It is August of 2015, the summer before I began asking questions in the business office. My mother and I have gone to visit friends at Carolina Beach. Looking out over the water, I realize...
All of my ancestors came over on ships. That’s how we reached America. And that sounds ancient until I remember the nations – not tribes, not clans, but whole nations – of Indigenous people that were here before us. Each member of my family here has been an intruder to the land that I call home.
My ancestors brought blood with them - in their veins and on their hands. Blood in the water. Blood on the ground. Blood on the trees. The ships that brought me had this bloodthirst embedded in their design. I didn’t spill it, but it’s there. It is part of my inheritance.
I stand on the beach of Fort Fisher looking out into the horizon. Gazing into the Atlantic, I can almost see them coming, sails emerging in the mist. I begin to see the shape of their bodies - white people above deck, at times, Black people below, in chains, in times of their own. I do not know who came first. I do not know if any of the bones of my family lie somewhere in that water, but the water feels hallowed to me because someone’s bones do. I think of moments in my childhood playing in the waves much further up the coast at Virginia Beach, and I wonder why no one told me it was holy.
I am thirty-six, my body providing a physical place holder that refuses First Nations their birthright, as I walk casually with my mother along the shore.
Fort Fisher is one of my favorite places to visit. At the southern end of Kure Beach, North Carolina, it recounts the Civil War battle waged here. The elements feel like company to me. The knowing. The recognition. The melding. The way the southern tip is a corner of beach that leads to the mouth of the Cape Fear River to my right. The way large boulders are piled up lining the beach to my left, fending off erosion, literally holding onto history and pinning it down. The way the Live Oaks and Sable Palmettos shimmy their leaves in the breeze behind me. I am blissfully in a sensory overload.
This is the place where the South lost their last major supply line. This is where Lee began to be choked out of resources. Richmond and Petersburg fell because of what happened here, and I feel known in this space, remembered, as if all my pieces have shared history here. In some ways, I originated in places like this – in convergence. This beach understands me more than most places do. It has room for more of me. I settle in easily to this community of timelines and ancestors, making peace with what made me, before even my great-grandparents were born.
I think of how supplies were once moved along this route – crated and stacked. I think of how I was once no more than a stackable supply to others, of use only for their intentions. A battle was waged over me here, and my bare feet stand on earth that bore witness to it all.
Yet, I am within walking distance of a river, that with help from a railroad, would lead me back home, if I let it. I am on a beach that always feels like home, as though the quiet of my room extends across state lines, as though the longleaf pines of my childhood and the Siberian elms of my Roanoke keep secrets here, too. I am from south of Richmond, lived many moments of my life in Petersburg, but for the most part I grew up in the country in Prince George County, Virginia.
I feel a wave splay over my feet that pulls some of the sand out from beneath them. I sink a little, my toes curling and gripping around salt-grit, wet earth, and I recognize for the first time that this is not simply a place where Confederates fought against my freedom, but it is also a place where Union soldiers fought for it, even if on accident. I was defended on this shore, by white people, in the 1800’s. In some ways, I suppose my mother was too.
My mother walks ahead of me. We meander softly, squinting in the sun, not speaking. We pass a white family walking towards us. My mother sweeps her wind-blown, blonde hair from her eyes, picks up a shell, examines it, and adds it to the collection she’s gathered in the pouch she has made of her shirt. In a few moments, two Black women pass us also. I catch myself standing closer to my mother, as if my presence vouches for her goodness. I am shielding her. I wonder if my mother ever does this for me, if the need for it is ever felt by her. I suspect that she has no idea, that she’s never considered it, and I do not ask her for fear that she might be suddenly burdened with it.
Heading towards the rocks on the beach, I relax and allow distance to spread between us again, space for each of us to enjoy the sun and sand in our own quiet ways. This is our last day visiting here. In a few hours, we’ll head to the strip and swing by Britt’s Donuts for our final steaming bag filled with glazed perfection. Like manna, they will only be good for the day. In fact, they will have lost their signature appeal before we get out of the state. Tomorrow, even warming them in the microwave will not bring them back to what they once were. You have to be in Kure Beach to fully enjoy them.
So, my mother and I will share a donut or two, she will have a cup of coffee, I’ll have a bottled orange juice, and then we will pack the car to leave. Our primary comfort in leaving vacation is that going means we can stop by one of the peach stands in Newton Grove at the halfway point between here and home. I know all of this while the waves roll and foam from the sea reaches toward me over and over. I’m not ready to leave. I never am. Breathing deeply, I try to soak every bit of the shore in, but it never fits. I have to leave it behind. I do not know when I’ll be back.
At this point in my life, I do not yet understand that I have mostly lived in white spaces, that there are pieces of me still unaddressed. I continue to believe in the false civility of color blindness. The fairness of my skin, the pattern of my curls, and the way white spaces have taught me to speak have given me a distorted sense of reality. My existence is coded in ways I have not yet unpacked. I have been other, but I have rarely, if ever, been Black, and I do not yet know the difference.