Tomato, Toe-Mah-Toe - Virginia, Vagina:

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Abstract

where the third I in Virginia was to go — she handed me a pencil, and without having her duplicate the non-verbal instruction of her tapping finger — I proceeded to wedge an I into the crowded cursive text. Looking at the now correctly spelled word, I thought it looked as awkward and misplaced as I’d always felt with the letter slightly tilted toward the N to make it fit.Even then — instinctually, I understood, by Ms. Jenkins’ disposition, despite her smile, that there was something more to this encounter than a spelling blunder. Still suspicious, I returned to my seat. When I arrived back home, my mother sat me at our metal aluminum and Formica table in the kitchen, which was so common during that era, and asked me if I knew what a Vagina was. At that point, the confusion that never left me was exacerbated by what I perceived to be an extremely random conversation. Apparently, my teachers had grown weary of my poor, ill-timed spelling, as news of it beat me home that day. Surely, I’d misspelled other things without the infraction ending in a kitchen table summons. Back then, little Black girls, in predominately White schools, in the south, I didn’t just misspell Virginia; they repeatedly and habitually misspelled Virginia. Seated at the kitchen table, paper and pencil already laid out, my mother asked me to write the word, Virginia. Furrowing my brow and without asking any questions, I wrote V-I-R-G-I-N-A. My mother had a Mona Lisa smile too.Through my confusion, I’d completely forgotten my prior lesson. It turns out I’d forgotten multiple such conversations about the I that inconveniently escaped my memory while spelling that word. In my defense, Mississippi was difficult for a while, too, before I learned that song — you know the one. Perhaps if someone had written a punchy little tune with Virginia spelled in it, then I wouldn’t have made so many people uncomfortable. I wonder… What was my young, inner-mind attempting to process— like it was trying to tell me that maybe I like or would like Vaginas. Was I and V(formerly Eve Ensler) connected spiritually through space and time? Or it was a subconscious expression of the unhealed trauma wrought upon my Vagina in my earlier life. What if, in an alternate reality, I lived in the State of Vagina and Virginia is what we call

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female genitalia? Perhaps, my repeated misspelling of this word was a primal rejection of a place that stood host to so much pain and suffering for Black folks.“Do you know what a Vagina is?” My mother asked, leaning forward, elbows rested on her knees, fingers interlaced, in that way she would do, to look me in the eyes. As a kid, I was sensitive to my mother’s moods. Still, this time, she was impossible to read — foreboding took a seat in my lower abdomen as I searched her brown face — taking in her soft, dark eyes and the tiny scar above the right one that she’d gotten in a car accident. I don’t remember all of that conversation — I only remember feeling as awkward as that I that was written earlier and that I was then certain what Vaginas had to do with me. What remained a mystery is why spelling Virginia correctly was so important at the same time as knowing about Vaginas. Suffice it to say, I did learn to be mindful of the correct spelling, of that particular word, from that day forward. In retrospect, I can appreciate the circuitous nature of a conversation about why it is important not to forget the I that goes in between the N and the A, in a word like Virginia, in the state of Virginia — as the word is visually, phonetically, and awkwardly very much like the word Vagina — while living in the early eighties, with a barely six-year-old girl, at a time when women's bodies where so hotly debated — as being open for debate.Less than a decade before my anatomy lesson in disguise, the Supreme Court begrudgingly ruled that women could indeed make decisions about their own bodies without going to prison — coincidentally, that is an argument that has never died, in this ethereal place “For lovers.” Assuming people with Vaginas are considered among those who love, it stands to reason that the population would be accustomed to acknowledging the fact in its various forms. I am appreciative of the compassion that both Ms. Jenkins and my mother showed me, who I imagine was slightly amused by the awkwardness of it all — but even today, I hesitate in the slightest bit when writing the word Virginia — I have a little anxiety around misspelling the word now, and I’m left wondering — would it have been such a big deal if one of my brothers had misspelled peanuts?</article></body>

What’s spelling got to do with it?

I remember when I finally learned to spell the word Virginia correctly. My home state, once widely purported to be “For Lovers,” is where a slim, kind-faced, maybe in her mid-twenties, substitute teacher called me to a desk — situated as near to a row of cheap, elongated, aluminum windows that stretched the length of the room, as it could get (the kind that would be all the way at the bottom of a window catalog— the ones a salesperson might avoid talking about until absolutely necessary) catty-cornered to create, what I imagined was, a private nook to house her personal things. “Yes, Ms…” I don’t remember her name, for now, we’ll call her Ms. Jenkins. “Yes, Ms. Jenkins,” I answered. Before she began, she angled my awkward little body to fit next to hers so that we could both see what was to be my paper, from the same angle, at the same time. “What’s this word?”, she asked tapping the paper twice with her index finger. I looked at the word then back at her again, thinking — you’re the grown-up, why ask me? I kept that to myself — she tapped the paper twice again, same finger, same beat, without taking her eyes off of me, “Virginia,” I answered matter-of-factly.

Ms. Jenkins regarded me with a Mona Lisa smile — the way grown-ups sometimes do when they are more amused than annoyed. “Another I goes between the N and the A,” she gently instructed. I looked at the word as if seeing it for the first time — to make sense of something that seemed to be so very unnecessary, but I accepted it as a fact — my young mind bowing to trust that this adult knew better than I, even, in my mind, having lost some credibility in asking me what the word was from the start. This time tapping the exact spot where the third I in Virginia was to go — she handed me a pencil, and without having her duplicate the non-verbal instruction of her tapping finger — I proceeded to wedge an I into the crowded cursive text. Looking at the now correctly spelled word, I thought it looked as awkward and misplaced as I’d always felt with the letter slightly tilted toward the N to make it fit.

Even then — instinctually, I understood, by Ms. Jenkins’ disposition, despite her smile, that there was something more to this encounter than a spelling blunder. Still suspicious, I returned to my seat. When I arrived back home, my mother sat me at our metal aluminum and Formica table in the kitchen, which was so common during that era, and asked me if I knew what a Vagina was. At that point, the confusion that never left me was exacerbated by what I perceived to be an extremely random conversation. Apparently, my teachers had grown weary of my poor, ill-timed spelling, as news of it beat me home that day. Surely, I’d misspelled other things without the infraction ending in a kitchen table summons. Back then, little Black girls, in predominately White schools, in the south, I didn’t just misspell Virginia; they repeatedly and habitually misspelled Virginia. Seated at the kitchen table, paper and pencil already laid out, my mother asked me to write the word, Virginia. Furrowing my brow and without asking any questions, I wrote V-I-R-G-I-N-A. My mother had a Mona Lisa smile too.

Through my confusion, I’d completely forgotten my prior lesson. It turns out I’d forgotten multiple such conversations about the I that inconveniently escaped my memory while spelling that word. In my defense, Mississippi was difficult for a while, too, before I learned that song — you know the one. Perhaps if someone had written a punchy little tune with Virginia spelled in it, then I wouldn’t have made so many people uncomfortable. I wonder… What was my young, inner-mind attempting to process— like it was trying to tell me that maybe I like or would like Vaginas. Was I and V(formerly Eve Ensler) connected spiritually through space and time? Or it was a subconscious expression of the unhealed trauma wrought upon my Vagina in my earlier life. What if, in an alternate reality, I lived in the State of Vagina and Virginia is what we call female genitalia? Perhaps, my repeated misspelling of this word was a primal rejection of a place that stood host to so much pain and suffering for Black folks.

“Do you know what a Vagina is?” My mother asked, leaning forward, elbows rested on her knees, fingers interlaced, in that way she would do, to look me in the eyes. As a kid, I was sensitive to my mother’s moods. Still, this time, she was impossible to read — foreboding took a seat in my lower abdomen as I searched her brown face — taking in her soft, dark eyes and the tiny scar above the right one that she’d gotten in a car accident. I don’t remember all of that conversation — I only remember feeling as awkward as that I that was written earlier and that I was then certain what Vaginas had to do with me. What remained a mystery is why spelling Virginia correctly was so important at the same time as knowing about Vaginas. Suffice it to say, I did learn to be mindful of the correct spelling, of that particular word, from that day forward. In retrospect, I can appreciate the circuitous nature of a conversation about why it is important not to forget the I that goes in between the N and the A, in a word like Virginia, in the state of Virginia — as the word is visually, phonetically, and awkwardly very much like the word Vagina — while living in the early eighties, with a barely six-year-old girl, at a time when women's bodies where so hotly debated — as being open for debate.

Less than a decade before my anatomy lesson in disguise, the Supreme Court begrudgingly ruled that women could indeed make decisions about their own bodies without going to prison — coincidentally, that is an argument that has never died, in this ethereal place “For lovers.” Assuming people with Vaginas are considered among those who love, it stands to reason that the population would be accustomed to acknowledging the fact in its various forms. I am appreciative of the compassion that both Ms. Jenkins and my mother showed me, who I imagine was slightly amused by the awkwardness of it all — but even today, I hesitate in the slightest bit when writing the word Virginia — I have a little anxiety around misspelling the word now, and I’m left wondering — would it have been such a big deal if one of my brothers had misspelled peanuts?