Natália Silva
SILVA_1
When I was about 8, I learned a new word. A new language, I should say.
It happened one day after school. I had this friend, Fernanda. We were close. Did everything together. Until the day, when she decided to ignore me.
She walked away when I said good morning. I had to sit by myself during the break. Had no one to play with in gym class.
On my way home, on the bus, my mom noticed I was unusually quiet. I told her what happened.
Liga pra ela.
Call Fernanda, she said. Ask if you did something wrong.
I think that’s when I began to internalize that I could be blamed for something like that…
When I got home, I dialled Fernanda’s number. I’m talking about something that happened more than 20 years ago, but I still remember the sequence of numbers.
4997-7097.
I stared at the white wall as the phone rang.
Alô?
Hello, she said. I asked her if everything was okay. And why she didn’t speak to me all day.
Minha mãe disse que eu não posso falar com você por causa da sua cor.
Her mom told her not to. Because of the colour of my skin.
She said that
por causa da sua cor.
por causa da sua cor.
por causa da sua cor.
por causa da sua cor.
por causa da sua cor.
por causa da sua cor.
and hung up. With a cruelty that still haunts me.
I knew nothing about the meaning of being black. “Different” was the word my white family used to describe me. But I knew, standing there with the phone in my hand, something bad had just happened.
How did I know? My skin found a way to tell me. My hands began to burn as if I was boiling inside.
What did she say? My mom asked. And that’s how she ended up having to explain to her 8-year-old daughter about this word. This language.
Racism.
Ever since, every time someone speaks that language to me, around me, my hands burn as they did on that day. Even before I fully acknowledge what’s going on, I can feel it. Nothing else triggers the same reaction.
It is as if my body knew better.
That’s why the other day, when someone I love asked me about racism, about a thing I wish everyone knew about it… I thought back to my first encounter with it. To my one-time friend Fernanda. And told them: when it happens to us, when we experience racism, we always know.
Because we can feel racism crawling into our bodies.
But do we? Or is it just me?
I began to wonder if all hands burned.
A1_Sofia
That’s so interesting that you get hot, because I get cold.
SILVA_2
Racism is such a collective and, at the same time, a very intimate experience… I know I can’t speak for everyone. So I decided to ask around…
A2_VOICES (hello, hi)
SILVA_3
To ask as many people as I could if what I told my friend about racism was actually true… If they always feel it. If they also felt it in their bodies…
A3_VOICES (yes, yes, yes)
Where?
A4_Sofia
My stomach drops.
A5_Yixiao
I felt like my body tightening up.
A6_Lauren
Feels a bit like my heart is being squeezed.
A7_Marie
My whole body got warm.
A8_Sofia
My shoulders shiver and…
A9_Marie
I think I probably got misty-eyed.
A10_Sofia
I get tingles.
A11_Marie
Almost like the rush you feel when you experience something embarrassing.
A13_Yixiao
I think I was just like… out.
A14_Davide
Something breaking in a way that couldn’t be really put back together. And then silence.
A15_Lauren
My mind just goes blank, before anything else, like, before anger, or discomfort or fear…
A16_Zee
Like a shock thing. I mean, I’m not shocked anymore, but like… is just like “what?”
A17_Sofia
Feel like you’re in fight or flight, which you are.
A18_Nate
My feelings of being hurt turned into rage. I wanted to swing.
A19_Lauren
I just walked out. But, I don’t know, I should’ve said something, but I don’t know…
A20_Sofia
And you just know.
A21_Marie
I knew what was going on.
A23_Pati
Because you’re not old enough to defend yourself or even, like, process what just happened to you or put it into words… it’s your body.
The first time it happened to me… when my mom tried to explain to me what I had just felt, she kept a secret from me.
She didn’t tell me it would happen again.
And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
And that every time it happened, I’d go back in time. She didn’t tell me that.
My hands are burning and then, for a few seconds, I’m once again holding the phone. Holding my breath. Standing in front of a white wall, wondering what on Earth I could’ve done wrong to deserve to be treated that way.
It’s not a memory. It’s a haunting.
I’d love to forget that… but my burning hands won’t let me.
For True Stories in Sound, this is Natalia Silva.
Telling True Stories in Sound 