I Write Because

An essay by Katrina Byrd

Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash

Four years after the end of Vietnam, two years after Elvis’s death, back when Coke came in contoured glass bottles, the Jefferson’s were moving on up and speakers bumped with Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell, a dusty playground surrounded me. Flanked by two straight lines—team one to my left, team two to my right—sweaty nine-year-old brown faces turned in my direction. The ball I’d never successfully kicked rested in the coach’s hand.

 “Aw, man,” team one captain said looking at me. “She can’t even see the ball.”

The sun beat down on me, burning the part in the center of my head. I couldn’t escape humiliation. Crying was weak. Fighting meant a suspension. No options. I stood. 

Discouraged by their insults—words formed in hate, ripping away my dignity—I learned to use my words to escape. “Tony the Turkey,” my first short story written in fourth grade, followed Tony’s last moments as he sat on the Thanksgiving table between the candied yams and turnip greens. Though there was no serial killer and Tony’s fate was no mystery, the story earned its mystery thriller label because the conflict rested in Tony’s consciousness. Unlike the cornbread dressing, hot buttered rolls and the ham, Tony refused to accept his fate. Visually impaired since birth, I learned the most unheard voice belongs to the person who refuses to conform.

Four eyes, blind, Coke bottle glasses, cross-eyed left a mark on me. I was made fun of on the playground, in the neighborhood, and in the classroom. Not sure what was worse, insults from children or insults from teachers.

“Don’t slump like Katrina,” one teacher told her second grade reading group. All eyes on me. Sitting in my desk, my nose inches from the open book. Their words weren’t due to my inability to see well, they were a reflection of my refusal to conform to the stereotypical disabled person. At my eye doctor’s advice, my mother insisted I read regular print like the rest of my class. I did.

“Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions—to define, classify, control, and regulate people,” writes French philosopher, writer and political activist, Michael Foucault. Foucault coined the term “biopower,” the subjugation of human bodies in order to gain control. This term applies to race, class and the abnormal. What happens when a disabled body refuses to be controlled?

“At twenty-two, I’ll know something,” I said ending my sixth grade graduation speech. “At twenty-five, I’ll have something, and at thirty-five, I’ll be somebody!” I stood, shocked at the two and a half minutes of thunderous applause. 

After the ceremony a gentleman approached. Awe set on his face like a sunrise. He took my hand and squeezed, then said, “Miss Byrd.” Only teachers were called by their last names. “You are a gasp!” 

Over the years his words dulled under the tapestry of systemic ableism weaving its way throughout junior high and high school. “This child can’t see and she got all A’s.” “…blind bitch…” “… with yo’ cross eyed ass…” “She’s outta step…she just can’t get the routine…” “Ain’t nobody said nothin’ to you…” “Rabbit eye…” “Y’all leave her alone. You know she can’t see.” “Sweetheart, if you can’t see, you shouldn’t be here.”

The year George H. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law, Millsaps College rejected my application, gas was $1.34 per gallon, and on a beautiful sunny day, my high school principal stood on stage at graduation rehearsal.

“You can’t march,” he said in front of an audience of two hundred. Instantly, Carrie, the girl beside me sobbed. Carrie took special education classes and had recently undergone hip surgery. This wasn’t right. I felt it in my bones. But, how do you challenge authority? An unknown author writes, “Hard things are put in our way, not to stop us, but to call out our courage and strength.”

Angry, I left my seat. The principal sat in a plush chair when I approached. “She will march.” I towered over him with clenched fists.

“She’s too slow.” He crossed one leg over the other.

“If she doesn’t march, I don’t march,” I said. “And If I don’t march, Jessie Fields (my daddy) ain’t gonna be happy.”

“She’ll have to be at the end of the line,” he said. “And you’ll have to be back there with her.”

Four hours later “Pomp and Circumstance” played, I held Carrie's hand. We took each step together as her mother’s voice filled the auditorium. “Y’all made it!” she repeated more times than I could count. But where had we made it to? I understood her joy. Completing high school was a worthy achievement, but what was next? Were we, two young girls of varying disabilities, prepared for the next leg of our journey? Together we took each calculated step, barely sure of the first before taking the next, knowing the slightest mistake would prove our unworthiness to participate in what we’d earned. “Pomp and Circumstance” mocked our attempt at normalcy as we pondered the paths available to our disabled bodies.

Encouraged by Dora Robertson, my partner, I reapplied to Millsaps College eight years later, and was accepted as an adult student. After four years of taking classes and working, I faced Dr. Kathi Griffin, the director of the Millsaps Writing Center at the time.  

“You have to complete your writing portfolio in order to graduate…,” she said in all of her emails and phone messages during the fall and spring semesters. Everybody said I was a good writer including Dr. Griffin. I didn’t understand why she wanted to speak with me about required edits to papers in my writing portfolio. I’m a good writer. Why do I need to make any changes to my papers? I ignored all of her communications until I could ignore them any longer. With ego in hand I sat in her office. 

“If you want to be taken seriously as writer…” she said looking at me.

Damn! She got my back. I sat amazed. I was planning for a graduation ceremony. She was preparing me for a future in the academic and creative writing world. A few weeks later I walked across the stage, not sure which was more frightening: people who saw me as nothing or those who saw my true potential.  

“My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability  doesn’t prevent you from doing well and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically,” writes Stephen Hawkings, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and a person living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 

In an unaccepting world, I talked a little too loud, stood a little too tall, pushed a little too hard. Society defines me by what I can’t do. I define me by what I can do. I write.

I write because I was bullied, because all my life I wanted to be normal and because of the mean girls in high school. I write because I grew a sunflower from seed, because I was friends with Jay Kenney and because each day I’m transforming  my life. I write because my high school friend died of leukemia, because of my childhood friendships with future drug addicts, and because of my love for music. I write because I practice Buddhism, because I hollered at my sister—she hollered back—and because I have joy. I write because somebody called me ugly, somebody said I was smart, and because my mama slapped the shit out of me one morning for talking back. I write because I was rejected, because I was accepted, and because my black lab and my white bunny were friends. I write because Eric Hambrick said I was amazing, and because two teenage black boys murdered him at a local Waffle House. I write because my friend’s husband committed suicide, because of the Japanese Magnolia in my parents’ front yard, and I write because of the unspoken rule that women had to wear dresses to church. I write because of bourbon time, tea time, and because a little girl next door said, “Mama, I see her panties,” when she saw me chopping up a felled tree in my yard. I write because on the day I testified before the FDA in support of AMX0035, Dora’s sycamore tree fell, because I miss her and because I am face to face with the devastation of ALS daily, and because Boots licks my tears when I cry. I write because five-year-old Felicia Griffin was raped and murdered, because Eric Moffett—the rapist and murderer—is on death row and because soldiers fought for my freedom. I write because I watched Dora die from ALS. I write because I’m an ALS advocate, because I’m a part of the dying and broken hearted community and because it is there I feel most alive. I write because I am human. 

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Katrina Byrd, writer and playwright living in Jackson, MS, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women. An emerging writer published in several magazines, Byrd and Dora, her partner of 23 years, created the Boa Flouncer alter ego in 2010. The Boa Flouncer is a social media influencer who encourages followers to be themselves. “If who I am offends you, then, honey, prepare yo’self!” With attitude, flair, and feather boas, she delivers messages of hope. “Honey, keep struttin’ yo’ strut. Don’t give up.” After being diagnosed with ALS on November 18, 2019, Dora lived for seventy-six days. With no legal ties to each other, Dora and Katrina navigated the 100% fatal disease alone. Byrd cared for Dora alone with no money, no famity support, no real understanding of ALS, no understanding of how to navigate the healthcare system, and minimal equipment. Shortly after Dora’s death, Byrd’s ALS advocacy work began. During the past four years, Byrd advocated with with several ALS organizations including ALS Problem Solvers, ALS/TDI, and NEALS.  Byrd testified before the FDA in support of AMX0035, presented at the 2022 STAT Summit in Boston and she’s presented at I AM ALS’s Flag event held on the National Mall. Byrd serves as a Tim Lowrey Panelist, she’s received four Mississippi Arts Commission grants, and in 2023, she was selected as an ALS/MND Patient Fellow. Presently, Byrd serves on the LEITH Lab’s Community Advisory Board, the RDLA Advisory Board, the Honey Badger Collective and she serves on the ALS Hope Foundation’s Veterans Action Committee.  Byrd also uses her alter ego to recognize community members who advocate, educate, and create awareness.