The Pieces that We Own
I wish DMX Read Kiese Laymon
Calendars, once marked with daily meetings, monthly birthdays and holidays, became one big blur. Days became less distinct. Months became scribbled with death and despair. 2020 transformed into 2021. As global death crept into the new year, I tried mustering up every ounce of hope I reserved to celebrate not dying. So many neighbors, people who I knew through others, and friends loved ones’ had fallen victim to Coronavirus. A lot of people died preventable deaths if there were a system of care set-up rather than profit. And a lot of us beat-out death through stillness… for the time being.
In the summer of 2020, the height of the pandemic, I lost my aunt, overtaken by a long battle with breast cancer, and a really good friend; a victim of a car accident. They died a month apart; the time in between their deaths fracturing me. They were surviving. They almost made it. But as pervasive as COVID-19 is, we are all naive to the daily ways in which we die.
My father, a man who grew up around violent racism and barely made it out of the first Iraq war, turned 50 in 2021. He survived. Months later Black Rob died at 51; Shock G died at 57; Biz Markie died at 57. I couldn’t help but think about my father and how he had made it to 50, and what “made it” entails when you are still trying to escape death. Then DMX died. He was 50-years-old. I wept similar tears that fell for Nipsey Hussle when he was murdered. DMX was trying to escape the darkness that clouded him through whatever opening was caressed with light. These Black men died within weeks and months of one another. These men, who my father indirectly grew up with, were surviving in a world that conspired to kill them. As I reflected on Black men having the lowest life expectancy in the nation; I paused. Pondering, I wonder if DMX read Kiese Laymon?
A few weeks ago I watched the Ruff Ryder Chronicles. A five-part docuseries covering the origins — rise and fall — of the Ruff Ryders record label. I was born in 1994, so I’m familiar, somewhat, with the Ruff Ryders: DMX, The LOX, and Eve. But I didn’t know much about the label. Only the artists. While the docuseries showed the struggles and successes that went into the formation of the Ruff Ryders, as well as its decimation, it spotlighted DMX’s troubled childhood.
I identify DMX like most people identify DMX: Pit bull’s rocking cuban-link like leashes around their necks, as X stands behind them, shadow like, with a ferocious gaze that rivaled Medusa, while standing in timbs with soles as hard as his gaze. Growing up, instead of a gun, as many people in his neighborhood would use, X would use his Pit bull, the same Pit bull that’s tattooed on his back, as a weapon to stick-up his victims. “The dog is like… like a bullet that will chase you,” X said energetically in the docuseries. “He’s gonna get you!” I was prepared to hear about a life that matched the vibration of his voice; aggressive and gritty. Instead, what I came across was a life that led to the creation of the Blues: lovelessness and anguish. DMX was a modern day bluesman. With the gravelly voice of Howling Wolf.
X, his real name Earl Simmons, was a loving child, yearning to please others. He was also defiant to authority figures; perfect for the career he would have. Born to a teenage mother who was consumed by her frustrations and an absentee father, young Earl spoke of his childhood like people speak of being in an abusive relationship. “You couldn’t be too confident in my situation,” he said about living with his mother. “Confidence would get you a beatin.” The descriptions of how he was disciplined reminded me of stories told of people put in the hole (solitary confinement). Their imaginations being their saving grace in the emptiness of their cell. My mother was young when she birthed me. So young that my grandmama looked to be my mom. While my mom resembled an older sister. This holds true to today. My mom struggled with loving me in the complex ways needed for a baby, let alone another human. But she did what she could. My father, much older than my mother, struggled with raising me. His wounds, which he neglected to bandage and heal, infected me. My father, a wounded man, allowed his festering wounds to contaminate my youth. My mother, a teenager, had her own story that she struggled to understand as she scratched out pages and wrote on new pages. Some of the pages she scratched out in an attempt to throw away landed in my book; her words becoming mine. Resulting in her story; the good and the bad, becoming my story. It is not only a privilege to be a parent, but a responsibility. A responsibility that requires the parents to be honest with their pains. If they are not honest, and neglect their afflictions, their children can become tormented by the trauma of their parents.
As X recalled the story of his mother dropping him off at Children’s village, a group-home for troubled youth, he said, “you can’t leave me,” to his mother. Heaviness took his head in sorrow. In shame. He is ashamed he trusted the only person in the world who was supposed to love him. Sniveling, his voice began to quiver. “We were supposed to go home.” That moment he learned to suppress his emotions. To pull away. “Another side of me was born right there,” he said, composed; to protect Earl.
Darkness; overwhelming a stuttering child engulfed by covers that are as protective as a shield and a flashlight as bright as Excalibur to protect them from the lingering gloom.
Darkness; the hidden traumas that mold our hearts into a rusted flask and tell our minds we don’t deserve love.
Darkness; a shadow of melancholy. Death.
When DMX died, I felt compelled to re-read Heavy by Kiese Laymon. The first time I read Heavy, I cried; tears holding space in my eyes, silently, in the darkness of my room. As a Black man, I’ve never felt held before. I never felt cared for in such a way that it was both immobilizing and freeing. As I held Heavy, my shoulders began to tremble, my forearms shook as my hands gave way. Yet, I felt held up somehow. Not by strength. But by love. I wanted that for X. I wanted him to know that kind of love from another Black man, because there were Black men who harmed him. I wanted him to feel safe. To feel enough. To feel that he could bring his childhood self, Earl, and the Dark Man that stood by as a means of protection, to the light and just cry. The kind of cry that he didn’t need to hide. I wanted him to know that sometimes what we think is protecting ourselves is really neglect. I wanted him to know that there is a distinction between crying because you are ashamed and crying because you are relieved. Relieved from the unbearable weight that you were made to carry, but that you weren’t responsible for. I wanted X to know what Kiese learned from his grandmama on their Mississippi porch. “You hurting yourself by trying to let folk know they hurt you.” I wanted X to know that Kiese loved his Grandmama like he did. DMX loved Black people like Kiese loves Black people. In a way that allows us to feel seen. Makes us feel like we don’t need to be exceptional to be loved. That revving our engines, and creating skids and doughnuts as dark as our circumstances didn’t mean we didn’t deserve love. That being vulnerable was indeed strength. That being strong was being vulnerable. Even if that only took place in the presence of thousands of fans. I wanted X to know those things because When I read Heavy I was reborn, like a phoenix. Not through ashes, but by my tears that swelled the pages. I no longer wanted to subscribe to a kind-of masculinity that limited my humanity. I wanted to liberate emotions that were shackled in the deepest parts of me. I wanted X to know those things because the world wants to see my dad, a 50-year-old Black man, dismayed and dead.
Throughout DMX’s life he struggled with drugs and legal issues. He spent the rest of his life trying to unlearn that not everyone he valued would abandon him. Something we all may need to unlearn. That always being prepared to be abandoned only sabotaged his relationships. We can be our own worst enemies at times. Stuck in survival mode, forgetting that — yes, we are born to die, but in between — we are supposed to live. And while we are being present and living, we deserve healthy choices, second chances, and healthy love.
In Black families, it’s rumored that it often takes a death for the family to come together. It seems that in death, we are able to be still. We give ourselves permission to mourn. We not only mourn for the transition of our newly gained ancestors, but we mourn for the pieces of ourselves that get buried with them. Taken to an unknown, but hopeful location. In their death what will become of us? Uncertainty always leading to anxiety; like the feeling of witnessing Black trailblazers who my dad watched carry Hip-Hop die. Watching his 20’s crumble before him.
In this global pandemic, pieces of ourselves, pieces that hold us like a blanket in the winter, departed from us while attaching to loved ones. However, maybe in losing pieces of ourselves we may be able to complete others who have rifts in their souls. If only for the time being. And in that brief moment of completing someone else, we may be revived. Christened anew. It may allow us to look inside ourselves, at the things that rip at our insides, and see if these wounds are our own. If these tears tell our own story, or the story we inherited. And in becoming connected to the pieces of others, we may learn all “making it” means is finding ways to be reborn.
