At birth, my parents documented my first name as Regina and my middle name as Lynette. I didn’t get to choose any part of my name – none of us chooses what’s on our own birth certificates. As a very young child, I loved that my family called me Gina. Later, I learned to love introducing myself as Regina. But I wasn’t much interested in my middle name, Lynette. Then something magical happened during ages five and six, and my middle name had considerable significance to me.
Mommy had a friend who she met through the church my parents joined when I was a toddler. Of all her friends, this one was the most like a sister to her. So she was more like an auntie or godmother to me. I thought her name was absolutely perfect – Lucy Bell. It sounded just as sweet as she was to me.
My earliest memories of being a part of Ms. Bell’s world include the smells of her home – I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly, but it was unique to her and her home and made me feel safe. And she smelled just like her home. As an adult I can guess it was the usual blend of perfumes and/or soaps, hair products, moisturizers, maybe a favorite candy or gum, and she was a smoker. I would breathe her in while I sat next to her at church, wanting to lean on her but knowing somehow that it wasn’t quite appropriate even though I wasn’t really sure why. But she would put her arm on the pew behind me and I would scoot in a little closer to her. Ms. Bell felt like a treat, just in and of herself. And Ms. Bell was mine and I was hers. She made me feel like I was just as much hers as her son was – something that only true mothers, good mothers, natural-born mothers can do.
I remember visiting her one weekend and she was suddenly pregnant. I was five and I swear she just all of a sudden was pregnant to me. And I was struck, staring at that belly while inching as far across the room away from her as I could. She and Mommy talked and random words floated by my ears – “middle name”, “spell it”, “girl or boy”, “good hair”, and “her daddy”. I know now there were conversations about the unborn baby, my hair, and my middle name. When I heard Ms. Bell say my name, I was snapped out of my stupor and was immediately present. She said to Mommy, “Gina won’t come close to me anymore.” I wondered how she noticed and at the same time I felt sorry that she noticed. Mommy said something about it – I don’t remember – and I was silent for a long time until I was prodded to respond. After I explained that I was afraid she would have the baby while I was close to her, I was assured by both of them that it would never happen that way and that the baby wasn’t due for what seemed like a long time. But I trusted what I saw on sitcoms where women were startled by sudden labor more than I trusted their words of assurance – parents said what they thought you needed to hear and not always the unadulterated truth (like I got from The Jeffersons). Ms. Bell was mine and I was hers and I had hurt her feelings by my distance so I stayed as physically close to her as I could stand but with anxiety. It wasn’t quite close enough to breathe her in nor did I wish I could lean on her.
On another visit I heard more of the conversation around the phrase “good hair” that I remembered hearing my mother and her friend mention. Ms. Bell told my mother that she’d heard that if you rubbed someone’s “good hair” while you were pregnant, your baby would have “good hair”, too. Even at five, I thought that was untrue. I think both Mommy and Ms. Bell thought it was unfounded, but Ms. Bell didn’t want to take any chances in same the way you don’t take any chances with your money by making sure to keep a black-eyed pea in your wallet. It definitely couldn’t hurt anything so whenever we were together, she stroked my plaits and smoothed my scalp. It was okay – we were having our own special moments. And if she could reach my head, I was successfully sparing her feelings while set to run away when labor hit.
Just as the grownups promised, Ms. Bell did the whole labor and childbirth thing outside of my presence and one day there was this tiny little brown baby girl at her house. I remember just staring at her, taking in all her beauty, almost trying to memorize her. Ms. Bell declared us sisters and told me she had given her daughter my middle name to seal the deal. Quietly, along that special gold thread that connected my heart to hers – our middle name, Lynette – I made a six-year old’s sisterly promises to her. Ms. Bell, from that day until the days just before she died, reminded me that I was her daughter’s sister. And her daughter was my sister.
I first embraced Lynette when I saw the importance Ms. Bell put on it by using it to connect two hearts in the same way that nature connected by blood. So I finally learned to spell it and pronounce it correctly. Neither of us sisters chose that name, nor did we know beforehand the significance of that name. But Lynette is like spun gold to me.
My middle name is Lynette. My sister’s middle name is Lynette.
I am Regina Lynette 