Everyone stays until almost two a.m. Once they’re gone, I check my phone and see two missed calls from James and four text messages.
Party @ my place.
Come over.
Where you at??
Happy New Year!
I smile, knowing he was thinking of me, and write back:
Happy New Year to you too. To all new things.
“What do you mean, put them everywhere?” I ask.
“I mean, don’t leave any space untouched. Put. Them. Everywhere. Books in the library, textbooks, slip them inside lockers, leave them in bathrooms—any spaces you can find, we gotta make sure people see them everywhere they turn. We have to stay on people’s minds,” Jasmine says. She looks through her backpack and pulls the bag of quotes and statements out to examine them. A couple of days later, after we made our “I resolve” statements, we photocopied our favorite ones so that by the time school started we’d have hundreds that we could work with.
“You sure about this?” Isaac asks. “I mean, I can understand posting them in books and stuff, but I just don’t really want to get detention for posting Down with the Patriarchy in the teachers’ lounge.”
“Stop being so weak,” I say, siding with Jasmine, “and besides, I took that one out. I replaced it with The Patriarchy Is Dead. That’s better, right? It’s kinder.” I smile.
Isaac stares at me. “I know you all want to do this, but maybe we can make a bigger statement at Word Up, and post there . . .”
“Nope,” I say, “it has to be bigger than that. We can’t just keep posting in places where everyone already believes what we’re trying to say. We’ve got to bring more awareness of the things that need to change here at Amsterdam Heights.”
Isaac still looks unsure.
“You’ve already done enough, Isaac. You helped us make these look so good. We’ve got it from here. I mean it,” Jasmine says, taking the bag of statements and handing it to Nadine, who is standing next to us and pulling out her favorite statements, figuring out the best places to post them.
Isaac surveys the hallway. We all have after-school commitments in a half hour, but that means if we work fast enough, we can cover a ton of ground. “No. I’m in it now. Let’s do this,” he says, and grabs the bag back from Nadine.
The four of us take off like a crew of womanist/feminist superheroes leaving our mini forms of justice all over the school campus. We all split up. Jasmine and I tackle the locker rooms, bathrooms, and the theater. But before we get there, I have a stop to make.
“Where are we going?” Jasmine asks. “We gotta hurry.”
“I know, but I have a special poem for a special someone,” I say, moving ahead.
“James? You wrote something for James?”
“No! It’s for Jacob Rizer,” I whisper, pulling the rolled-up poster board out of my bag. It’s big enough to cover his locker. I hold it out so Jasmine can read it.
You—
for Jacob Rizer
You don’t own my body.
It’s not yours for the taking.
You don’t get to put your hands on me—
touch & burn. You are too full
on your own corrupt metaphors & similes to see that
You don’t own me. Not my head to pat,
or my shoulder to bump, or my behind to smack.
You can’t hold me down or shut me up.
I’m an avalanche & my words will drown you.
You know the truth—what you did, who you are.
Think you can bop & weave away, but
You are less than. An equation that equals zero—
a subtraction. The sum of nothing.
You made me feel like nothing.
Like my anatomy was yours to handle,
regulate, oversee. You don’t get to win.
I’m not yours to keep or command.
My shape stays my own.
You can keep your brazen, outrageous,
hateful hands—to yourself.
“What? You wrote that?”
“Yup, and I’m gonna tape it right on the front of his locker for everybody to see it,” I say.
“So you’re really doing this.”
“No, WE are really doing this.”
Jasmine and I make our way to Jacob’s locker and post it in record time. Next, we head into the girls’ bathroom and pull open every stall door. I figure posting a statement that says I resolve to listen to women’s voices is way better than the statements already scribbled on the bathroom walls, which include: Mary Lyvers is a slut whore and THIS SCHOOL CAN SUCK IT. Actually, sometimes I agree with that last sentiment, and I consider writing a check plus next to it but stop myself.
“I mean, whoever wrote this didn’t even put a comma between slut and whore. They didn’t even write it correctly. I mean, what is that anyway?” I ask, spelling out Female = Future in blue tape.
“It’s sexist is what it is. And it’s slut shaming. Here, give me a sheet of paper,” Jasmine says, writing—I resolve to stop slut shaming women.
“Oh, I like that,” I say, writing it again, and putting it directly under the info about Mary Lyvers. “By the way, she graduated like two years ago, which means that no one has even taken the time to clean this, or paint over it, and you know that girls have been looking at this every day for years and no one has ever said anything.”
“Nope. And neither have we.”
“Until now,” I say, taping resolve statements to the soap dispenser and writing WOMANIST on all the bathroom mirrors in tape.
We move even faster once we’re done in the bathrooms, and we make our way to the theater. We tuck statements into all the Playbill posters and the blown-up photographs from previous shows. Jasmine has a whole list:
I resolve to play whatever role I want.
I resolve to see black women as multidimensional,
be multidimensional.
I resolve to be sweet, sexy, sassy if I say I am,
be all the woman I was made to be.
I resolve to break your boundaries, unbox myself.
I resolve to shut down simple stereotypes—
shake up systems meant to shut me down.
You won’t shut me down, shut me up, shut me out.
I show up anyway, anywhere.
I resolve to stand on stage and be me,
and not the woman you want me to be.
I resolve to grow back stronger—unshakable, unstoppable.
“Wow,” I say when she reads all the extra statements she wrote. “When did you write those?”
“Last night. I started thinking about the ways that Mr. Morrison was trying to pigeonhole me, and the ways he was trying to get other people to see me, and I just . . . it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. And to be honest, I miss the ensemble. And I miss my dad. He would’ve been really proud of us for doing this, and he always loved seeing me on stage. I just don’t want anyone to take that away from me,” Jasmine finishes. I don’t hug her, since I know she hates when she’s about to cry and then I hug her, which makes it even worse, so I just take her extra statements and run them all over the theater, backstage, and dressing rooms. We make sure to put them in small spaces where people will see them when they’re getting dressed, and when they’re putting on stage makeup. Everything is open because after-school activities are starting soon, so we move even faster and then meet Isaac and Nadine in the lobby. They are laughing when they roll up.
“Oh, nothing, we just pretty much got James and a few of the basketball players to run up and down the bleachers while doing their sprints and drop statements in all the seats. It looks like it’s been raining women’s rights in the gym,” Nadine says, clearly proud of herself.
“At one point, Ramel was throwing up statements like it was cash money,” Isaac says, smiling at us.
“And he also might have been singing some of the statements,” Nadine finishes, and as if on cue, Ramel and James walk down the hallway, Ramel singing, “I resolve to raise my hand more. I resolve to answer more questions in algebra. I resolve to use my voice.” He enters a falsetto on the last note, and we all start laughing. I see him tucking one of the statements into his pocket.
“What’s that one say?” I ask, hanging back as they all continue down the hall practicing their new songs.
“Ah, nothing, I just liked it.” He hands it to me. It says: I resolve to ask for what I want. My voice should be valued and heard.
“Why do you like it?” I ask.
“I guess I’m just curious. What do you want?”
