Читать книгу Hey Homegirl - Lashell Rivers - Страница 6

Stop, Look, and Listen

And I listened, all right, to all the parties my family would have, especially since my mom could cook her ass off; and between her and my dad the family was big. The people that would come over, between all my uncles and their friends, would fill up that apartment living room, singing, drinking, and dancing. My father was the DJ and was so into technical stuff. The albums would play all that real good music from when they were growing up in the ’60s and ’70s. I watched them play spades, standing out on the balcony, smoking refa’, and eating whatever my mom had laid out beautifully, for she was a caterer for weddings sometimes and other events. I remember being a little girl and going along to help her cater with my dad and uncles. It was how she made extra money while going to school to become a professional at it. As for Pops, he mainly did construction work, and on those breaks in between jobs, he would have me to watch, along with keeping an eye on my brother and sister. We had our family moments where my dad would record us on the microphone, with my mom and us three children acting silly and singing to different songs; and back then my mom could sing her ass off! Everyone would always try to get her to sing at the house parties we’d have. My dad loved to record her and show her off as his woman, and they would just dance and groove, get drunk, and make their moves.

Of course a lot of the times all the children would be in the room playing while the adults were doing “grown-up” things as they would say it, and all my cousins and I would either be playing with our Barbie dolls or that husband-and-wifey roleplay we would see our parents doing. There was always that drunk uncle in the mix that someone would play, and I would draw pictures to sneak out there with all the adults to show off and be nosey at the same time. I remember drawing a naked woman when I was five and taking it to my mom while they were partying. “Aw, Shell, that’s so beautiful. Now let’s give her a fur coat.” And she scribbled over the tits and coochie to cover that part up while others laughed. Sometimes it was crab season at our dinner table, and we would eat bushels of crabs that sometimes lasted for days. And so many of the family members would come eat them while the kids ate the leftovers. Those were the fun times.

I always had an uncle sleeping on the couch—either he had nowhere to go, he and his lady were arguing, or they were just fucked up, period. These were my mom’s li’l brothers. There was the oldest one, Uncle Ron, who loved women and would spoil the hell out of me. He and mom had the same father, and Ron was a taxicab driver. I guess that’s how he picked up so many women, and I would ride with him sometimes in the front seat while he worked and drove all over DC. He would give me anything I wanted. He would rub my legs, and I didn’t know that was wrong. For some reason, as a little girl, I would become so jealous when he had a girlfriend; I guess that meant less time for me. But he made up for it when he bought me my first kitten, and I named her Cindy after the singer. The whole family was gathered around when he surprised me with her from behind his back and onto my lap, not to mention one of his girlfriends was there, lol.

Another uncle was Troy, who had this gorgeous dark-skinned girlfriend named Monique with the pretty hair, and they had my cousin Tiffany, who was dark-skinned like the both of them…just darker (shrug). I guess because her grandfather was African—hell, that’s how he looked to me. He died when I was very young, and I always remembered him sitting in a chair looking out of the window. He was old and looked very sick. Tiffany’s grandmother took care of him, and Tiffany and I were always together. She had soooooo much that I was like, wow! Any Barbie doll you could think of, she would have it—from the cars, the houses, dresses, oh my goodness; and she loved to do their hair. Whenever I was at her house, we played Barbie with the cousins on her mom’s side, and she did all the Barbies’ hair. Monique and her family lived a walking distance away in the nice houses, so I always loved being at her place because it was a nice house! That grandma played piano for the church, so we’d play on the piano, making noise. There was a large yard with their own playground for us kids. I mean, she had other aunts and uncles with their children; it was so much fun. I lived in a NW apartment. That was cool, but I would always love my cousin Tiffany’s house. And she was only older than me by two years, so we grew up together and went back and forth between each other’s crib while growing up. I mean, after all her father was one of my many uncles, and I believed she saw a lot while we were growing. So much that there were times when I would spend the night over her house, and of course with us being two little girls, we slept in the room and in the same bed. “Shell, go get some toilet paper,” she would tell me sometimes, and she would shove it into her underwear and hump me between my legs. Hell, sometimes she would have me do it to her, and I didn’t know what we were doing. She must have saw something, I mean she knew more than me. We would even have Barbie and Ken hump when we played with them. She was six when I was four, so I paid it no mind and simply looked at it as a fun thing to do.

However, eventually some drug-addicted skank came into my uncle Troy’s life. Maybe he sold some crack to her a couple times. I mean he did do jail time for something. I only saw pictures of him in there holding Tiffany, but later on, he was called out to be the woman’s baby father—a little boy. Now, my grandmother said that boy wasn’t his. Hell, everybody did, but drugs were a motherfucker back then, and between Monique and this woman, all hell broke loose. Ms. Betty, as I would call her, already had a drug habit; and then my uncle Troy got into that habit with her. And as the old saying goes, “Crack killed Apple Jack.” That woman destroyed everything. Hell, the drug crack destroyed so much of my family that it was unbelievable.

My uncle Troy began to deny Tiffany as his because of the crackhead in his life he fell in love with and left aunt Moe for.

My father’s brother Pat became so addicted that he began buying drugs from his little brother Walter, and he was on PCP so hard that when his own brother Patrick kept coming up with excuses on not paying him the money, the hustler he was working for told him to handle it. And he killed his own big brother while high—shot him to death.

I had another uncle that I never met. I heard he was killed in some gang/hustler incident. And his little brother, my uncle Lenny, found out who the man was that killed him years later one night, while listening to an addict speak of it to another. He knew and found that man and beat him to death. He shot him and dragged his body onto the train tracks to be ran over. I think my uncle Len only did three years in jail for that. I mean, hell, he did the police a favor.

And these three men were my father’s little brothers. His sister, Annie, was the only girl, and she was so strung out on drugs that it was unbelievable. She was so beautiful and had one boy—my cousin Kareem, who was like another big brother to me. But boy, she could not stand me for some reason. I was the second grandchild and a girl. Hell, I don’t think she could stand my mother. I remember her with another little girl. I was five years old. She had to have been four because I remember her being younger than I was. I guess Dad didn’t know she was getting high yet, and I did not want to be with her. But she had us one day and sat us under a bridge on the curb while buying drugs from a dude. I remember seeing them argue while she was giving him all the money and getting slapped in the face, then she came back, telling me, “I can’t wait to take you to your father” while grabbing the both of us and taking us to a bus home. She was sober when she had Kareem, but when she gave birth to my other two girl cousins, she was so heavy on that crack and heroin that she threw one in child the trash when she was a baby because of the crying and left the other in the hospital.

My grandma Joan used to love having her grandchildren over. We were there all the time and would go places, having fun. Just playing outside her apartment was fun. My cousin Kareem would always ride his bike to her, and little Pat (named after his father) was a crybaby. He used to be there with us. My uncle Walter was the only one living with grandma, and of course that was before the murder of little Pat’s father—his older brother.

I never really got to know my grandfather, maybe because my father was not his biological son. All the other children were, so only he knows the abuse taken from that. He knew that there was a chance my dad wasn’t his, but he didn’t care. He wanted to marry Grandma Joan and raise dad as his own. It just didn’t work out that way. But by the time I came into the world, he and Grandma Joan had already gone their separate ways so Mr. Bernard took his place. Yes, him I remember for, he treated my grandmother like a queen And they were together all the time until he was robbed and shot to death by an addict. After that, I guess my grandma chose to be by herself and focus on her last son and grandchildren.

Whenever my mother didn’t cook for the holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, Joan did; and we would all be in her little apartment having just as much fun. But there was this one time when my auntie Annie was feanin’ for drugs so hard that there was such this huge fight with her and the family at dinner. So much food went flying, we children stayed in Gramma’s room to hear the arguing. “Fuck you!” was screamed while she was smashing plates of food into her mothers work clothes. She kept hanging on to the door as Dad and the other brothers dragged her screaming tail out of the door and down the steps. Of course, Kareem knew what was going on. He was older than me, and he was going hysterical while the others tried to calm him. But my grandmother took it very calmly. I always noticed that about her. Even with losing two sons and her man through drug violence, she always remained calm, at least in my eyes. She was working at Washington Hospital Center and saw people going through a lot worse than her so; maybe that did it. No matter what damages would go on through the family, she would get with her cousins and other relatives to throw a family reunion every summer and wash it all away.

All this was happening before I reached the age of seven, and although I was the youngest and was getting good attention, I was also going through hell at the same time. Back then, I had some pretty long hair, and before the perm thing came along my way, I would have my hair pressed and hot combed by my mom. “Bend your head down, and let me get that kitchen.” It was another word for beady, nappy hair spots in the back of your neck, and whenever she couldn’t do it, I was in my sister’s hands.

My grandmother (Mom’s mom), died when I was five, and there was a time when fighting cancer became so hard that my mom moved her in to take care of her. She gave her my brother’s room. I recall her yelling sometimes because of the pain she would go through from trying to make it to the bathroom on her own, for it was right across the hallway and she simply didn’t want help. She wanted to stay strong and independent without the help of others. Eventually, she had to stay in the hospital, and they didn’t even alert my mother of her death. She simply found out on her own while going to check up on her. The funeral was full of so much hurt from my mother’s heart because she didn’t get to say goodbye and let everything off her chest before her mother left. I simply sat there and watched my dad hold her as she cried, until it was time to bury her mother. My sister loved her so much, for Eva (our grandmother) gave her the attention she couldn’t give our mother.

Olivia was the name of my sister, who began to treat me like shit when she became a teenager, for loving me the same way as a little sister vanished.

There was a time when she snuck out of the house just at twelve to see a boy in another building. She got caught because of the neighbors calling home, and another time, she was caught in our mother’s bed, with a boy. There I was on the balcony playing with my cat, and I was hearing screams coming from inside, only to see my mom choking her as Dad and Bill tried pulling her off. What could I do but look. It was from then on that I had to go wherever she went so I could be the tattletale and report to my mother everything that she did, which grew the hate she began having toward me. Before that, she did show me love (shrug)

Wherever she wanted to go, my mom would holler, “Take your sister”; and with that came the anger, the mental abuse, and the embarrassment in front of her friends.

“She ain’t my sister. She’s my half sister.”

“Her father is broke as hell and can’t get a job.”

“I’m glad her father ain’t my father.”

“She’s dirty like her father.”

“Heifer.”

“Wench.”

“Go somewhere and get outta my face.”

“I wish you weren’t my sister.”

“Damn, you get on my nerves. Go somewhere and play.” And that is exactly what I did. I would go to my neighbor’s crib or in other buildings, anywhere, and just cry. Whether it was to the people she couldn’t stand, because I would tell them all the things she would say to me, or just cry because my mother had me go with her. And whenever I would go outside, I would do my best to stay completely away from her so I would have nothing to tell. And yeah, my father didn’t work all the time; he would hide liquor in the Laundromat (probably from my uncles) and do his thing. He would smoke so much weed that he would sit and eat five plates of food. Hell, he wasn’t fed as a child (shrug). There was a time that I snuck a piece of bread off his plate, crawled under my bed, and ate it. He whooped my ass for the first and only time! I mean, he literally beat me until I pissed on myself. I came back into the bedroom, with my sister shaking her head while talking on the phone. “That’s what your ass get,” she mumbled so the one on the phone could hear. Boy, did that make her day, for I would always stand there, screaming and crying, while watching her get beat by my mom for talking back and disobeying, staying out past her curfew, getting into fights at school and being suspended, and for people just telling my mom the things they saw her doing with boys and other teen girls.

Go-Go music was hot in those days. It still is, but in the ’80s, it was hotter. With her light skin, long hair, and big booty, she would attract all them hustlers with money. She would sneak out and stay out late with her friends to see Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, Junk Yard, and Back Yard Band, or whatever group was hittin’ back then whom she liked with her girlfriends. There was a time my mother was getting ready to leave for work at five in the morning, while my sister was coming in. Boy was that more shit to hear. All could do was lie in the bed and hear arguments, especially since we shared the same room. My brother had his own room, and my sister couldn’t wait to have her own. That was another conflict.

“How come Bill can stay out and I can’t!”

“Because he’s a boy, and you’re not,” our mother would respond, and that seemed to be the main argument all the time. Lord don’t let the phone ring with two teenagers fighting over it.

There was a time they argued over the phone. If the line beeped, neither would click over for the other’s call. I have no idea what brought it out of her, but she grabbed one of mom’s cooking knives and ran toward Bill for not getting off the phone. His reaction was to knock her the fuck out! I was at school, but Dad came in the door like “WTF” while seeing her on the floor.

“She came at me with a knife!” And that’s all I know from that story. Bill could just get away with things that my sister wished she could get away with, and between the two of them, when I would be walked to school and picked up, I’d rather it be with him than her; for she would terrorize me with words and have me truly wish that I was never her sister or was maybe with another family (shrug). But when it was just me and Bill, just anything without her, had me at peace (prayer hands). We would talk, have fun, go to the store; and sometimes we loved hitting the Kennedy playground before going home. There was a time while we were going into the building that one of the neighbors my age came walked up behind me with another boy and humped on me as though my brother wasn’t there. Bill gripped him, nearly tossing him to the ground. He said, “Don’t you ever come to my sister with that shit, you hear me, little nigga!” And then he got on me. “Don’t you ever let them little boys do that to you, do you hear me? Don’t let that shit happen to you no more!” I nodded while saying “okay.” He grabbed me, pissed off from seeing that. Guess they were doing that “I dare you to” shit.

My sister stopped picking me up because she was always getting into school fights and was just tired of me. She was hanging with her friends and living the teenage life, with other girls being jealous. I mean, she was gorgeous, and they were ugly.

She even had her own team of homegirls. They would have street fights and jump bitches for talking shit to her because of other boys, and those were true ’80s—ass-whooping groups jumping each other. My goodness could she fight. And simply watching her fight built more fear in me, for I would simply imagine her beating me up. With all the hateful words she would say to me, I was too afraid to say anything back. I had the strong fears of her beating me till I bled. She would say “Fuck you” and call me a bitch like she did the others, so running and crying was my only safety. I knew her friends wouldn’t help me—hell, they always fought with her. And I would watch sometimes, for it would be bitches coming to our neighborhood for her. One of her sidekicks named Jes was very petite and lived downstairs underneath us; I hung with her little sister. Her other friend was Krysta, and she lived over us. I hung out with her little brother; she was light-skinned like my sister. They pretty much owned the block when it came to the street fights. The bitches they went to school with were from other blocks. One of her friends, Riana, loved me though. They once fought and became friends, for our mothers met and gave them that choice. Riana would get on her for being so mean to me and making me cry.

But I did feel some love from her here and there. A bigger girl had pushed me while playing, and my sister was told. Livia came out and pushed that girl down in front of everyone. “Don’t you touch my little sister.” The girl ran off crying to her family, and I herd of them came out of the building, fussing at my sister for being older than her and pushing her. “She’s too big to be touching my sister!” yelled my then fifteen-year-old blood, as one of the members held her arm and had the big girl push my sister back. It was more hurtful mentally as I saw it, for the girl didn’t hit her or hurt her physically. The point was that she was defending me, and they didn’t see that. Their point was to come tell them and not put hands on each other, which was the adult way. The hood doesn’t always teach that. She went to our building and cried on the steps after that. I sat next to her with my arm around her and her head on my shoulder. I saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show love.

My big brother was magic and would love to get me away from it all. We would go to the movies and watch the same one three times in a row. We would go to art museums or whatever just to get me the hell away from the house, and for that, I treasured him. Not to mention his gifted abilities. He inspired me when it came to art, for a person could just sit there while he drew them on paper and it would be perfect.

My father spent his whole paycheck on buying him art supplies because he was that good. Let mom tell it was her money (shrug). I would simply stare at him do it, then painter Bob Ross on TV every day whenever Sesame Street came on. All that became my influence in drawing. My teachers would notice my drawings in class, for I’d sometimes draw while they taught. But instead of getting on me, they actually liked what they saw and placed me in TAG, a “talented and gifted” class. So I could continue to become better at my art. I didn’t care what other people thought, only my brother; for I looked up to him and he inspired me. Whenever I drew a picture, I’d take it to him, only to hear “That’s good, but you can do better,” which would truly irk me (hand 2 face). However, I kept going to the point that I was in competitions during second and third grade, and for some reason, I always chose parts of the human body to draw and compete on in science fairs. It simply caught my interest. I studied the human body because no one was teaching me what to do with myself at home. Mom placed me in everybody’s hands while she worked, so I would go for days without a bath. I would scratch myself to see dirt in my nails. I placed my dirty underwear underneath my bed because everyone was doing their own thing, paying me less attention. I really wasn’t being taught anything as far as hygiene from my sister, and she was the only girl to teach me when mom wasn’t there. Just because I learned while younger doesn’t mean the crap will stay in my head. One should never stop teaching and checking to make it a child’s habit.

You always make sure a little girl has on clean clothes, clean underwear, bathes properly, brushes her teeth every day, and wipes her ass from front to back until it stays in her fucking head!

Eventually, I came up with my own ways of doing things and was a dirty little girl before their eyes without them truly noticing. We were one of the many unstable families in the hood. Mom would write notes and give me money to buy her Newport cigarettes when they were only $2. With a note from the parent, the cashier would actually sell the child the cigarettes or, hell, even liquor back then.

My brother had a pizza job and a pretty girlfriend, along with his acne problem. Many never thought that he could get a girl like her. However, as long as he had the money, he had her. I almost caught them on his bed doing it by walking in (hands to face), and he would buy her things and draw her picture. I believe she was his first young love. But he lost his job, and without money, she dumped him. He was so heartbroken that he took a bunch of pills, trying to kill himself. He ended up walking to the playground and passing out, then being robbed while lying there on the ground. I’m glad I was too young to truly understand and remember it all. I glanced at him in the hospital bed, but Dad hurried up and took me away. I mean I needed him more then I needed my parents—mentally, that is. He would have reptiles for pets, and he opened my mind to so many things. Once we had a big turtle who had baby turtles. He would keep a boa constrictor, a python, and would simply keep them all in his room, away from Mom. I would watch the snakes chase the white baby mice that he’d buy to feed them, and it would truly touch me to see them become squeezed to death, with teardrops of blood coming through. Our mother was okay with it because he’s a boy, even though she was scared of those pets. Everyone loved Cindy because she would eat all the roaches that ran around the apartment. :)

We lived on top of the trash-dump room, and Jess’ family had such a huge infestation of roaches that they would spread into our apartment. Hell, I believe everyone had roaches, but my parents were very clean people. And we’d cover all the furniture to let off roach bombs. We would come inside to air out the place and clean the dead roaches from everywhere, mainly the kitchen, which was the cat’s cookout spot. But while all these ordinary things were happening, my parents slowly began to separate. Mom started having some friends on the side, and Dad had me with him while getting high with his homie. I met a couple of Mom’s friends and knew they were nothing, but then the dude my mother was creeping with actually had the nerve to call my house while she was out of town and asked for me (shaking my head). Of course, my jobless dad at that time was home and answered the phone.

A grown man calling your seven-year-old daughter? Really?

Dad was far from ignorant.

That man was not the first one my mom had on him, but she ain’t plan on keeping his ass either. Dude snuck his way in, and it was through me.

“Shell, who was that man on the phone?”

“Mom’s friend.”

“How does he know you? Why is he calling you?” And this finalizes all that I refused to see, because I was the baby of the family. I’d ask, “Why is Dad sleeping on the coach?”

“Because he snores,” she’d respond, as the other siblings laughed.

They knew our parents were having a hard time, but they said, “Shell’s the baby she doesn’t need to know. Just keep it from her.”

Three months later, my dad was renting a room somewhere, and I came home one day and saw a man in Mom’s bed—the same bed my parents slept in.

It was the same man on the phone—Mr. Tyrone.

Before that phone call, I remembered my mother showing him to me, and I immediately hated his skinny black ass. Children are not dumb, especially when it comes to another man trying to take their father’s place. And I knew he was no good. My sister and her friend saw the shit, screaming, “Damn!” while he lay there in a robe, waving hello. I stood there while they ran out the door, laughing, because it was just that weekend that I stayed with Dad, who gave me his fold-up cot bed to sleep on while he slept on the floor.

Dad did eventually move on to who was to become his future wife: a beautiful, heavyset woman named Kelly. I fell for her instantly, for she got out of her car with the biggest smile and hugged me. Her young son was in the back seat; his name was Micheal. And the confirmation was clear that my parents were done. Yeah, Mom knew she fucked up, and Dad fucked up too.

But being unfaithful was the difference.

We began to leave DC, packing for Virginia after Mom got into it with Liv. She had graduated high school by then and needed to figure shit out. I was nine years old ending 4th grade, but can’t say much.