I just finished reading the wonderful collection of short stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires called “Heads of the Colored People.” She is a delightful writer, focusing mainly, in this work, on intra Black community relationships, and how the wider society’s notions of Blackness impact those moments that are just between Black people.

It’s a joyful thing, to discover for myself an author who pays attention to detail, tackles serious, intersectional issues with courage, and still manages to be savagely, heartbreakingly funny. Another thing I enjoyed was how she brought certain characters from one story to another, As if to say “why should their arc be only about that one dynamic, time, and place.” Such perfection.

There was one story that was directly about disability. It was called “This Todd.” There will be spoilers!

The main character, cleverly, is not disabled. So already we know that this is going to be a tale where the non-disabled person centers herself. She (unnamed) has a fetish for amputees. I would even say that it’s not amputees she fetishizes, but the missing limbs, what she can fill in herself. See what I mean when I compliment this writer???

She has dated several amputees, and, after each relationship ends, she calls them all Todd in her head. They are interchangeable, lumpable together. My God.

I shan’t get into too much summarizing. But each of the Todds eventually realizes in their own way that she is a fetishist, and they grow uncomfortable with it. And then she texts them after the fact and tells them they were disgusting anyway.

In one incident, “Todd” calls her out on how she is always staring eagerly at his stumps. She insists she finds him special and beautiful. Which of course he finds alienating.

She pressures “Todd” to go to the beach, and doesn’t even factor in how, after his amputations, he may not be ready for the displays of fitness there. But this is about her. She enjoys wheeling him around, and even scolds a child for staring and commenting. “Todd” is alarmed by her co-opting of his public persona, and rightly so.

In the last part of the story, she, an art major, designs prosthetic legs for “Todd” from wood. Of course they are not suitable. They are heavy, not fitted for him, and she is decidedly not a professional in this field. But, as always, this is about her vision for how to fill the void of the phantom limb. She is intent on creating prosthetics that match the different shades of Black skin.

She takes the legs to his apartment. One of them falls down the stairs, but she continues up with just one leg. “Todd” is alarmed to see her, shocked by her presumption that he should be thrilled about the wooden legs, and calls the police, forcing her to depart in a hurry.

There is so much symbolism here, I almost feel I like don’t have to write it. So what if one leg has clunked down the stairs? The point is not practicality anyway! The one leg still conveys her “ability to overlook his shortcomings.” She actually says this to herself.

She takes the wooden legs home and sleeps with them, even putting compression socks on them…. Here, I must pause to tip my hat to Thompson-Spires. What a symbol of a symbol of a symbol she has created. Artistic renditions of prosthetics, to take the place of amputated limbs.

Also, when her friend Chelsea tells her she’s in love with the legs and not the person, she replies, “He was the wrong Todd. I just have to find the right fit.” Wow. I mean..

This is literally how people are about racial and cultural exoticization, too. Waiting for someone with enough of an internal colonizer in their mind to come along, to co-sign all their appropriation and cosplay. Discarding anyone who resists.

And that’s why disability is its own issue, but is also about everything and everyone else. Because this story is also about how the wider world treats Black people, and the author is portraying how that mess can creep into relationships intra Black community. It’s not so different from white women constantly touching Black women’s hair, and claiming not to see why it’s harmful. Mind you, I get the sense that this narrator is a white woman, but still.

We need to have uncomfortable conversations about this in every community, yes? Because people do bring those messes into our private spaces all the time. And, by talking about disability, Thompson-Spires (almost painfully and remorselessly) makes it so our minds cannot handle how cringey it is, but we end up sliding sideways and seeing immediately how applicable this is to race.

And coming back to focus on disability: A great many people do this thing, just less, erm, artistically. Each encounter becoming about how gracious they are for giving the time of day to a disabled person. How amazing they are for wanting to stretch their capacity to do “disabled” things. Not being able to see anything BUT the person’s disability. A kind of objectification that is not at all benign, because, have we given the disabled person a chance to articulate how they wish to exist in the world before we wrote onto them as if they were a blank canvas?

And also, it may be that a disabled person does not have enough of a support system, but “Todd” is not asking her to be that for him in this case. Every attempt he makes to set boundaries, she stomps over.

One thing I thought deeply about as I read all the stories was: how much we make meaning out of people in an abstract way, not allowing them to be themselves. Black people are not a monolith. Nor are the disabled. If, as they say , we’ve met an autistic person, we’ve met one autistic person. And not just that; they get to be crabby, ungrateful (according to us), and turn down our overtures of friendship and solidarity. They can even be prejudiced. Some are.

I can hear at least a few people ask: so how DO we approach friendship or romance with a disabled person if every act of kindness could be read as condescension? I cannot answer this. I believe we must negotiate this anew with each person we meet, like any friendship. And if it goes sideways, it may not only be because of disability or our lack of understanding of it. It may be something else entirely, just like with any person.

How will we find out unless we stop talking over the other person’s self perception?

In a different story, “Todd,” who is actually Brian, has moved across the country to attend a different college because, as he puts it, he had a stalker, and there is a case ongoing against her. It’s mentioned very briefly, but the stuff mentioned in passing is usually the key.

We’ve had the experience of having had to remove our kids from activities where they were poorly treated due to disability. We’ve had to move house because of racist threats. It’s always the targeted person who has to make their life smaller, start over, lose community, financial stability, consistency of place. All because no one really expects the people who do the targeting to give up anything at all. Almost always, the targeted person has to cede the entire field. Keep trying to build a new world. Pray that a whole new set of people want to give them the time of day, and won’t meaning-make at their expense.

I’m sure we can all draw the parallels to the evil colonizer energy rampaging unchecked through the world, and the demonizing of every effort to hold those people accountable.

It’s worth asking ourselves what our own version of artistic renditions of dehumanization we may be sleeping with. How convenient if we never do anything but play with symbols…

Radha.

Source:

Thompson-Spires, Nafissa. Heads of the Colored People. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.