Dad was a Sertiko

Like the character featured in the image above, my father, also, was often called “The Professor” by people who knew him back in DC. It was generally more of a joke than a respectful title, unfortunately, because few if any people ever actually understood what Dad was trying to explain, but they knew that he had a habit of explaining things and trying to help people understand things. Wasted words, as those pearls of knowledge were effectively cast before people as interested in understanding what Dad was trying to explain as the swine mentioned in Matthew 7:6. That is why my father died under the circumstances in which he did. Because he was in the wrong place and time, for his gifts. And so, naturally, he was angry. The Greeks have a name for this kind of man:

Dad Was A Sertiko

I see you,

Dad.

That pain,

The biting rage,

Darkness hidden,

Covered by smoke,

Brooding ‘Professor.’

‘Jonesy, stop challenging people!’

‘You’re one, too!

We ain’t cutin’ your hair anymore either!’

Yet, still, always

Light Skinned.

And never

understood.

Never

accepted.

Never fully

loved.

This poem comes after weeks of groping in the darkness for a word that I only just learned very recently, from the Greeks, but somehow, I always knew. This word describes that brooding, lonely and angry man, who has a place in Greek society, but not in Black American society. For a brilliant man like my father, beaten with rubber hoses in North Carolina in the 1960s to remember his place, never taken seriously for his mind, and always angry. His gifts were wasted, and he knew it. Had he been born Greek, he would have been called a Sertiko, and he would have danced through that pain, as Zorba danced when his son died. He might have been avoided, but his title would have been one of respect, rather than mockery. He would have had a place, and he would have had the respect, and perhaps even just a glimmer of that understanding that I believe he so craved. In his heart, at the oddest of times, the rare quiet moments, he was a poet. How many saw that side of him, and how many respected it? He left no written work, and I could not appreciate it at the time that I heard him give those words, partly because he was so drunk that even I could tell, but that was what it took for the tenderness hiding within him to reveal itself, hidden as it was by the pain and darkness nearly always so near to the surface, in a world that could not accept him for who he was, for so many different reasons. And a world which he could neither accept nor change, for so many different reasons, at a time when opportunity was so limited, and chances to do were rationed out by ruthlessness. Dad was, above all, not a ruthless man. He was a good man, ridiculed, pinned, and also done in by his own vices. Lacking the tools that in another part of the world might have allowed him some peace, some hope, a certain type of respect, or maybe, even, love, for the Sertiko that he was.

Don’t worry, Dad, this is not Spanish, so you don’t have to curse me out. It’s Greek, and they get it, a little. They know, or at least some of them know, how you felt, Dad, because they even have a name for a guy like you, and when that guy gets up to dance, everybody else moves out of his way, and sits the hell down. A little bit like Zorba, maybe. He’s a smoker, like you, and a fighter, too, and with the pain that words will never tell, but they have a dance for it, called the Zeibekiko, and if you had been a Greek, Dad, you would have danced the best, the most beautiful, the most dangerous of all the Zeibekika, of all time, ever danced by anyone, and you might have been just a little bit less angry, then, Dad, because somebody, over there, might just get it, might just get you, after you danced your Zeibekiko, instead of starting another fight. And these Greeks, they get that, too, Dad. And maybe they would even have understood you, too, just a little. You were dark, you were angry, you were brooding, and in your own way, you were also beautiful, Dad. And I miss that part of you, the poet, who never got a chance to live, not in DC. Where so many of our poets, from Ms. Phillis Wheatley to Paul Lawrence Dunbar lived, and where your soul, that of a poet, remained trapped in the dark alleys with those 2x4s you told me to learn to use. And I learned how to fight, Dad, and I defended myself, too, from a white man, even, because you gave me permission, Dad, to defend my honor, and so I learned, that, and more, too. From you, Dad. And I learned to look for new tools, even the ones you rejected, like other languages. Not to pass for white, but to defend myself and others, with words, Dad. Like those words I only heard you utter so rarely, in so few of the tender moments, when you would dare to bare your soul. The soul of a poet, one in pain. The soul of a Sertiko, Dad.

Destinie A. Jones, but now, please call me Nia.