The Arkansas Arts Council’s GetSmart! Learning series was the forum for a three-part virtual series, “Still I Rise: Women’s History Month Celebration,” during Women’s History Month 2020. The series included an author’s talk, featuring Robin White; a session centered around women sharing messages from their mother and other women in their lives, and during the final session, women were invited to share their stories of survival through the trauma of the global COVID season. Participants represented a diverse and intergenerational cross section of women throughout and outside the state of Arkansas, all sharing unique stories of the challenges, lessons, victories and dreams that impact their lives.

 As a follow-up to the writing and sharing series, the Arkansas Arts Council held an open submission for women who had participated in the Women’s History Month Celebration and others, to write and submit their own short memoirs and personal stories for possible inclusion in the Messages from our Mothers and Other Women Anthology.

We are excited to share these stories with our audience! We hope you will enjoy reading them and share them with your own circles. 

The Color Red

by Janet Holmes Uchendu

I love red, yellow, green, orange, blue, and purple. I love deep reds with blue undertones versus bright reds. I love vibrant yellow versus pastel. I love cobalt blue, and indigo, and any shade of purple.

I am as black as night and grew up being called skillet. Although now I wouldn’t trade nothing for the color of the skin I’m in, back then I had no understanding of just how beautiful was this shade I parade.

I remember, as a teenager, my mother once took me to shop for school clothes, and there was this beautiful pair of red pants I wanted. She said, “You can’t wear those because you are too dark.”

As a child, how do you process this? I tucked it away in the same place I put skillet, unaware that one day I would come face to face with the hurt and would need to examine the hurt and the harm.

As an adult I now understand my mother meant no harm. She was a product of her time and was just trying to protect her chocolate child who was too dark to wear a vibrant red because it would call too much attention.

So, I grew up ever mindful to not call attention to myself.

By ninth grade I was 5 feet 11 and three quarter inches. One quarter inch shy of six feet, which I achieved on any given day by simply wearing any shoes—tennis shoes, sandals, or flats. And, yes, I wore heels.

In the late sixties and seventies, I was tall for a girl, and taller than all the boys in my class. Thank goodness some of them eventually caught up. I started slouching and rounding my shoulders to make myself appear shorter. My mother’s response: “Don’t slouch; stand up straight; hold your head high.”

My inner dialogue: “But, you told me to not draw attention to myself.”

By ninth grade, my top half had developed nicely, effectively making my face disappear as far as boys were concerned. Their eyes had trouble rising above the level of my boobs. All the slouching in the world could not conceal them.

So, here I was, tall and thin, with a “bod.” I often thought of myself when I heard the song Tall, Tan, and Teasing, except I wasn’t tan, and I wasn’t a tease. A tease! Heaven forbid!

Also, by the time I graduated from high school, though my mother couldn’t express it, in her soul she knew what I would come to know, that my design, and every design is divine. God’s design was calling attention. So, in addition to, “Don’t slouch; stand up straight; hold your head high,” she added, “You are beautiful.” I could see she was proud of me.

I love the color red. It looks good on me, and I can now feel my mother smiling down from above every time I wear it.

_______________________

Janet Holmes Uchendu is a writer. She has a B.A. in Music Education from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, AR. Prior to leaving the workforce in June 2020, she spent twelve years working in the Museum School at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, formerly the Arkansas Arts Center, in Little Rock, AR. She took her first writing course, Introduction to Creative Writing, in April 2018, at the University of Central Arkansas, Conway, (UCA). She is thrilled that she has been accepted into the graduate program at UCA, and in fall 2021 at the age of 66 she will begin pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing.