Host: Jenifer Hixson
[overture music]
Jenifer: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jenifer Hixson. In this hour, stories about control, wanting it, wrestling it from the powers that be, or happily surrendering it to those more capable. Whether it's a mighty battle for absolute command or a slight power adjustment. So, you maybe could just, get a little sway.
The battle for control begins in childhood with your parental overlords and sometimes extends into adulthood, which is the case with our first storyteller, Dame Wilburn. You may recognize Dame's voice, either from her first Moth Mainstage story where she attempts to take control by lifting a curse. Highly recommend that one. Or, maybe you'll recognize her as one of the guest hosts on our Radio Hour and podcast. If you know Dame, you know that she rarely follows the rules. Dame is a rebel.
In this first story, we get to meet the woman who inspired the rebellion, Dame's mother, a woman so fierce, Dame weaves a tangled web to avoid her wrath. Live in her home city of Detroit, where we partnered with Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, here's Dame Wilburn.
[cheers and applause]
Dame: [00:01:26] My father died the sophomore year that I was in college. And this made me the sole focus of my mother, the Dragon. [audience laughter] Now, she got that name, because she wanted me to be a free spirit, but she was never prepared when I did free spirited stuff. [audience laughter] She would always respond to these moments with volcanic levels of fury that could only be described as dragonesque. [audience laughter]
She was 5’10” in heels. She kept her talons sharpened. She would wear $2,000 worth of power suits and accoutrements, and she would smoke under no smoking signs for kicks. [audience laughter] She also once sent a man, a pink slip. He was in a coma and she sent it to the hospital and had his wife sign for it. [audience laughter]
This is the woman whose eyes are boring into the back of my head, as I sit at my graduation with my diploma holder trembling in my hand. This holder, and I have a secret. And we learned this secret about three months ago when my counselor said I was a few credits short of graduating. [audience laughter] I was 15 credits short of graduating.
Now, if you don't go to college and don't understand what that means, that's a semester. [audience laughter] So, I had somehow managed to be in school for five years [audience laughter] and still be a semester short of graduating. [audience applause]
Thank you. Some of y'all did it. It was also at that meeting that she told me that if you weren't graduating until the fall, you could walk in the spring. And that's when it started.
I began to come up with a plot that would extend the time between the time I graduated and the time my mother, the Dragon, found out that I hadn't graduated, [audience laughter] which means I've got a problem. While I'm sitting here in this chair-- Now, I don't know how many of you have run a con, but [audience laughter] if you're running a con, evidence is bad. [audience laughter] Holding it is worse. And I'm holding something that's empty, so I need a Hail Mary pass. That's when I look to the young lady next to me and I see that she has a form letter that says, the reason she didn't get her diploma is because she didn't pay her last bill. I take this out of her hand, put it in my diploma holder, throw my hat up into the sky and celebrate my graduation. [audience laughter]
Now, I walk outside and I get into the parking lot, and my mother makes a beeline for me and snatches that holder off from under my arm, because she can smell blood in the water. [audience laughter] She opens it up, reads it and says, “Makes sense.” And we go off to dinner. [audience laughter] And baby, it was beautiful. I now have little time on my hands, but here's one of my issues now I can't go home, because under her direct gaze, I'm going to crack, okay? [audience laughter] So, I told her, “Well, I'm going to work campus security for the summer. And then when I come home in the fall, I'll get a job.” [audience laughter]
Now, the key to a good lie is that it's got some truth in it. I'm a cabin security officer. At least I was until I had an administrator and a police officer knock on my dorm door. Okay. Now, the word they use is embezzlement, [audience laughter] but I feel like that word is too big. [audience laughter] Okay, stay with me. [audience laughter] At the time, I had access to the charge account for campus security at the school bookstore. And apparently, I had run up a charge of about $700. Exactly. [audience laughter] So, the admin informed me that I had two options. “You can quit your job, pay the money back.” Or, “We can fire you, you can pay the money back plus court costs, and you can go to jail.” The officer informed me that embezzlement has a 15-year jail time. And I thought about it. [audience laughter]
Now, the reason I thought about it, much to the bemusement of the officer, was I was pretty sure the Dragon was never going to get her talons through those jail walls. [audience laughter] And I might actually be safer with the cops than I was at home. But I also knew I couldn't really go to jail and tell my fellow inmates that I had embezzled $700 worth of pizza flavored combos. [audience laughter] So, I took option one.
Now I find myself in another, little problem. Because as a campus security officer, I could stay on campus for the summer for free, but I don't have that job, and I owe the bookstore $700. And to stay on campus, I've got to pay a grand. Can't ask the Dragon. So, this is where modified con number three comes in. [audience laughter] Okay, hold on. Stay with me. We got this together. We're going to be all right. So, I called my godparents and told them that my mother had fallen on hard times. My mother hadn't been on hard times since she was two. [audience laughter] I said she'd fallen on hard times and I needed them to pay this bill, because I didn't want to ask her for the money.
Okay. Now we got it. We have tied up all the loose ends, everything is gravy, I've got the whole summer to figure out what I'm going to say to her. Well, while I was doing all that plotting and thinking, I had forgotten to get myself enough money to eat. And that's when I started reading magazines, I started reading the newspaper, I started watching the news and I turned myself into one hell of a dinner guest. I've got good shoes, I've got good manners, I know how to talk to people. I'm witty and urbane. [audience laughter] I was raised right mostly. And people love to have me over. I'm good at getting myself invited to things I'm not supposed to go to.
But the end of summer, it snuck up on me pretty quickly. And my buddy came in from New York, and I told him everything I had going on. And he said, “You know, you might be some evil genius. [audience laughter] I hope one day you're going to use your powers for good.” [audience laughter] And that's when it all hit me. I'm out of lives, I'm out of people, I'm out of time, I'm out of chances. I got one more card to play, and that's the truth. And it dawns on me. I got to call the Dragon.
Now, I'm not going to call her and talk to her. Absolutely not. So, I waited till she went to work, and then I called home and left a message on her answering machine. [audience laughter] And the message I left was, “Hi. It's Dame. I didn't graduate and I'm actually 15 credit hours short. The school says I got to pay $1,500 by end of business on Friday, so that I can register for the fall semester. If you've got it, great. But if you don't, let me know. Thanks. Bye.” [audience laughter]
Now, you got to understand, I don't know how many of you have ever run a four-part con, but the key to doing it is to not talk to anybody. So, I hadn't answered the phone in four months. Because talking to people is how you give up, what evidence. Once I left that message for her, I shut off the ringer on my phone, turned the answering machine volume all the way down and took a three-hour nap. [audience laughter] When I woke up, my answering machine light was blinking at me angrily. It took everything in me to press that button. But I played the message and this is what it said, “I will be at Siena Heights at noon on Friday. I expect to speak with you in person. Click.” It's not terrifying at all. [audience laughter]
So, when I told my counselor everything that had gone on, I came clean to her, she said, “I think it's best that you two not meet in private.” [audience laughter] I think you should meet in the music room, and I'm going to be in my office and we're going to leave all the doors open. [audience laughter] This woman had met my mother one time, [audience laughter] but she knew what I was up against. And that's how I ended up clutching a music stand, staring into the eyes of the Dragon.
Now I'm waiting for the speech, “You know, you're a liar, you're a cheater, you have a chronic lack of ambition. You know, the speech I've been getting my whole life.” But she starts crying and she says, “Do you know what it's like to not know where your child is? Do you know what it's like to leave message after message and not get it returned? Do you know that I contacted the Michigan State Police Department and tried to have you declared as a missing person, but they informed me that I couldn't do it because you were 24 years old and you were an adult and you didn't have to call your mom?”
Now, my mother didn't cry at her mother's funeral. So, I'm touched and moved by this. However, the hustler in me was thinking about how the Michigan State Police Department got my back. [audience laughter] I am an adult. I don't have to talk to my mama. The Popo is on my side. [audience laughter] And that's what gave me the courage to tell her, “Do you know what it's like to be the singular focus of a very focused mother? Do you know what it's like to have no control over your childhood and see that it's going to spill into your adulthood? Do you know what it's like to get a diploma you don't really want in a degree you don't really want for somebody else?”
And then she asked me a question for the first time in 24 years. She said, “What do you want to do next?” I said, “I want to finish.” We walked over to the business office and she wrote a check. We walked outside, and that's when the sun hit and she pulled up to her full height, and you could hear the leathery edges of her wings snapping in the wind. [audience laughter] And she unclenched her talons and put one right up against my jugular and she said, “You need to get the hell out of this school, because I'm not paying one more dime for your education.”
I thanked her and she drove off. But I didn't need her pep talk. I already knew what I wanted to do. I walked off that campus with the highest GPA of my entire educational career, a 3.0 - [audience cheers and applause] -and my own set of leather wings. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:15:27] That was Dame Wilburn. I called Dame to talk about her mother and her mother's legacy, and here's some of that conversation.
So, in the story, you paint her, she's pretty fierce. But she has a tender side, though too.
Dame: [00:15:43] She does. And the reason I paid her as fierce-- My mother passed away in 2007, and she was home. So, I was with her when she passed. Some of the last coherent things that she said to me, was that I would tell people that she was a bad mother. And I said to her, “You weren't a bad mother. And if I speak about you to people, what I will say to them is, you were formidable.”
I was not an easy child to raise. I was interested in everything and nothing all at once. I was a comedian, and I was a charmer and easily able to get in and out of things. What I thought I did was I driven my mother to distraction. In these later years, I've talked to her sister. She said, “Your mother never talked to me or anybody else that I know of as if you were a burden.” When I heard that, I started crying, because my perception of how I had been [chuckles] as a child was not my mother's perception at all. As I've gotten older, that's been of a real comfort.
Jenifer: [00:16:55] Dame Wilburn talking about her mother, Mrs. Alberta Wilburn. Dame has a set of dragon wings that would make her mother proud. I've seen them flapping with my own eyes.
Dame: [00:17:08] I also was thinking about sending you the tattoo I have on my right arm. It's the first tattoo I ever got. I hid it from her for a year before she finally saw it one day. And she said, “What's that?” And it's a dragon. And I said, “Well, I was going to get a heart that said mom in it, but they were all out of red, so I just got a portrait of you.” “Stop. That is perfect.”
Jenifer: [00:17:35] To see a picture of the dragon tattoo she got in honor of her mother, visit themoth.org.
In a moment, a story about losing control on the road and also in a second-grade classroom, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:18:10] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Jenifer: [00:18:22] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson. We're sharing stories about trying to exercise power over others and sometimes over ourselves.
This next one is from Tod Kelly. He told it at a Portland GrandSLAM, where we partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here's Tod.
[cheers and applause]
Tod: [00:18:46] It's very important for me that you understand that I am not a violent person. I'm very even keeled. I never lose my temper. In fact, at one point when I was 25 years old, my girlfriend of a year broke up with me, because she said I was too even tempered and even keeled. She said that I so was afraid to ever get angry, that her words were, I was like a woman. And to quote her, she could find a better, more masculine man on the open market.
This breakup had ripples that I didn't see coming, because in addition to being my girlfriend of a year, we had drifted off with her friends and I'd become estranged from my own. And I started about six months prior working for her sister, who, now that we weren't together, let me know that she didn't like me and was waiting for a reason to fire me, which I was making too easy, because I was really terrible at my job. I kept showing up late, and I knew if I showed up late one more time, this is about a month after we've broken up, that I'm going to get fired.
And so, I set my alarm and I am on my way to work from my crappy life to my crappy job driving my crappy Mazda, which is 20 years old. It's the kind of car where it makes these noise that frighten you, and so you turn the stereo up, so you're not afraid to drive it. I don't know, I can't move past anything in my life, and I'm thinking about how I have nothing to look forward to when I see something come directly at me on the freeway from the window. It is a black car hurtling toward me.
I swerve over and actually go off of the highway onto the parking strip. And the car is, in fact, I immediately notice it's not out of control. It's just cutting me off. It's this incredibly expensive, black, gorgeous BMW. And the person clear, how could he have not known that he just run me off the road, doesn't think anything of it, just shoots on along through traffic. I had this moment of clarity where I decided everything in my life would better if I passed him and cut him off. [audience laughter]
And this is rush hour traffic and it's in Portland and Everybody's going about 35 or 40 miles an hour, except the guy who I'm chasing, who's going about 60. It sounds more dangerous than it probably is. He's a phenomenal driver. [audience laughter] And this car, it handles beautifully. It's almost as if all the other cars recognize that this is a superior car and they have to get out of the way. [audience laughter] It's like watching a dolphin go through water. [audience laughter] I would have no chance of following him, because now I'm going in his wake. He's going back and forth, and it suddenly hits me. I suddenly know he knows that I'm following him and that's why he's going faster. This is why he won't do anything.
We come up and we get to the exit where I'm supposed to get off and get to work on time. I think, no, [audience laughter] because justice has to be served. [audience laughter] So, I barrel on. We're going and we're going. We're going through the curves. I should not go through the curves in this car, because it's an odd thing about my car. Not all the times, but sometimes when you turn the wheel, it's a little while before the thing turns. So, I'm now actually cutting other people off accidentally. Again, before you think, hypocritical asshole cutting off, cutting off for justice, they are very different things. [audience laughter] I'm not falling back, but I'm not catching up to him.
And I keep going and we go. And finally, we're passing Tualatin. I'm now 15 miles past my work. [audience laughter] We get up to the 205 interchange, and suddenly cars are going off there and it breaks open and I can see and he's 10 car lengths ahead of me. He hits the open space. He's going 60. And then, clearly, he just puts his foot on the grass and he leaves it there, because he goes from 60 to 90. Boom. And he is like a comet. It's like those cartoons where you see the car suddenly shrink in size. But that's okay, because I'm just a few seconds behind him. And then, I hit the open space and I hit my accelerator. I hold it out and I go from 60. I'm still going 60, because piece of shit car. [audience laughter]
I should turn around, but I don't because I think I can't stop now. [audience laughter] And then, a miracle happens. As I start to get towards Wilsonville [audience laughter] there's something happening on the highway that's caused great congestion. And he's the last car in the fast lane. I can say, “Oh, boy.” He's seeing me coming in his rearview. He knows it's coming. He knows it's coming and I can feel the adrenaline. I feel amazing.
And suddenly, he branches off and he gets off and I follow him. [audience laughter] I think I'm going to confront him. He parks immediately in this business park, and he gets out and I'm like, “He's going to have it out with me.” I get out. And he's really big. [audience laughter] And that flight part of me goes, we're terrible at this. And I'm like, “No, today we're going to try it.” I walk up to him and I go, “Hey.” And he turns around and it's the moment I see his face and his expression that I know he has no idea who I am, he has no idea what's happened, he has no idea he's cut me off and I have no idea what to say. [audience laughter] All I can say is, “You cut me off.” And he said, “Oh, God, I'm sorry” right at the [unintelligible [00:24:57] off ramp. And I'm like, “No, 20 miles ago.” [audience laughter]
And he's looking at me and not in an unkind way, he's like, “Are you going to cry?” [audience laughter] And I was. I can feel the tears welling up. I want to say my life is out of control and it's shit and I just want something to go right. But all I can say is, “You cut me off.” [audience laughter] And he says in the coolest, kindest way, “I am so sorry. I was late, and I wasn't paying attention and it looks like you're having a rough time. I’m so sorry that I made it worse for you. I'm terribly sorry.” I hadn't had anybody apologize to me about anything in forever, and it just felt amazing.
If this were an ABC After School special, suddenly my life would have changed. But it didn't, of course. Except that in that moment it did. I just felt better, and I apologized and I thanked him, and I got in the car and I started to drive off to work, knowing as soon as I was going to get there, I was going to put in my two weeks’ notice and I was going to start asking myself, seriously, what do I need to do to get my life back on track? Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:26:34] That was Tod Kelly. Tod says that what happened that day in his 1983 Mazda 323 was totally out of character. I asked him why he thought he lost it that day. And he said, “Heck if I know. Maybe it was my brain's way of telling my heart it was time to grow up and move on.” And that's what he did. After Tod quit the dead-end job, he bartended for a spell, then had a successful career in risk management. And these days, Tod is a journalist who also produces live shows in Portland, Oregon.
For people whose North Star is predictability and order, any deviation from the path can be a challenge. Our next story was told by Gabriel Woods Lamanuzzi at a StorySLAM in Boston, where we partner with PRX and public radio station WBUO. Here's Gabriel.
[applause]
Gabriel: [00:27:40] Okay. So, I'm the type of person with assigned pegs for each specific coat that I own and very much assigned slots for each utensil in my kitchen drawers. This pillow in my world goes with this pillowcase only. Every time my girlfriend leaves her keys in my key spot, I have to just pray for patience. Left to my own devices, all of the spice bottles in my cabinets would be label facing forward, because I'm not a barbarian. [audience laughter] When it's down halfway, I take the soap dispenser in the bathroom and switch it with the one in the kitchen, which is used up more slowly, so that they can deplete at the same time and be filled up simultaneously, [audience laughter] I consider this peak brilliance. So, you get the picture.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a lover of and at times a refugee in order. Predictability, organization, these are things that help me maintain sanity in an otherwise chaotic and overwhelming world. So, make a plan, have a routine, everything's just safer and better that way. Well, when I went off to college, settle on a major in cognitive science, partly because the research is awesome, and partly so I could just be tucked away in a neat, orderly little lab somewhere.
Well, my junior year of college, I ended up stumbling my way into an education course. And the professor was an amazing human being. I had great classmates. I was having a good time. But part of the requirement for this class was going to a local classroom a couple times a week. And the final project was I had to teach a lesson about states of matter using mystery goop. Okay, what is mystery goop?
So, mystery goop is this mixture of cornstarch and water that when you get the perfect ratio, it's liquidy when you move it slowly but solidy if you squeeze it really suddenly or punch it or something. It's pretty cool stuff. So, I decide I'm going to plan the shit out of this lesson, right? I'm going to do warm up discussion with my students, and we're going to list different liquids and solids and gases, and we're going to have a worksheet for them to write down their observations while they explore the mystery goop in a calm, orderly, civilized fashion. [audience laughter] This is second grade, by the way. [audience laughter] I was new. All right.
So, the night before I have everything laid out and the morning of I wake up early and I excitedly start mixing the concoction, my mind's wandering as I'm mixing one cup of cornstarch, two cups of water, one cup of cornstarch, another two cups of water, and I realize that I have no mystery goop developing below me in the Tupperware. Instead, I just have white water, totally liquid. So, I add a bit more cornstarch and then more and then all of my cornstarch, and it's still just white water. That's when I realized that I got the ratio backwards, and I halved the cornstarch and doubled the water. So, my orderly world just crumbles. In this moment.
The scientist in me decides the best option is to evaporate the extra water as rapidly as possible. So, I put it in the microwave. [audience laughter] All this does is cook it into some weird, fluffy mass, right? So, it's got all of the mystery and none of the goop. [audience laughter] That's okay. It's okay, I have time. So, I get my car and I go to the grocery store to get some backup cornstarch. When I get back to my car, the battery is dead. Okay. By the time, I get to school, I'm running way late and I have no goop. I am officially goop-less, which is not a place you want to be in if you want to win over a classroom full of second graders.
So, I rush to the back of the room and the head teacher's run and things. I'm frantically but carefully mixing the cornstarch and water in my backup Tupperware with my spoon. And it's working. I've got this muck in front of me, right? It's great. I turn around to get the work sheets out of my backpack, and I turn back around and the spoon is gone. I look for a culprit nearby, and there's no students and I realize I lift the Tupperware up, and there at the bottom of the goop through the see through bottom, is my spoon. So, with a sigh, I reach in and take out my spoon. I'm standing there, hand dripping goop, frantic, frenzied eyes, you know, looking around the room. And you know what? The kids freaking loved it, right?
When we got the lesson rolling, there were squeals of delight and kids were shouting for their friends, “Hey, look at this.” There was dried goop dust on hands and pens and desks and my soul. [audience laughter] Students were arguing if it was a liquid or a solid. There was that one kid who was debating that it was a gas, because if you're lucky, there's always that one kid. [audience laughter] Only if you're lucky. I looked around the room and realized that it was full of curiosity and laughter. I realized that I was laughing too. I had actually laughed every time something went wrong that morning with the floofy mass with the spoon spelunking. Maybe I didn't laugh with the car battery, but my point is that even though things went spectacularly awry in ways I hadn't even imagined, I was having a darn good time. I did not feel safe, and I was not in my comfort zones and I was most assuredly also frantic and anxious, but it was working. I felt alive.
Anyway, that graduation requirement turned into an education minor. And instead of doing brain research, the past five years, I've been teaching all around the world. And for every piece of organization and predictability that I've given up in my classrooms, I've welcomed in equal parts, adventure and joy. And that's a ratio I've worked really hard to get right. I got to say, my students have really taught me a lot about living a better life. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:33:37] That was Gabriel Woods Lamanuzzi. As you heard, Gabe is now a teacher and says, “I believe that education should be applicable, empowering and joyful.” To see a picture of Gabriel in his highly organized workspace with a place for everything and everything in its place, visit themoth.org, where you can also download the story. There you'll also find a picture of him joyfully showing the disorganized spice rack he shares with his girlfriend, because compromise makes for harmony, Gabriel has yielded control of the spice situation. I'm proud of you, Gabe.
Coming up, a story about skinheads in London, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[softhearted music]
Jay: [00:34:38] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Jenifer: [00:34:51] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson. In this show, we're sharing stories about how people confront power.
Our final story was told by Nimisha Ladva. She told this at a Moth Mainstage at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn, New York. Here's Nimisha.
[applause]
Nimisha: [00:35:18] I grew up in England, the daughter of Indian immigrants. The spring that I turn 11, there is violence in Brixton. It's an area of London. Skinheads, police and dark-skinned people, some who look like me, are clashing. On TV, there are images of things on fire. My father talks to my brother and me and says, “There's nothing for us to worry about. We don't live near the violence, we don't live near any skinheads and we should just carry on doing what we do and being who we are.”
So, one of the things we are is vegetarian Hindus. When bugs get into our house, we don't kill them, we take them outside. So, that spring, a gigantic wasp gets into the house. The stinger is visible to the naked eye. My mother rolls up a newspaper, asks God for forgiveness, [audience laughter] and then does what she has to do. She hands the weapon to my father. [audience laughter] But my dad does not take it. He walks up to the window where the wasp is, and with his bare hands, cups them around the wasp and walks outside and simply lets it free. Then he turns to me and my brother and says, “I'm your father. My job is to put things where they belong, including you two monkeys.”
To be honest, my brother and I do not care that we have just been insulted. Because in that moment, we are figuring out that our father, skinny shoulders, thick glasses, Indian accent, that guy, that guy might be badass. [audience laughter] So, in the neighborhood where we live, we are the only people of color. We are such anomaly that there's this one day, I'm outside in the front garden, visible to everyone, when a neighbor walks by with a friend and announces passing my house, “Here is where the colored family lives.” The kids at school could sometimes be cruel. When the incidents added up, my father would come to school, talk to the headmistress and leave with assurances from the grownups that they would seek to make my condition better.
Now, that said, I will say that I did have friends at school. For example, there was Deborah. I not only liked Deborah, I really liked her little brother, Michael, as well. And Deborah's mom was a baker. She would tell me things about sponge cake, and fruit tarts, and shortbread in three flavors and chocolate biscuits. I'm just amazed, because in my house, when my mom finds an eggplant at the market, she makes eggplant curry, and that is supposed to be a treat for us. And it's not working for us.
So, when I get invited to Deborah's house for tea, I'm really excited. So, I ask my parents’ for permission. They say yes. I go to school the next day. I wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for the school day to end. It finally does, and it is time to go to Deborah's house and eat that stuff. I'm really excited, actually to also meet Deborah's mother, because she's making all this magical stuff. And she's raised these lovely children. I'm really just so excited.
So, we start walking to her house. And the pavement's a bit narrow, so we have to take turns holding Michael's hand. We're talking about how many treats we can eat before we get into trouble, and is it rude to eat two at a time? We finally get to the door and I'm really excited. Deborah presses the doorbell, and her mom opens the door and I look at her. As soon as I see her, I know that something is wrong. So, I watch her eyes, and I look to see where she is looking. She's looking at my hand, holding Michael's.
The first thing out of her mouth. “Michael, why don't you go inside and wash your hands? Wash them twice, dear.” Then she turns to Deborah, “Deborah, is this your friend you wanted to bring over for tea? Is this Felicia?” I'm so shocked and scared. I don't have the nerve to tell her that I am not Felicia. My name is Nimisha. Then she says to Deborah, “Well, dear, you really should have known better. Why don't you tell her that she can't come inside and that she's not welcome.”
Each word is poison. And I am stung. I am stung with shame and fear, and the brand-new knowledge that the touch of my hand is something that has to be washed away. I wish and wish and wish that my father was here, that he would come and do something about Deborah's mother for me, because I am not ready. I am not ready to do anything about Deborah's mother myself. Deborah doesn't say anything to me and I don't say anything to her. And at school, we pretend nothing happened.
A few weeks later, my family and I are on the bus. We're coming home, like we always do. We get to our bus stop, we get off. The only thing we have to do to get home is cross the street and walk about 10 houses down. The problem is, on this day, we get off the bus. And right across the street, right where we have to walk, there is a group of maybe 15 young men with very closely shaved heads, skinheads. Some of them have armbands with swastikas on them. They are like the men I've seen on TV.
As soon as they see us, they start to shout at us, “We hate you. Go back to where you came from. Go back to the jungle.” And then, to my mother, who is draped in a sari, “Take it off.” So, my mother takes my hand and my brother's hand and she walks away. She walks away from the skinheads, away from our house. But my father stops her, “[foreign language] Our house is this way. And he points right into the middle of the nest of skinheads.
One of them looks up. He makes eye contact with my father. And once they see each other, my father walks so fast and so sure across the street that even the skinheads make way for him. Then he puts his dark face right next to the young skinhead. And I see what my father has just seen before. It's our neighbor's son. My father speaks. “Good God, Frank. Does your father know you are here? You are with these people?” Then he turns around, and he grabs my hand, and he grabs my brother's hand, my mom comes with us, and we walk home right through the skinheads.
[applause]
Because my dad really is badass. [audience laughter] The next day, I hear my parents talking. My dad wants to go to Frank's house and talk to his father. My mom really doesn't want him to. She doesn't want to make things worse than they already are, and they start to argue. And then, I hear my father, “I am going, okay? I am going. It is the right thing to do.” So, he goes.
A few hours after his visit, the doorbell rings. I go to the top of the stairs to see what's happening. And it's Frank. He's not wearing his skinhead jacket. Just his school uniform. My father opens a door, “It's good to see you, son. Come on in. Cup of tea?” So, they have a cup of tea and talk for a while. And Frank apologizes. My dad says to him, “You did the right thing coming here today, son.” Frank is blushing. He looks like an ordinary boy now. No stinger. My dad cups his hand, puts it on Frank's back and simply walks him outside.
As the news keeps bringing more and more reports of violence and racist hatred, my dad decides, it's time to leave England. So, he moves us to America. [audience laughter] In this country, I have grown up to be, among other things, a dark-skinned woman married to a nice Jewish boy from Chicago. [audience laughter] I've always assumed a happy, multicultural future for us. Diwali and Hanukkah, samosas and latkes. [audience laughter] Two cultures, double the fun, twice the love. Perfect.
This summer, I stopped taking that future for granted. We're at the beach in Delaware. My children are digging a giant hole in the ground with their father. It's what they do. So, I take a boogie board and I head out into the ocean. I'm waiting for a wave and I'm behind a group of young people and I'm closest to a man. He's probably 19 or 20 years old. I catch something that he says. “Hey, Rachel, are you a Jew?” The girl says, “No.” And he says, totally casual, “Well, that's good. And you know what? I just knocked down two hijabis down there.” I look to where he's pointing. I see the two girls with headscarves. They are barely middle school age.
The next wave carries me back to shore. The same wave knocks the young man down. I get out of the water and I join my family. But I can hear him cursing. He is in a foul mood and he is getting closer to my family. I stand up, I put my hands at my hips and I stand in front of my children. The man is getting closer and my heartbeat quickens, I start to breathe shallow and fast. I look back at my children, they are lost in their play. But for the first time, I'm worried. I am worried that with their two cultures, can they be hated two ways? I'm thinking of my father.
In this September, he will be 75 years old. He has had a brain tumor, operated on twice. He now walks with a walker, and his hands shake a lot. I look back up at the man and I wonder, is my children's burden twice mine? The answer comes to me in my father's voice, “No. Not today. Not now.” I look back at the man. My father can no longer take the wasps out himself, but I can and I am ready. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:48:59] That was Nimisha Ladva. She teaches writing, oral communication and public speaking at Haverford College. Nimisha’s dad has slowed down slightly, but is still 100% a badass. To see a picture of young Nimisha and her family outside the home they left behind in England, visit themoth.org.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:42] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns and Jenifer Hixson, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Coproducer is Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, bass guitar instrumentalists, Duke Levine and Boubacar Traoré. We receive funding from the National Institution Endowment for the Arts.
he Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.