A House Pt 4

sigh. the craft room.

When I was little my mom and I moved to an apartment in a nice Birmingham suburb down the street from Body Complete, the upscale salon where she worked as a hair dresser. We did not have a car and she could not afford a babysitter, so on her lunch breaks she walked two miles in heels to pick me up from my elementary school and back to her job where I would hang out til she was done with her clients in the evening.

The trained masseuses were the only black people who worked at Body Complete, not counting me, the unpaid five year old intern whose only talents were disarming clients with my youth and sweeping hair up off the floor. Iola and Pearl were in their 50’s or 60s with big, huggably soft bodies. Pearl epitomized the kind of grandmother you read about in children’s books, her eyes sparkly and warm, her hair parted down the middle and kept in a neat bun at the base of her neck. She always asked how my day at school was when I bounced through the salon doors with my backpack on, but Iola was quiet and intimidating, so I respectfully stayed out of her way. Even so, when business was slow, one of them would lead me into their darkened massage room, lay me facedown on their table, and gently rub the wiry kindergarten muscles underneath my school clothes. It was heaven.

The smell of the manicurist’s room was overwhelming, acetone and nail glue blended with perm juice and hair bleach wafting in from the main room of the salon, but that didn’t keep me away. I was drawn to the brilliant shades of lacquer that lined the walls in every color of the rainbow, and the large framed prints of disembodied manicured hands poised in front of a red rose, a bowl of fruit, a feather boa. Kathy was my favorite nail tech, a tall, tomboyish woman from New York with a gorgeous mane of thick hair and a brand of sarcasm that made southerners uncomfortable. She talked to me like I was a grown up, which I liked, and sometimes I spent the night at her house when my mom needed a free babysitter.

Kristy was my mom’s best friend at the salon, and she shamelessly adored me, buying extra treats from the snack machine for us to share whenever she saw me stationed in front of the tiny black and white tv in the break room. Kristy was beautiful, petite and round with long, wavy hair and icy blue eyes. She didn’t like her body and was always talking to my mom about dieting and losing weight. In my memory, it was Kristy who came up with the idea to put a broom in my hand in order to make me look useful, because Floyd, the owner of the salon, did not appreciate his work space becoming my after school care.

Floyd was openly gay, well dressed, and had Tourettes. As a five year old I was pretty entranced by his physical tics, but I averted my eyes from them since my mother told me it would be rude to comment or otherwise draw attention to them. It felt like keeping a secret, one that everybody already knew about. Floyd didn’t care for kids much, so, like Iola, I stayed out of his way, too, but eventually he got fed up by my presence, said it was making the clients (presumably the male ones) uncomfortable. My mom’s job was on the line, so when I started second grade, instead of picking me up from school and walking me into the warm embrace of all my friends at Body Complete, she dropped me off at our empty apartment while I waited for her to be done with work. I was told not to touch the stove. Not to answer the door for anyone. Not to leave the house.

The apartment got very dark when the sun went down, so when I got home I walked straight into my bedroom, turned the light on, and closed the door shut behind me so the shadows in the rest of the house wouldn’t reach me before my mom returned.

It was lonely.

I desperately longed to be in some kind of class, ballet or painting or music or gymnastics, anything to feed my endless curiosity, but I knew such privileges were only afforded to wealthier families, ones with vehicles and two parents living under the same roof. In the absence of extracurricular structured learning, I got good at spending my time alone and entertaining myself. I lined my stuffed animals on the edge of my bed and read aloud to them from “books” I had “published” about cats, even though I wasn’t particularly fond of them (I’ve always been allergic but my mom insisted on keeping them in the house anyways- for context, she is a triple Scorpio). I composed songs, usually commercial jingles and what I considered to be power ballads, on the portable organ my mother bought me for Christmas. I had asked for a Casio keyboard, the kind all my friends owned with pre-programmed beats that you could sing over, but the 14 key organ she found was much cheaper, each note delivered with a long, muffled “pfffffff” before it’s fuzzy tone broke through and landed softly on my ear- Michael Jackson songs have never sounded so ominous. I obsessively practiced drawing on lined paper torn from school notebooks, rarely capturing where I was but rather where I wished to be. I tried to occupy myself with my Easy Bake Oven but I accidentally spilled cake batter on the light bulb inside it once and it had smelled dangerous when I plugged it in ever since.

I learned to dilute my loneliness with being busy.

Part of me understands why Floyd didn’t want me hanging around the salon every day after school. The clients coming to the salon deserved to have a comfortable space where they could relax and get their services done without worrying about what young ears might be clinging to their every word. And as a child, I deserved to spend my time having age-appropriate fun with other kids. But I also think that good community care can blur the lines of cultural standards and collectively make room for meeting the needs of the least resourced members of it’s system. Mine was a single mom barely making ends meet in order to keep us in a middle class neighborhood so that I could access it’s great public school. I was a quiet, eager-to-please kid who knew how to be respectful and stay out of the way of grown folks. Together, we were a mixed race family living in Alabama in the 80s. Community care did not make its way easily to us; we needed all the help we could get.

There’s a different version of my childhood where the white male boss at my mom’s job didn’t have the final say of where I spent my time after school. In this version, it is the women staffing the salon that determined what happened to the young child who just wanted to draw pictures in the break room after school. It is the women who helped raise her, laughing with her and teaching her in equal measure. It is the women who cheerfully waved goodbye to her and her mother walking out of the salon hand in hand every night, the two of them ready to meet their dark apartment together. It is the women who understood that an environment that was safe enough for a kid to be in would also be inherently safe for them.

The craft room in my house is an amalgamation of that loud, lively salon who’s doors became closed to me and the singularly lit room in the apartment I grew up in. It is a place to feel safe. I’ve done so much in this room! I got really good at sewing and learning how to adjust patterns here, pinning fabric around my body and scrutinizing the lines of the garment instead of the lines of my curves. I learned how to make shoes here, a thing I didn’t even know a regular person could do! I lined the walls with stickers and photos and surrounded myself with art I made, art that was gifted to me, and art that I found. I impressed myself project after project, not because what I made was perfect, but because I had believed enough in myself to make anything at all. I sang and danced my heart out in this space whenever the spirit of song grabbed me, which was often. I shared my knowledge with other people, taught them how to use a sewing machine and how to replace buttons and how to attach rubber soles. I made gifts for the people I cared for dearly, understanding that the act of making for others was an opportunity to meditate on my love for them. I mourned the loss of the connection between me and my ex before we ever separated, retreating to this room when I needed to feel embraced again. There were so many days when I entered this room feeling anxious and dysregulated and then left it minutes/hours/an afternoon later feeling calm. I know it’s not the room itself that gave me peace, it’s the love I generated in it. The craft room is the cultivation of 14 years of good vibes.

A few years ago I hired a carpenter to build wood cabinets for one wall of the craft room. It had been on my list of things to do ever since I bought the house but there had been too many other pressing renovations and cosmetic changes that took priority, so it never got done. A sweet, white-haired man came to my house and spent the better part of a week measuring, cutting, and building the custom frames for the cabinets. I told him I wanted to paint the doors myself, and he left them with me over the weekend so he could install them on the cabinet fronts when I had finished them. I had no plan for how the doors would look, just knew that I wanted them to be colorful and bold, so I fished out all the random pints of paint I had collected over the years for various DIY projects around the house and used them to adorn the wood doors the cabinet maker had built. One door I painted with lots of angles and thick stripes of contrasting color. On the next one I spray painted the background in gold and drew animal print on top of it. I used a relief roller with a floral motif on yet another door, it’s pattern repeat soft and hazy after some passes, dark and clean after others. I barely finished the doors in time and wasn’t sure how cohesive they would look together, but I figured that if I hated them after they were mounted, I could just paint them white.

I woke up on Monday morning feeling unexpectedly nervous. It had suddenly dawned on me that the cabinet maker might be annoyed that I had taken his perfectly nice, classic wood cabinet doors and essentially doodled all over them. I knew he had probably assumed I would be painting the doors all one color, but instead I had used six different colors, from a very loud palette no less. I told my ex about my worry and they kindly agreed to go downstairs and let the cabinet maker into the craft room so that I didn’t have to suffer through his potential disappointment. I was holding my breath while I waited for my ex to return when I heard a loud voice boom from the floorboards beneath me “WOOOOW! I LOVE THEM!!!!”

The cabinet maker said no one had ever turned his woodworking into art before, and he thought the doors looked really cool- he was delighted to hang them up and see our collaborative work in it’s final form.

This craft room feels like my body pulled inside out, seams on full display, my past and my history and everything I needed as a kid and didn’t get plastered across four walls and a concrete floor. At once it looks like both an art room for kids and a classroom for adults, which I suppose is exactly it’s intended purpose. It’s a space for infinite creativity, a space so vibrant and filled with light and color that it gives the room sound, a space with every tool, every material, every resource imaginable and available to bring my most brilliant ideas to life. The craft room is my Body Complete, my Soul Complete, and my mind complete, a place where I learned to cultivate my life force, which I define as a dedication to artistry and fun and exploration, a force that has allowed me to create community while also nurturing the youngest version of myself.

Ahhh, the craft room! I know it will live on forever in me, even if I’m no longer living within it. That doesn’t make this part any easier, though.

the painted cabinets! a few people have told me they look like a series of framed artwork. That was unintentional, but I love it. I also painted the vintage cabinet beneath it, a piece of furniture my old contractor pawned off on me before I knew how to say no to people. I spruced it up and have been using it to store fabric in ever since.

one quick addendum to this post:

Last weekend was my first open house, a very emotional day for me, so I opted to stay away from home til it was over. My real estate agent left me a voice memo shortly after the open house had finished:

Jasika, there were a bunch of moms and families that came through today with a bunch of kids. I don’t know if it was Mother’s Day or what the deal was but anyway everybody loved your house, especially the kids they were like. Going in all the rooms looking at all your stuff all the little crystals and I mean the place was like magic today with all these families. It was incredible. I wanted to share it with you because your space is so special and so inviting that these little people just were like lost in a magic land with your home and this one little girl was like who lives here whose house is this and I was like oh she’s an artist of course I’m not giving any information but Anyway, I thought you would appreciate that…your house was so so well received by everybody who visited today, but especially the kids.

I’ve been drowning in the bitterness of my circumstances lately, so it was truly special to finally get a taste of the sweet, to hear firsthand how the space I molded to care for the youngest version of me is resonating with other little kids, too. They can feel this space! There is no better compliment than when a kid vibes with you and feels safe with you. I’m very grateful to my sweet real estate agent who took the time to share this with me. She is actually the agent who helped me buy this house 14 years ago, so that’s been another thing to express gratitude for, the fact that I’m working with someone who understands firsthand what a tough process this is for me and is so sensitive to it ❤️

a few days after the open house I discovered this tiny handprint on the mirror in my craft room, sized 3 or 4 years old 🥹 - can you see it?