free from objectification. When she
sees the fellas on the corner, she greets them by jutting her chin
out. "S'up?" she says. "S'up?" they say back, returning the chin jut
and exchanging the neighborhood handshake. When she goes into the
chicken shack, she sweeps in like a king, shaking hands with the
owner -- "Ali, my man!" -- and pulls wadded-up bills and coins from
her cavernous pockets.
But there is the other edge of the sword. Felicia has been jumped and
beaten. Men press her for sex. After Sakia Gunn was killed, Felicia
had to become more discerning about the overtures. Some have a hint
of playfulness, and she can handle those. Others have menace. Felicia
says that some men view her as competition for their women and want
to remind her of their dominance. She has developed her own radar
that tells her who might be trouble.
"They know that under the clothes, we got a shape," Felicia
says. "They think they can change us. They just can't let it go.
They'll say, 'Felicia, you too pretty to be gay.' "
Anita Holt had two rules for her girls as they were growing up: Any
daughter who became pregnant or gay could find another place to call
home. Felicia waited until the 11th grade to break the news. Her
mother was in the bathroom getting ready for work. The moment of
truth arrived, and Anita couldn't make good on her threat. "I don't
care what you are," she told Felicia, after letting the news
settle, "just don't bring it in my face." It was the best Felicia
could hope for.
Her father's reaction was harsher. He told Felicia that he didn't
like to see her touching her younger sisters anymore. Last fall, at
the beginning of her senior year, he invited Felicia to accompany him
to church with his girlfriend. Felicia was careful to wear her best
plaid shirt and to double-starch her khakis, but nothing seemed to
recapture her father's affections.
Anita Holt had not dwelled much on the details of Felicia's life
until Sakia Gunn was stabbed. On the day of Sakia's funeral, Anita, a
bus driver for the Newark school system, was behind the wheel of a
van patrolling for truants when she noticed all the teenagers walking
in the direction of the funeral home. Instead of collaring them, she
drove them to the service. So many looked like her Felicia. "I know
what my daughter is," Anita says. "I don't like it, but that's my
child."
Her struggles with homosexuality have less to do with religious dogma
than the rules of nature. "God put us on this earth for a woman to be
with a man and a man to be with a woman," Anita says. On occasion,
her curiosity outweighs her discomfort. "What do two women do?" she
asks Felicia, who is too mortified to answer. Anita has some idea
because her younger sister, Shakira, is gay. Shakira is 24 and looks
like Mary J. Blige, with a platinum wig feathering out from beneath
her suede cap. When she wanted a baby, she hooked up with a man to
get pregnant, and then it was back to women for love. All of this
mystifies Anita.
One autumn Saturday afternoon, Felicia is home cleaning the apartment
when there's a knock on the door. "Aunt Shakira!" Felicia says with
delight. In walks Shakira wearing high-heeled boots. She drops into a
chair across from Anita. Big sigh. She's having love troubles. Her
girlfriend has stopped paying attention to her and isn't helping
around the house.
These conversations irritate Anita. "Why would you put up with that
from a female?" she asks her sister. "You could just be with a man."
"Because a female gives you something a man can't," Shakira says.
"And what is that?" Anita asks. Felicia stops sweeping and listens.
"Friendship," Shakira says.
"Well, I'm friends with my man," Anita challenges.
"It's different," says Shakira, whose baby is now 3. She folds her
arms and sighs again. "Just like with a man, it ain't that easy to
get up and leave."
If one theme unites the Holt household, it's the hunt for love. Anita
goes out dancing with a gentleman friend but not often enough.
Felicia's 15-year-old sister drags the phone around like an IV pole,
calling her boyfriend who is always MIA. It is not lost on the women
of the house that Felicia has more nibbles than anyone.
And yet Felicia is not really looking for love. She'd rather be out
riding with her crew. On this Saturday night, her ride is a city bus
and her crew consists of her friend Paige, an 11th-grade A-G who says
her mom recently probed her sexuality by asking: "Are you really over
the gate? You aren't gonna come back, are you?"
Felicia and Paige dress with great care and ritual, assembling nearly
identical outfits and fresh-fitted caps.
"Abbott and Costello," Anita says, looking at the two creatures.
"Tom and Jerry," says Felicia's 15-year-old sister.
Felicia is out the door. "What you wanna do, son?" she asks Paige.
They zip up their hoodies against the autumn night, walking by the
corner stores where last-minute lottery dreamers buy their tickets. A
midget stands on a crate, talking on a pay phone. The sidewalk
sparkles with shards from a smashed bottle. A Pentecostal church
glowers in the dark stillness. Two children dance together under a
yellow porch light.
"I wish I had a video camera right now to get all this," Paige
says. "The street, us walking, just everything about this life."
Five months after Sakia Gunn's death, the concrete near the bus
shelter where she was stabbed is still scrawled with RIP farewells.
The sun pounds down, the rain pounds down, and though thousands of
tired feet hoof over the scribblings every day, somehow they stay.
Newark's mayor still has not come through with his pledge to build a
center for gay youths. Felicia and some of her friends have formed
their own organization, Sakia Gunn Aggressive'z and Femme'z, and they
hold bake sales and buy fresh flowers for Sakia's grave site, but
they get no help from the city.
When a group of black gay activists plans a rally, Felicia is asked
to sing. It is a gray and raw Saturday in October as police set up
barricades to block off the area around the bus shelter. Haggard
storefronts display wigs and discount fashions. "Rise and Shine With
Us" banners hang from light poles, but Foot Locker and Footaction are
the only two national retailers on the corner, looming like titans
across from each other.
There are already more than 300 people gathered by the time Felicia
arrives, carrying her gym bag from basketball practice. She is
greeted by her friend Jai Marsh, the president of the Aggressive'z
and Femme'z group. Felicia scans the crowd nervously. She has tried
to put Sakia's death behind her, but now she stands in the middle of
hundreds of lesbians, young and old, rainbow colors flying, forcing
Felicia to confront her emotions. Jai grabs her hand and they squeeze
toward the front.
"There is nothing here for us," says Newark Pride Alliance founder
Laquetta Nelson, standing on the plywood stage. "Most gay and lesbian
people are living in the closet of fear. We are about to kick that
closet wide open."
The national president of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians
and Gays takes the microphone and announces a $2,500 annual college
scholarship in Sakia Gunn's name. Most in the crowd have never heard
of PFLAG. But they give their rapt attention to the frail woman
making her way to the platform. It is LaTona Gunn, Sakia's mother.
She has appeared publicly several times over the past few months. At
an awards banquet in Washington for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight
Education Network, she received a standing ovation for urging parents
to support their gay children. Someone asked afterward, "Can I have
your e-mail address?" LaTona didn't even have a phone.
Today at the rally she is drained of energy. She seems less like a
spokeswoman and more like a mother whose daughter is gone. As the
wind picks up and torn billboards flap in the cold, LaTona sags. She
tries to speak but can't. The crowd coaxes her. One girl buries her
face in her hands and then looks up, imploring, "Say it, Mommy."
LaTona is led from the stage. The rawness of the moment is too much
for Felicia, but there is no escape. It's her turn.
By now the crowd has grown, and Felicia climbs up on the wobbly
stage. She takes off her cap and holds it in front of her face to
gather her concentration. Without musical accompaniment, she
sings "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." The crowd sways to the hymn. When
the last note is sung, Felicia bolts from the stage. She pushes
through the bodies, hurrying away, with Jai trying to follow.
Jai looks everywhere for Felicia. In the pizzeria, the fish place and
among the sidewalk vendors and their cardboard boutiques. Nothing.
The last place to check is the video arcade. Jai ducks into the dim
and noise-shattering gallery where young men with backward baseball
caps take target practice. Simulated gunfire echoes off the walls,
and computerized voices shout, "RELOAD, RELOAD." Jai walks through
the battlefield.
Finally, in the corner, in the scrap heap of long-gone video games,
she finds Felicia, working the joystick to Ms. Pac-Man, tears rolling
down her cheeks.
West Side High, home of the Rough Riders, is one of the poorest high
schools in one of Newark's most high-crime neighborhoods. Students
are greeted each morning by metal detectors, hand-held wands and,
finally, a search of the backpack. Guards are stationed at every
exit. The halls are joyous, but there is no ignoring the vista from
the left side of campus: Fairmount Cemetery and its 100 acres of
headstones.
After Sakia's death, the A-Gs started traveling the hallways of West
Side with new respectability. In a neighborhood perforated by
violence, they had earned a perverse standing. By weathering death,
the odd girls were odd no longer. A oneness sweeps them all down the
same river. Students forget they are straight or gay. They are just
Rough Riders.
Felicia manages to transcend the cliques and rivalries with her
singing voice, a wood-smoked alto strengthened by years of hymns. A
guidance counselor calls her the school canary. Every morning, she
shambles up to the front office to sing the West Side High alma mater
over the PA system, like Sarah Vaughan in K-Swiss sneakers.
As homecoming approaches, Felicia auditions to sing the "Star-
Spangled Banner" at the football game and wins the honor. Homecoming
day is crisp, all russet and copper. Without a football stadium of
their own, the Rough Riders load onto buses for the ride across town
to a loaner field, where the marching band runs through its routine
before clearing the way for the opposing West Milford Highlanders. As
the Highlanders raise their instruments to play in perfect formation,
four gold tubas flash in the autumn sun.
>From the bleachers, the tuba-less West Side band looks on with a
familiar feeling: outgunned by the white suburbs again.
Hassan Vann, West Side's band director, senses their sinking spirits
and claps his hands for attention. "We have a beautiful day out
here," Mr. Vann says, regarding his troops. "The sun is out. The wind
is down. So let's wake the people up! AMEN!"
The Rough Riders knock out an R-rated version of "24's" and "Get Low"
while the crop-topped Hot Ice dancers swivel their hips over the 50-
yard line. The Highlanders cheerleaders, dressed in Burberry plaid,
watch from the sidelines with stony admiration.
The most dignified moment of homecoming is the a cappella national
anthem sung from high in the press box, floating out over the quiet
stadium.
No one can see the XXL clothes from the men's department because
there is only the voice, "that gospel Baptist voice she's used to get
through the emotions of her life," as Mr. Vann says. The voice that
makes West Side feel like it has a genuine advantage.
>From the bleachers, a student cries out, "Sing it, Fee!"
Felicia tells her friends that they need some church in their life.
Their choices would seem without limit. Just beyond the gates of West
Side High, there are seven: Full Gospel Monument of Faith Church,
Pentecostal Soul Saving Temple, House of Prayer, Deliverance
Christian Fellowship Church, Living World Healing Temple, Macedonia
Baptist Church and Mount Sinai Church of God in Unity.
But for Felicia and her gay friends, there is only one choice.
After Sakia was slain, most of the pulpits in Newark were silent.
There was one that raged. Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church
is a full-gospel, sweat-under-the-armpits, rosewater-scented African
American church for gay people. Services are held downtown on Sunday
afternoons in a 260-year-old stone church borrowed from the
Episcopalians. The culture of Newark churches is patriarchal and cuff-
linked, but Liberation in Truth is a world apart. The clergy is all
lesbian, mixing priestly robes with African kente.
"Good afternoon, family!" one of the ministers calls from the front
of the sanctuary. "Let's stand on our feet. Let's pray for love right
now!"
The tambourines start, and a few hundred congregants raise their
hands as the volume reaches higher. Unlike a lot of white gay
churches, children are everywhere, the product of earlier liaisons
and a shared attitude that no family is complete without kids.
The Elder Rev. Jacquelyn Holland appears, dreadlocked and regal. It
was Elder Holland who arranged counseling for Sakia's friends after
her slaying. Now she looks out over the pews, noticing Felicia and a
few of the girls.
"No matter how you identify yourself, no matter how you look, no
matter what you are wearing, God loves you," Elder Holland tells the
congregation. "Jesus had a moment when he had to go off and pray in
the wilderness. God does not intend for us to stay out there. We need
to come out, shouting, praising victory. We are living in the
wilderness!"
Whispers of "Yes, Lord," ripple across the rows.
"It's time to embrace freedom and come out," Elder Holland
beseeches. "Bring all the victory with you. Bring your voice. This is
the new wine. God gave you something different. Our blessing is on
the way."
The music begins again, a rising syncopation of keyboards and
tambourines. Suddenly the instruments stop, leaving only the voices,
working harder and harder to be heard.
Using Her Voice to Rise Above
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 4, 2004; Page A01
Part IV
Five hundred students are packed into the old-timey auditorium at
West Side High School. A piano begins, then a jazz drum. Onstage, in
shadows, two figures sit at a table with their backs to the audience.
The crowd beckons them, Newark-style, calling and pleading, daring
and challenging. Come on, now. Bring it.
Felicia Holt and Valencia Bailey spring to their feet.
They grew up playing ball together in the rusted-out hooplands of
Newark, where they won their honor by scrabbling and sweating in pick-
up games with the boys. Tonight at the school talent show they are
fighting for something more important: the honor of their friend
Sakia Gunn, who was stabbed to death at a Newark bus stop after
telling a man she was gay.
After Sakia died, Valencia filled page after page of a spiral
notebook, penning an epic rap poem about her best friend, who bled to
death in her arms. Now in this overheated auditorium on a winter's
night, her poem of gay friendship and loss becomes the 2004 class
anthem about the precariousness of teenage life in Newark, where four
West Side students died of gunfire in a year.
Taking the microphone, Valencia lets the words fly from her mouth.
Stuffed with the knowledge that the streets provided
Even though we said we weren't gay, we couldn't hide it
So when all the times we were hurt and denied it
We knew the truth, we had proof
You was me, I was you
Felicia's voice gets under the rhymes, harmonizing. She watches
Valencia, who paces with increasing fury as she bats out the lyrics
in a mist of spit. This isn't just a performance for Valencia, it's
an explosion that has been building for months. Her springy bleach-
tipped braids are flattened under a do-rag as she moves toward the
front of the stage.
Kia, why did you have to go
I am so cold
Facing the world on my own
Valencia shudders and stops. The words are trapped in her
throat. "Come on, V!" someone shouts, but Valencia drops to her
knees, overcome. Felicia tries to lift her. The piano and drums play
on, waiting for the singers. For the first time, Felicia falters,
wiping her eyes. The students urge them on.
"Sing it, V."
"Finish it, now."
"Help her, Fee."
Valencia finds herself. She whirls upright, finishing her song, fast
and hard. The microphone thuds to the ground. Valencia starts to fall
sideways. Felicia reaches out to catch her.
The fact that two lesbians in boxers are crowned as the moment's
truth tellers matters little to the crowd. Grief has equalized them
all.
The auditorium goes atomic.
Basketball gave Felicia and Valencia a certain status that brought
instant coin with the girls. In high school, Felicia gravitated
toward music while Valencia had her sights set on playing for the
Women's National Basketball Association. Her junior year, she is 16,
with light-filled marble eyes and braids that bounce when she trots
down court. She doodles play patterns and to-do lists ("GOALS FOR A
POINT GUARD") and presents them to her coach for consideration.
But as the 2004 season approaches, Valencia is still haunted by
Sakia's death. Seven months later, the bloody clothes she wore that
night still hang in her closet.
"Son, the kid's messed up," Felicia says of Valencia one day after
practice. Shelley Perkins, a guidance counselor at West Side, has a
starker assessment. "It's like she's dying inside."
There is one ray of optimism. The Lady Rough Riders of West Side High
have a new coach, Latasha Thompson, a former St. John's University
player who is determined to bring a sense of discipline to her street
ballers by holding study hall and insisting the team dress up on game
days. Coach Thompson, 24, is unbothered by the fact that a few of her
players are tomboy lesbians who call themselves A-G's, short for
aggressive. "I was around that in college," Coach Thompson says. All
she asks is that her players keep their dramas out of the gym.
With one player lost to homicide -- Sakia Gunn was a dominating point
guard -- the coach knows she's inheriting a shaken bunch. "Respect
each other," she tells her team. Values will have to substitute for
equipment: The athletic department issues six plastic water bottles
to the 12-member team. Coach Thompson subsidizes the players with
sneakers, deodorant and bus money. Only a few parents will attend a
single game all season.
The season opener has the terrible timing of being scheduled the day
after the talent show. The coach had watched Valencia and Felicia
onstage, their pain so unmasked that the performance was wrenching to
witness. On game day, she asks them if they're mentally
prepared. "It's all good," Valencia says. But from the moment the
Lady Rough Riders arrive at the waxed gymnasium at Passaic Valley
High School, the game is a disaster. Felicia tips off, and she is hot
on the post for the first half but the play is sloppy. Valencia is
hammy and distracted, committing two turnovers. When she lofts an
airball, Felicia grimaces and Coach Thompson screams from the
sidelines, "You are killing me, Valencia!"
All the plays they'd rehearsed are scrambled in their heads. They
lose to one of the weakest teams in the conference.
Back at West Side that night, the players duck into the locker room
to grab their things but Thompson has other ideas. "Start running,"
she orders. They trot around the empty gym in the empty school, their
cheap sneakers squeaking on the polyurethane. Valencia is dragging.
Felicia runs next to her and whispers. Valencia picks up her pace.
After 45 minutes of drills, Thompson tells them to line up.
"We are family," the coach says. "We chill together. We bug. I'd do
anything for you. You're hungry, I take care of you. There's nothing
I don't share. I'm like y'all's older sister. I work hard for y'all.
I bust my butt. I expect you to do the same for me."
Her tone softens as she looks at Valencia and Felicia, who stand side
by side in mismatched socks. Thompson brings up the talent
show. "Maybe last night was upsetting," she says. The coach has
spoken an absolute truth. Felicia and Valencia have a phrase they use
when they hear something so authentic. Word is born, they say. A
thousand pounds of weight seems to lift from the gym.
During the next few games, the team finds its rhythm, racking up
three victories. Basketball season lets the Lady Rough Riders travel
beyond their familiar three-mile radius of Newark's West Ward, but
they are never free to forget their ghetto reputation. One night
after a dramatic victory over Union Hill, tucked into a Latino
neighborhood of aluminum-siding homes and lawn ornaments, a few of
the girls walk to a nearby carryout place. Spirits are high. They are
waiting at the cash register, Valencia excitedly reviewing the game,
when a white police officer walks in.
"We are not causing no trouble," one of the West Side girls says.
The officer smiles. "I'm the nice police," he says. "Where you from?"
Valencia stands up straight. "We're from the bricks," she
says. "Brick City."
At Liberation in Truth, the African American gay church that Felicia
sometimes attends, the Rev. Jacquelyn Holland announces from the
pulpit that she looks forward to officiating a same-sex wedding one
day. The Massachusetts court has already decided that gay couples can
marry in that state, and New Jersey has its own same-sex marriage
lawsuit winding its way through the courts. One of the plaintiffs is
a minister from Liberation in Truth.
"Some day!" Elder Holland tells her church.
But matrimony has a weak grip here in Essex County, where 47 percent
of children are born to unwed mothers. Felicia dreams less about a
marriage license than about having children. She can't pass up a baby
stroller on the sidewalk. Felicia wishes she could get a woman
pregnant. "Dag," she says, contemplating the impossible scenario.
Not that Felicia is ready to settle down. When it comes to girls, she
has a mathematical ability to remember dozens of ever-changing cell
phone numbers. And sweet talk? "Yeah, I got that little wallet
picture of you on my mirror," Felicia tells a girl on the phone one
night, looking at her dresser mirror that is void of any pictures.
Fifteen minutes later she tells another caller, "You were my first;
you never get over your first."
Some of Felicia's fellow A-G's mooch off their girlfriends, expecting
to be kept in fresh sneakers and hair braidings but adamant about
having their freedom. They brag of having "wifey" and a "jump-off."
A straight friend of Felicia's tells her that it takes more than
jerseys and swagger to become a real man. "The thing about the place
we live -- the ghetto, the hood, whatever you want to call it --
people live what they see," says Latoya Grissett, a senior at West
Side. "You have to able to live beyond what you can see."
Felicia herself is a mirage. Some straight women are so starved for
companionship on the loveless boulevards of Newark that they overlook
her gender. Seeing her ball cap and the hip-hop slouch, feeling her
charm and attentiveness, they squeeze their eyes and imagine. It is
almost always Felicia who pays the emotional price.
A few weeks into basketball season, she is spending time with
Fontessa, a 19-year-old who has a 6-month-old child and is pregnant
again. Felicia decides she loves this woman. She stays over at her
cramped apartment behind a corner market. Fontessa proclaims her
affections for Felicia and says she's getting a tattoo to prove it.
This only seems to bring the baby's father around more often.
One Friday night, Felicia and Fontessa go out dancing at the Globe,
the gay teen dance hall downtown. The Globe is so bare bones that the
clubgoers, mostly lesbians, pile their parkas on the floor in the
corner. The walls vibrate with the bass line of Missy Elliott's "Pass
That Dutch." Felicia and Fontessa dance and kiss.
When they arrive back at Fontessa's apartment, Felicia would later
recall, the boyfriend comes walking up. He takes the bedroom with
Fontessa. Felicia gets the living room couch.
Felicia keeps her heartbreak to herself. She and her mother are
fighting. Somewhere in the fog of Fontessa, she blew off her
scheduled SAT.
On a January night when the temperature drops to 22 degrees, she and
Valencia are walking along South Orange Avenue, mummified in their
puffy jackets, when a car with four young men eases up. What's
poppin'? one of the men calls out, Felicia and Valencia would later
recall. The girls keep their heads down. Their snub is a sign of
disrespect and they are surrounded. Valencia gets a bloody nose and
mouth, and Felicia is thrown to the ground.
They refuse to think the worst -- that they are targets because they
are lesbians -- and chalk up the beating to a neighborhood beef.
Even with the assault, Valencia shows signs of revival. She no longer
gasps for breath in the middle of the night the way she did after
Sakia's death. In the small apartment where she lives with her
mother, a mail carrier, the sound of "Jeopardy" and the waft of
oxtails give school nights a steady rhythm. Valencia's father, also a
mail carrier, lives nearby and fusses over his only child, whom he
calls "the baby." He shuttles Valencia here and there, and pitches in
when she wants a white tux with a top hat for the prom.
Felicia becomes more fragile. In Mr. Mason's chemistry class, she
sits in the front row, calculating molarity and writing her answers
in a notebook. But her focus is sporadic. She starts smoking Newports
and breaking curfew. "I have given Felicia to God," her mother, Anita
Holt, wearily says one day. "Just take her, Lord, because I don't
know what to do with her."
Felicia goes in to talk with Mrs. Perkins, the school counselor. A
Muslim who wears a hijab and can decipher the various subsets of the
Crips better than the police, Mrs. Perkins is sympathetic toward the
A-G's. "You are like everybody else," she tells Felicia. "You are
subject to the evil of the world, and you are subject to the good of
the world."
To ease the tensions at home, Felicia decides to move in with her
Aunt Shakira, who lives in Bradley Court, a 60-year-old public
housing complex sandwiched between a cemetery and the Garden State
Parkway. Felicia sleeps in a spare room, keeping her clothes in a
plastic garbage bag.
The harshness of winter won't let go. Singing is Felicia's escape.
The big news is that a talent scout from Harlem's Apollo Theater is
coming to West Side High to hold auditions for a spot in a citywide
talent show. Felicia signs up, scheming on her song selection. Hassan
Vann, her music teacher, tells her to never mind all the rhyme-
splitters on rap radio; sing the music that's inside. They start
rehearsing after school at the beat-up piano in Mr. Vann's classroom.
A cloud, mystical and dark, settles on Felicia. "You can't take
tomorrow for granted," she says, cryptically. She starts carrying two
photos in her pants pocket, one of each grandmother. For her audition
number, she settles on a hymn called "Alabaster Box" by CeCe Winans,
about a prostitute shunned by the townspeople but received by Jesus
after she washes his feet with oil from her perfume box.
There is a defiance in the way Felicia burrows into the music of the
church. Rehearsing her hymn, she asks an A-G friend named Danny to
stand in front of her and hold up the two photos of her grandmothers.
With her do-rag cocked over one eye, Felicia sings "Alabaster Box" to
the two iron-haired matriarchs.
She felt such pain
Some spoke in anger
Heard folks whisper
There's no place here for her kind
Still on she came.
The rows of headstones at the cemetery next to West Side look like
stone toes poking up from the snow. Half the basketball team is sick.
On a Saturday morning when the Lady Rough Riders have an away game,
the players straggle up to the school, some in ski masks to hold off
the cold. The gym is warm and glowing. There is no sign of Felicia.
When it's time to load up, Coach Thompson gives her orders. The bus
pulls away from school.
Just as they are about to pass Bradley Court, Thompson yells for the
driver to stop. Felicia is standing on the curb, holding her
basketball gear.
"Fee!" one player shouts, as Felicia climbs into the bus with her
uniform slung over her shoulder. "Hey, daddy, what, are you special?"
Felicia has a wicked cough but manages a smile. "I didn't say I was
special."
The players make room, giving her a choice seat in the back. "Watch
her," one of the younger players confides to another, "she'll play
like she ain't even sick."
The bus cruises through the Bergen toll plaza as the team eats a
breakfast of corn chips and sodas. Valencia wears a gold necklace
that says "Becky" while the actual Becky rests her head in Valencia's
lap. No one bats an eye, but not everyone is accepting. "My preacher
will say that this is wrong," says a player named Artis. "My gay
friends know what they are doing is wrong. I wouldn't say they are
born that way."
Valencia pipes up. "So what's my excuse? My issue is, I never liked
dudes."
Artis won't bend. "In the Bible, it doesn't say a woman and a woman!"
"Artis!" snaps a player named Ciara. All this Bible talk works her
nerves.
Finally, the bus turns into the parking lot of Paramus High, an
imposing campus with a great lawn. Felicia studies the building. "All
these schools look alike," she says.
The players press to the windows. "They design them the same on
purpose," Ciara says.
They watch as the snow falls, their faces and hoodies crowded up to
the white light of winter. No one says anything until Felicia's
singing voice breaks the silence.
Hand me the world
On a silver platter
And what good would it be?
Everyone knows the Alicia Keys ballad, and the bus turns into a
mighty choir singing about the emptiness of money and power. Finally,
they leave their snow globe, and as they walk into the sparkling new
gym, they are greeted by hard rock and bleachers crowded with home-
team parents and cheerleaders who've brought buttered bagels from
home. With their half-gone bottles of Snapple and gusty coughs, the
Rough Riders trounce the Spartans.
In the days that follow, Felicia begins to slip emotionally.
Estranged from home, she tries to maintain a cheerful front at
school. "Leave your drama at the door," is her motto. "It's all
good." But the accumulation of anxiety is too much. She gets into a
fight with a man downtown -- he had apparently disrespected Felicia's
aunt -- and Felicia loses, getting slapped hard in the face. That
night, she can't stop crying and goes to the medicine cabinet at a
friend's house and swallows a handful of pills.
She is admitted into the adolescent psychiatric unit at Newark Beth
Israel Medical Center. She arrives by ambulance, strapped down in a
chair. Her mother visits. Her father visits. Her aunt brings her new
sneakers. The switchboard is jammed with messages from school
friends. The outpouring surprises Felicia, who by day four at Beth
Israel wants some hot wings and her own bed, and is tired of "doing
all these little crazy-people activities." On the morning of her
release, she dresses in a chocolate brown warm-up suit and asks her
mom to drop her off at school. She receives a hero's welcome. "You
had us scared, big head!" a friend shouts, throwing her arms around
Felicia's neck.
Felicia holds court on the frozen sidewalk after school. "My doctor
says I'm not supposed to put myself under stress," she says. But her
doctor doesn't live near the corner store on Stuyvesant Avenue, where
fresh graffiti spells the word "MURDERVILLE."
The week at Beth Israel is rarely spoken of again. Felicia resumes
her 12th-grade life. Her follow-up care consists of a daily
meditation book called "Faith in the Valley: Lessons for Women on the
Journey to Peace." Felicia takes the book everywhere and panics if
she misplaces it. Soon the pages are dog-eared and full of
underlines. The meditations of March turn to the meditations of April.
"So you think you are not good enough, not God enough" she reads
aloud one day. "You are a sprout. God is a good gardener."
Felicia had thought so much about this moment. What song to sing.
What outfit to wear. Piano or no piano. After auditioning at West
Side, she had earned a spot in the citywide talent show at Newark's
grand old Symphony Hall. She viewed the night as a chance to reclaim
herself. Everyone thought they knew her: Felicia the A-G, Felicia the
gay girl. The labels boxed her in.
They follow her even as she enters the dressing room on the night of
the show. Other contestants are at the makeup mirror applying their
cocoa butters and hair jams as Felicia comes in with clothes slung
over her shoulder. "Man, I wish I was gay," says one of the girls,
giving Felicia the once-over. "Get a $5 haircut, get a shirt and call
it a day."
That night, the 28 contestants are delivered by limousine to the
front of Symphony Hall, a gilded and gargoyled performance space
where Toscanini and Horowitz played. This is a shot at the big time:
a $2,500 grand prize and a slot at amateur night at the Apollo
Theater. Velvet ropes and police barricades hold back the surging
fans. Mr. Vann is here, and Mrs. Perkins, and Valencia and a few
other Lady Rough Riders. Aunt Shakira is also here. They are all
waiting to see Felicia step out on the red carpet. Flashbulbs pop as
the Escalades and stretch Navi's deliver contestants under the
marquee that announces "Newark Idol Search."
A sleek black Town Car pulls up and the door cracks. A four-inch heel
touches the carpet. A silhouette moves behind the smoked-glass
window. When the contestant stands, the West Siders go wide-eyed.
Felicia Holt is wearing a dress. A drop-dead sexy dress.
Mr. Vann claps like a gentleman. Valencia and the other A-G's put it
down for the streets, yelling, "You gotta work, ma!" Mrs. Perkins
beams, "Look at my baby!" Felicia smiles as she totters awkwardly on
her skyscraper heels. One hand waves while the other moves self-
consciously to cover all this newly exposed skin.
When she returns to the dressing room, the other contestants realize
the drubbing they just took by the tomboy.
"She makes me sick!" says one of the girls, an arts magnet school
diva changing into a black dress. "She needs to give me her body. She
don't show it!"
Felicia sits alone at the mirror. She's back in her sports bra and
wife beater T-shirt. Latoya Grissett, her friend from West Side and a
fellow contestant, leans down and holds Felicia's gaze in the
mirror. "You're fine as hell, girl."
Felicia nods.
Two hours pass before the emcee calls her name. "Please welcome, all
the way from West Side High, Felicia Holt!" The dress is gone,
replaced by a pair of men's blue linen pants and blue alligator
shoes, like P. Diddy in the Hamptons. In Felicia's pocket are the two
photographs of her grandmothers. The lower seats are jammed with
1,200 screaming fans and four VIP judges scribbling their secretive
notes at a table in front. Felicia walks to the microphone. The stage
is empty. She has decided to sing without musical accompaniment. And
while almost every other contestant chose to perform a bombastic pop
ballad or R&B hit, Felicia has decided on a Kelly Price gospel tune
called "I Don't Know About Tomorrow." She had told Mr. Vann that the
words were custom-made for her.
The song is so blatantly old-fashioned, so unapologetically
spiritual, that at first the audience is silent. Felicia moves
fearlessly about the stage, her powerful alto reaching up to the gold-
faced gargoyles. She is flying, winged, floating away from the wooden
planks beneath her shiny alligator shoes.
It doesn't matter that Felicia will not win tonight. What matters is
right now. "Sing it!" the hip-hop thugs shout. "Take it downtown."
Arms wave in the air like at church. Felicia appears not to hear the
calls or see the hands swaying. Her eyes are closed. She is singing
for no one but herself.
I don't know about tomorrow
I just live from day to day
And I don't borrow from its sunshine
For its skies may turn to gray
Word is born. Turning her back on the thunderous applause, Felicia
disappears into the folds of the curtain.
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