Laverne Tapley
Laverne Tapley: “All that was like a teacher to me”
Laverne and her granddaughter.
Laverne posing in front of a Christmas tree.
“All of that was like a teacher to me,” Laverne Tapley reflected during our interview at the SAGE Center Bronx. Her life as a black lesbian woman has not been an easy one. But she learns something from each of life’s challenges, and every day continues her journey to embrace who she is.Growing up in the New Jersey foster care system, Laverne and her brother never found a supportive home. The foster placement was a less-than-ideal match. Laverne recognized herself as a lesbian when she was sixteen, though because her foster parents had so many expectations for her and her future with men, she did not feel safe coming out to them. Laverne has rarely had the privilege to present her sexuality, much of her life was spent hiding herself from others and working hard in order to fit into places she would not be accepted otherwise. She would pursue the occasional boyfriend solely for the sake of pleasing her parents, and even took a husband at the behest of his mother on her deathbed. Laverne recounts a low point in her life when she was raped by a man and could not confide in anyone who could bring about justice. During our interview, Laverne lamented about the mistreatment of women in the justice system, with an emphasis on her empathy towards fellow victims of rape. She says the problem lies with our society more than anything, citing the fact that women like her do not feel comfortable confessing to authorities when these violent crimes are committed against them. The intersection of Laverne’s identity as a black woman makes her even less likely to be listened to from police and justices. After this event, Laverne completely lost interest and trust in men.
Laverne’s relationship with her family was neither positive nor supportive. Those family members who knew of her identity as a lesbian avoided and shunned that side of her. She remembers one or two supportive relatives, though the majority made it clear that they could not accept her as a lesbian. Before she married, she expressed her identity to her fiancé, though he dismissed her. The two divorced after five years. Not long after the marriage, an interaction with ex-girlfriend publicly outed Laverne to her family, who reacted by treating her very poorly for years after; many resented her their whole lifetimes. Laverne thinks back to how this treatment affected her. She recalls later in her life when her daughter was experimenting with her sexuality, and received much more support than she did from the younger generation of her family. This uneven treatment mixed with her past trauma caused Laverne to behave much less supportive than she would today. In our interview she thought back in sadness about how she wished she was a better mother to her daughter.
Laverne Tapley at the Sage Center Bronx
Laverne now commutes from Queens to the Bronx SAGE center four times a week as a crucial element of her life. She always invites her girlfriend to the social events at the center, and otherwise enjoys activities such as Bingo-cise and the group art-focused projects. Although she does not enjoy the food much herself, we found it surprisingly tasty when we visited. SAGE has been a huge factor in her acceptance of her identity today. Laverne expressed that even while dealing with the death of so many of her family members and friends on top of her own health issues- she is grateful for her girlfriend and the SAGE center for making her feel comfortable with herself, which she had not gotten much of in the rest of her life.
The photographs Laverne brought mostly depict her in recent years, which she decided to share because they document her more recent coming to terms with her identity. She also brought some photos of the members of her family that are women like her mother and grandmother. She also brought a photo of her granddaughter riding a tricycle- on which she commented that never liked children much, but she may be starting to understand the appeal because of this specific kid. Some of her pictures were of her sister, who grew up separately from her and her brother’s foster family. Laverne keeps a trunk of photos from earlier parts of her life, though her family has informed her of their plan to throw it away after her passing.
After a lifetime of hiding her story, Laverne has decided the world should hear it. She was excited about the idea of this visual-oral history website, especially because since her strokes she has lost the ability to write in her journal she enjoyed keeping. Despite her tough life in which she was turned away from acceptance at nearly every opportunity, Laverne is doing alright today. She has been going to therapy and though she questions how much her straight white therapist can help her, she still finds value in talking to her weekly and working through some of her trauma out loud. Laverne looks back at her life with a reparative outlook, noting that she would not have learned the lessons that she knows today had her experiences not taught her the hard way. We have encouraged her to donate the trunk of her photos to SAGE for safekeeping.
Later in her life, Laverne, was tasked with taking care of the older members of her family as they grew old and started to pass on. These are the same family members who would shun her for her identity as a lesbian woman. Laverne was devoted to her family regardless, and she stayed indoors and cared for them for many years. Around this time, she also suffered from medical troubles herself, including multiple strokes and heart attacks, which she attributes as the cause of her impacted memory in our interviews. Laverne, thinking back to this period of her life, expressed gratitude to her girlfriend, with whom she is still in a relationship today. Laverne mentioned how her girlfriend cooked soup for her and took care of her- which she comments is what you do when you love somebody. The two were together during the COVID pandemic lockdown, though Laverne spent most of it pent up in their home from fear of COVID-related complications.
Laverne Tapley and a plush toy.
Laverne’s Facebook post