Pas de Deux
On the other end of the line, my boyfriend’s voice admonishes me to go back home.
“What home?!?” I scream — half crying, half laughing — into the receiver.
Here we go again. Our moral high-ground pas de deux.
Entrée. The conversation always starts innocently enough. Pleasantries. How was work today? I don’t care which movie we watch — you pick. Did you hear what Trump said today? Anything can trigger the eventual escalation but politics, racism, and my job usually get us there quickest. The topic du jour is chosen. Silently, instinctively, we retreat to our corners.
Adagio. It begins slowly, often with me bemoaning the state of racial inequality in America or ridiculing the white girls with box braids and hippy pants traipsing around Kampala, ruining it for the rest of us. I deliberately and passionately argue positions that I feel are largely unimpeachable. Black Lives Matter. Cultural appropriation is bad. I mistake my boyfriend’s silence throughout my oral arguments as tacit support for my position.
Variations. Swiftly, the music changes. The mask of stoic silence drops as my boyfriend strides confidently to center stage to perform a variation on the theme of “you people” — a reverse-weaponized term he wields like a surgical blade. Cutting through layer after layer of skin and argument to remind me of the privilege afforded me by my pigment. An athletic grand jeté as he questions my authority to speak on anything to do with racial justice and inequality. A lightning-quick assemblé as he jokingly (but not really) refers to the voluntourists and Donald Trump voters as my “people.” A spectacular tour en l’air as he dismissively suggests I go back to America and fight for social justice at home. The not-so-subtle insinuation that I am just another white girl trying to save Africa lands hard and cuts deep, as he knows it will.
I try desperately to recover my place in his arms. With a graceful penché I lean in, seeking the support that was so swiftly withdrawn. It’s no use. As an Indian South African whose aunt was a main figure in the liberation struggle, his people are and always will be the real “people.” His experience and opinions are the only ones with any validity. His racial minority endows him with moral superiority. My original colonial sin deprives me of any right to object. We are partners in this dance, but we are certainly not equal.
Coda: It ends as it always does, with me in tears. Questioning my values and my worth, laughing sardonically at the suggestion that I go home. Where, exactly, is “home”? Is it the apartment in Kampala with the domestic trappings (bed, couch, towels, utensils, a few hardy succulents) that are hardly ever enjoyed for more than two weeks at a time? Is it the house in New Jersey with The Purple Front Door, inhabited by childhood memories and long-suffering parents who manage to endure my prolonged periods of absence? Is it the apartment in Johannesburg, heavy with the silence of unspoken needs and emotional abuse?
I hang up the phone, knowing full well that I will pick it up when he calls tomorrow and acts like nothing is wrong. Because, right now, he is the only home I know.
