At the beginning of the third grade my mother moved my brother and I to a new school. She did this often. With each move I attempted to blend in and fade away with the other children; but with a younger brother whose rebellious reputation was known in the tri-county area and a mentally ill mother this never seemed to happen. Each time I would gradually become known as the good student with the crazy mother and hellion brother. This meant I was never invited to sit with people at lunch, or play at recess. At our young stage of development we didn’t understand that mental illness was not something you caught; that my raving mother’s appearance outside of homeroom would not infect our teacher, or my classmates. I was blacklisted.
Determined for this move to be different I decided to reinvent myself, to remove as much of my family as I possibly could. When I walked into my first class at this new elementary school and the teacher called out my name, “Elizabeth Johnson” I replied, “Actually, it’s Angela. My name is Angela. I like to be called Angela”. With each speaking the name became more concrete and by lunchtime even I believed my name was Angela. I could control the course of my life. If I didn’t want to be associated with my family, I didn’t have to be.
When I came home and announced to my mother that I would now be called Angela instead of Elizabeth, she responded coolly, “And who exactly, is Angela?” “Angela is a shortened version of Angelina; I just shortened my middle name” I answered. When she asked me for my reasons I replied simply, “It’s shorter, and Andy goes by a shorter version of his middle name. My name is too long mom, it’s too long”. And it really was. With 32 letters, 14 syllables, and two ethnicities in my full name I had decided that enough was enough. Elizabeth Angelina Bautista Johnson was going to become Angela Johnson. “Mhmm. Well, let’s see what your Grandmother has to say about this,” and with that she dialed the phone and passed it over to me.
My Grandmother and I began to chat about my first day at the new school and from the kitchen my mother yelled “Go on, tell her what you just told me Elizabeth! Tell her what you think you’ve decided to do!” My Grandmother asked what my mother was saying in the background. “She wants me to tell you about my new name.”
“What new name? Did you get a nickname on your first day?” I replied quietly, “No, I just wanted a shorter name is all. I am going to go by Angela now, that’s all. I asked all my teachers to call me Angela,” I braced. I was named after my Grandmother. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I also didn’t want to be Elizabeth anymore.
She was very quiet for a moment and then asked me if I knew what a namesake was. She said that I was her namesake, that her name was not, in fact Grandma. That her name was Elizabeth, and that my mother had given me her name, as a way to honor her. The only response I could come up with at the time was “Oh,” and I handed the receiver back to my mother. They spoke for awhile about me on the phone and I sat thinking about my decision.
I couldn’t go back to school and tell my teachers that my name was actually Elizabeth, that I had been mistaken. My vanity and stubbornness had already emerged as the frontrunners of my budding personality so back-peddling was not an option. The name war waged on in our house for weeks; my reasons for the name-change multiplying each time either of them would ask me why, furthering my resolve.
I began investigating all of my names. If my mother had loaned Elizabeth to me from my Grandmother, had she plagiarized my other names as well? I soon discovered that Angelina was my birth father’s sister’s name. I had never met him, and certainly never met her. Bautista was plundered from my father, it was his surname. My mother’s birth father, Edward Johnson, had died shortly after she was born. This too, was a name doled out to me to pay homage to someone I had never met. The only one left to defend their namesake rights was my Grandmother, and she continued her resistance until the day she died.
My brother was also a namesake; but he received no pushback when he declared his name was no longer Edward Andrew Johnson, but Andy Johnson (and for a short time at age 3 he demanded to be called "Mud", and the entire family went along with it). All of the men Andy's name paid homage to were dead, so he could basically do whatever he wanted with his name.
It would be 20 years before I knew the reasons for my sudden identity crisis and the impetus would launch an exploration into my name and concept of family that I still dedicate hours of thought and writing to.
Following my Grandmother’s death I drove to the DMV and had my driver’s license updated. Instead of reading Angelina Johnson, as almost all my legal documents at the time did, it would soon read E. Angelina Johnson. A compromise of self that I remain willing to live with.
Comments