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  His renewed enthusiasm and fresh vision would be tragically short-lived. Three days after the conference, on January 28, 1998, he told Nancy he was feeling light-headed and asked for a glass of juice. She went to get one for him, and when she returned she found him dead of heart failure. He was only forty-four years old.

  Spencer’s passing had a wide ripple effect. He was the glue that held our community together, and without him things began to fall apart. VOC members became more withdrawn, relying on their most intimate circles for support. Nancy and her children moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to her family. Antioch disbanded.

  It had an equally profound impact on me. Before he’d died, I’d drawn a portrait of him, which he’d loved, and I was honored when his family chose to display it on an easel beside the closed casket at his funeral. In the drawing Spencer was full of life, grinning from ear to ear. I was pleased to remember him like this, but my heart was shattered. For me, Spencer had not only been a sounding board but also a compass that helped me find my way as I was sorting out my feelings about my cloistered childhood and my passion for civil rights. He’d always treated me like a daughter and made it clear from his words and actions that he genuinely cared about me. Although he was a Christian, the love he gave people wasn’t just a list of rules and tactics for dodging Hell. It was kind; it was real.

  Spencer wasn’t just a father figure to me. He was also a mentor, lending me insight and clarity whenever I was confused about something. Determined to make him proud, I somehow managed to graduate magna cum laude, despite feeling almost completely adrift during my final year and a half at Belhaven. For months after his death I would visit his grave just to sit there and have a one-sided conversation with him. He’d been everything I’d hoped a father could be, and without him a huge void appeared in my life. What filled it would send my life in an entirely new direction.

  *I did not, however, call Spencer’s wife Nancy “Mom.” That she was white may explain why neither one of us was comfortable adopting that level of familiarity with each other.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kevin & Howard

  WHEN I FINALLY STARTED dating someone in college , I went with a safe choice. Lawrence “Law” Quinn was a highly analytical Black man, belonged to a Pentecostal Holiness church, and, like me, was still a virgin. Everyone in the BSA thought we made a great couple, as we were perfectly matched in our naïveté and creativity. Like me, he was an art major, and he often kept me company in the art studio. “You don’t think like a white girl,” he told me while I was sitting on his lap in the studio one day. “You respond to things in the same way that a lot of my biracial friends did growing up. You have a biracial mentality.” That he seemed to truly understand me made me feel good, but when he grew too clingy it started to get on my nerves and I broke up with him.

  The time I’d devoted to Law I now put toward my new job. Five nights a week from 10 PM to 3 AM, I loaded trucks at the local United Parcel Service distribution center. As the lone female on the night shift, I was frequently subjected to whistles and catcalls. One of my coworkers Kevin Moore declined to join in, and I soon found out why—he was interested in me. We started dating, but I broke up with him after only a couple of weeks because he kept trying to violate my Christian boundaries, which forbade premarital sex.

  Kevin had seemed like a good match for me. He was quiet, especially when compared to some of our rowdy coworkers, and he was religious, or at least that’s what he told me. He’d been raised in the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal church where some of the members were known to speak in tongues just like Ruthanne did, and he claimed he’d been born again just two weeks before he’d met me.

  I’d soon wonder if he’d made his new conversion up as a way of convincing me to date him. As it turned out, there was a lot I didn’t know about Kevin, and very little of it was good. Before finding religion, he was known on the streets as “Profane,” thanks to his foul mouth and shady activities. This was all news to me, delivered by Kevin’s best friend, who also told me that Kevin wanted me back and that I’d better be careful because I would be in grave danger if I didn’t agree to see him again.

  On paper, it seems obvious that I should have refused to go out with Kevin again. But with Spencer’s death and Antioch disbanding, I no longer had an adequate support system in place. I’d never been taught how to turn people down gently. And there was also some shame involved. I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d allowed Kevin to do things to me sexually that I barely knew the terms for at the time. In the end, I thought I could fix him, and if I did that, I might be able to keep my place in Heaven and salvage my own dignity as well. I decided to give our relationship one more shot.

  Over the course of the next four months, Kevin managed to detach himself from many of his former associates and focused on work and community college. He and I also engaged in just about every sex act you could possibly think of except male-on-female oral sex and the one I believed would send us both to Hell—vaginal sex. Somehow I managed to preserve my sacred virginity while satisfying his sexual appetite. None of it was very enjoyable for me.

  My commitment to abstinence only seemed to make Kevin want me more. He must have asked me to marry him twenty-one times before we flew to Montana during Christmas break so he could ask for Larry’s permission in person. At this point in my life I was still (for the most part) following the rules Larry and Ruthanne had imposed on me, and one of them was that if a man wanted to marry a woman he needed to ask the woman’s father for permission first. By giving his consent, the father was transferring his authority over his daughter to the man who would be her husband. While Larry and Kevin went on a hike together, I stayed behind and secretly hoped that Larry would tell Kevin that he wasn’t worthy of me, just as Spencer had implied that Buddy Lee didn’t deserve me. This would have provided me with an excellent excuse to end our relationship. But it didn’t happen. Kevin seemed just as surprised as I was when Larry gave him his blessing. When Kevin asked me to marry him moments later, he didn’t even have a ring. Larry’s approval came with a dig directed at me. “She’s the stubbornest woman I know,” he told Kevin. “Good luck breaking her.” The plan was for us to get married in June when I graduated from Belhaven so that my family could be there for the wedding and my graduation, but you know what they say about best-laid plans.

  When I started dating Kevin, I was living in a duplex in West Jackson with Kim Stevenson, a Black woman in her late twenties. Kim and I both attended services at Voice of Calvary Fellowship, and we were both in committed relationships—she was dating a tall white guy from church named Will. Beyond that, Kim and I were an unlikely duo, opposite in nearly every way. I was artistic; she was practical. I was relaxed; she was particular, almost to the point of being obsessive-compulsive. I was from a lower-class family that lived on the side of a mountain; she was from a middle-class family that lived in the suburbs. When we went to church, I felt most comfortable hanging out with the Black parishioners; she preferred the company of the white folks. I also had a natural sense of rhythm, whereas Kim did not. I tried to teach her. We stood in our living room and practiced rocking back and forth while clapping at the same time. First we worked on the rocking part. Then we worked on the clapping. It took several weeks, but she was eventually able to do both at the same time. That I had rhythm while she did not, that she was uptight while I was chill, and that she dated white guys while I had dated two Black guys made us the butt of a running joke. People often said that I was a Black girl in a white body and Kim was a white girl in a Black body.

  Our love lives were also quite different. She and Will liked to go on very romantic dates. They would pack a basket with sandwiches and strawberries and have a picnic somewhere. Kevin and I were a bit more prosaic in our dating habits. With our work schedules, going on an actual date, like to dinner or a movie, was a luxury we simply didn’t have. We were forced to content ourselves with brief physical encounters in places that were never compl
etely private: his car or mine, the art studio I had on campus, the living room in his mom’s house where he still lived, or the common area in the duplex I shared with Kim.

  It was in the last location on March 27, 2000, that we engaged in roughly two hurried minutes of sex on the orange couch Kim had purchased from a nearby thrift store. Twenty-two years of suppressing all my lustful urges and sexual curiosities were erased in less time than it takes to listen to a song on the radio.

  Terrified that we might have punched our ticket to Hell, I knew there was only one solution to the crisis we’d put ourselves in: a quickie marriage. We rushed to the courthouse, got the paperwork completed, and were married on March 31. I wore a black dress out of shame, and Kevin and I exchanged cross necklaces to symbolize our commitment to God. Only the pastor and his wife, Kevin’s mother, and a couple of my college friends attended. Kevin and I spent one night at a three-star hotel—our honeymoon!—and both of us were back at work the following day. When we called Larry and Ruthanne the day after the ceremony to tell them we’d gotten married early, Larry thought it was an April Fool’s joke.

  None of the signs pointed toward Kevin and I having a long and happy marriage. Like the sex that had precipitated it, our marriage was unplanned, unwise, and unsatisfying. If Spencer had still been alive, I have no doubt I never would have married Kevin Moore.

  Soon after Kevin and I were married, I got hit by an extremely painful kidney stone. Doubled over in agony, I had to crawl across the floor to get to the phone. Kemba, one of my friends from Belhaven, got to me before the ambulance did and drove me to the hospital. By the time we got there, I was so incapacitated she had to fill out the paperwork for me. As she handed in the forms, the receptionist started arguing with her about what she’d written down. The receptionist’s confusion was understandable. On my Montana driver’s license, I looked white and my name was Rachel Doležal. On my UPS employee ID, I looked Black and my name was Rachel Doležal. And on the intake form, Kemba had put down my married name, Rachel Moore—and who knows how I appeared to this woman? Given the discrepancies, the receptionist couldn’t figure out which race I belonged to or what my real name was.

  When Kevin arrived, he became part of the ongoing dispute about my identity. The receptionist didn’t seem to believe he was my husband. Meanwhile, I was writhing in agony, couldn’t put two words together, and started vomiting over the side of the gurney. By the time a resolution had been reached and a doctor had taken a look at me, I’d already passed the kidney stone on my own.

  One of the first things I did after receiving my diploma was ask Larry and Ruthanne when they planned on paying back the money they’d borrowed from me before I’d left for college. My great-grandmother, the one who was reputed to be Hunkpapa Lakota and who’d died when I was eight, had managed to squirrel away quite a bit of money over the course of her four marriages. When she’d died, she’d left each of her children $56,000, each of her grandchildren $28,000, and each of her great-grandchildren, including me and Josh, $14,000. Larry had told me that he and Ruthanne could save a bunch of money if they paid off their mortgage by the end of the year and the remaining balance on the loan was almost the same as the amount I’d inherited. He assured me that I would get more financial aid if I didn’t have any assets and promised that he and Ruthanne would pay me back as soon as I was done with college. Now that day had arrived.

  If I live a thousand years, I’ll never forget Larry’s response when I asked him about the money. “We already paid you back,” he told me. “It cost more than that to raise you.”

  It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I’d upheld my end of the unwritten agreement that bound us together. I’d tended the garden, picked apples, canned food, hunted elk, butchered chickens, collected eggs, and scrubbed the bathroom floor, and in return I’d been rewarded with what? A roof over my head and three meals a day. I’d worked just as hard to make my own money and had always been allowed to keep it. When I loaned Larry and Ruthanne my inheritance, I expected the same treatment.

  Yet Larry had the gall to insist it had been otherwise: We already paid you back.

  If I ever wanted anything that wasn’t considered absolutely necessary during my childhood, I’d had to pay for it myself. Harvesting and bagging an entire field of potatoes might have earned me a fountain soda or a candy bar. I even helped pay for some of my younger siblings’ adoption expenses. I’d worked nonstop, forgoing any sense of a normal childhood, much less any free-spirited teenage years.

  And yet: It cost more than that to raise you.

  Being betrayed by one’s parents always comes as a shock. All I ever wanted was for them to love me, and I remained hopelessly optimistic long after it had become clear that that was not the case. After deluding myself into thinking that Larry and Ruthanne loved me and Josh equally—or even loved me at all—I now knew the truth. Any trust I had in them dissolved. From that day forward, I stopped calling him “Papa” and her “Mama,” and started referring to them only by their given names. I now viewed them not as my parents but merely as two people who’d helped raise me. The distance that lay between us came with a silver lining: now that I was free of their judgment and control, I could relax and be my true self. But the newfound sense of freedom I enjoyed didn’t last very long.

  Kevin knew that I’d always dreamed of moving to DC and going to Howard University, but when I told him I wanted to apply to grad school there, Kevin said he didn’t want to go, complaining that I would be taking him away from his mom and everything he knew—he’d never left the state of Mississippi. Eventually, he relented.

  Unlike the hospital in Mississippi where I passed the kidney stone (and other primarily white institutions that require detailed information about race and ethnicity), Howard didn’t have a box on the application for its graduate Master of Fine Arts program asking me to identify my race. The university’s mission was clearly explained by the motto listed on its website at the time: “We exist to promote Black values.” I, of course, was completely on board with that. I wanted to go to Howard so badly it was the only grad school I applied to, so you can imagine my excitement when I got in. I was even more thrilled when the chair of the art department, Winston Kennedy, upon seeing my academic records from Belhaven and my growing portfolio of artwork, offered me a full scholarship and a teaching assistant (TA) position.

  With no money to fly there, I hadn’t visited Howard before I applied. Why bother? I didn’t need to inspect the dorm rooms or walk through The Yard to confirm what I already knew: this was my dream school, the Black Harvard, the Mecca. Having never set foot on campus before, the day I arrived at Howard was especially thrilling for me. Here, Blackness came in every shape, size, and hue, and I immediately felt at home.

  I’ll never forget my first visit to the Gallery of Art. Established in 1928, the gallery contained a permanent collection that featured the works of some of my favorite Black artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Robert Scott Duncanson, and Edmonia Lewis. In awe of the content of their work and the mastery of their technique, I admired them more than Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, or Pablo Picasso and was eager to have my artwork critiqued by those who revered them as much as I did. I was just as excited to be in a place that’s considered by many to be the epicenter of Black education, philosophy, and culture. Even though Howard was one of the leading HBCUs in the country and its student body was almost entirely Black, I wasn’t trying to be some sort of racial pioneer by going there.*It was simply the best fit for me, as my art focused on the Black experience and racial and social justice.

  People at Howard had all sorts of ideas about my ethnicity. In an interesting evolution, some HBCUs now have more white students than Black ones—Bluefield State College in Bluefield, West Virginia, for example, is 90 percent white—but Howard has remained steadfastly Black, and because of that, many people assumed I was, too.

  Others, however, upon first seeing me, assumed I was white—and with good reason. Even though I
was fulfilling a dream by attending Howard, my evolution toward Blackness actually took a step back during this time because Kevin disapproved of the fact that I didn’t mind—even preferred—being seen as Black or biracial. He didn’t understand why I had such an affinity for Blackness and why I felt more comfortable in the Black community than the white one. He also made it clear that he preferred my hair to be straight—and bleached blonde—and forbade me from wearing braids or Black hairstyles. It saddened me and made my efforts to blend in and socialize with my peers on campus more difficult, but I acquiesced. I was still operating under the belief that God’s law required me to submit to male authority, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t go to Heaven. Now that I was married I needed to yield to my husband’s will, even if that meant burying my own thoughts, feelings, and identity.

  Kevin’s worldview sprang from a poverty-stricken childhood in all-Black West Jackson, Mississippi. He’d grown up in a cockroach-infested home, where the kitchen sink was propped up on bricks, the bathroom sink was permanently clogged, and the shower had to be turned on and off with pliers. As a consequence, he’d come to equate poverty with Blackness and to idolize the rich white people he saw on television. He wasn’t the only Black child to think this way.

  The “White is Right” narrative is so ingrained in our culture most white people don’t even notice it. That most of the actors on the television shows we watch are white (a situation that was even more skewed during the 1980s and 90s), most of the people sporting Rolexes and driving Mercedes-Benzes in the advertisements we’re bombarded with are white, and most of the faces on the covers of the magazines we read are white casts whiteness as the norm, if not the pinnacle of beauty and success.

  Inroads are starting to be made. TV shows with Black leading characters or predominantly Black casts, such as Black-ish, Scandal, Queen Sugar, and Empire, have become more common and offer more nuanced approaches to discussing Black culture while addressing contemporary hot-button issues Black families face on a daily basis. But when Kevin was growing up, there weren’t any shows on television like them. From watching the shows that were popular at the time, he saw two very different worlds—the poor Black one he came from and the rich white one he saw on the screen—and if he had to pick one, who would choose poverty?