MsCantGetRight
A True Story
Shakeya Craig
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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MsCantGetRight: A True Story
Copyright 2006, 2012 by Shakeya Craig. All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition
No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.
This is a true document of work, it was written under the author's own experience and opinions and does not reflect the beliefs of others. All government names and nicknames of persons involved have been changed except for the author’s own.
for
bulk purchases, please visit www.shakeyacraig.com
or write to:
P.O. Box 543
Philadelphia, Pa. 19105
267.499.6712
United
States
Edited
by Shakeya Craig
Written by Shakeya Craig
Contents
Chapter 6: Racism and Runaways
Chapter 14: Wolf in Wolves Clothing
Chapter 16: What Happens in Vegas
Chapter 17: Love Thy Crazy Neighbor
Chapter 23: “Me Tarzan, You Jane”
Chapter 34: Can’t Keep Running Away
Chapter 36: Pedophiles in the Pulpit
Acknowledgements
I pray to the Almighty a great deal. Whether I’m praying for something I want or don’t need or on someone else’s behalf. I pray for forgiveness. I pray for guidance and answers. I pray when I’m elated and when I’m not feeling what life is throwing at me. I thank God all the time for the many blessings He’s granted me and I’ve learned over time that even when things aren’t going my way and everything seems wrong, I thank God because I know everything has a reason, I know that He is talking to me and has not looked me over. I thank God for showing me just how strong and tolerant I am for pulling through when I began to doubt myself. If someone told me that there was no such thing as God, I would pray for them too. God is real.
I’m grateful to have met some wonderful people during my life. At one time I had almost given up on human beings!! But people like Brandon Grier changed my mind. Thank you my friend for wanting to remain a part of my life when sugar and shit was brewing together and eventually became a big pot of pure shit!...lol.
A special shout out to my crazy fam; Marilyn Camara Edwards, Arthur Tillman, Evans Bouknight, Teakee Edwards, Stacy, Tanisha, Rudolfo Williams (my goon/chef/brotha from anotha motha. You ready…lol?)
R.I.P Beulah Garrett. You are in heaven with the angels. Thank you.
Thank you Delores Sweeney.
Constance Johnson, you do so much for so many people. You’re always putting folks first. You are truly a blessing.
Much love to Carol and Betsy Grier.
Oh well Mike Sanders (Hustlin’ Backwards), finally this is it and thanks.
Shout out to Johndi Harrell (Do you think ya job will hire me now...? probably not…lol!)
Thanx for the advice and pointers Mr. Marcus “Moshay” Whaley(True Blood).
Special thanks to Mike of CustomCreations.
Hey Margie Tierno! …andMyra!!
Excuse me Rahstan (Mr.James where’s my damn DVD?)
Brandy Ashby aka Brandy Chenell aka Coffee, good looking out for me sista when I needed a friend the most. You helped me a lil’ bit, just a lil’…lol.
I haven’t forgotten you Mr. “Ruff Rev.” Jerry L. King (sorry)
Ed (Chickenwang)…Top…Big Daddy…Kevin…Bigs
To Chris, Malik, Shawn, Brook, Naseem, Alex, Sidque, Karima, Allyma, just know that I tried, I cared and love ya’ll but my best wasn’t good enough.
Uhhh…Hi Shawna! (not quite sure where you fit into this equation…but anyway)
To the soft-spoken gentleman that sat next to me in court, you gave me encouraging words, inspiration and you believed in me during a time when no one seemed to care (you know who you are) Thanks for the magazines.
Thanx Mark Robinson, City Blue, Joe Creighton, Markisha Boyd and also to Mrs. Jessica, thanks for considering me.
Of course I can’t forget all the brothers and sisters that lifted me up and helped me out when I was feeling low and doing bad and most importantly; the others that kicked me when I was already down. I am stronger because of you all. Thank you.
And you know what they say about saving the best for last…so smoochess Kerron R. P., much love for sticking around once you knew of my situations (and not expecting anything in return), thank you for your patience, encouraging words, motivation, honesty and advice.
Intro
I was at a cornerstone of my life when I thought that it was the end for me, during these last few days I couldn’t sleep, eat or at times even gather up the strength to bathe. I had read passages of the Bible a few times in my muddled life but never did I take into perspective the messages that were before me, I wasn’t living by the rules or learning the lessons.
This book was written by accident, meaning to say that it was never in my plans to write one. But God was trying to tell me something.
I stood at the front counter of my restaurant one evening when this young Jamaican cat entered. He offered me his services of the “best killa” weed in town: I told him that I was already stocked but that I would keep him in mind for the future. He turned to me and said as he went to leave, “Hey you know what? You should write a book yo about ya life.” I looked back at him with one brow raised, “Why you say that?” He replied, “’Cause you should, I heard about you ma an’ I got peoples up top in NY that’s in that book shit an’ they can put you on.” I laughed his statement off and continued on about my business.
Later on that evening when I got home, I thought about that stranger that stopped by my store. A book huh? The thought was amusing but I had no room, patience or desire to embark on something so intense like sitting down and writing out all those dark chapters and the many words that would fill them. My energy was being wasted on www. com; worry, weed and work. I would not have known where to begin if someone asked me to write a story of my life.
But fast forward to about three months from that evening when that cat first approached me, and I found myself writing for my life instead of about it. Whether the letters I created consisted of pleas, facts or fiction, it didn’t matter when at the end of the day I would always get compliments from people of different backgrounds, nationalities and occupations about my writing. Still, it never fazed me.
My life was ending, you couldn’t tell me that it was just beginning and that God had plans for me because I would not have believed it. It was over for me and I was distraught, I was overcome with grief, and not because of where I was at that time, but instead though of where I came from and what I had been through that lead me to my current condition. “Why?” That was the only question I asked myself and God as I sat alone in a solitary state. I cried and cried for days, days turned into weeks and still I didn’t know. I had no one to talk to and no one had the solution. I became sick with desperation.
There was only one way out of this hell I was living called life and it was an exit that I knew if I stepped out of, that there would be no turning back. I thought about the small amount of people whom I knew loved me unconditionally and who would miss me: There wasn’t many in my opinion. One side of me could care less, that half felt selfishness, but the other half of my being felt compassion, and yes, through it all I still had an ounce remaining within me. But I was tired. I needed to go. I had no purpose in the world and I was too lazy to keep trying to figure it out. “God please give me a sign, any sign, anything to let me know that everything will be alright…I know what I’m contemplating is wrong, I know it’s a sin and against everything that you stand for but I need you to speak to me, I need an answer because I don’t have it, please tell me God…”
I waited a few seconds, maybe minutes. I was expecting the walls to start caving in or objects to start flying around the room after I made that lengthy plea that I had cried out loud towards the heavens; but I got nothing. I continued on with my plan.
With a pen and paper in my possession and a razor by my side, I started off my suicide letter with the reasons for my decision ahead. I felt a need to apologize to my godmother and anyone else that would be affected by this. But instead, that moment of overwhelm is what bought me here today, because once I began writing that letter, once I had given up; I found that I couldn’t stop writing. My hand would not stop moving, it just went on and on. Almost everything within me came pouring out of that pen. It was like a cleansing of my soul, my entire inner being, and it felt so good like a ton of bricks was lifted from my body as I recalled certain events that took place in my life, mainly during my childhood, things that I had hardly ever shared with anyone, let alone everyone. Someone was going to read this one day.
Writing, I learned over time, has been therapeutic for me, more so like a healing. No longer do I feel sadness and despair when I think about the abuse and neglect that I suffered from the hands of my mother and others like her, though I do still get emotional when I think of my siblings during the hard times. But I, myself, feel that through God and my passion of writing, know that I am a better woman today than I was just a few years ago. I know that this piece of work that you’re holding in your hands right now will someday and somehow help the next person who might be living a similar life as my own; to others it may just entertain. Of course I didn’t put out there everything that I’ve been through in my life whether bitter or sweet because some events were just too deep, hurtful or just plain outlandish, however, what did manage to ooze out of me only came natural, it was already set in stone and I just didn’t know it until the last page was completed. Everything in this book is true, none of it is made-up or exaggerated and all the names or nicknames involved have been changed except for my own.
What is
it that I long for?
How can it be if I have never known
what it
feels like to be loved
from a small child until I’m grown?
I don’t
know affection, caring and motivation,
But my heart feels love
and compassion
Towards the places I long to go,
Yet I smile
from so much rejection
Because I know what it means to be
loved
Yet still I do not know
How it feels to be
admired
Adored, proud of and missed
My mother never gave this
to me
Not even so much as a hug or kiss.
From a
child my cup has always been half empty
Though I know what it is I
want
Wanting it so bad, it makes my heart sad
When I’m
putting up this front,
Because I see love in other people
And
I grasp it to instill in me
Hoping one day to be just like
them
Erasing the bitterness that haunts my soul
And diminishing
my insecurities.
© 2006 by Shakeya Craig
Chapter 1
Certain issues that wrecked my brain no matter how hard I tried to shake them, were the reasons why I wanted to end my life. I couldn’t help but to think of how much rest I would get from this world if I wasn’t in it. I was hopeless and had no meaning of being here, I felt that nothing I did turned out right and even when I tried to do right, something else would fail me and when I was good to people, the same ones stabbed me in the back and in return their actions made me bitter most times, then I’d feel bad when I lashed out on others that didn’t deserve it.
The main thing that bothered me in my life and the most important was the question that I pondered most and that was: How can a woman give birth to three children, one by her own brother which by the way is a disgrace in itself, only to abuse and starve them, then throw them away like garbage thrown in a dumpster to be looked over, sorted out and discarded? From the time I was born until I was seven years of age I can’t recall ever having a decent meal or just being hugged or kissed by anyone, not even from my own mother.
The house we lived in was the worse on the block, a dilapidated house, a home in serious need of condemning that was without any electric, hot or running water at times. Dog shit and trash littered the place and anyone my mother partied with or allowed entrance to the house to come drink, snort coke and fuck, was able to molest my oldest sister and me at any given time. My mother would leave us often, sometimes days at a time with no one to watch us or feed us, never was there any food left in the house for us to nourish ourselves. My mother also had a lesbian lover who lived with us off and on; often I would see them engaging in sexual acts or my mother having sex with multiply men. A couple of times I’ve seen my own sister being taken advantage of, she was just two years older than me.
We were considered the dirty kids on the block, my mother never put us in school, and we were hardly ever clothed properly. I can remember when our neighbors would call DHS on her but no one ever came out to do anything. No one ever came to our aid except for my Aunt Sheila who is older than my mother by a few years, she lived about two blocks over from our house on Bonitz. Many of times I could remember my Aunt Sheila or one of her many sons coming to get us from our house to bathe and feed us.
My Aunt Sheila enrolled us in Edward T. Steel Elementary after a while and it’s sad to think that the elementary school was right on the block between my aunt’s and ours and my mother wouldn’t even enroll us herself, that’s how lazy she was. My Aunt Sheila really didn’t have much room for us though because she already had six growing boys of her own, one had died when he was two years old when he was out playing on her narrow one-way block and his ball rolled under a neighbor’s car and while he crawled underneath there trying to retrieve it, that’s when the neighbor got in his car and drove off and while everyone was yelling for him to stop, the guy backed all the way up the street to see what all the commotion was about not realizing that he'd dragged my cousin up the block under his car and back, killing him. I never got the chance to meet my cousin because of that.
My other cousin Ralph, he was her third born, would be killed some years later due to gun violence. He was missing for a day or two and when his friends and his other brothers went looking for him they stumbled across his body in the same school yard where just about every other neighborhood kid attended school. Immediately after that his baby’s mother became a crackhead and my other cousin Jessie who was the closest to him, eventually lost his mind. When I think back remembering Jessie and how he used to be, I can recall a very tall and handsome dimpled-faced teenager who was dating a pretty young girl named Gina back when I was younger. But he took it hard when Ralph was murdered, right after the funeral he began walking around talking to no one in particular with all his brother’s pictures torn up in a plastic bag and when everyone told my Aunt Sheila that she should get him a doctor to deal with his pain and loss she didn’t follow through thinking that he was just going through a temporary faze of a sibling losing one of their own, and soon after, he just snapped and had to be put away in a psychiatric hospital.
He’s been released since then, but now today he’s totally out of his mind and on medication to help with his sudden outburst of rage that comes down on him and if he doesn’t have his meds at times he’ll just snap out foaming at the mouth screaming, yelling, swinging and throwing punches at anything or anyone in his way. Sometimes holes would be punched in walls or furniture would be smashed all in a matter of minutes, his fits of rage would never be too drawn out, just long enough to scare the hell out of anyone near to bear witness. If you see him today you wouldn’t be able to recognize him from the man he was years before. Often times when I would go through my old neighborhood I’d see him walking somewhere or just sitting on the corner asking for a dollar but I’ve never ran from or tried to shun him and even though everyone around the way knows Jessie, I still refused to let anyone disrespect him if they didn’t know.
One evening my bestfriend Bracey and I stopped through this Jamaican hole in the wall bar around the way in Nicetown when Jessie came in there asking everyone for a dollar and this group of Jamaican cats at the bar began to pop shit about my cousin who frequently was good for asking folks for a dollar. I had to get up and go check those bastards because it was the right thing to do. I told them that they didn’t have to talk to my people in the way that they were because regardless of the condition he was in, the point was, he was still a man and that he didn’t mean any harm so they just needed to be easy. They apologized; I then pulled Jessie to the side giving him some dough before making him leave the bar,
"Thanks Yas"
He always called me by my sister’s name. I know that my Aunt Sheila will always be blessed by God for atleast trying her best in helping her sister’s kids as much as she could, she cared about us and loved us like we were her own. I can remember her taking the time to straighten our long thick hair in her small kitchen with a hot comb struggling to keep us still because we both were tender-headed, myself more than my sister. In other terms, we were just plain scared of getting burned by the heavy iron comb or the grease itself that covered our scalps and became warm from the heat of the comb and that sizzling sound the comb and grease combination would make once it made contact. She’d do our hair up with the hot curlers and tie our ponytails in pretty colorful cotton ribbons and it was the only time we’d ever get our hair done and that was when we were at my aunt’s. I recall her restraining and wrestling with me to put eye-drops in my eyes that when I finally did relent or got tired of kicking, screaming and crying, felt like nothing more than a small drop of water in my eye,
“All that for nothin’!”
She’d say to me afterwards shaking her head. It was the same thing I would be thinking too when it was all over with.
My aunt only scolded us for minor reasons like not eating our vegetables unlike our own mother who hardly ever fed us anyway, but would still find the time to beat us down like grown men with a mop or high heeled shoes. When I think back of those days I cry and I do think about them most often because like I said before, it was events of this nature that I can’t seem to erase out of my head. Most of the times when we were going to get beat, I would run and hide. When my sister realized she didn’t have her own house key on her one day, my mother threatened to beat us both once we got inside the house and her threats never went undone, so as they were going into the house, I took off and ran down the street to hide behind a neighbor’s flowerpot. Now just imagine a 5year-old running off and hiding to keep from being beat, because most kids don’t react like that but even at a young age I knew that we didn’t deserve alot of these beatings and it hurts me to my heart to think of how my sister stood up to them unnecessary brutal beatings all for nothing.
We weren’t angels but we weren’t troublesome kids either and most of the time we were too weak from hunger to do much damage around the house that didn’t have much furniture in it anyway. The years of abuse while with our mother weren’t for many, but the memories will last me a lifetime until I’m in my grave.
I always thought that the last and final days of abuse was an end to our turmoil but now as an adult I realize that it was just the onset of a life most difficult ahead. At the time when my brother was just two years of age and I was six, I recall my sister Yasmin and I both getting the most horrible beating ever, and God only knows what the reason was for it but it couldn’t have been that bad because that part we don’t remember, but what I do remember is seeing my sister being beaten in the head with a broomstick, crying and screaming at the top of her lungs, and there was nowhere for me to run unlike the last beating when I ran and hid in the front bedroom closet and since there was no light in the room, my mother cursed and searched for me throughout the house even stepping on my back as she searched the closet and had no idea I was lying flat on the floor to keep from being detected; but this night I wasn’t so lucky. I was beaten just as brutal as my sister on the bed and I fell down onto the floor wedged between the wall and the bed located in the front bedroom, I was covered in blood and urine, it was dark in the room and the only light was coming from the hallway.
My sister’s cries rang in my head, I never heard my own. My mother maneuvered from me to my sister, beating us all over our already fragile and weak bodies preventing me from making any attempt to escape. I just wanted to stay down on the floor forever and die, and all this was going on while my mother’s lesbian friend was in the house witnessing this shit and she did nothing to try and stop her. Rose cursed my mother for beating us but did nothing physical to her to actually put an end to the raised hand that came down on us. But by the grace of God somehow my little brother Curtis climbed up on a crate that was in the hallway and he took the phone off the hook that was hanging on the wall, after a few minutes of the phone being off the hook there was a live operator on the other end. My baby brother couldn’t talk at his age but the operator heard what was taking place in the background, children screaming and crying out of fear and pain; she immediately dispatched the police to our house.
Next thing you know we were at the hospital being treated for our wounds, I recall seeing my sister sobbing aloud in tears of pain and confusion lying on the operating table receiving stitches to her forehead where my mother had put a gash about half an inch long while I wanted to stand by and comfort her but was prevented from doing so because of my own wounds that I had no awareness of, I myself was led away by nurses to a sink where I was told to bend over to get my hair washed. I soon realized that the nurses and doctors were scrubbing the back of my head and nape of my neck because it had been busted and bleeding and most of the blood was caked up in my hair. I reached to feel the back of my neck and it felt like a damp sponge. I knew I was bleeding during the whipping, but I quickly forgot by the time we reached the hospital that I too was injured, all of my attention was focused on my sister.
The doctors were finished with me first because I wasn’t in need of stitches, I was placed in a bed next to my sister and I looked over out towards the hallway and noticed the police officers handcuffing my mother, she was placed into custody and taken away. DHS was called to the hospital to pick us up.
Soon after, once we recovered well enough, a lady by the name of Mrs. Garland arrived and took us down City Hall where the Department of Human Services was located. Once we got there, we were in the hallway with her after business hours waiting while she spoke with a security guard that she knew name Lester Wright and she told him that she was trying to find emergency placement for us that night but she didn’t want to split us up, which is rare most times in these cases, but nonetheless, she didn’t want to separate us from each other. The guard suggested she take us to his mother’s house down off of Erie Ave. His mother, he stated, was a noted foster mother and mother of her own nine children, all of them grown and college educated.
I don’t remember much after during that night. From the time I was a small child up until now I’ve had some points in my life that seemed like a blackout, meaning I can’t recall some events that might’ve taken place whether good or bad. I’m pretty sure though that my reason for not remembering much after that night once we reached Lester’s mother was because of fatigue, undernourishment and of course the constant beating we were faced with. Maybe in my mind I’m thinking we just slept and ate for two or three days straight and everything else was just a blur and then we eventually came to. In the midst of those few days though, our new guardian whom we were now living with under her roof made an awesome discovery about us, she found out that she was my grandfather’s sister. Baron Wright was our mother’s father, which made her our great-aunt. Through this, I think it cemented her instant love and bond she showed us from the beginning. Later on in life I took into perspective how great God was, I knew that it was no coincidence that of all the many foster parents, godparents and guardians throughout the city that we’d somehow end up at family’s house, our own blood.
Chapter 2
Mrs. Ethel Garrison that we would grow to love turned out to be our own Aunt Maggie and she was an awesome gift from God, not just for me and my siblings but also for other people that came to know her, she was a good woman and provider for both children and adults in need. She was living in her late forties by the time we met her. As a widow she was your healthy average looking woman despite living with diabetes, she married young down south and raised nine children on her own once her husband passed. She moved up north, and all but one of her children, the eldest who was also a Baron Wright, went through and graduated college. She had thirty-six grandchildren and nine great-grands, something she was always proud of and quick to let anyone know.
Aunt Maggie was a humble, yet well-known and respected woman; she also was everyone’s “Nanny.” Mrs. Maggie known to everyone else outside of family, took in throughout her healthy years many troubled children whether from DHS or someone in the neighborhood that knew her. She was a great caretaker for mental and physically disabled adults and a reliable babysitter for young mothers that wanted to finish school or work, when they needed someone they could trust with their kids and that wouldn’t charge them too much, they came to Mrs. Maggie. Her house was void of strangers, drugs and alcohol. And if matters persisted, she’d sometimes go out her way to babysit for free depending on the circumstances.
She risked her life once by climbing out of her window on the second floor, crossing two roofs down to a neighbor’s house that was engulfed in flames to rescue a young boy. Other family members of the enflamed home had escaped out the front door but he was trapped in the front bedroom and was too scared to climb out the upstairs window because he was afraid of heights but my Aunt Maggie coaxed him to come to her, allowing her to then pull him out of the bedroom window which was already in flames. She was always proud to tell of that heroic feat and we sometimes would sit gathered around for her to retell us that story. I took enjoyment reliving the scene in my head as if I was actually there myself just by the depth of her voice when she spoke and the way she would tell it, describing every little detail from the young boys reaction to it all, down to the onlookers emotions of what was going on. My Aunt Maggie was a good and loving woman indeed, but she could be very strict most times especially in the opinion of many “grown children” so to speak.
It was Christmas morning soon after our arrival. Yasmin and I woke up and headed downstairs to eat breakfast, hot oatmeal with a serving of government issued honey on top. We were still in our pajamas, colorful and warm flannel pajamas, something that we weren’t used to. But as we approached the bottom of the steps we stopped in our tracks because right before us stood a huge tree with all these decorations and boxes wrapped up in the prettiest paper and bows we’d ever seen and then there was this little boy about our age with these metal wire looking things on his teeth and these big ol’ glasses on his face and he kept staring at us tapping my Aunt Maggie on the leg at the same time, over and over he repeated,
“Nanna, Nanna?”
While not taking his eyes off of us as we just stood at the bottom of the steps peeking out into the living-room, I don’t know what we were most in awe of, the beautiful decorated tree, something that was foreign to us since we’d never seen one before or this new face, this boy about our age with these ridiculous looking things on his teeth,
“Nanna, Nanna?”
I’m thinking what the hell is a Nanna and what is this tree doing in the house? A tree with shining glittering things hanging from it decorated with red velvet bows and candy canes with presents underneath. He on the other hand urgently needed his curiosity fulfilled; she calmly explained to him that we were his cousins.
She urged us to come out into the living room to meet one of her thirteen grandkids, his name was TJ, then we asked her what was the deal with the tree and the things under it, she told us that they were our gifts and to open them. We asked her why and what did we do to deserve these things? We also wondered who they were from, so she broke it down for us about this holiday we never heard of called Christmas and the meaning of it and how much we should enjoy it being as though it only comes once a year. Then we asked her what “Nanna” meant, she told us all her grandkids called her Nanna or Nanny and it just means grandmother to them, then just as she was explaining all the many questions that came her way, in walks her son Lester, the security guard, carrying two life size black Barbie dolls just a few inches shorter than my sister and me, they weren’t wrapped but was just standing upright in the display box in which they came, again we’d never seen anything like it, we hardly had toys living with our mom so you could probably imagine the surprised looks on our faces through all this.
He handed them over to us and said they were ours to keep. For my little brother Curt, he bought a big ol’ remote control truck that came with different sounds and bright red, yellow and blue lights that flashed with the push of a button. A semi-truck horn, a police siren and ambulance siren was the noise we grew used to hearing for the next two months until my brother got tired of it as well. Though it would be a few additional years of mornings like this one living with my aunt, that particular Christmas day would be the one that I’d never forget because it was our first.
We soon learned that not only was our dear Aunt Maggie a great-aunt, mother and “Nanna,” she was also a great cook too, her house was always the stomping ground for all the big tasteful meals during the holidays where the whole family would meet, but only from her side of the family, though our grandfather’s side was always welcomed, no one from our grandfather’s kids ever came through, not even on a regular day. Sometimes Granddaddy would pop up but then he’d somehow end up getting drunk at the bar on the corner and pissy drunk by the time he’d make it back up the street to the house. Usually Aunt Maggie would make him go upstairs to sleep it off before he journeyed back home to wherever it was he lived. The best times for me living with my aunt was in the kitchen helping her cook and prepare holiday or Sunday dinners or just helping to bake a cake while we listened to gospel music like the sounds of Shirley Caesar and the late James Cleveland. Those were very peaceful times for me.
Nothing delighted us more than having to glaze hams and top them with pineapples and cherries or cleaning and stuffing a turkey or washing her favorite chitterlings and hog-mogs. She made just about everything from scratch, her cakes, pies and biscuits. You could smell her cooking a block away. I can remember us staying up late the night before cleaning the house to a t or cleaning pig intestines alike. My Aunt Maggie could and would cook anything she knew how. And I always enjoyed the look on her face when she was expecting one of her sons to come in from Minnesota with his family and her other son with his family to fly all the way in from Germany for the holidays. They were both married to white women while living “real good” in big houses with their mixed, proper speaking well off children. Aunt Maggie was most proud of them; she’d cry every time they made it home to see her.
Living with my aunt back then, life seemed so sweet, those times under her roof would seem to me, to be the only time I would be happy in my life. We were good kids but we weren’t angels either, we got disciplined when needed, Aunt Maggie didn’t tolerate lying, stealing or acting up in school. She was very strict when it came to us being around kids other than the ones she took in. We were the only children that she ever kept for a longer period of time, others came and went, but not us, my aunt hung in there with us, and while living with her she was able to learn our ways and also tell us about them.
She always said that Yas was the rebellious one, doing little things but not concealing it too well, she always got caught, and me, she said I was the sneaky one. I was more humble than my sister around the house, always singing or reading, and like most kids I hated vegetables or anything that was nutritious for me, I only enjoyed eating sweets and junk food. I wasn’t used to getting good food as a child up until then so I wasted alot of her cooking by throwing shit away when she wasn’t looking. I always had a problem eating my dinner, I would be the last one still sitting at the table for like an hour after dinner trying to eat the food that was on my plate, and she would make me sit there as long as it took, sometimes Yas would sneak in the kitchen and eat it for me or I would just throw it away but never in the trash can because that was the obvious; she’d look, so I would throw it behind the stove or in the big five-pounder soap box underneath the kitchen table.
We would sometimes throw our already chewed peas up on the ceiling and they would stick. And of course what the mice didn’t get, Aunt Maggie would find once we’d have to do a thorough cleaning of the house about twice a month unannounced, she’d sit in her chair and starting from the living room, dining room, on back to the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom; every table, chair, sofa, china cabinet or appliance would have to be moved by us and cleaned out or under. We always dreaded moving the damn stove, because she would see the food back there and we’d get put on punishment.
Our punishments were things like; no TV for the day and getting sent to bed at like 5pm and if we did get a beating it wouldn’t hurt but we’d still cry just to satisfy her. After living with our mother those years getting abused so severe the way we did, Aunt Maggie’s beatings were harmless, and I think she knew this too. She didn’t hit us much at all though, only when we acted up in school. She punished us more so for our misbehavior rather than beat us. Our misconduct was minor back then.
She never allowed us to leave off the front steps, only if we had to go to the corner store and straight back, and we would be elated going to the corner store for her favorite request of three packs of Mores cigarettes, a Pepsi and a sticky bun. That was our little piece of freedom on the block, going to the corner store. She didn’t allow us over anyone’s house no matter how well she knew the person, we had a few buddies and everyone knew us, but we couldn’t go and hang out with the other boys and girls in the neighborhood, eventually people began calling us the “Maggie twins” or the “step sisters” because we were always on the front porch steps and had to be in before the streetlights came on.
We did have two bestfriends who lived across the street from us a little ways up, two Spanish sisters name Janessa and Suzanne who were our age and once in a blue Aunt Maggie would let us sit on their steps and that was only when she was on the porch chilling with her homegirl Mrs. Vonnie. Mrs. Vonnie lived across the street and she used to have to carry around this little oxygen tank with her and a tube under her nose connected to it and she had this hump on her upper back, a birth defect. Mrs. Vonnie didn’t do much but sit on her porch and patrol our side of the street and Aunt Maggie would sit on her own porch to patrol Mrs. Vonnie’s side of the block, poor Mrs. Vonnie, she never missed a thing, she knew everything and everybody that came through that block. My sister and I came up with a secret code name for her every time we’d see her coming to our side of the street to sit and chat with Aunt Maggie, we’d say; “Uh oh…watch out, here comes 3, 6, and 10.” Those were our local news channels.
We loved Mrs. Vonnie though, she didn’t have any family. We secretly reveled the times she came to sit with Aunt Maggie because then we knew that we could get away with the smallest thing if we could because their attention would be too caught up with talk of all the things that was going on in the hood, grown folks talk or plain ol’ gossip, whatever it was, it took Aunt Maggie’s eyes off of us, or so we thought, even if it was for just a few hours.
I often think of my great-aunt now in my adult years, I don’t think my sister or little brother truly realized how blessed we were at the time to have her in our lives, her strict ways taught us some restraint. I’ve always been a lousy liar because of her and stealing was never my thing, she’d often say; “What you do in the dark will always come to light” or, “You a liar, a thief, ya feet stink an’ you don’t love ya own self.” She was very old fashioned in her ways and had plenty other old adages to back it up. She was aware of how cruel the world was out there and did her best to protect us from it, we weren’t allowed to have cable or listen to rap music. I grew to love watching the “Young and the Restless” with her or, “Quincy M.D,” “Little House on the Prairie”, “The Cosby Show,” “Golden Girls,” “Laverne and Shirley” and the like.
We attended church right up the street from the house, not every Sunday, but enough to learn about God. At the time before that we’d never heard of Him or to know He even existed. It’s a sin to say; “If only I could rewind time, to take me back when we were in her care.” Aunt Maggie tried to raise us good, instill morals and respect in us despite what we’d been through, but eventually things would change as we got older, atleast nothing we’d expect.
At the age of eight, I was placed in the second grade at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary. I received decent grades, sung in the school choir and had little trouble through school, Yas on the other hand was changing. We both had issues amongst ourselves from the abuse we had received, it’s not like we were babies when it happened and don’t remember shit, the abuse really took its toll on us. But it showed almost immediately in my sister, me on the other hand found a way to control the confusion and anxiety that was in me by making it a habit of pulling my hair. I still had signs of hyper activity and depression but I found pulling on my hairs was sort of soothing to me, it took away the many flash photos that were crowding my thoughts of the abuse we experienced, Yas on the other hand had nothing to turn to.
Yas was abusive towards me at times, once shutting my head in the refrigerator and slamming an open bedroom window down on my head. One day we were in the kitchen making some tea and she took a boiling cup of water and threw it on my bare leg while I was wearing shorts. My Aunt Maggie was in the living room, she heard me scream but when she asked me what was going on I told her that it was nothing, that I’d seen a mouse, so for about four days I walked around with the first layer of my skin on my left leg burnt. My skin had bubbled up with pus, it was gross, I did my best to make sure she didn’t see it but then one day while we were all on the front porch, Mrs. Vonnie noticed it and Aunt Maggie asked me what had happened to my leg, I didn’t want to get my sister in trouble so I said that I spilled hot water on it, immediately my aunt went in the house and got this powder stuff in a can and she applied it to my leg a couple of times daily until it was better. I still have a scar from that burn on my right leg.
One of the saddest days of my life though was when I came home from school one day and my aunt had told me that Yas had gotten suspended for putting a cap in her ear and trying to strike it. Stores would sell the plastic toy guns along with a roll of caps to come with it, the caps were a small roll of red paper with some sort of powder placed along the strip and you would tear paper off bit by bit and place each piece at a time in the barrel of the toy gun and it would make this loud popping noise once the trigger was pulled releasing a small cloud of dust from the gun, supposedly gun powder. You could also get the same effect from the strip of red paper if you just scraped it with a coin.
I had no clue why Yas did that but whatever it was it was enough to make my aunt put her in a girl’s facility called Southern Homes located in Philadelphia somewhere. I didn’t see her when she left, but that Easter Aunt Maggie gave me money to walk around the corner on Germantown and Erie Avenue to pick out and buy our Easter outfits, I was about eleven at the time, that’s when Kwame was rockin’ the polka dots. I bought myself a black and white silk like polyester polka dot shirt with a pair of black dress pants and for my sister I got her an all polka dot cotton outfit. You couldn’t tell us we weren’t the shit.
Yas was still living at the facility but she was able to come home for a visit, my uncle went to pick her up and she was standing in the doorway of our living room looking so nice in her outfit that I picked out for her. My aunt also gave me money to buy her some flowers too, I gave her the flowers along with a big hug and kiss. I missed her and at the moment I didn’t realize the funny feeling I felt seeing her but after she left I realized it was because I knew I really loved my sister, I came to understand at that time what love for someone felt like and because I wasn’t used to receiving it, I didn’t know that I could feel that way for someone.
I only imagined what type of horrors she was probably facing while living with other strange and troubled kids that she didn’t know and the fact that she wasn’t home with us. My aunt had already told me that Yas was having trouble at the home there with the other girls so I was extra worried after hearing that. I was sad all during that day she visited, although I hid it. I was even sadder when the time came for her to leave. I just felt so bad for her and I know my aunt felt it also because it wasn’t too long before she was back with us, my aunt got her out of there just as fast as she went in.
I loved my Aunt Maggie for who she was; she really cared about our feelings and wellbeing. The good outweighed the bad during those times while we were living there, it’s where we received the news that my cousin Ralph was killed and my Aunt Maggie also lost her son Lester some years later, the security guard who brought us together. He wasn’t elderly or sick that we kids knew of and to this day I’m still not sure how he passed.
We also lost our babysitter, Mrs. Jennifer. She was a cheerful woman that lived in the next block up from us. My aunt didn’t trust too many people to watch us, or to even spend alot of time in her home around us for that matter but she and Mrs. Jennifer were good friends, she also had two children of her own. One night she was watching us while Aunt Maggie and her crew took a bus trip to Atlantic City, something she did about once a year. She made us a large pot of the best spaghetti ever before she left.
Mrs. Jennifer really enjoyed it too, so much that when Aunt Maggie returned home and Mrs. Jennifer left, she called back later on that night around 11pm asking my aunt was there anymore spaghetti left, she said it was so good that she didn’t want to go to bed without another bowl of it, once she confirmed with her that it was some left, but not alot, Mrs. Jennifer said she was on her way back over to our house to get it but she never made it. The next morning on the six o’clock news a body was discovered in Huntingdon Park on Old York Rd. not too far from our house, the victim, who turned out to be no other than our babysitter, was badly beaten, raped and strangled and though the once husky-thick boned lady put up a tremendous fight she nonetheless lost her battle in the park that night. We watched the screen which showed the yellow tape around her lifeless body that lay on the ground covered in white sheets. My aunt took that really hard mostly because Mrs. Jennifer was on her way to our house to get something more to eat. My Aunt Maggie cried for days, all she kept saying was,
“She didn’t have to come over here so late in the night like that; I would’ve saved her some.”
She suggested this to Mrs. Jennifer a couple of times over the course of the phone conversation but our babysitter was adamant about coming to get more of the “best spaghetti she’d ever had.”
Chapter 3
Eventually as time went on, like most abused and neglected children, our behavior began to change for the worse, we were entering our early teenage years and it was showing. We started doing our own hair and liking boys, even if it was from a distance. We began putting in request for more daring privileges like wanting to go to the movies by ourselves. I even skipped school once or twice to hang out at my closest friend’s house that lived near the school. We grew to love rap music, I went from enjoying the sounds of New Edition, Michael Jackson and Keith Sweat to LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee and my favorite, NWA, ”Straight Outta Compton,” which was my first ever rap tape and I think my only at that age.
I don’t know how I ended up with that cassette tape in my possession but I knew and loved every song on that album word for word and snuck to listen to it. I loved it so much that I used to write the lyrics down on paper until one day my Aunt Maggie found it on the bathroom floor, I denied that it was mines though, I told her that I found it folded up in the school yard and thought it was a regular note so I just put it in my pocket and forgot all about it, I don’t think she believed me even though I didn’t get in trouble for it, but she wasn’t no dummy.
One day she sent us up to her room to sort out her laundry and to clean her bedroom, she had the master bedroom which was in the front. The two front windows had a tall bureau standing in the middle of them up against the wall. On the right side of the bureau sitting on the floor there was a large chest full of clean clothes and with some piled on top of it, the other side of the bureau there sat a loveseat with clean clothes piled in it as well.
Yas and I was sitting on the loveseat bullshittin’ around when she came across a plastic straw and some matches and being the kids that we were; we began burning the straws and watching them melt, then I got bored with that and went back on the other side to fold the clothes. Yas left to go to the bathroom and while I was folding the clothes I heard a small crackling noise like a mouse or something coming from behind the bureau so I peeked behind the bureau over to the other side of the room where the chair was and I noticed flames coming up from behind the loveseat, I immediately stopped what I was doing and ran over to take witness of the entire chair on fire. Yas was just returning to the bedroom; I turned to her in shock,
“Yas the chair is on fire!”
I screamed and she was out and downstairs in a flash, but me, I was too stunned to move. I just stood there directly in front of the blazing fire, my mind wanted to try and put it out but my body couldn’t move, the flames were to the ceiling, that’s when one of Aunt Maggie’s oldest grandchildren, Neesi, Uncle Boo-Boy’s daughter who was staying with us at the time, raced upstairs and grabbed me and we both either fell or ran down the stairs together, I don’t recall, but I do remember standing across the street on one of the neighbor’s porch watching the entire front upstairs bedroom in flames and seeing my poor ol’ aunt sitting on the sidewalk crying and rubbing her thick arthritis knees, she rocked back and forth as she pleaded in distress for someone to help her,
“Oh Lord my house is on fire!”
It was devastating to see her in agony like that, the fire company was there in no time, they managed to put out the fire in the master bedroom before it spread to the other rooms which did sustain some smoke damage though but nothing major. Then one of the firemen approached me and my sister. The angry firemen asked us how the fire started, I admitted that we were playing with matches; he then scolded us several times,
“Don’t be a firebug… don’t be a firebug!”
He told us how wrong it was for little kids like us to play with matches and the obvious consequences that could come about; he was really upset with us. After that incident my aunt didn’t say much about it, that’s how I knew she was really upset and traumatized by the whole thing. She didn’t yell at us or even put us on punishment. She made it seem as if just because she had fire insurance and her bedroom was going to be remodeled better than before and she would receive all new furniture that everything was ok but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t, even at my young age.
While we were still living under her roof she was discreetly looking into some other placement for us to reside at through our social worker, Mrs. Garland.
“How would you and Yasmin feel about goin’ away to a Children’s Home for awhile?”