Yet Another Single Gal

Some believe her to be broken. She is no more broken than any of us who chose to enter this world via human beings, allowing those flawed creatures to parent us. Many believe she is afraid of love. These people are partially correct. She is afraid of a love that requires her erasure.

Of all the characters in Queen Sugar, Nova Bordelon interests me the most. While Ralph Angel tires me and Charley reminds me of half of the black women I have ever seen on any show that has black women in it, Nova has always struck me as something new. A portrayal of black womanhood we have only seen a flash of here and there in between the standard storytelling of tragic black women or ambitious black women. All longing for that one thing: love.

Nova Bordelon is not the first single woman to be portrayed as struggling with partnership. She is the first black woman I have seen on screen who struggles with finding love because she does not value the opportunity to find a mate over any other aspect of her life. She is one of the first black women I have seen on screen to repeatedly choose herself over the chance to get chose by a decent enough mate.

Her boyfriend left his wife for her. But, Nova did not stay.

She had a replay of her college years and entered into a relationship with a woman. Nova did not stay.

She is currently involved with a single man who is an academic and activist; he is as committed to racial justice as she is. While Nova has opened herself up to the quietly sexy Dubois in ways she has not to others, she is still a flight risk.

But, her potential to run is not simply because she is afraid of being vulnerable. It is not merely because for her entire life she believed her father betrayed her mother and did not value her as much as he did his son. “Free spirit” is the only term our limited language will allow us for a woman like Nova.  But, even that does not fully capture why she is in her late 30s and has nonchalantly walked away from potential love on several occasions.

She wants a kind of love that women like her have had no prototype on which to base their vision of partnership. In this version of love, she gets to continue to choose herself and not be penalized for it. She gets to put her work before her relationship when it is necessary and have her partner admire that quality in her, acknowledging that a woman passionate about her life’s mission will choose it over him at times.

It is no coincidence that Nova admitted her love for Dubois after he confided he, too, had made it to mid-life without children on purpose. And he planned to continue his life childfree by choice. When you are a black woman who does not worship at the altar of motherhood, you get used to good black men taking offense to their goodness not being enough to magically transform you into a baby-hungry maker of nightly meat loaf. Dubois asserting that his legacy would lie in the work he left behind, the altruism he extended to his community is what made Nova believe, with this man, she could be the woman she has always known herself to be. The woman that she feared would have to be erased if she entered into something permanent with any of the others.

She told Dubois she was tired of running. And that was true. But, the thing is: Before him, she had to run. When you are self-possessed. When being alone does not frighten or shame you. When wife is a title that mostly disinterests you and motherhood a role you do not need to try on to know it won’t fit.

When you are enough for you.

Saying yes to a version of partnership that might suffocate you is an unnecessary burden.

I long to see more of Nova’s struggle because it centers the black single woman that I know. She is neither frivolous and fabulous nor bitter and angry. She ages and reconsiders some assumptions she made once she has new evidence to redraw conclusions. But, these new inferences don’t necessarily make the complexities of her desires any more simplistic than they ever were.

Nova wants what she wants when she wants it. She wants it how she wants it. Because she has met her intellectual, spiritual and philosophical equal in Dubious, she is more likely to bend and consider this way of living and loving will not reap her what she needs emotionally. But, at her core: preservation of self will underscore every choice she makes. I want to send Ava and Oprah a thank you card for showing people what a Nova looks like and how looking like Nova can cause turmoil for the Novas themselves as well as the people who love them.

Finally, a woman who desires love, but not more than she desires herself.

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