The Dream
I dreamt
of my great-grandmother.
I only found out about her
a few years ago,
after a DNA test
showed I have African roots.
She was Jamaican.
At 15,
she became the concubine
of my great-grandfather—
a Portuguese doctor
in his late 40s,
already with a family.
She gave birth
to seven of his children.
She’s mentioned
in a book.
She was deported from New York
on the grounds
of being ‘immoral.’
She travelled
to the UK and US
in her lifetime.
I’m not sure
why I’m remembering her now.
Her name
was Cleopatra.
My first black cat
was called Cleopatra.
My email handle
is “cleo21.”
My grandmother
didn’t want anyone
to know
about my mother’s father.
Another man—
her husband—
was listed
on my mum’s birth certificate.
My mother’s biological father
and his family
knew she existed.
They’d been told
she’d moved
to Australia.
They all knew about her.
She
never knew
about them.
The Meaning
the woman herself
Cleopatra is not just a name. She’s my great-grandmother. A teenage girl swept into a colonial arrangement— her story buried with scandal and shame. She reappears now not just as history, but as witness. As legacy.
the name
I’ve been carrying her name unconsciously for years—in my pets, my usernames. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. I think it’s lineage trying to find voice. I was already remembering her, long before I “knew” her.
hidden lineage
My mother was erased from her paternal story. My great-grandmother was deported for “immorality.” I’m the first in this line to say: this happened. I’m breaking silence simply by remembering. Cleo is stepping into that role.
arrival
I didn’t summon her.
She came to me.
I’m the one who can carry her story—not with shame or denial, but with understanding.
What Lingers…
What if remembering is a form of repair—stronger than silence, a candle against shame?
What if some names live in the body long before they’re spoken aloud?
Marginalia
I was twenty-one when I took Cleo’s name into my email address—the same age I began experiencing the panic attacks I later connected to another of my ancestors, over twenty years later.
Perhaps those events are unrelated, or even chance; it all depends on what you believe. To me, not everything has to be explainable to be true.
This dream, along with The House That Contains Everything, sparked another deep dive into my ancestral history. The research felt so unrelated to my herbal path that, out of curiosity, I uploaded my natal chart to an AI—to see whether I was on the right track.
