Chapter 5 Glass Bones, Steel Smile

Chapter Five: Glass Bones, Steel Smile

By my fifth year in corporate law, I had mastered the art of looking okay.

I wore my pain like perfume, subtle, present, hidden behind elegance. My smile? Perfect. My outfits? Impeccable. My reputation? Untouchable. But my body? Breaking.

Sickle cell had a way of humbling even the most ambitious heart. My crises became more frequent. One time, I had a hearing scheduled, and the night before, my chest tightened like a vice. I couldn't breathe. I lay on my apartment floor whispering prayers between spasms of pain, wondering if I'd see morning.

I still made the hearing....

I wore a grey suit that day, a power color. I straightened my hair. I smiled at the judge. And I won. Everyone said, "Ummu, you're unstoppable." I laughed politely and went straight to the hospital after court.

That became my life: excelling in public, collapsing in private.

My body was warning me, but I refused to listen. Because I believed rest was weakness. And weakness, for people like me, wasn't allowed. Black, African, female, unmarried, chronically ill. I had to be strong in every box just to be taken seriously.

So I kept pushing. Until one day, my body pushed back harder.

I was in a strategy meeting with partners, the kind where everyone sat around a polished table, analyzing big cases. I remember feeling lightheaded, then numb, then nothing. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, IV in my arm, nurse at my side.

My boss visited the next day. He was kind, professional, awkward. He asked how long I'd known I had this "condition." I told him all my life.

He paused, then asked quietly, "Why didn't you tell us?"

I wanted to say: Because I didn't think I could. Because I didn't want to be pitied. Because I didn't want to be the sick girl in the office.

Instead, I just said, "It never got in the way of my work."

That was true,until it did.

I was signed off for two weeks. It felt like punishment. I stayed home, restless and angry. Not just at the disease, but at the silence I had wrapped myself in for so long.

I started questioning everything.

Why was I still doing this?

Who was I proving anything to?

Would this be my entire life high-rise job, endless deadlines, and hospital beds between it all?

I began journaling again. Scribbles at first. Then pages. Then chapters.

I wrote about the first time I realized I was different. About missing childhood playtimes because I was sick. About pretending not to be tired at school so I wouldn't get labeled "weak." About watching my friends talk about weddings and baby showers while I stared at medication charts and blood test results.

I wrote about how sickle cell wasn't just in my blood, it was in my relationships, my self-image, my silence.

One night, I stood in the mirror and saw myself clearly. The makeup, the fitted dress, the lipstick, all carefully applied for a birthday dinner I would eventually cancel. My bones ached. I was exhausted. I stared at my reflection and whispered, What are you still fighting for?

I had built a beautiful lie. And lived in it for years.

But that night, something shifted. I realized I didn't want to be admired anymore. I wanted to be understood. I didn't want perfection. I wanted peace.

And I knew I wouldn't find it in boardrooms or client pitches or polite smiles.

It was time to stop performing.

It was time to listen to my body.

It was time to find the girl I had buried beneath ambition.

Her name was Ummu Hayy.

And she wanted out.