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Navy Bleu Perkins

One of my favorite movies was My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

It was a movie that no matter how many times it came on, I could rewatch it every time.

Mostly because it reminded me of my own crazy family.

Every time I watched the movie, I thought of my aunt, cousins, uncles, or grandparents because we were one crazy bunch, but we loved one another.

The one difference was that instead of Greek, we were one big Guyanese family.

We loved hard, fought harder, but came together in the end.

Every Sunday, you could find us making the walk to my grandparents’ apartment for dinner.

Our family all lived in the same area, and any given Sunday, we almost always ran into each other heading to my grandparents’ apartment.

I could make it to my grandparents’ house in three blocks, and my parents’ house in two.

Greene lived a few blocks down from me, and her mother lived a block over from her.

Family, and being close to each other, was very important to us.

I grew up living close to family and walking to their apartments whenever I wanted to be around them.

Other than when Greene’s father moved them to another part of Brooklyn, we had never lived too far from each other.

After her parents divorced, her mother returned right back to what she was used to.

When my grandparents came from Guyana to Brooklyn, New York, they knew they wanted to give their children what they didn’t have back in Guyana. My mother, aunt, and both my uncles all graduated from college and settled into their city jobs.

My mother was a social worker for the city, while my aunt worked in corrections for Riker’s Island.

Both my uncles were firefighters for the FDNY.

Since I had been a child, I had been reminded that once you got a city job, you kept it until the day that you died.

A city job in New York City was like hitting the jackpot, and not too many fumbled that when they got it.

They stayed in those positions until they retired or died.

Imagine my parents’ face when I decided not to go away to college.

Me and Antwan had planned on going away to the same college and worked hard to get in.

It had always been our plan to go away to college so he could play ball, and then eventually become drafted, and I would follow him wherever he was drafted to.

The plan had always been one that we both wanted, but one day I woke up and didn’t want that anymore.

I didn’t want to chase a man around while he followed his dreams. It was very much one sided when it came to Antwan and our dreams. My dreams never mattered because the goal was for him to play for the pros.

We grew up together, so everyone, including my entire family, wanted that for him.

The closer it came to us graduating from high school, the more I realized that Antwan following his dreams meant there was no room for mine.

My parents loved Antwan and encouraged our relationship because they saw it as something positive.

They had always wanted me to go away to college, and the fact that I had gotten accepted into the same school as Antwan was amazing. A week before graduation, I sat my parents down and told them that college wasn’t for me.

It was less about Antwan and more about what I wanted.

College was something I had been working hard at because I wanted to be with my boyfriend.

This had been our dream, more his dream than mine, but I was rocking with it because I didn’t want to break up with him.

He was my first real boyfriend, and we had done everything together for the first time.

Traveling had been what I was passionate about.

Documenting my entire life and showing girls that it was alright to choose you and be yourself.

I’ve spent years watching different content creators and could never relate to any of them.

Some days I wanted to go all out in pink and be all princess like.

Then there was other days when I wanted to toss on the baggiest sweatpants, timbs, and an oversized hoodie to accomplish the day.

Music and fashion were my loves, and I enjoyed writing music and singing it. Even with me being scared to ever release it, I enjoyed it and loved to encourage others to do what they loved and go where they were loved.

Music was my first love, and I had been writing it since I could write my name.

I kept every lyric and song I’ve ever written, and when life became too hard or the noise in my head was too loud, I retreated to music.

As much as I was an open book and shared my life online, that came with a lot of negative backlash that I wasn’t strong enough to handle.

I could have a million people telling me they love my content and what I bring to the content creating world, but one person could say I was overrated, and I was harping on that one person. It was a vicious cycle, which I tried hard to work on without getting into my head about it.

Antwan and my parents were both angry when I decided not to attend college. As mad as both my parents were, they never turned their back on me or kicked me out. They were trying hard to give me the space to make my own decisions without forcing me to do what they had to do when they were my age.

Me and Greene stressed everyone out because while I had at least applied to college, Greene was on her own path.

She didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she eventually found her lane.

Being an assistant to the Caselli family wasn’t a bad job, not when her female boss noticed she was having car trouble and bought her a brand-new car.

I almost wanted to ask if they were hiring because putting my life on the web wasn’t what I thought it would be. Then I thought about traveling the world and all I had been able to do, and I learned to quiet the noise, and focus on me.

“Mommy!” I hollered as I walked through the door, knowing she was home because I could smell the curry in the air.

The smell of the curry cooking in the bottom of the worn metal pot that had housed many meals of rice and peas was the best thing in the entire world.

“Kitchen, Navy!” she hollered back.

Her Louis Vuitton Never Full that she insisted on using for a work bag was hung on the back of the kitchen chair. She had her belt and pants unbuckled as she was opening up a can of peas and looked over at me.

Mommy’s brown skin glistened with sweat as the kitchen window was opened. The sound of the bus bolting down the street could be heard in the kitchen, as the warm air cruised through the window, along with the steam from the pots.

“Did you make enough for me, too?”

She put her hand on her wide hip, something I had inherited from her, and pursed her lips. “Navy, you just come over and never tell us what you doing.”

My mother was born in America, but you couldn’t miss the hint of an accent that she picked up from my grandparents. “Well, I’m sorry if I wanted to walk over and visit my parents.”

“Oh please,” she sucked her teeth.

I laughed and leaned on the free counter, careful not to get in her way. The galley kitchen was already a tight squeeze for the both of us, but I just wanted to be in my mommy’s space. It had been a week since I had been over to visit her and my father.

If I came over too soon, then she would have known something was wrong.

Avril Perkins knew me better than I knew myself, and she would catch me in a lie before I could get it to form.

I was nervous to tell her that me and Antwan had broken up because I was afraid of her response.

My mother never looked at Antwan as my ticket to something better.

I think she wanted us to work because she knew how much I loved that boy.

Since fourth grade, when he pulled my hair and then pushed me, I had loved that boy.

Our families knew each other, and every labor day, you can count on his grandmother to sit right with mine on the parkway while we celebrated.

This wasn’t a little bullshit breakup because our families wanted this for us, and I felt like I messed it up.

“Navy Bleu Perkins, what is the matter?” She held the onion in her hand and sliced it easily, all while she was staring at me.

“Mommy, why something had to be wrong?”

“I know you, gul.”

Laughing, I became serious. “Antwan broke up with me, Mommy.”

She stopped cutting the onion and looked at me. “Go on playing with me, Navy.”

“I’m serious. We’ve been broken up a week and I don’t think we’re going to work it out this time.” I slumped my shoulders, feeling the tears threaten to fall.

I hated all this crying because I thought I had got it all out, and here I was in my mother’s kitchen crying about it again. It was one thing for me to end things because I knew we were growing apart, but for him to end things because I got out of Landon’s car, hurt because he knew me.

He didn’t want to hear my explanation and didn’t even try to sit and talk things out. My mother washed her hands and then pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“It’s alright, Mommy. I know how much everyone loved Antwan.”

She pulled me back as she stared into my eyes. “Navy, we loved Antwan because he grew up with you kids. That doesn’t mean we loved him more than you. I only want my child happy, and I can tell you both weren’t happy anymore.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I questioned as the tears fell down my face, and she swiped them away. Her long nails gently touching my cheek.

Her eyebrow raised. “Would you have listened to me?”

“No,” I sulked.

She laughed. “Exactly… child bull headed.” She imitated my grandmother’s accent, and we both laughed. “Happiness is all I want for you, my Bleu. If that means that you have to find it somewhere else, that is alright, too.”

“What about Daddy?”