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Matilda and Jacqueline, aka Matty and Jack are my best friends from freshman year. We all had internships at Wilde World this summer. They’ve been staying with me at my family’s house this week. And we’ve been having the time of our lives. My mother seemed to have mellowed and except for her horror over the way I wore my hair, she barely had a word to say about anything.
Growing up, Houston’s humid summers made my hair impossibly frizzy and my mother would drag me to the African hair braider on West Alabama to get my hair braided every week. In the fall and winter when the air was dryer and cool, we spent Saturdays getting our hair rolled, blown out and then pressed with a flat iron.
It was an ordeal. But in Tina Wilde’s eyes, an unruly coiffure was a sign of internal disorder. One of the things I looked forward to most about leaving home was autonomy over my own hair.
In the weeks before I left for SMU, I spent hours reading Black hair blogs. i learned my hair was considered a 3C texture and figured out which products were best for it and went down to Solid Gold on W. Bellfort to buy them.
Before I left, we spent half the day at the beauty salon getting it pin straight, the way she liked it.
The first thing I did after she dropped me off on campus was wash my hair. I walked out of my room and headed to orientation with it loose and free for the first time in as long as I could remember.
I stopped to ask someone for directions. She gave them to me and when I said, “Thank you” the girl responded with, “What are you?”
I laughed and answered, “An Aquarius,” tongue in cheek because it was such a vague question.
She gave me an impatient sigh and spoke in a slow, deliberate tone. “Are you, like…Dominican, or something?”
“Nope, I’m from Texas.” My ignorance was feigned, but only because I wasn’t sure how to answer.
If she’d asked who I was, the answer would have rolled off my tongue. I’m Regan Naomi Wilde - daughter, sister, dreamer, womanist, ally, writer, reader, rebel.
But what I was? I’d never given much thought to. In Houston, my family’s history is practically local lore and even though my grandfather is Irish, we were raised by our mother and have always thought of ourselves as Biracial Black people.
Over the course of my first week on campus, I found myself being asked that question, “What are you?” repeatedly. The response to my ambiguous and vague answers was, almost universally, disappointment. And it only made me feel more alone than ever.
One night, I stared at myself in the mirror and tried to see what stood out the most. But all I saw was a near perfect blending of both parts of my heritage.
My eyes are the same deep dark brown as the famously rich soil in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica where my mother spent her childhood.
The spray of freckles on my left cheek are a gift from my maternal grandmother who was born in the town of Letterkenny, Ireland.
In the summer my skin drinks in the sun and turns deep brown. By the end of winter, I’m so pale Tyson calls me Casper.
I joined the Caribbean Student Union and the Irish American Student Coalition to try to figure out where I might fit. I found things and people I loved in both organizations, but I realized that no matter what I called myself, my resting bitch face was a universal language that made friendships hard to cultivate, no matter where I was.
It was in the bowels of the library, researching a piece to submit for a spot on the school paper’s staff that I felt most at home. I guess it should have come as no surprise that it’s also where I met my best friends.
The submission prompt asked us to pick a historical figure that was notorious, scandalous, or is widely despised. We were to cite reliable sources and tell a different story. One that was just as true, but perhaps, more inconvenient.
I knew right away who I was writing about – Jezebel. The biblical Phoenician princess whose name has become synonymous with ruin and deceit is, in my opinion, one of the most misunderstood women in all of history.
I’ve been obsessed with her since my grandfather told me that she was actually a ruler whose name was dragged through the mud because she was so ahead of her time. For a little girl, who often, felt misunderstood and underestimated, hearing her story made me angry. The budding storyteller was itching for a way to set the record straight, and this was my chance.
My very first conversation with Matty was an argument in the stacks over a book we were both intent on checking out. When our heated exchange revealed that we’d picked the same subject for our newspaper pieces, we quickly settled our quarrel. She invited me to join her and her roommate, Jack, for dinner.
We spent the evening talking about our shared outrage over the way, both history and myth alike, make men heroes and describe women as treacherous sirens, child-eating monsters, or husband murdering gold diggers. Our food grew cold, and our friendship caught fire.
The rest is history.
“So, how do you know this guy?” Matty asks, breaking into my wandering thoughts.
“Weston is my walk on the wild side from high school,” I say with a mischievous and lascivious laugh. But, if I’m completely honest, I have no idea what to expect tonight.
The last time I saw him, he called me a “dis
loyal cunt.” He was carrying an unlicensed weapon of some sort and had weed in his pocket that night at the bakery. He was handcuffed to the gurney that took him to the hospital for treatment of his stab wound.
My grandfather was furious when I called him to try and do damage control, and my late-night shifts came to a swift end.
