One In A Million Made It Worthwhile

A week after the Million Woman March, I keep remembering one encounter.

The girl, who looked about 6, stood clinging to an older woman - her grandmother, I assumed - in a spot far from the stage. The child stood, eyes frightened, braids damp from the rain. Her slender arms reached up to wrap around the elderly woman’s waist. Together they formed a small, still island in a shifting sea of women.

As I studied the child, our eyes met. Suddenly, in a day that had been a confusing mix of disappointment and delight, I’d found something I absolutely understood - a child near tears, whom I sensed I could help.

In the midst of several hundred thousand sisters in Philadelphia, I’d felt lost and sad, too. Despite flashes of intimacy and beauty, the march wasn’t developing into the love-in that I’d hoped for. I did love just looking at us in our infinite variety: women whose heads sprouted curls and twists, braids and perms, whose dreads snaked down their backs and whose waves crept the barest whisper from their scalps; women in Yankee Doodle denim and fabrics with motherland melodies, in obvious hand-me-downs and pricey designer gear.

But when I offered these sisters my smile, just as many scowled or ignored me as smiled back. Scores passed each other without speaking or making eye contact. Speakers, who one minute assured audience members that they loved us all, the next minute ridiculed by name black women whose music, professions or opinions differed from theirs.

Once, I caught myself humming a lyric from a Roberta Flack song: “Where is the love?” If not to share, why were we here?

The girl’s sad face, which echoed my feelings, distracted me. I handed her my notebook.

“Could you draw something for me?” I asked, glancing at her grandmother, whose nod said she didn’t mind. “Maybe a picture of how you feel right now?”

Grabbing my pen, the child immediately drew an expressive moon face with worried eyes and a downturned mouth. At my “Wow!” she scribbled on, connecting rows of teardrops to make braids, adding a tiny T-shirt. Then she printed her name above the drawing: Chantelle. And wrote, “hi hi hi hi how are you?”

When I said, “Fine,” Chantelle, who turned out to be 7, told me she’d come to the march from Washington with a gaggle of female relatives. She was sad, her grandmother told me, because her mom had gone to hunt for a bathroom. Then I noticed Chantelle’s older sister, who’d been watching the proceedings.

When she learned I was writing about the march, Cherrelle, 11, grinned. “It’s like, really educational!” she bubbled. “The guest speakers teach you a lot, not just about your culture, but about how you’ve been taught wrong! That we don’t come from slaves but from kings and queens!”

We both took a breath. “If you don’t know who you come from, you don’t really know yourself,” she offered, making this old chestnut sound fresh.

Then she said, “You know, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for my teacher.” One of her seventh-grade teachers, Cherrelle explained, had just sent home a letter praising her enthusiasm for reading and learning.

“It motivated me to come here and learn more. The funny part is, I didn’t even think that teacher liked me!”

Asked what most impressed her about the march, Cherrelle barely paused.

“The numbers that are here,” she said. “That so many people would want to be here, to devote their time. I’ve never seen so many people in my life! … It’s a variety. All black people aren’t the same. Some don’t care about who they are, have a bad attitude.”

Others, she said, are totally different.

“Like my mother. She’s a carpenter who works from 8 in the morning till 12 at night. But as soon as she walks in, she wakes us up to hug us and kiss us. It’s a nice gesture - even though sometimes we’re too tired to appreciate it.”

It didn’t bother her that some of the women at the march weren’t very friendly.

“Every single one of us is beautiful,” she said. “Even if people act evil and mean, they’re still beautiful inside - and not just black people. Every human person is beautiful. God created everyone.”

Even women who can’t, in a few hours, turn off a lifetime of distrust and disappointment to smile at strangers. Even women for whom sisterhood is a conditional commodity. Even me.

Suddenly I felt better. This perceptive child was being raised in my beleaguered city by a hard-working single mom who’d seen the wisdom in bringing her here. She reads books, has teachers who inspire her and a little sister who can learn from her.

Thank heaven, I thought, for little girls.

And the big ones, too.