Coin toss
One year ago on this day, we learned that our dog, Ivan, had cancer. It came after weeks of late night and early morning desperate trips to use the bathroom at all hours of the night. He’d curl up his body, pulling in his hind legs and release liquid. He’d begun losing weight and sleeping all afternoon in the sunny spots on the floor. By the time we’d been given a diagnosis, they were referring to his lymphoma as stage 5 because his cells had started discharging a thick fluid. A toss of the coin, we do chemo treatments or he dies.
The commemorative dollar coins selected in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States that included Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges, and figures representing Women’s Suffrage, have been scrapped for images of the pilgrims and the early presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and James Madison. Our dirty money, legal tender celebrating the foundation of an America that continues to deny the experiences and contributions of the Black, brown, female citizens of these United States.
When the coin is tossed, the captains from the opposing teams call either heads or tails, and the one who calls heads determines the state of play. Offense or defense? There would be no unfair advantage, only a stroke of luck, a chance, equal opportunity as the coin flipped edge over edge until it landed.
Playing kickball and later softball as a girl, I remember the anxiety around the toss of the coin, the day’s decisions being made by an arbitrary flick of the wrist. I was a serious competitor who felt an extraordinary amount of shame when I lost. I was first born, second chosen, called by a one-word combination of both of our names, StephanieandSharon whenever we were in trouble, relatively ignored at my successes. I believed nothing was coincidental and everything held a hidden message, and that there could possibly be a moment when I did something so extraordinary that my parents might stand at attention.
Proving my mettle on the playing field was an imperative, demonstrating my prowess as important as living and breathing. For the competitive, justifying one’s reason to exist, proving oneself a winner, can mean the difference between exaltation and rejection, being seen and discovering that you are truly invisible.
Sometimes when we were unsuccessful, my dad would ask,
Well, what happened? And you couldn’t tell me that there wasn’t something else I couldn’t have done to turn the tables, that it was my fault, my responsibility to improve.
I don’t like to lose even in situations that do not favor me, maybe especially. Even in systems that are rigged. I knew that John Henry1 could beat that locomotive even if it killed him and that I could outmaneuver, outsmart, outperform any challenge put before me. I have been committed to breaking myself to prove my value or my worth, leaving nothing to chance. And then came clarity.
There will be no one from my lineage on the commemorative coins marking the 250th anniversary. I know that Crispus Attucks2 died for our sins, but he won’t be on there either. The collective ‘we’ likes to only occasionally recognize ‘us’ in the tales of ‘our’ founding, and like the first person to be killed in the sci-fi or horror genres, the Black guy gets erased first. If we turn and turn the coin over and over in the dirt enough times, we may wear the grooves that marked our presence, and you may never have to admit we were there. Many Black and Brown folks remain uncounted, unnamed, but we know we’ve never heard from them again. We are the only ones looking.
Renee Nicole Good was gunned down in Minnesota by ICE agents and less that 12 hours later, the story of her murder was spun on its access to make her responsible for her own death. She was a mother and a poet, a good neighbor and a friend, and she got up that morning to defend her neighbors and as fate would have it, her life turned on a dime. We are all scared. For the reasonable, we cannot make heads or tails of it because we all know deep in our souls that this is not how it’s supposed to be and that a young, white shot at point blank range driving her family SUV by a rogue band of vigilante ‘enforcers’ flips it all upside down.
Have we decided to leave to fate what will become of us? Is there a god to whom we are to appeal, make offerings so as to no longer be playthings?
Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, the endless night of torment where we grapple with, twist and turn over the possible outcomes of our future, struggle with what it will be to win or lose, leads some of us to steeliness and others to resignation. I have lately found that my teeth are ground, jaw clenched when I wake up in the night, as I have been fighting battles in my sleep. I don’t want to believe that there is a pantheon of gods on high toying with us, daring us or that there is one singular god who punishes us with arbitrary tests and challenges, who allows us to fall all over ourselves for his attention, hoping our toss falls on heads in our favor.
In the last days of my father’s life, he told me that he’d give a million dollars for another week. His coin had flipped to tails; he knew he wouldn’t win playing offense or defense and became resigned. His little body, once taught and packed with muscle and fight, sighed, shoulders dropped as we walked together, me holding onto him shoulders to guide him gently, while also stealing the hugs I’d been denied for much of my life.
The arc of his life had spanned a shift, at least in policy, for the Black man, and I’d been, still am, so proud of his achievements and accomplishments. We are amazing, Black people, when we are allowed to be considered outside the Shirley-carded3 measurements of beauty, intelligence, relevance, and value. When the Fates, decided he’d played his full game, he had no choice but to accept his imminent end.
I learned to fight, taking swings at shadows, holding my stance, in my toe-to-toe battles with him. I only wanted him to love me, to allow me room to breathe, to look at the world’s softness and be able to exhale into it. I have not yet landed in this space.
It is said that God made us in his image, but, as I have done many times before, I argue that we have made him in ours. And our love is brutal. It is violent and it is punishing and it is conditional, traumatized, traumatic, and exclusionary. I made God in the image of my father’s love and hate for me, his push and pull, and I believe that our country, that swore a separation of church and state could do no better than weave those strands of hatred into the mane of our code of conduct.
We wrought this in the seeds planted, told ourselves lies about the odds being forever in our favor, tempting some of us with the collective ‘us’ knowing ‘we’ would always be thrown in with the towel when the rigged game was won. Everyone believes they are the quarterback, calling plays from a book they are reading upside down. You want me to believe that it was the luck of the draw that made me a Black woman in a world that cannot stand us but need us, nonetheless. You want me to believe that when the coin was flipped palm down on the back of a wrist that it was called ‘tails’ because everything in the world is trying to kill me.
Nah. I’m still here and I’ve seen it and we’ve seen it and I know better than you know about what this all looks and feels like. In the midst of trying to live and not die until we are supposed to, I know that there are sharpshooters and those who just shoot at close range because they don’t know how to express their feelings, because daddy and Daddy and gods and monsters don’t or didn’t love them enough, aiming at me, aiming at us, telling us the coin flipped the other way and they are winners and I should consider myself a loser.
I’ve been here, practiced first at home where I should have been shielded and armored with what I needed, instead grew that shit as skin, hard and callused. Driving steel into solid rock with my body, never leaning with much trust on the machine promised to do the work for me.
The minted coins endure a long process, raw metal turned to tender, distributed through banks and businesses throughout the country, working their way into pockets and collections, making a fool feel rich because the metal gleams. It doesn’t matter if we are worked to death, if the sides of the coin are the same, both heads or tails, if you call us collectively ‘other’ when you are angry, when we are in trouble (and we are always in trouble because you are convinced in right and wrong we must be wrong), when what you want to make of the world offers so little love, so little compassion, so little joy, we all exist on the same ridged coin flipped. In the air.
Curled under my arm is my dog, showing no signs of the cancer that has freckled his lymphatic system and added flecks of brown to his once all white fur (except for his one brown ear). The lymphatic system plays a large role in the circulatory and immune systems of the body, fighting off infections and filtering pathogens. Because the cancer has affected fluid all over his body, there was no way to cut out an easily identifiable lump or swelling in his body, which means it will return again.
We simply watch for changes in his behavior and other patterns and love him with all the reserves we’d stored. I would never have believed a year ago that we’d be so lucky. I know that the doctors did everything of which they were capable, and we adhered to their guidance and directions.
It is sitting in this unknowing that breaks me. I hope with all my heart that he is one of the dogs who recovers despite being told it’s unlikely. I wrestle daily with hearts that don’t fill with love and are determined to see the rest of us suffer, arrogantly believing the hurt will never touch them if they continue to throw us in front of the danger. It would be a shame for us to lose. I hope with all of my heart that we recover while also believing it is unlikely. It’s a coin toss. (And I also believe love wins.)
According to folk legend, John Henry, the steel driving man, raced against a steam-piling rock drill and won, only to die at the end of the race. The hammer songs, or work songs, told the tale of this Black man with nearly superhuman strength, who defeated a machine but worked himself to death. As a girl, I believed my father was as strong as John Henry. As determined and as fated.
Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent is regarded as the first martyr of the American Revolution, killed during the Boston Massacre which fueled growing desire for independence amongst the colonies.
The Shirley card calibrated skin tones, color, and light based on the eponymous Kodak employee, a white woman on whom the standard for photo processing and printing was based. Black, Brown, and Asian skin tones were rendered ruddy or blurry with this measurement.