Something Like Beautiful by asha bandele Read Free Book Online Page A

it will be gone, the expanse of time I now get to spend with her. As I write these words in this very moment, Nisa is steadily securing her role as a grammar school star. Her time with me is shrinking. I am no competition now for a sleepover with three or four other girls who are her own age. But for as long as I can have her, for as long as I have a choice in the matter, more often than not, my daughter is my choice when it comes to who I want to be with and experience the world.
    But yes, there are people—friends—who have called me smothering. They’ve shaken their heads at me and warned me against stifling Nisa’s independence. Generally I don’t argue back, because to explain your parenting style is to then be dismissed as defensive. I’ve learned to let it go, because it’s not important that they know or acknowledge what I’m trying to make happen in Nisa’s life. It’s only important that Nisa continues to be the loving child she is. I actively work now to shut out voices so loud that they shut me out and shut me down for years and years, but finally I got it, that Nisa is happy and Nisa is thriving and so what else? Motherhood was my choice. It was more than a choice, it was my deepest desire.
    There was nothing I wanted more than to be a mother. I had seen much of the world; written two books; known great and defining love. I had certainly been to more than my fair share of parties, more than my fair share of clubs. Motherhood was then and is now exactly where I want to be. To be pregnant with a child that was made with the love of my life, my husband, was a dream come true for me, despite the obvious hard edges of it.
    But if I was to be honest, and alone and away from all the criticism that penetrated my parenting style, my lifestyle in general, I knew that my desire for a child was so much larger than having no interest in parties, no interest being in the mix. A mother now, I could begin to look at something I had spent my life both running into and away from. It is the story that is part of my bloodstream, defines it, my genetic twists.
    And the thing about it is that it isn’t especially obvious, not like a physical deformity or birthmark you can witness and name. Nevertheless it has been both of these to me. But once I became a mother, once I gave birth, I could not stop thinking of it, and I could not avoid it and I could not deny it.
    Having been adopted near my third birthday, I had never seen, at least to my memory, one person who looked like me, or shared my blood and particular genetic makeup.
    I may never understand why this hurt me so badly, left me feeling for my whole life as though I came from nowhere, belonged to no one. But it has. It always has. And it was there all during my pregnancy. It was there all during the time that I refused to see myself as a single mother. It was there, that thing, that heavy tarplike thing that hung over my head, my heart, and reminded me I was not the one worth being claimed.
    I was the one who could always be given away. Nisa would never feel that. She would never know that. She would know that she was wanted, that she was wanted every day of her life. She was wanted before she even got here and she was wanted by her father and she was wanted by me. Me who looked like no one, came from nowhere. I looked at Nisa and was certain that as much as she came from me, I came from her.
    One of Rashid’s friends—this was during our first visit—stopped by our table and looked at Nisa and said loudly, “Man, that girl’s all you, Rashid. All you.” He was joking, playing, but those words slapped. He could not have known, that man. But Rashid did. He knew all of my past, and knowing, he rushed to my defense. “That mouth, those eyes, those ears. That’s all asha. Can’t you see, man?” he implored and almost sounded convincing. This is what Rashid knew: I needed Nisa to look like me. I needed