Notes From a Springhill Suite

I.
It’s a stay-cation, I tell the check-in clerk. My husband is watching the kids so I can have some time to myself.

You’re lucky, she says while handing me a plastic keycard with a smile so wide, I’d swear her teeth were slathered with Vaseline. It’s unwavering as she watches me fumble my car keys, debit card, and duffel bag from one hand to the other to take the hotel card from her. Perhaps it’s her otherwise placid mannerisms that suggest I could dump my life all over her and still be well received. I open my mouth to let loose a host of thoughts. Normally I’m with the girls all day. I can’t wait to unpack! You’ll be seeing more of me—

I swallow the verbal vomit churning up my throat, primed to spew. There’s no need to scare off the clerk with my rabid loneliness brewed to perfection as a stay-at-home mother of two. Thanks, I say, sliding the keycard into my back pocket. I nod once more and give her what feels like a crazed, Willem Dafoe grin. God, I am desperate to converse with another adult.

I turn and labor across the room to the hotel’s sole elevator. I have too many bags for the twenty-four hours I’ll be away. My backpack is loaded with my journal to write inspiration, a laptop to work on a few essays, and a book for leisure reading. My duffel zippers strain against my clothes, breast pump and all its accessories, and various oils and lotions for my hair, feet, and face. A bag holding snacks and leftovers from lunch at the casino digs into my arm.

A family lounges in the center of the lobby on a generic looking couch. Their bodies are distorted, mouths slack and necks tipped back sharply, as they gape upward at the television. The couple wilting over their beers at a high-top table peer over at me. Their tired eyes rake me up and down then stare at me head on. It’s this passive confrontation that brings my blackness into full awareness. I am alone and too weighed down to defend myself. I glance at the man, while looking through him, then do the same to the women before letting my eyes settle on the empty space between them. I flash a quick smile. My go-to act of placation when in the presence of white, possibly hostile, strangers. It usually works until it doesn’t. I walk away hoping they turn back to their Coronas.

After the elevator doors close behind me, I finally exhale the breath building in my chest. I am lucky, I remind myself. I’m lucky to have the gift of alone time. I’m lucky to have a free night at a hotel, a mother’s day off. Falling back onto the king-size bed in my room, I giggle at the thrill of being a woman unto herself before drowning under all my luck.

I’m lucky to finally take a nap. I’m lucky to deep condition and detangle my own hair instead of leaving it neglected under a series of head wraps. I’m lucky to eat a meal, whole and free from small, thieving fingers. I’m lucky to sit in the quiet, now a clamor, as I hear long-stifled thoughts.

There is so much.
For me.
To do.
For myself.

II.
You Do You List:

1. Enjoy a much-needed shopping spree. Spend the money on you. Only you. I’m serious. This can’t be like the birthday cash. You deserve nice things.

2. Succumb to giddiness while watching Spider-verse. When the credits roll, cry about Miles Morales and his dad and your biological father. Your hands, slick with the tears you wiped away, struggle to dry as you dig them into your ill-fitting maternity jeans. Festered wounds are healing. You feel seen. My God, you feel seen.

3. Drift asleep to the sweet lullaby of Michelle Obama’s Becoming. Wake up ready to be carried away again.

4. Embrace the peace, arriving on a cool wave after the air conditioner’s burps. This is serenity. But don’t enjoy too much of it. There’s still much to do.

5. Watch what you want until you binge watch yourself into a coma, then wake up in a panic that you wasted your time away sleeping.

6. Finally attend church service then, after communion, flee the sanctuary to disrobe down the street in the soft moans of the massage salon.

7. Eat a messy barbeque chicken dinner with chili cheese fries on the hotel bed while cocooned in snow white blankets. Forgive yourself for the stains. You are letting yourself loose.

III.
A friend sends me a video message. She pans over the ceramic tiles she painted and asks me which ones I want. I choose a stack of green ones, my favorite color. Later she zooms in on a herd of steer lumbering across the field outside her uncle’s cabin. When we talk, depression swallows her words, lines the corners of her eyes.

Take your time, I tell her. I’m here.

To breathe is labor. To exist is difficult.

I collapse backward onto the bed after we say goodbye. The silence plows a path for everything I’ve read and watched and consumed to overwhelm me. The taunts against my history. The hate for my ancestry. The national reports of generational financial instability. Children and families swept up in tides and raids. Dead and dying. The constant discourses stream across digital-scapes and I regurgitate them to my husband and then simplify them for my toddler. Black women the world over speak in harmony with me.

Y’all, I’m tired.

This day to myself is supposed to be refreshing. The sun is still up when I draw the blackout curtains and retreat under the covers. I home in on my own crying in the dark. It’s so sorrowful and strange. I indulge for a while longer before crawling out and turning on the lights. There are so few days like this, of quiet and self-love and facing myself head on.

IV.
I’m uncorking the pulsing vessel of my spirit and letting the steam out. It’s pent up, held back for fear I will offend my husband or scare my children. There is so much inside of me trying to get out. Anger, exhaustion, sorrow, life. So much life. I scream into my king-size pillow. Then I punch it for good measure. The soft collapse of the pillow around my fists makes me laugh. It’s ridiculous, but I give in to it. I laugh and roll around on the bed, wrapping the duvet around me in a cloud of joy. I hope the neighbors can hear me and snicker at the sound of me reveling in freedom. All of me, in the now. And all at once my voice explodes into the corners of the room.

_______

DW McKinney is the book reviews editor for Linden Avenue Literary Journal. Her nonfiction has been featured in Stoneboat Literary Journal, TAYO Literary Magazine, peculiars magazine, and others. Learn more about her at dwmckinney.com.