SHYLO SHANER

The sound of an oscillating fan has always been nostalgic for me. It reminds me of the mid-day naps I was forced to take as a child by one Ms. Hattie Mae Major. She was my Gramma’s best friend who watched me while my Gramma was at work. She was also blind. Around one or two o’clock, I would reluctantly have to peel myself from “Skinnamarinky rinkying” or watching The Adventures of a Koala Bear, once Ms. Major would holler from her bedroom to the living room to “come get in the bed.” It was in this time I became witness to another story. It was a story of peace and imagination.

I found my space in her big queen size bed next to the wall and window. Ms. Major would take a seat in her chair next to the door, probably to ensure I didn’t sneak out. In her words, I was a little motor scooter. Then she would turn the knob of her radio on and skim through the channels until she landed on her stories. She usually ate or knitted while listening. I’d watch her a bit. I’d listen along with her to the drama between Ted and Samantha, or whatever their names were. Many of the times I’d look out the window to see banana trees, blue skies with big puffy Florida clouds, or the cliche pink flamingo in the yard, and I’d imagine. I would imagine my Gramma was rich. I’d imagine I had all the toys I wanted. I imagined living in a house without turmoil.

I remember my first grade teacher coming up to me to ask if everything was okay at home. I remember not knowing how to answer that question. I was born to a white woman, who after being verbally and physically abused by her own mother, mentally snapped in her thirties. She then met my father at a corner store in Inglewood and asked him to help her with the broken pipes of her kitchen sink. Let my mother tell it, they fell in love. They had my brother who was lost to the state. My father did some time in prison for gambling at the horse tracks. Somehow they met up three years later and conceived me. This is the only blurry account I have from my mother of my father Tyrone. My mother was able to keep hold of me a little longer than my brother.

I remember my foster home. Specifically I remember the big brown couch my social worker left me on. I remember many unkind things that happened to me in that foster home. I also remember telling my Gramma, my mother’s sister (I know that makes her my aunt but I called her Gramma instead), I hated her when we met for the second time. Little did I know, I would grow to love her. She plucked me from that foster home in Southern California and moved me to Pine Hills, Orlando, Florida. I also didn’t know she had an ongoing battle with alcohol and was in love with Ms. Major’s son who became addicted crack and was in and out of the prison industrial complex. I would grow to love and hate him all in one breath. The two black men of my life both had interactions with the prison system. I grew to learn this wasn’t a coincidence.

As I continued to lay atop Ms. Major’s flower printed covers, I imagined all the things that wouldn’t come true while simultaneously fighting my sleep. Every now and then the thick humid air would surprise me with a breeze so soft and cool my eyes would become heavy. Ms. Major’s muffled commentary, her “hmph’s” and sucking of her teeth would remind me she was still there watching over me as she listened to her tale of the day. As my body and mind finally began to surrender to the sleep that was sure to come, I was at peace for a moment. Ms. Major knew my home life and knew I needed a nap. The mid-day naps she made me take allowed for something else. They allowed me the safe space to imagine and let my mind be free. It was an active but restful space to be.

Today when I get on and off the table for my Alexander Technique active rest session and hear the sound of the oscillating fan in the room, I am reminded of Ms. Major. She taught me early on the importance of creating a space to recharge so you can continue the good fight. I tell stories for people like Ms. Major, an everyday hero who the world at large might not ever know if I don’t say her name. Stories are everywhere you look. It’s the lens and framing in which we tell these stories through that must change. No longer can stories like mine be told through the sole lens of a white cis straight able bodied man. Ms. Major allowed me rest, peace, and a safe space to imagine. She gave me the tools I needed for the life long fight she knew I had ahead of me. So I fight for marginalized and shout we are here in the most imaginative way I think there is. I fight as a storyteller.