Cracked Roots & Roses 1: Rotten Soil

My first real boyfriend was an unlikely candidate. Of course, I had a couple of bouts with puppy love, but nothing near serious or lasting more than a few weeks. I was 14 years old and a freshman in high school. At the time, boys were the furthest thing from my mind. I was too skinny, and my second-hand glasses were too big. I wasn’t checking for boys, and they weren’t checking for me.

The adolescent half of my life was spent just trying to survive. My father was an alcoholic who struggled with seizures and was in and out of hospitals every few months. My mom worked a full-time job and, when she wasn’t at work, lived her own life at the neighborhood tavern. I was the middle child, so I wasn’t anyone’s favorite and just focused on making it to the next day without a beating.

I never had any goals growing up. I didn’t dream of what my life would be like. I could never answer the “what do you wanna be” question because who even cared? I just wanted to be somewhere else. Pipe dreams aren’t something folk in poverty think about. The thoughts of people in poverty are how to make money to ease the pain or how to get out. I still know people who live in that same neighborhood doing absolutely nothing with their lives. Unfortunately their minds have imprisoned them.

Growing up, I didn’t have my own identity—that, too, was a luxury. Until I was a teenager, I wore my older sister’s hand-me-downs. My parents didn’t have any money and I was too young to get a job. I would hear folk on TV talk about an allowance and always thought that was for rich folk. Any money I got at Christmas from my Big Ma down south, I had to give to my father. He knew the cards had money in them and would ask to have a few dollars, but of course never gave them back.

That was my life, but it wasn’t as horrible as it sounds. People can get used to anything.

My older sister had the friends and the attention of boys. She was light-skinned and had straight teeth. Being light-skinned in the hood is like a free pass out of the hood. She always had a boyfriend who had a car and was favored by my parents because she was the oldest.

I never much cared. All I thought about was being grown so I could finally get a job and move out of my father’s house. I was always told to shut up and that I wouldn’t amount to much because I was too skinny. Being skinny was not a compliment in Black neighborhoods back then. Thicker women got attention. Songs like Brickhouse and Bad Mamma Jamma were a homage to this reality. I wasn’t a Brickhouse. I was 5’8 and 115 pounds. I wore big glasses, had gap teeth, and too much hair.

As I came into my preteen years, I finally started getting noticed by a few boys, but I just didn’t care. There was too much going on at home to think on anything else. I didn’t know if I would walk into the house and hear laughter or arguing. I didn’t know if my father would be in a good mood or sitting quietly on the couch stewing. Would tonight be a night for a three-hour lecture on amounting to nothing, or would I get a slap upside the head for leaving a sock on the floor? Would there be enough food for me, or would I have to eat government peanut butter on stale end bread? Or would my sister and I have to walk a mile to the gas station to buy $3 worth of kerosene for the space heaters?

There was no room in my mind for boys, childlike thoughts, or dreams. My biggest dream was to grow up and move away. That was it. That was all.

I had seen too much violence and misfortune in my short 14 years of life to live on a cloud. I can still remember when “Charles got stabbed.” I can still hear that phrase in my head to this day. There was a cute teenage couple that everyone in the neighborhood knew, Charles and Evette. One day, they had an argument, and it spilled onto the playground at my grammar school. Evette went into the house and came back out with a butcher knife. Instead of Charles running from her, he pulled off his shirt and walked toward her with his arms open, almost daring her to do it.

She stood crying, holding the knife, and then, in one swift motion, she pulled it up and stabbed him several times. I can still see the stabbing, the puddles of blood on the playground and the blood running down his arms and chest. I remember the ambulance coming to get him and Evette being put in handcuffs and into the back of the cop car.

Charles lived and months later, they were back together, walking hand in hand.

That playground was one of the few spaces with basketball hoops, so there was always something happening. During recess one unusually warm spring day, a few guys were playing ball and got into an argument. We stopped playing to see what was going on. One boy pulled out a semiautomatic and pointed it at the guy he was arguing with. My gym teacher blew his whistle vigorously and waved us in. We would’ve been in the crossfire.

One of my father’s friends, Helen, had won the pick three a few times and was known to drink a little too much. When you saw Helen, she was either heading to the corner liquor store or coming back from it. One night, while getting drunk on the top floor of our three-unit apartment building, she simply said, “I’m outta here,” and jumped out of the side kitchen window. We heard the screaming and commotion, but it was too dark to see anything. She landed on the chain-link fence in the gangway and died of her injuries. I could go on in this vein for hours, but you get the drift. 

Misfortune is a part of the hood. This is why I’m not surprised to see the death count in Chicago—it’s just a way of life. When you’re raised seeing violence, it’s normal.

My family wasn’t immune to the misfortunes that plague the ghetto. In the early 80’s my father worked as a laborer for Pepper Construction. One day, he was climbing a ladder on the side of a courtway building and fell from it, he was pretty high up. He broke nearly every bone in his body. This accident changed the course of his life. It caused several health issues, required plates in both legs, and left him with a permanent limp and chronic pain.

I believe this is what caused him to start drinking heavily. I always felt bad for him, even in the abuse. My father was very book-smart and a great artist. He could draw you from just a glance—that amazed me. When I was younger, I can recall him painting portraits on the backs of old wall paneling. Those were happier times that would not last. 

One day I got home from school and saw my mom cooking on a hot plate. I asked what happened? She ignored the question. My sister later told me that Peoples Gas came out and shut off the gas for the whole building. We lived through several Chicago winters with no heat, cooking gas, or hot water. I took cold baths occasionally and had to boil water on a hot plate during the week to wash up at the sink before school. We cooked on one hot plate and had to sleep fully dressed, with socks and hats on. Winter in Chicago would get so cold that we could see our breath in the bathroom. 

So, needless to say, boys were the furthest thing from my mind. Also, if June (my father) saw me talking to a boy, I would be in trouble. June wasn’t a punishment father—he was a beat-you father. I never knew what the rules were because he made them up as he went. I recall vividly having a glass of water and being slapped for not asking if I could have water. This all caused trauma in my life, so in order to survive, I made myself small. He didn’t allow us to call him dad, so we had to call him June. I still don’t know why.

At any rate I learned to shut up when I was told, until I couldn’t take the injustices anymore. Then I would say my piece and take the beating. Some of these punishments were flat-out cruel for no reason. If a glass in the kitchen cabinet felt dirty, my sister and I had to wake up at three a.m. and wash every dish in the house. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have hot water and most times we didn’t even have dish liquid because we couldn’t afford it.

One time, our cat vomited on the carpet, so my father woke us up at 2 a.m. and had us move the furniture in the living room and dining room, pull up the carpet—including the padding—and carry everything down to the garbage in the middle of the night. We got back to sleep after 5 a.m. I overslept and missed the free school breakfast that day. I was in the 5th grade.

I hated June. I grappled with those feelings of hatred for a very long time. Jesus had to deal with me about him many times. I know it was because of his cruelty that I’ve gravitated toward men who were cruel. The only persistent dream I had as a child was of running away but had no place to go. So I bore it. I endured the beatings and unusual punishments, all the while waiting each year to be old enough to get out.

My sister was two years older than me and always had a boyfriend in one form or another. She got pregnant young and moved in with the boy’s family. I was so jealous of that. She was now living in a house with heat and hot water. She no longer had to endure the abuse meted out by my father. She would come by from time to time with new clothes on to see us but didn’t stay long. Why would she? I would’ve never come back.

Around this time, my father was having seizures more frequently. I was scared to be home with him alone because if he had one, someone would have to take a big spoon and put it down his throat to stop him from swallowing his tongue. I didn’t know if I would do this even if I could. 

As if the seizures weren’t bad enough, he started throwing up blood daily. Because of the frequency—and the limp—he started to throw up in an old red chitlin bucket. I was in charge of dumping the bucket and cleaning it. Not soon after, he started to urinate in the same bucket. I was also in charge of that. This was my life, and I hated it with a perfect hatred.

I didn’t know God. My parents didn’t take us to church or even own a Bible. I would hear folk talk about God, and it angered me. Where was He? Why didn’t He care about us?

I didn’t have the childhood most have because of all of these traumas. So, when I got to high school and started getting noticed by boys, I didn’t know what to say or do.

The first boy to notice me was a very popular kid—let’s call him Gino (not his name). Gino was a junior, and I was a freshman. I was in the cafeteria, sitting near a column, trying to blend into it. He and his “entourage” were walking through.

Everyone knew him because he was the best-dressed in the school and could dance. One day, while in the cafeteria, he and his friends started tossing around a small Nerf football, and it landed under my table.

Gino ran over and slid under the table to grab the ball. When he put his hand on the chair across from me to stand up, our eyes met. He held the gaze, then smiled and ran off to finish the impromptu game. I knew something happened, but at the time didn’t know it would change my trajectory.