The Mask Falls

Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

The way racism and poverty and the Jim Crow laws of the south, exploitative capitalism and Western ideas/ideals of white supremacy and world dominance, his ‘barely out of their teens’ parents, educated as far as a system designed to destroy all of us had allowed shaped my father, surely a beautiful, inquisitive, funny, Black boy with curious, soft eyes and a wide smile, strong body, and quick wit, made him angry and bitter, but only in the crevices and nooks of his personality. Only in the places a very few of us could see. On the outside he was a charmer. He was not a monster. He’d been a Black man forced to contain himself lest he be shackled and humiliated for sport by a culture still unable to revel in his shine, determined to put coal over his Rudolph shiny nose.

Both my mother and father were the valedictorians of their respective high school classes, something neither of them spoke about much, but came up when pressed about their youths by their children (my brother, sister, and myself) who stared in disbelief that it was possible they’d ever been young, and when a B could or should have been an A if we applied ourselves better and took more time and care in our studies. I stood witness to all the external ways they shone. It was the 70s and 80s and outward presentation, success, upward mobility were the measures, while still nodding deferentially to people nowhere near their raw talent and capabilities. I hated it and sometimes, them.

We lived up close and personal with white families. Ate dinner at their tables, slept over on occasion, went on camping and day trips, celebrated birthdays and swam in their pools. I know a thing or two about a thing or two and have always been more vigilant observer than animated actor unless I was completely comfortable. My mask has been incredibly life-like. One would be led to believe that I am ‘all in’ when I am just ensuring that I can be safely tucked in, well hidden. So present that I am almost a figment of one’s imagination.

It is a strange place to find oneself witness to the pulled yarn that unravels the whole lie suddenly being discovered by folks who weren’t ever looking for the pulls or snags. Like walking through a festival buzzed on mushrooms watching everyone move in slow motion, where smiles and frowns are indistinguishable and movement is either a dance or panicked run.

I learned long ago not to trust the words but the feeling in my body, even if I had no one with whom to share this truth. I have been watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop, always hoping it would. For my grandmother and her mother and hers. I felt in my bones what scared them and knew better than to ask outright. And by knew better I mean I tried all the different ways to get them to tell me how awful white people were to their community. When my paternal grandmother pointed out the homes of this or that white man or family, I silently prayed over my people and cussed them folks back to their origins. I knew if she was calling them out, there was something to say because she mostly kept their lips pursed.

When describing the worst treatment, the shock and awe of it all, even the well-meaning present proof of their ill-treatment by offering up its proximity to the treatment of Black people. They tell me that they understand because the Italians or the Irish or the Jews or [insert any other non-Black group here] were excluded once, that they are ‘dark’ for the group or school or community of which they are now a part. And when I say,

Yeah. I know. On the spectrum of best to worst, the closer to Blackness, the worse one is treated. I know. But I am Black and you cannot and will never get there. So, for that you feel relief. I can see it.

And then there is silence because shame holds the tongue and averts the eyes. I recognize the tiny movements and flickers under the skin because I have always had to. We have had to.

But I sit with it. Remembering that in the desire for understanding and connection, I have been too forgiving of these mistakes, have not demanded greater self-reflection from my friends and peers because I have been taught to hold the shame and embarrassment for all of us. I know the task has not been demanded of them, drilled as it was into us. So many of us have, but the mask is hard to maintain when one is worn to the core, and I am exhausted.

We have been warned that if the entire of the files on Epstein and the international cabal of rapists, traffickers, leaders, colonizers, and abusers were released, all of the world’s systems would collapse, and to that I say,

Let’s see. Unravel it.

Do we somehow believe it is possible to build our future on quicksand, pretending that the foundation upon which it all rests is perhaps not as corroded as it appears, even as the truth of the building materials are revealed daily? Are we really all just going on about our business having been made painfully aware that children and women were trafficked and assaulted, psychologically and physically terrorized, that a network hiding in plain sight stole the childhoods, futures, hope of an endless parade of victims but we would rather not take it all back down to the studs and rebuild it all better?

When being introduced to new people, places, or things, I always ready myself for the whiff of prejudice, the stumbling, and awkward joke of someone who didn’t expect to be in such close proximity, hadn’t really noticed me in the gallery. If I do not come with a warning, I am met with defense, blank or wide eyes, confusion. I move slowly, having been well-prepared by all the decades of infiltrating the closed circle that calls itself a melting pot but is more like those serving plates for babies that are sectioned off so the different foods won’t touch. There has been so much coddling and so little demand that folks just grow the f*** up.

I hope they won’t want to hurt me, will remember their manners. I hope they have manners, even if they are just niceties masking their prejudice and insecurities and will wait to sling arrows at my name and kin when I am gone and not to my face. I wonder if my friends know, wonder if they’d believe me if I told them what I feel in my bones, what my honed intuition has taught me about ‘the best guy,’ ‘the coolest kid,’ ‘the sweetest so and so' who was giving me the side eye or death stare. I wonder if they know what their complicity has bought them and cost the rest of us.

I have always been afraid in the night, in the dark, mostly because I am afraid of what comes out from the shadows that daylight bleached. I have understood angry, dark hearts, filled to the brim with shame and trauma, lacking the spells and incantations to heal, hoping we will wear the cloak of their dark triad, vengeful, cannibalistic energy. Hoping if they call us ‘demon’ long enough, we will claim it, despite witnessing their human sacrifices in the night.

This

is a death cult. The secret word is

It has been practiced and honed and perfected for years, for centuries and while we knew it in our bones, and were always ready with the car keys between our fingers and took no sips from drinks set aside for us, and flinched at arms draped over our shoulders, jokes made at our expense, being invited to a table where the place setting didn’t quite seem right for us. It’s why we can’t have nice things. Because some are so distracted by the rest of us living and thriving, than in discovering the truth about how we got in this cage match and missed what they were doing under cover of night.

It is the anger and punishing, vindictive behavior that is poorly masked despite being perfumed or manicured. You hope that if you succeed at fooling yourselves, you will have also fooled everyone else, even those who have been studying your behaviors for their very survival, those who don’t trust, even those who say, you can definitely trust me. Some of us are extremely tired, having been running and dodging for our lives amidst the lies from the very beginning.

It is impossible for me to have a soft era in these hard times; in just the moment I am craving the exhale for my weary body and soul. When my paternal grandmother passed, I was so hurt for her, angry with the god she loved because she’d never had a chance to kick up her feet and visit with her family, be taken care of in each of our homes, waited on hand and foot as she’d done for others. I thought of the generations of my ancestors stolen, never living a moment’s peace, always at the ready and having to hide their rage, disgust, anger, repulsion, and fear. I feel it in my cells when something startles me, when I learn as I feared that there was something even more sinister going on under cover of rules and systems, secret societies and governments.

It is all revealed in dreamscapes and metaphor, wakes us with a start, where everyone feels suspect, only this time, we don’t have to talk ourselves out of that feeling creeping up over our shoulders. We acknowledge that it is true. That we are in grave danger if we continue to cover our eyes, to lie to ourselves about what we’ve chosen to accept and believe, what we’ve allowed to placate ourselves.

It wasn’t that I didn’t suspect, didn’t wonder. I’d heard conversations and whispers for years from friends on the periphery of Broadway and Hollywood, seen the late-night crawlers step out of their town cars and into the seedy night life with the rest of us. Always mindful, watching, I feared the hardcore drug dealers, stony-faced and tight-fisted, but the older men in suits and their sons, laughing with one another like friends, slapping each other on the back, pleading with beautiful, skinny white girls in tiny dresses, while I danced with abandon but not lost in oblivion. Always one eye open at that something flickering in the matrix.

When I was in middle school, kids used to talk about the ‘white slave trade,’ Middle Eastern men collecting beautiful, white girls into their harems where they’d be kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. Dare I say these themes showed up in some of the 70s crime shows I wasn’t supposed to be up watching. They’d always choose a costume like in ‘I Dream of Jeanie” and the women would lie around in jewels and beautiful clothes, slightly drugged or somehow restricted from movement.

I remember thinking, at least I wouldn’t get caught up in something like that, and then there would be one Black woman in the scene, and I’d be grateful I wasn’t really that pretty. Like quicksand and lightning strikes, the fear of these kidnapping rings occupied more of my childhood hellscapes than they should have.

That there is a network, a syndicate cloaked in cashmere darkness and designer everything, hidden behind gold bars and money and domination, threats made against goodness and honesty but shining like blood diamonds that have to be paid for with something of value - one’s life, youth, innocence, dignity, onus has rocked me to my core. We’ve been taught to honor and worship at the thrones of these people, value their largesse, have been brainwashed to forget that they road in on our backs and wore our skins and teeth.

Let me tell you about the brilliance and the violence of SINNERS¹ in this moment and how I keep coming back to it. So much of the movie reminded me, and likely so many Black folks, about going down home. I see my kin in these folks, see them living on the outskirts, trying to make their way, honest if they can, good and god-fearing, keeping to themselves. And the white people in their communities could not just leave them be, projected onto them all the sin and wickedness they dreamed and lived in the dead of night.

When we get to the root of what ails us/US, we learn what will kill us all.

We’ve worn the masks to protect ourselves while the masks worn by this network of liars and thieves, men and women who would traffic and rape and torture, even murder were to prevent us all from seeing the truth of this enterprise. And again, racism and nationalism and misogyny, pedophilia and sacrifice have blinded us collectively to the real face of who we are and what we have become.

So, if it is to fall, let it be. Shame has held our tongues and averted our eyes. We have to look underneath and see just what it is we have become.

1. Ryan Coogler’s, 2025 movie, Sinners, a Southern Gothic tale set in 1932 Mississippi about twins returning home for a fresh start and meeting supernatural evil. No spoilers.