Essays: “Cleo and the Queen” by A. Brown
Cleo and the Queen
There is no space between my skin and the skin of a man with whom I have a relationship without labels. I call him my boyfriend because it is easier than “Man that lies in my bed, kisses my neck, lips, shoulders, promises me the world, asks me for $15.” Easier than “man I have fallen in love with, though it is a waste.” Or “man I accidentally come out to while lying skin to skin and watching Set it Off.”
“Queen Latifah is sexy.” It really is an accident. I don’t think much of it when I say it. It is the truth.
He asks, “What you mean by that?”
I repeat myself, nodding at Latifah in character as Cleo. My eyes are trained on my 24-inch TV. I am watching the scene where Cleo and her girlfriend, Ursula, are hiding out in Cleo’s garage and the other three confront them. They sit atop Cleo’s ‘62 Chevy Impala Hardtop painted teal, fitted with gold rims and hydraulics. Cleo absentmindedly kisses Ursala’s fishnet covered legs that stretch up like sunflower stems, as she ignores the shit talking the other three are doing. The camera puts the emphasis on the argument happening between T. T., Stony, Frankie and Cleo, but I am drawn to Cleo’s loose french braids and permanent scowl and pulled to wonder how much her underwire bra with back coverage costs her. If I will be able to find one for a decent price here in the present because the pull on my back is getting out of control making my shoulders slouch. Wonder how it would feel for her to kiss my fishnet covered legs. “I liked her as Khadijah better though. I love Living Single” I add.
Living Single is a sitcom he is diametrically opposed to. He finds it boring. But it is my favorite, even over 20 years after its cancellation. A show that depicts four black women (successful, but still finding their own way). All beautiful, intelligent, courageous, outspoken, resilient. All worthy. And Khadijah James is at the helm. A plus sized black woman, standing 5 '10 (6' 2 in heels), with a killer press and curl, running her own magazine about hip hop (a male dominated industry). A woman with no shortage of gentlemen callers, vulnerable moments or relatable dilemmas. A woman who helped redefine what it means to be both Black and woman.
Khadijah is portrayed by Queen Latifah, who wears her late brother’s motorcycle key around her neck, who took care of her mother (the legendary Ms. Rita Owens) until she passed away from heart failure, who married Eboni Nichols and had a child decades after politely requesting that audiences stay out of her business (and private parts). A woman who drops a hot 16 every few years just to remind us that we’re in the queen’s court.
Living Single was pivotal for Queen Latifah’s brand and career. Prior to that, she was referred to as the “Mother” of Hip Hop/Tommy Boy/Rap/etc. Members of DeLaSoul and the legendary Monie Love, call her ‘mother’ and ‘mama’ on songs like “Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children.” To some extent, these songs helped to sterilize her so that she fit perfectly into the mother archetype. Living Single was her first big acting role. It adds layers. Khadijah appears on screen in suits, boots, headwraps, dresses, jerseys and heels. Sports the same confidence that Latifah wears on her shoulders and shoots down Duke University alum Grant Hill, a surgeon, a reporter and her childhood best friend (twice). Steers her magazine with purpose, even when she’s bought out by a corporation.
The change in her image is also reflected on her albums, The Reign and Order in the Court. The latter album built on the first like a contractor builds on a foundation. Now that she had respect and unity (or U.N.I.T.Y.) in her relationships, in music, in film and television, the rest needed to be settled. On Order in the Court, Latifah let her sexual side fly free on songs like “No/Yes,” “Turn You On” and “Black on Black Love,” which is not to say that Latifah had never talked about sex before then. Between Nature of a Sista and Black Reign there had been a handful of tracks, but Order in the Court was a layered project and “No/Yes” was inevitably juxtaposed by “Life” and “What Ya Gonna Do,” on which asks, Sometimes I feel alone, what you gonna do when it happens to you?
Set it Off was yet another change. Latifah’s first theatrical starring role and the film that made audiences raise an eyebrow at her sexuality. The second eyebrow raise came with Foxy Brown's “10% Dis,” a response to Latifah’s “Name Callin’” from the Set it Off soundtrack. Not only did Foxy name the song after MC Lyte’s “10% Dis,” which gave us the infamous “Hot damn ho, here we go again” lyric (that would be inherited by Lil Kim), Foxy uses the track to accuse Latifah of “liking pussy.” Latifah bit back on “Name Callin’ Part II.” Latifah channeled Cleo with, Today I'm not the queen, a sista, role model, or friend. Today I'm that bitch that'll shoot you a fair one, this don't exclude men. Foxy responded again in the mostly overlooked track “Talk to Me.” The gavel banged. The dust settled. Latifah was declared victorious.
I wonder what victory can look like for me as I realize that the man next to me wants me to mother him. To force him to sit and get his hair braided, when the consequences of an undone head should do the trick. To drive him around like a car for hire, while complaining about my driving, my car, my everything. To toss him a ten and a five on a regular schedule while insisting that I call out of work and babysit him for the day.
He sits up and says, “You can’t be attracted to me and be attracted to her” with his full chest.
He is an objectively beautiful man, despite the black spot eating one of his front teeth from the inside out. Despite his scratcher tattoos and the tough skin on his fingertips from roach burns. He has a beautiful face. A beautiful body. Charm. When I look at him I want to play The Dana Owens Album, the only project that refers to Latifah’s government name. An album of jazz and soul covers that no doubt helped make her a contender for the 2015 Bessie Smith film – where she portrayed one of the first openly bisexual Black figures.
I want to say, What attracts me to her isn't what is attached to her chest or between her legs. It is the respect she receives when her name is spoken into a room, rolling off the tongue like the lick of a bottom lip. It is the way that she is so sure of herself, though she is always described as shy. It is her honesty.
To say, It is her thick Newark accent that mirrors my own. The one I inherited from my Northern parents, though I grew up in the South (or the Mid-Atlantic depending on who you ask).
To say, It is all of the things I see in her, that I want to see in myself.
In the future, he will deny he ever said such a thing. He will set up a date for a socially distanced summer concert event. He will forget. Will tell me I made it up instead. He will deny knowing of my virginity when trying to slide my panties from my hips and his face between my legs. He will say, “I won’t wait forever.”
In the future, I will learn that this is called ‘gaslighting.’
In the future, I will stop mentioning my brothers though they are my pride and joy. His relationship with his sisters is difficult. I will stop taking calls from my father when he is present because he lost his father at the age of seven.
In the future, I will realize why I let my attraction to Queen Latifah slip. Because being with him is like being alone. Because of the comfort. Because of the ease, the crying, the silence.
In the future, I will wish I had the power to say the truth aloud: I am scared of sex. Sex looms over my future like death or loss or anxiety, an inevitability. Is reflected back at me anytime a man smiles at me on the street. Plays before me on the page in written scenes that make me snap my legs shut, turn my head like an owl. My virginity is not sacred. Not like the name Dana Owens. It just is. In my dreams, we have sex, but not real sex. We have the kind of sex that exists in movies. The under the sheets, gaspy, caressing, completely satisfying kind. In my dreams, my body is not clunky on the coiled springs of the mattress. It is graceful, all smooth curves and no dips. But I know enough about sex to know it isn’t really that way. There are more grunts. There is more sweat. More talking. More dimples in flesh. More penises. More vaginas. More wetness, tongues and lips.
In the future, I will sing Monie Love’s “Ladies First” verse aloud only when he is elsewhere. I won’t bother telling him that I love her music like I love Latifah’s. He doesn’t like any of the music I listen to and constantly tells me so, even in the quiet.
In the future, I will be able to see our inevitable implosion on the horizon without making out the specifics. Seeing the shape, but not the fangs. Hearing the growl, head swiveling like a wind vane, wondering what it means.
In the future, I will begin caring for my mother, setting boundaries for her like a parent does for a child. Telling her how to properly clean dishes. How to best cook brussel sprouts. To leave her dirty clothing in a pile for me to wash and fold later.
In the future, I will lay spread eagle in my bed, in my house, empty. I will crave the sound of voices in the hall, the living room, the tiny kitchen. I will crave more trash in the bin. More dishes in the sink. More creaks in the floorboards.
In the future I will learn that I am worth more than this, even if I am alone.
In the future I will ask myself if a Queen can ever really be alone in her own court.
For now, I reposition my plus sized body, swallow down my writing dreams, ignore a text from my brother. Think, I shouldn’t be attracted to you. You’re everything the Queen warned me about. Hear Latifah say, I see myself as a queen, but it ain’t for rank. This for all, not one, not for income. But for knowing who and where we descend from. Say, “But I am. I really am.”
About A. Brown
A. Brown is an Indianapolis-based writer from coastal Virginia. She writes about Black folk, for Black folk. She was a TED Residency Finalist in 2018 and a recipient of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellowship. She is an MFA student at Butler University and her work has been published in The Prism, RueScribe, and Entropy Magazine. She is currently the Head of Editorial Content at Concept Moon and recently began working to launch their Concept Moon Literary Magazine.
