My mother adamantly recalls that it was a cold, windy, February morning. The immensely dense and congested rush hour traffic bustling beneath our sixth floor downtown, Bronx apartment window could be heard, even if all of our windows were permanently sealed shut, and made to be soundproof. I’d only been home from the delivery room for less than three days.
My mother dealt with the inevitable task of figuring out how to calm me down because the neighbors next door were starting to complain. I was inconsolable, crying for hours, even though I’d just been held, breastfed, and given numerous warm baths. It’s quite hard for me to imagine my mother, confused and clueless, to the cause of my moodiness, as I was her sixth child at the time, and she’d been in this scenario many times before. Mom says that I was different from all the other six children. It was as if I were trying to tell the world something.
It was obvious that I was not in any physical pain, but she thought, “How can a child be fussy for three hours straight?” It wasn’t so much of the crying that worried my mother, nor the stinging sensation from the salty sweat that continued to run down into her eyes. It was that my mother didn’t want to alert Isabelle; Isabelle couldn’t know that my mother had given birth to “the baby.”
You see, Isabelle was an infamous drunkard, who lived in the apartment, directly above ours. She was well known on our block for hanging out of her window, compulsively screaming the most vulgar obscenities imaginable, atthe people below, for hours on end. My mother didn’t know her very well, but while my mother was pregnant with me, Isabelle approached her in the downstairs hallway with a very lucrative proposition.
"Look here," Isabelle shrieked, “if you name your baby girl after me, Imma’ set up a Trust Fund in her name.” Isabelle would remind my mother of the same thing each and every time she saw her. My mother will tell you until this day, that it was never an option. All of the money in the world wouldn’t allow her to break the tradition of giving all of her children meaningful African names, not even the constant pressure of outstanding light bill payments that had been accumulating.
My mother told me this story the very first time I inquired about my name, Waseme Zuwena . I recall being about four years old. It had been a rough day in Pre-K class. We were learning how to write and spell our names. Some of the kids spent half the day poking fun at my name and the fact that it took me just a little longer to spell my middle name, Zuwena.
In my classroom, I clearly recall common names such as, Jessica, Alex and Linda and others. I vividly recall feeling a slight sense of frustration. I just couldn‘t figure out the spelling of Z-U-W-E-N-A. I sat at that small desk, feverishly trying to sound out each letter. I remember being really great at pronouncing words from early on. It was some sort of gift or something. My focus went more into familiarizing myself with words than with numbers, and I was fascinated with how easy it was to connect letters together to form a word-- no matter how BIG the word seemed. Words became my best friend, and anything related to them.
I remember teaching myself how to spell the word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, simply by breaking down each syllable. That is the main reason I couldn’t figure out why it was so hard to spell six simple letters. I’d mastered Waseme with ease, long before I even entered Pre-Kindergarten; I was highly discouraged at that point.
It’s safe to say that I went home that day in sheer sadness. I ran up to my mommy and said, “Can people change their names when they get older?” Instantly, she gave me a look and asked me why I asked such a question. I immediately replied, “Why didn’t you name me Rose?” Of course, then, we had our mother- daughter moment. She assured me that as I got older, I’d learn to love and cherish my name. She somehow managed to convince me that the children were poking fun at me because their names weren’t original and everyone had the same names which I found to be highly accurate.
Next, my mother told me something that I’d never known before that day. She’d painstakingly chose my name out of an African name book the day of my birth. When she spotted the two names, Waseme and Zuwena; Isabelle could never hold up. My name was an authentic Swahili name. Waseme means, Let Them Talk. Zuwena means Good. Though I was too young to breakdown the underlying meaning, I was able to realize that it meant something great! I didn’t want people to ever see me in a negative light. No matter where I went, I wanted people to speak good things about Waseme. If people still chose to speak negative things about me, I was going to, Let Them Talk.
It was at that moment that I became extraordinarily proud of my name. I was going to learn to spell Zuwena-- frontwards, backwards, and inside-out. I refused to return to class the next day without the complete knowledge of my name and I have held my head up high ever since then. I have embodied the very essence of my name. I have modeled my life by it. I never found the want or need to use drugs because I constantly thought about what I stood for. I basically wanted to live up to my name. It was both my motivation and incentive behind trying my best in school and wanting to work very hard at everything.
I will be the first to tell you that a name is essentially a person’s shadow. I adore my shadow, and I would never think about changing my name from Waseme Zuwena. She has stood by me through my good and bad days, for over nineteen years. Today, my mother and I usually sit back and relish upon what would have been if my mom would have named me after the drunken slanderer, Isabelle. Would I be rich right now? Would we be any better off than we are today? Well, there is one thing I do know; this is who I am, Waseme Zuwena, and I am very content.
