Hanif Abdurraqib (10:27)
So I grew up on the east side of Columbus, Ohio, and if you were a teenager in the 90s on the east side of Columbus, Ohio, the place to be was Eastland Mall. This was specifically true in the summertime, and for me, in the summer of 1997, it was an especially unique, massive summer because it was a summer between middle school and high school. What this meant was a couple things. But the most primary thing was that my friends who I had gone through middle school with, we were all kind of scattering high schools all around the city. So we weren't going to have that kind of affection driven by proximity that we'd been sheltered with for our 6th, 7th and 8th grade years. And so the plan was we were going to have one last joyful, freeing summer together at the mall almost every single day. The best way to get to the mall from where I lived was to take the number 92 bus. But the bus better way to get to the mall from where I lived was to sneak onto the number 92 bus, which you could do if someone in your party had a little bit of change in their pocket they could fumble with while talking to the driver at the front door so that everyone who could who was with them could sneak onto the back door while the driver was distracted. And this was vital for us because we were from poor working class neighborhoods. And our parents would leave us alone for the bulk of the days. And so the mall effectively became a kind of parent to us. And so the bus would drop you off at the front door, and then you would walk straight to the food court. Of course, the food court, which, at least at that time in my life, also operated as a kind of medieval court as well. The things most commonly on trial there were the blossoming or dying out of crushes or scores from a couple days ago that needed to be settled in front of the Sbarls or whatnot. So. So, for example, if I had maybe gotten a little bit too exuberant in my trash talk on the basketball court on Friday, right before the street lights came on, I knew that on Saturday I would have to answer for that in some capacity or the other. This was also kind of the place where the mall. It was the beating heart of the mall. So, you know, the stores that surrounded it were the coolest stores. The Footlockers or the Claire's or the Champ Sports. But it was also kind of the place where we went to be our freest, most joyful versions of ourselves. If you had, like a dollar, you'd get a slice of pizza and a cup that you said was for water, but you could fill with something else. The real and most ideal versions of adolescence that I loved are the parts of it where new freedoms are introduced and maybe some other ones are taken away. And for me, at 13 years old, the highest point of freedom was going to high school, because I'm the youngest of four, so I had three older siblings, so I'd already watched Take that joyous journey through the halls of high schools and come home like new people. And so I thought that for me, it was going to be this really glorious summer followed by a fall of, like, clandestine phone calls with girls and staying out super late and having cool friends who smoked secretly and all these kind of things, as long as I got through this nearly perfect summer. But in the beginning of June, in the first couple weeks, my mother died unexpectedly and suddenly. And it's hard to perhaps explain what happens next to someone who is not from a very intensely caring area or a neighborhood that's focused on community care. But my house became kind of flooded with people. It was this real claustrophobic moment that even in my gratitude for the presence of others, I was still feeling really closed in by the grief. People would come and bring meals three times a day, and people would ask me how I was doing when I was walking on the street. And the Shopkeeper at the corner store would give me free candy, which was cool at first, but then it became a little less cool. Then it became kind of embarrassing. As a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to kind of vanish. I was very content being a supporting cast member in the film of my own life. When you lose a parent, however, you kind of become the kid with a dead mom and then nothing else. There's no way to kind of sink into anonymity beyond that. You're kind of drifting from one moment of darkness to another moment of darkness, seeking a light through which you can reformat yourself. The mall was really useful in this way because no one really asked about or cared about my dead mother at the mall. Not because they were, but because no one really went to the mall seeking heartbreak, or no one went to the mall to feel pain. Heartbreak and pain happened at the mall. Of course, breakups occurred, or a shoe you wanted sold out before you get to it. But no one really arrived at the mall seeking pain. And specifically no one could ever focus on one single person. Because the mall, in the ecosystem of it, it was pulled forward by a focus on the collective. And so spending too much time on one person's woes or pleasures or whatever else stopped you from doing the things you would normally do at the mall. Talk to girls, try to get girls phone numbers, in my case, trying to get girls phone numbers, unfortunately, using my mother's death as a tool to get in. But it didn't. Never really worked that way. I hope I'm forgiven. And this was a real respite for me because at home it was very silent in the weeks and months after my mother died. My mother was a very loud woman. So she laughed loudly, she moved around the house loudly. Her sounds kind of announced her presence before she entered a room. And in the moments after she died, my house kind of grew increasingly silent until the echoes of those things faded away completely. But in the moment mall, it was just loud all the time. There was a cacophony of sounds. My friends and I would sit on tables and like bang out beats on the. On the wooden tables and then stomp our feet on the chairs to kind of make a little symphony. And then the security guard would sometimes come over and he would try to rap along to the beat we were making. And then the raps would always be bad. And then we get to make fun of him and he would sulk away. In my favorite place in the mall, there was a balcony above the food where you could have a perfect vantage point of not only the food court itself, but all those cool surrounding stores and the mall's busiest days, which usually were in mid July. You could just watch like a sitcom unfold. It was for me like sinking back into being that supporting character in the movie of my own life. But summer comes to an end, and I specifically dislike the feeling of summer coming to an end. Even now I grumble as August kind of turns over into those awful slow, long, hot days. But as a teenager, specifically in 1997, I really hated this feeling because it was so visceral. The signs for back to school were kind of coming up. My friends were vanishing to do back to school shopping and I was often alone wandering the mall, which is less romantic when you are doing it alone, to be sure. But another thing that happened within me was that I was no longer excited about going to high school. It no longer felt felt like a freeing thing to me because in those first couple weeks of August, my house had started to get flooded with letters and phone calls. Administrators and teachers and counselors at my new high school were calling to ask what they could do, how they could help. They had all heard my mother died and they were wondering how they could make my first year at high school feel a lot more peaceful. This was well meaning, as well meaning as people being bringing casseroles and whatnot to my house. But it was also a reminder that I was getting ready to enter a space we're in. I would be the kid with the dead mom for four more years of my life and nothing else. And so towards the end of summer, I used to think that when the mall closed, if I just stayed really quiet and found a corner, I could maybe live there forever. This of course, could have never worked, but when you're a kid, you know, you're thinking, I could find a really quiet space and no one will know I'm here. In late August, maybe a week or so before school started, there was this day that was very hot and it was also very gray. In Columbus, there's these storms that happen in the summer that are really quick, maybe five, ten minutes, but they're also really violent. And the aftermath of them has these effects that last for hours or sometimes even days. And this was one of those days. And the mall was half full because the people were getting ready to go back to school. But I was in my spot, the balcony above the food food court with my one slice of pizza in my cup that should have had water in it, but definitely had Sprite. And I was just watching these Small movements unfold. And then the blackout happened. And it didn't happen all at once. I remember a light above my head flickered and then went off. And as I was gathering myself figuring out what happened, all the lights in a row began to flick off in the mall. And because this was a mall in a poor area and people in it were working in a poor area, we were all like, well, you know, lights go out all the time, bills don't get paid, we get it. And so what happened was this really calm moment where a footlocker employee went in the back and grabbed a flashlight. And a couple other employees of other stores followed suit, like the CD store guy and the Claire's employee. So there's these flashlights waving around in the darkness. And then someone says, oh, I got batteries for a boombox. And then someone gets a boombox and then the batteries go in the boombox. And then someone Sundays, I have CDs in my car. And so someone follows another someone out the door to go to the parking lot, which by that point is soaked by the torrential storm. And they re emerge in the mall with a book of CDs tucked underneath one of their shirts. The CD book thankfully mercifully dry. They less so for their sacrifice. They were granted these really massive jerseys from the Jersey store. This was 1997 after all. And the flashlights were put in a little circle at the center of the mall. And so maybe five or six flashlights were all beaming up into the same spot. And it was this one magnificent light that looked like it might break through the ceiling itself and signal outward to let people know that we were in here and alive. And someone put on some music and a dance party started. A very impromptu soldier small dance party of 20 to 30 people, folks who worked on the second floor of the mall, running down the non working escalators very gingerly to join the dance circle. And me alone up in my balcony where no one knew I was or no one could see me. I'd found my perfect hiding spot. And I watched this dance party slowly unfold. And I watched the light push itself into the ceiling. And it was a wonderful reminder that as we kind of move through these series of darknesses, there is a light pushing us up higher wherein we can reform ourselves and become better than we were before. And I remember the rain stopped and I walked back to the bus stop. And I still did not want to go to high school, to be clear. But I knew that when I did go to high school, I had a blueprint for how to make myself a newer, better survivor of a thing. Thank you.