[mystical music plays]
[gentle tinkling]
[wind rushing]
[woman] Black girl magic is more than greasing words up
for the world to swallow.
I'm not mistake or coincidence. My ancestors dreamt me up.
Swinging metaphors into flower dust, scraping the mouthbed
of all the women left unsaid.
I am making ritual a resistance.
I am creating my own eulogy before they write me out of my own story.
Before they silence and erase me.
Abuela?
Abuelita?
[nurse] Blood pressure's dropping.
[indistinct overlapping voices]
[voice] Abuela.
[girl in Spanish] Grandma.
[doctor in English] I'm very sorry, she was old.
[indistinct chatter]
Are you listening to me?
Focus.
[uneasy breathing]
[ominous ringing]
[indistinct voices]
[electricity buzzing]
[upbeat music plays on headphones]
[whooshing]
[woman] Like a tree without roots,
I'm left between the margins of displacement and erasure.
Like a tree without roots, I'm thirsty.
Thirsty for memories.
Thirsty to remember.
[birds chirping turns into high-pitched ringing]
[ringing fades]
Memories of her delicate, strong hands.
Hands that picked me up every time I fell.
Hands that could not be moved.
Hands like roots, hands that refuse to let this white silence
control who gets to tell our story.
[glimmering chime reverberates]
[clock ticking]
[necklace tinkling]
[dramatic music plays]
[man speaking Spanish on TV] Many people highlight how important it is
to exist, which is very hard.
Stars will guide you.
[in Spanish] Cross my heart!
[man speaking Spanish on TV] Lots of love for you all. Lots and lots of love!
[in Spanish] Cross my heart.
[clock continues ticking]
[chair creaking]
- [gentle tinkling] - [sobs softly]
[sniffles]
[mystical reverberating sound]
[in English] You got this, Estella.
Keep it together.
[soft screeching]
[voice] Luna, cannot register command.
Feets, please. Cannot register command.
Anything.
Cannot register command. [voice winds down]
[Estella] Okay. Okay.
You got this.
What's happening to me?
[cacophony of humming and discordant sounds]
Culture of costume,
our knowledge of vacuum,
our bodies become targets, don't you see?
How easily Black girl becomes wallpaper to the building of her own identity.
A mime always in front of her edifice, a movement.
[electricity crackling]
[high-pitched ringing]
[distorted record scratching]
[indistinct chatter, static]
[ominous whispering]
[voice shouts, echoes]
[ominous music plays]
[gentle tinkling]
[wind rushing]
[muffled beat plays]
[man] The wind of change is blowing half a gale in the Panama Canal Zone.
Americans had to defend themselves as students and other rioters demanded
an end to the Standing Canal Zone Treaty with the United States.
[overlapping shouting and chatter]
[automatic gunfire]
[people protesting]
[in Spanish] A country is not defined by those who suppress the people.
We're free, free and sovereign people!
- Grandma! - Freedom, freedom!
[man in English] Panamanians want their flag to replace the Stars and Stripes
as they call for change.
[glimmering chime]
[gentle tinkling]
[Estella] My flow forever pulsates within me.
My story is rooted in the sacrifices of my people.
[exhales]
The truth is, I come from women who climb mountains like stairs,
who strut and slay,
women with grit and guts.
I come from go-go beats and thick tamboras.
I come from rose-bloodied machetes and chants of libertad.
I am a yucca child rooted and ready.
I am not docile or decent, I am enlightened and enraged.
I am ready.
And I will rinse myself of all of society's toxic noise.
Noise that silences, that chokes.
You and I will, we will rise.
And whatever I have left of these memories is mine.
[percussive music plays]
The blood in my veins is one with the stories that course through
the braid of time, and I'm taking it back.
Sometimes you have to block out the silence to listen to the music inside.
[woman in Spanish] Cross my heart.
[mellow, discordant music plays]