11.2.16 Out of the night

     When I was six, I would get off the school bus with my big brother and our next door neighbor, who was my best friend, and we would play 'Zorro' . Or my big brother's best friend Michael would come over and the four of us would race through the endless Pine Forest being Zorro. 
     When I was eight, my next younger brother joined us in our untiring game , and when I was ten my next brother too. 
     We would run like the wind, like agile fleet footed horses, over fallen trees and through deer thickets and past mossy land, veering by enormous Holly trees, calling 'Out of the night when the full moon is bright ...'
     Sometimes there would be a male revolt, where all of them would suddenly think about how they were all boys and I was a girl.
     They'd all say 'Hey, YOU can't be Zorro. You're a girl.' And I knew it was true. It was.
Zorro was a man and boys grow up into men and I was a girl and I could not be Zorro.
     But I also felt no different than my five brothers. Talk about all for one and one for all. We were FOR each other. And they were mine.
     And yeah, I noticed the world. When Cardinal Cushing came to speak at our Unitarian Church, I knew I'd never be a Cardinal.
     When Medgar Evers came to speak I knew I could never be Medgar Evers.
     When President Kennedy spoke on the tv, I knew I could never be President Kennedy.
The truth was just obvious.
     And when my friend down the street looked at President Kennedy or Cardinal Cushing, or Medgar Evers, I knew that she knew that she could never be Cardinal Cushing or President Kennedy or Medgar Evers. Or Zorro, either, because not only was she a girl, she was also black.
     That distressed me so much, the rules. There was no one to talk to about it. It seemed so certain , these rules. It seemed certain to me that nothing could be done.
     It didn't even connect in my mind, my parents' work with Fair Housing or the NAACP.
     It didn't seem as though any of this would ever change, and yet the rules made no sense to me.
     So when my brothers and neighbor every once in awhile started teasing me about being a girl and not getting to be Zorro, I'd ignore them. Or distract them. But I wouldn't give in.
     I too much longed to BE Zorro. Thundering about on a horse. Escaping. Saving people. Being cheered and loved. And I knew if I gave in, in my own mind, it would just be the beginning of the end.
     So I'd wait, and their crabby mean stuff would pass, and then we'd race off through the twilight, through the aromatic pines, each of us being Zorro.