We Are Not Broken

Author’s Note

Tamir Rice was twelve years old when he was killed by police officers who mistook his toy gun for a real one. It’s a story that’s all too familiar. I, too, was a Black boy who played with toy guns. My cousins Rall and Rasul and my little brother, Garrett, were Black boys who played with toy guns. All four of us got “the speech” early on about how unsafe it was for us to do the same things as our white friends. It was a reminder of the danger in our simple existence.

Black boys don’t have it easy in American society. We face many systems of oppression that tend to harden us, forcing us to lock in our emotions and exist in a state of near-constant internal rage. These systems become pipelines to our trauma—pipelines that many of us never make it out of. Though this trauma and adversity often beat down our spirits, we may be bruised, but we are not broken.

We Are Not Broken is a window into the lives of Lil’ Rall, Rasul, Garrett, and I—four Black boys growing up in the small city of Plainfield, New Jersey, under the supervision of our grandmother Nanny. We were four imaginative kids who were allowed the freedom to be individuals and the agency to make decisions rather than be told there was only one way. Centered on our adolescence, these stories discuss masculinity, racism, religion, violence, Blackness, and, most importantly, Black joy. In addition, these stories journey into Black womanhood and the narrative of the Black grandmother—a figure that has often been the cornerstone of progress and love in our community.

This book also contains heavy messages around corporal punishment, mass incarceration, racism, anti-Blackness, and homophobia. There is strong language, including the words “nigga” and “faggot.” When reading this book, please refer to the words as the n-word or the f-word, especially if you are non-Black or if you are non-Queer, respectively.

Black boys in society are often seen as adults by the age of twelve. We are viewed as dangerous and more prone to violence, and often left broken. This book is an attempt to change our narrative and give voice to our stories through our own eyes. Most importantly, this is an opportunity to disprove any notion that Black boys don’t deserve love, affection, care, and the space to be open, vulnerable, emotional, and kind.

Many places around the world are now in a state of protest over the police-caused deaths of Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. George Floyd was once a Black boy. Many Black men were once Black boys, and this is our story of survival in a world that has rarely seen our beauty.

Introduction

“All shut eyes ain’t sleep.”

I’ve probably come across this quote more than a thousand times on social media, television, or even on the radio. As someone who has multiple identities, with being Black and Queer at the top of that list, I recognize the feeling of living in a society that sees you as disposable. I understand what it’s like to put so much into a world that requires you to save it. A world that never once gave a second thought about saving you. Still, being a Black woman is a unique experience, one I could never fully understand—much like my own unique experience with Blackness and Queerness.

I come from a family of strong Black women. My mother, my aunts, my grandmothers, and their mothers were all women who led their families, supported one another, and stepped in to handle family business without needing to be asked. Black women have always been the ones expected to heal us and make us whole, often neglecting to take the time to heal themselves.

The Black woman who sat at the center of our universe was my mother’s mother, who the grandchildren affectionately called Nanny. When people say, “We rest on the shoulders of giants,” this woman comes to my mind immediately. In her life, she was most certainly disrespected but didn’t take no shit. Oftentimes she was probably unprotected, which is why she usually carried a weapon. I know there were many times she was neglected, yet she never once neglected the duties she felt were her purpose as our grandmother. This story is a way to love, honor, and care for her in a way that the world never has.

Louise Kennedy Evans was her birth name; she was born in March 1941 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She was the tenth child of thirteen kids born to my great-grandmother Lulu Mae Evans. When Nanny was a little girl, her family’s house caught on fire. Her three youngest siblings all passed away, making her the “baby” of the family. Even as the baby, she had something special about her, something domineering and omnipresent. As the youngest to survive, she was left here for a reason. She was left here to change the world, and that she did.

Caregiving came naturally to her. She had my mother, Kaye, when she was only sixteen years old, and dropped out of school around the tenth grade before marrying my grandfather Rall Elder and starting her family. She would go on to have an additional three kids by birth—Rall L. Elder Jr., Sarah Elder, and Stephanie Elder (who we call Aunt Munch). She also had one adopted nephew—my uncle Kevin Hobson—and raised twenty-four foster kids over the years for the state of New Jersey. She would go by many names in her life: Mommy, Lou, Louise, Aunt Lou, Big Lou, Ms. Elie, Irene, Nanny, and several others. That’s the kind of spirit she had. The embodiment of every woman. A reflection of all.

Nanny worked hard for each dollar she ever earned. At every point in her life she had some kind of hustle going on. She held down regular jobs, including one working as a registered nurse; she owned a daycare; she did flea marketing; and she ran a catering business for many years. She had other side hustles, including my favorite—providing microloans to the women in her church. With the loans, the women would buy diamonds from Mrs. Ruth, the diamond lady in our neighborhood, and pay her back at a low interest rate. Nanny kept a little red book in which she detailed all the money she was owed, and used it to track payments. She was that type of boss.

With all she had going on, though, her greatest investment was in her grandkids, or, as she would say, “the grands.” We got the most of her time, love, and energy, something none of us will ever forget. Nanny always used to say the world was playing a trick on her because she kept having grandsons. First my cousins Lil’ Rall and Lil’ Kevin in 1980, then my cousin Rasul in 1981, me in 1985, my younger brother, Garrett, in 1988, and my cousin Justice in 1994. She desperately wanted a granddaughter, but with me, an effeminate boy who spent the most time with her, I think she got a little bit of what she wanted. Still, she would have to wait nearly twenty-five years after her first grandchild was born before our little cousin Kennedy Elder-Law arrived in 2004. Kennedy was sort of named after Nanny, with Nanny’s middle name being her first name. Nanny got to live her final years with a granddaughter as her sidekick and best friend. Although, in our own way, each of us felt we held the title of her bestie. But that’s the magic of the Black family dynamic. People in our family don’t just use son, daughter, cousin, or grandmother as a placeholder. We do the work to actually become friends.

I want to be clear when I say, you don’t grow up in a home with a Black grandmother where wisdom isn’t being shared on a daily basis. Nanny was no different. She was the Black matriarch who told it like it was and always meant what she said. When she talked, the ancestors spoke through her. Her body was the vessel for the wisdoms of a thousand Black grandmothers over several millennia, with word-of-mouth truths passed down over generations, crossing oceans and being adapted.

When I watch movies that have that Black-woman wisdom, I instantly think about her. When Cicely Tyson did one of her majestic monologues. Or when Loretta Devine or Jennifer Lewis gives us one of those infamous rants on how “if we knew better, we would do better.” Or anytime I read the texts of Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and the mighty Toni Morrison. I’m immediately enveloped in their words, the warmth, the Blackness. It’s the same warmth I felt each time my grandmother scolded me and molded me, and a feeling I think we all share.

Nanny always used to say, “The things I didn’t get right with my kids, I tried my hardest to get right with my grandkids.” The lengths she went to—to ensure that we had the best of everything—are a testament to how she truly was a woman of her word. Her word was her bond. Of course, no one ever gets everything right, but for a woman who defied the odds since childhood, she came damn close to getting it right with all of us.

Sometimes I have this vision—a vision of four little Black boys lying in the bed, sleeping after a long day of bike rides and video games. Four heads sticking out from underneath the covers at the top of the bed. The moonlight streaming through the window, illuminating the room. Nanny comes into view, walking up the hallway, peeking in to make sure that we are okay before she finally goes to bed. I imagine what she was thinking in that moment. How beautifully the moonlight danced on our skin. How, although we gave her hell every day, having us with her still felt like heaven. Wondering who we would turn out to be when we got older. Wondering if the words and lessons she gave us, day in and day out, would be remembered.

I often think about the power of the Black word, the way we’ve passed down traditions since the beginning of time. I consider how our ancestors’ words and thoughts were created during such different times but remain relevant for every period that we, as their descendants, enter. You can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been, as the ancestors would say. Nanny knew where we had been, but not just in our own lives. She was the connection of old to new. The oracle of our family. The gateway to the past, just as the Black women before her had been. And as much as she ensured our care in the present, she also knew that there would be a time when she would no longer be with us in the physical world.

After Nanny passed, all of us wondered, What will we do next? Who would be the person to guide us as a family? Who would be the tiebreaker and the decision maker for us moving forward? Who would we come to when we needed to hear the Word of God? But that’s why she left us something more important than her recipes, or money, or jewelry. She left us with the words.

Her “Nannyisms”—the little quips of wisdom that my family has lived on for generations, her small reminders of life lessons—will guide each story in this book. All shut eyes ain’t sleep was one of her sayings, and it meant that when you think folks ain’t around or paying attention, they really are. Nanny, although your eyes may be shut in this physical world, we know that our queen ain’t slept a wink. Since you moved on to your next phase of life, you have been above us, wielding your power of protection and blessings in so many ways. You’ve been protecting us from the other side, just as you did on Earth. I can still feel you some days. There are times when I dream and you come through as clear as day, still helping me from the other side. There are times when we see a ladybug—oh, how you loved your ladybug pins on your church dresses—and we know you are with us at that very moment. Or the times when I mention your name and I get a chill, letting me know you are in the room.

We quote the famous ancestors so much that we tend to forget about the ones we had in our everyday lives. Nanny, this book is a love letter to the Black boy joy you created, the Black-woman experience, your powerful lessons and words, and you—the Black grandmother that saved generations.

It’s now time for the world to blessed by the greatest storyteller ever known. We will always have your words, and we know that your word is our bond.