The Unblocking of Dawn

Dawn sat on the edge of her mother's veranda in Chaguanas, the evening heat pressing against her skin like a second layer. The tamarind tree she'd climbed as a girl cast long shadows across the yard. Thirty-three years old, and she still sat in the same spot, waiting for permission.

She was beautiful and also had beautiful hands. Everyone said so. Long fingers, warm brown skin, nails she kept immaculate even when she had nowhere to go. Those hands had held babies, stirred pots, plaited her niece's hair, folded church bulletins. Those hands had never once reached for what she wanted.

Because what she wanted felt like a burning sin.

Dawn wanted to become. Not a wife. Not a mother. Not a deaconess. Those were the only three options her Baptist upbringing advocated by her mother, had laid out for her like starched linens on a Sunday table. She wanted to become Dawn. The one who sang off-key in the shower. The one who'd secretly painted a small canvas in her closet last year with swirls of orange and crimson, then hidden it beneath a blanket. The Dawn who dreamed of opening a small studio in Port of Spain where women like her could come and make beautiful things with their hands and laugh too loud and not apologize. The one who could love who she chose.

But every time she took a step forward, the voice of her raising yanked her back.

Pride goeth before a fall.

Who you think you is?

The Lord does not bless a woman who forgets her place.

She wasn't even sure if it was God anymore or just the ghost of her grandmother, Sister Eunice, who could pray a demon out of a sinner and shame a girl out of a dream in the same breath.

Last month, Dawn had done something reckless. She'd applied for a small business grant. An arts program for women in east Port of Spain. She'd filled out the forms in secret, fingers trembling, checking over her shoulder like she was forging a check instead of asking for an opportunity. She got the interview. She even bought an open shoulder batik dress for it. Something that wasn't navy blue or ash grey, the only colors her church approved for "respectable women."

Then the guilt hit.

Three nights before the interview, she woke at in the early hours of the morning drenched in sweat. A dream. Her grandmother stood at the foot of the bed, shaking her head. You abandoning yourself, Dawn. You choosing the world.

 She lay awake until dawn, literally, watching the sky go from black to bruised purple to a soft pink that made her chest ache.

She didn't go to the interview.

She told herself it was obedience. Humility. Staying in her lane.

But sitting on the veranda that evening, the new dress still hanging in her closet with the tags on, Dawn felt something worse than guilt. She felt small. Shrunken. Like she'd been poured into a mold that no longer fit and left to harden there.

Her best friend, Marise, came over unannounced. Marise wasn't religious. She wasn't anything organized, really. She was just steady.

"You still sitting down here? Steups" Marise asked, settling into the chair next to her.

"I'm thinking."

"You been thinking for fifteen years, Dawn. When you gonna do?"

Dawn's throat tightened. "You don't understand. The shame, Marise. It's like... my whole body. If I step outside the lines, I feel like lightning is going to strike. Not from God, but from inside me. Like I'm the lightning."

Marise was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached over and took Dawn's hand.

"That voice you hearing," Marise said softly. "That ain't the Holy Spirit. That's the jail you built brick by brick, and you been sweeping the floor and calling home. God would want you to get up and get it”

Dawn wanted to argue. The scripture verses were already lining up behind her teeth. Train up a child. Obey your elders. Deny yourself.

But then she looked at her hand in Marise's. And she thought about the orange and crimson painting hidden under the blanket. And the dress she bought. And the women in Port of Spain who might need a place to become something too.

"What if I'm not afraid of God?" Dawn whispered.

"What are you afraid of then?"

Dawn closed her eyes. "Becoming who I have to be. And being happy about it."

The silence stretched. A chicken clucked somewhere in the yard. The mango tree shifted in the breeze.

Then Dawn stood up. She walked inside, past her mother's Bible on the coffee table, past the framed cross-stitch of Psalm 23, into her bedroom. She opened the closet. She pulled out the painting—orange, crimson, gold—and carried it to the living room wall.

She hung it. Right there. In plain sight.

Then she took off her house slippers, put on the yellow dress, and walked back out to the veranda.

Marise looked at her. Looked at the dress. Smiled.

Dawn sat down, heart pounding, waiting for the lightning.

It didn't come.

Instead, the evening light caught the fabric of the dress, and for the first time in fifteen years, Dawn felt something warm that wasn't guilt.

It felt like grace.

She reached for her phone to reschedule the interview.

Her hands, beautiful and finally unclenched, did not shake.