Preamble
I, Nigeria Jones, in order to form a more perfect Black girl, establish justice, insure inner tranquility, provide for my defense, promote my general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to myself and my posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the united, whole, and complete states of Nigeria Jones.
Article IIndependence Day
“What to the American slave [this Black girl] is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to [me], more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which [I am not] the constant victim.”
—A remixed quote from that OG Frederick Douglass, July 1852
Section 1
My baby brother’s name is Freedom, and today is his first birthday. I hold him in my arms real tight and sniff his little head. He smells like Mama—a mix of patchouli and lavender oils that cover up the scent of places I don’t know, faces I can’t name, and secrets I don’t remember. We’re fifteen years apart and he’s not even walking yet, but it still feels like he could leave us, too.
We’ve rented out the community center over on Spruce Street for the birthday party, but it’s not called a birthday party. In the Movement, nothing is ever that superficial. It’s a gratitude celebration marking the one-year anniversary that Freedom Sankofa Jones chose us as his family. My father says that some African souls return over and over again to make things right, to heal generational wounds, and to fight for our liberation. We choose our parents, our families, and the lives we want to live before we are even born.
So I am a returning ancestor and I chose to be the daughter of Kofi Sankofa—the Black nationalist, revolutionary freedom fighter, and founder of the Movement, whose mission is to divest from oppressive systems and create an all-Black utopia. My baby brother did, too, and the members are coming together today to thank the baby king for choosing us.
The air in here is thick and warm even though the AC is on full blast. The aunties had smudged every corner with sage, and the scent lingers along with nag champa incense and all the different natural oils the members have on. Most of us are wearing colorful African print clothes and head wraps. When the members start coming in, a sea of braids, locs, afros, wooden beads, and cowrie shells will extend out to each wall of the community center. My father says that we’re like a small African West Philly village in the big, white state of Pennsylvania. And it definitely feels that way, even though some people think we’re a cult. Mama always says that the word “cult” comes from culture. We’re just proudly celebrating our culture, that’s all.
“Put that baby down!” my father calls out from across the room. “You’re gonna spoil him.” His deep voice is rolling thunder, his presence is parting clouds, and whatever words come out of his mouth today will be the sun shining on every member. He’s moving about like a hurricane, putting the Youth Group to work, and I’m the only one who doesn’t have to do anything because I’m holding my baby brother.
Freedom fidgets, babbles, and reaches for the floor, so I bounce him in my arms, shush him, and kiss him on the cheek, refusing to let him go. Even though this community center will be filled with people I love and who love me back, my eyes are glued to the front door, waiting for the person I want to see most in this world right now.
“Nigeria, come help us put up these posters,” Jasmine says from the front of the room. She’s rolling out the black-and-white photo of Malcolm X holding that rifle while looking out of a window. The words “By Any Means Necessary” are at the top, and that famous picture is my father’s whole vibe—rifle and all.
“I’m busy with the baby,” I tell her, even as Freedom cries for me to put him down. Besides, there are a bunch of other kids around to help her. She just doesn’t like me giving orders.
About two dozen Youth Group members are setting up folding chairs and tables, throwing African print fabric over everything, and pinning posters of Black heroes over the old flyers on the bulletin boards. The baby king needs to know that by being born into the Movement, he’ll be standing on tall and mighty revolutionary shoulders—Frederick Douglass, Toussaint Louverture, Harriet Tubman, and Marcus Garvey. On each side of a long table in the front of the room where the birthday cake and gifts
will be are two wooden sculptures—one is in the shape of a bird with its head turned back reaching for its tail, and the other is in the shape of a heart where the curved lines curl in opposite directions into the center and twist out at the bottom like curlicues.
My parents told me since I was little that those shapes are what the Akan people of Ghana call Sankofa. It means to go back and fetch, or the way forward is to return to the past.
Sankofa is also the last name my father chose for our family because Jones is a slave master’s name, he’d said. But Mama wasn’t trying to hear that. She said she didn’t want to erase the history that’s in our blood, skin, and bones from our names. If my father’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had to carry the weight of all the Joneses that ever lived, including the slave masters, then I had to carry some of that load, too.
So that’s why I’m Nigeria Jones on my birth certificate instead of Nigeria Sankofa. Or else it would’ve meant that I was trying to get back to Nigeria for some reason or other. We’re not from Nigeria or Ghana. I’ve never been to any country in Africa. You’d think otherwise by the way my parents and the Movement talk about the motherland, though.
A huge banner with the words “We Are African Not Because We Are Born in Africa, but Because Africa Is Born in Us” hangs above the cake table. In just minutes, the community center looks like a throwback to the Black Panther Party headquarters. A few more tweaks would make it more like the Wakandan embassy; and I got Freedom a bunch of Marvel’s Black Panther decorations, too.
“Let me hold him so you can put up the posters, since you know where they should go,” Jasmine says, clearly trying to get out of doing her job.
I ignore her, hold my baby brother up, and say, “I bathed him and dressed him up real nice with his little shirt and matching pants. Don’t he look cute?” I bring his face to mine and nibble on his little nose.
Jasmine shakes her head and rolls her eyes. I should tell her that doing this work is part of her community service for living rent free in the Village House, but right now, in this moment, I don’t feel like being the president of the Youth Group. I just want to hold my baby brother and let him know that his mama—our mama—will be here for his first birthday.
I look around at the members, some I’ve known all my life. Most think that being here will change their lives and change the world. But some of them leave and never come back.
Makai comes in through the open double doors with a hand truck stacked with boxes. I quickly rush over to him and say, “Are those books? This is a celebration, not another seminar.”
“We need to sell these jawns to get our own building,” Makai says. I’m distracted by the ring of sweat around the neck of his T-shirt and his wire-framed glasses are slipping down his nose. “Capitalism don’t sleep, Sister Nigeria. Especially when we’re trying to dismantle it.”
He starts to unpack my father’s books to pile them on a table near the entrance. The newer ones—Black Families Matter, Volume III and Flip the Table: The Global Majority’s Guide to Dismantling Capitalism—are front and center, and Makai stacks them into a pyramid. Postcards of the publishing date for his next book, The Black Man’s Constitution, are spread out like playing cards. Another table holds brochures and flyers ab
out the Movement’s mission and its programs. One of the aunties puts out two giant glass jars for donations. A piece of paper with the words “Youth Group Trip to Ghana” is taped to one, and the other one reads: “Freedom School Building Fund.” I was too busy worrying about Mama and Freedom that I didn’t notice what my father had planned.
“Is he serious?” I say out loud, and catch myself. I can’t let anybody hear me criticize my father. Not even Makai, who’s been living with us for the past five years.
“Come on, Geri,” Makai says all out of breath. “Help me set these up.”
“I can’t. I’m holding the baby,” I say, turning my back to him. I’m keeping all my attention on Freedom just in case Mama shows up.
My father is in the front of the room and pulls aside some of the other boys and motions for them to set up the portable screen and podium. That’s when I know for sure that this birthday party slash gratitude celebration will also be another one of his lectures.
Freedom must feel the heat rising from my body ’cause he starts to cry. More members are coming into the community center now, and they’re not just members; they’re like family. Every woman who walks in through those doors is an auntie, every man is an uncle, and every kid my age or younger is a brother or sister. The elders who are old enough to be grandparents are called Mama and Baba So-and-So, and they get the best seats in the room and are the first to get a plate of food. This is all to remind us that we are a family, that we may have been related way back in Africa, that we were separated during the Middle Passage, and that maybe, by joining the Movement, we are finding our way back to each other. A few of them rush over to hug and kiss me, ask me how I’m doing, ask to hold Freedom, and shower me with so much love that I can’t breathe.
My father says that as long as there are women around, me and Freedom will never be without a mother. The thing is, I’m Freedom’s only sister, and with our mother gone, maybe I’m like his mama, too. But I know she loves us way too much to just up and leave forever like that. She’s coming back. She just needed a break, that’s all.
I grab a seat in a nearby corner and put Freedom on my lap. He’s tired from fighting to get to the floor, so he’s a little drowsy, thank goodness. I pull my phone out of my back pocket to text my cousin, Kamau. He’s not really a member anymore, but he’s actually family, and he should be here. If not for me, then for Freedom. Are you coming? I type. I promise this is just a party, I lie.
Someone is suddenly hovering over us. A pair of beat-up Converses are in front of me, and I look up to see my cousin’s halo of an afro that makes him look like a microphone, which is on-brand because he’s always broadcasting his opinions out to the world (even tho
ugh his name means “silent warrior”), just like we were raised to do. He’s looking down at his phone and shaking his head. “Just a party, huh?” he says. “I swear the minute I hear one word from your father, I’m out.”
“No, no, no,” I say as Freedom reaches for his big cousin. “Please stay. I need you just in case something goes down.”
He exhales deep, pretending to be annoyed with me, but I know how he is. He really wants to be here, but he’ll try his best to avoid my father. “The way you holding that baby looks like you wanna carry him through life,” Kamau says. “Isn’t his name Freedom?”
“Be quiet and make yourself useful,” I say, smiling wide because my cousin is like sunshine. He is my lifeboat and my lifeline. Kamau is the realest person I have in my life. We’ve gone through the same things, being children of the Movement and all: vegan our entire lives, homeschooled (until the eighth grade for him), and taught to see the world in black and white. Literally. We don’t always agree, but he speaks his mind and keeps it one hundred. And sometimes that truth stings. He knows the sum total of me with all the pluses and minuses. And now that he goes to a real school, now that Mama left and we don’t know when she’s coming back, now that my baby brother is turning one and he’ll be walking and talking and growing into his own, now that things are messy in the Movement and this is supposed to be what liberation is all about, I need someone who feels like sandy shores and trees and mountains and far-reaching land. Because here in my father’s Movement, where I’m the daughter of his revolution, I’m drowning in an ocean of everything that I love and everything that loves me back, and none of it makes sense anymore.
Section 2
As the members pour in through the front doors, I don’t need to keep watch to know when Mama has stepped into the space. She’s a whole vibe. She’ll shift the energy in the room as soon as she walks in wearing one of her tie-dye caftans and matching head wrap, her many beaded necklaces and silver bangles making music as she moves, and her waist-length locs swinging from side to side. And once she sees what’s really going on, she’ll definitely rearrange everything so that Freedom is the center of attention and not my father.
Kamau is biting his bottom lip and looking every which way, as if this whole thing is new for him. “Look at all these people. I told my mother I’d come because this was supposed to be just a family thing,” he says.
“This is a family thing,” I say as I get up from the chair with Freedom in my arms. I know what he means. Our celebrations used to only be with blood family. I want to distract him from the fact that my father will be lecturing, so I inhale and ask, almost whispering, “You think my mother will show up today?” It’s a thought that isn’t fully formed yet, like a hard, tiny seed that hasn’t sprouted. I’d planted it there in my soul the moment Mama left us. Is she coming back? I wasn’t ready to speak those words, that feeling, that doubt into existence just yet.
Kamau looks at me as if I’m the saddest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Then he takes Freedom from me and plants a kiss on his cheek while bouncing him in his arms. “I don’t know, Gigi,” he whispers. “But maybe she’s always been here. You just don’t see her yet.”
“She’s not here,” I say as plain as day, smoothing out the wrinkles on my tie-dye sundress.
“Don’t be pressed about it, though,” he says, looking around as if he wants to change the subject. “And you knew damn well this wasn’t going to be just a celebration.” With his free hand, he pulls out his phone and logs on to one of my father’s pages where he posted about today’s event.
“I don’t be on social media like that, Kamau,” I tell him.
“Yeah, you damn Luddite. If you would log on for, like, a minute, you’d see that he’s arguing with half the country.”
“I don’t want to know,” I say, taking the phone from him to get a closer look at my father’s page. “And I’m not a Luddite. I just don’t like seeing all the shit they say about us.” My father being a radical activist and all means that if he’s not out on these streets liberating our people, he’s on the internet fighting for the cause. And by default, fighting everybody and their mama—Black or white. I try to avoid all of it.
But still, there’s nothing on my father’s post about his son’s first birthday. The topic for his lecture: “What to the American Slave Black People Is Your Fourth of July?” It’s a remixed Frederick Douglass speech from the mid-1800s that I was forced to memorize when I was twelve. I’d recited it on my father’s podcast on Independence Day ’cause he was tired of seeing our people get all excited about fireworks when state-sanctioned murders, unemployment, crime and violence, and overall injustice were happening to us across the country. Since then, he’s been talking about having a live lecture on this day. So, here we are. But th
e gag is, it’s also his son’s birthday. My father will be overshadowing my baby brother’s big day with a speech about slavery and fireworks. When Mama comes back, she’ll be pissed.
“You ready to get this party started?” Kamau asks with a smirk. Sarcasm is his second language.
“No, and this party is nothing like the one you went to last week,” I say, bringing up the pictures he had texted me. “And you’re part of Sage’s little crew now? How come you don’t take me with you?”
“’Cause you’re still stuck here in Blacktopia,” he says. “And I’m not part of Sage’s nothing. I only let her sit with us ’cause she’s your friend. Besides, you’ll feel out of place hanging with the kids from my school. They live in the real world.”
“Ouch. You outta pocket for that, Kamau.” He stays, trying to make me feel bad for still being homeschooled. He doesn’t have to try that hard. I live vicariously through my cousin as he navigates his fancy private school and goes to yacht parties on the Delaware River. “And Sage is not my friend anymore. You know that. That’s why I need you here with us, cuz. You’re family. You’re still part of the Movement.”
“No, I’m not. I only visit on holidays and weekends.” Our eyes meet, and he sees that I’m hurt, like he always does. “Gigi, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you, girl. ’Cause if I was your father’s daughter, I’d be in the streets every day and night, just because. And it wouldn’t be to recruit new members.”
I laugh, and I hate how he can sting me one second and tickle me the next. “In the streets doing what?”
“Leading my own damn revolution! You can break free when you turn eighteen, Gigi. Or, I heard there’s something called emancipation, when kids can divorce their parents. In this case, your father.”
I squeeze Freedom a little tighter because even though Kamau knows what my life is like in the Movement, he makes it sound way worse than it really is. “I’m not trying to divorce my father, Kamau,” I say as Freedom rubs his eyes. Still, I live for Kamau’s stories about his school, all the drama, and all those different personalities. “I just want to know what it’s like to be you. Especially now that you’re out.”
“You don’t want to be me, Gigi. You just want to go to a regular school like everybody else.” He gives me the side-eye, but he’s smiling.
“I love you and I can’t stand you,” I say, laughing and nudging his shoulder. “And Philly Friends is far from a regular school—talking about socialism while partying on yachts and charging forty grand for tuition.”
“I see somebody’s been doing their research,” he says.
And he read me like an open book, as usual. He knows that I wish I could trade places with him—to have one foot in the real world and one foot in this one.
My baby brother is almost asleep, so I take the fabric I’d tied around my waist, bring it up across my back, and have Kamau slide him behind me. I secure my baby brother to my back by tying the fabric across my chest and waist. I’m sure I look just like Mama when she used to carry me like this. Most of the aunties carry their babies like this because that’s how they do it in the motherland.
“Are you ready?” I ask Kamau because he used to be my right-hand dude when it comes to organizing events for the Movement and keeping the Youth Group in check.
“Not really,” he says, and I know what he means.
The community center is almost packed, and I’m glad that the members would rather be here than at some barbecue grilling meat or getting ready to see the fireworks at the Philadelphia Welcome America Festival over on Ben Franklin Parkway. I guess t
hat’s what makes them members. They refuse to celebrate independence in America while Black people are not free. They don’t want to be part of this settler colonialist experiment called the United States, as my father says.
I take in deep, cleansing breaths, like Mama taught me. Freedom’s breathing matches mine; his little belly expands and contracts against my back. I clear my throat, inhale, and start giving out the first set of orders to Kamau. “Make sure everyone walking in writes down their email address and phone number, even if they’re already members. The presents for the baby can go underneath the table with the cake. Remember, no plastic toys, no electronics; only books and handmade gifts from Black-owned businesses. When the little kids come in, ask the girls from the Youth Group to take them down to the basement with some snacks. They can come up before we cut the cake. I’ll be here if you need me,” I say.
“Only ’cause I love you,” Kamau mumbles. Then he leans in closer and whispers, “And if your father says one disrespectful word to me . . .”
“He won’t,” I tell him. “I promise.” I want to add that my father didn’t really mean all those things he said, but Kamau won’t believe me. I’m not sure that I believe it myself.
Then he’s off to delegate tasks to someone else. I miss having him around ’cause he used to love being a boss. He was good at being the Youth Group’s president. But Kamau is still family, so other members will listen to him, even after my father stripped him of his leadership position when he started going to that school.
Some of the girls from the Youth Group are sitting on chairs, scrolling through their phones and being unproductive. They start making themselves look busy when they see me. With Freedom asleep on my back and a few minutes to go before everything starts, I call the Youth Group members to attention with one word: “Harambe!” I put my hand in the air and pull down with a closed fist. “Harambe!”
Most of them fall in line and repeat, “Harambe!” barely getting the “pull together” hand motion right.
“I thought this was a party,” says Jasmine, the newly appointed Youth Group’s secretary. “We have to organize on the baby’s birthday, too?”
She’s new and so are some of the other Youth Group members—Danika and Nailah in particular—who have confused and disappointed looks on their faces.
“Plus, it’s Fourth of July!” Danika adds. She comes because her mother makes her. Otherwise, she looks out of place with her blond-ombre weave and lashes that almost touch her brows. “Can we get some grilled veggie burgers or something?”
“Y’all don’t even have salmon burgers?” Nailah asks while slipping her fingers beneath the front of her hijab to dab the sweat on her forehead. She’s used to some of our rules, being part of the Nation of Islam and all. But she can’t get with the plant-based lifestyle and the mandated monthly juice fasts.
My father is looking in our direction, and our eyes meet. Please don’t come over
here. So I get right in line, too. “All right, y’all,” I say, motioning for the Youth Group members to form a small circle in the front of the community center. “As a reminder, ‘Harambe’ means ‘pull together’ in Swahili. ‘Kombit’ is the same thing in Haitian Creole. ‘Mbongi’ and ‘Simba Simbi’ in Kikongo.” I start to say one of my favorite ones out loud in the Bantu language just to get them motivated. “Ubuntu ngu buntu . . .”
Then they all mumble, “Nga bantu!”
“That’s right, brothers and sisters!” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. “And what does that mean?”
“A person is a person . . .” Jasmine starts.
“Because we are people!” another girl adds.
“There’s no ‘i’ in ‘we’?” Danika asks.
They all give different answers, and I can’t help but to laugh. “Y’all need to get it together. It’s ‘I am because we are,’” I correct them. I let it slide. It’s early and it’s hot and we’re all hangry. But there’s work to do because my father says leadership takes courage. “I need y’all to just greet the members as they come in. And I’m gonna need a couple of you to sing with me in the front.”
“To sing ‘Happy Birthday’? Why it gotta be a performance?” Danika asks, and she should’ve gotten a whole lesson on how we do things around here.
“No. To sing the Black national anthem,” I say.
“‘Lift Every Voice,’” Nailah whispers to her before she even asks what it is.
Danika quickly raises her hand, and so does Nailah. ...
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