Finding Me (3 page)

I acted like it didn’t hurt me. But it did. I hated the way I looked, with my unwashed hair and secondhand clothes. I smelled funky. And I was doing horribly in almost every class—mainly D’s and F’s.

Compared to mine, the other kids’ lives seemed much better. For one thing, they had name-brand clothes. Some of them were poor too, but my family looked even worse off.

Many of the grown-ups in my neighborhood were on welfare, but some of them went to work. I often saw groups of women dressed like nurses and maids standing at the bus stop. My parents didn’t let us go over to other kids’ houses, so I don’t know for sure whose mama did what. I do think a lot of folks in the area sold drugs, but at least their kids got enough to eat and some decent clothes out of it! I had maybe two or three outfits. And let me tell you, they weren’t brands you would recognize. I wore 1960s shirts that came from Goodwill.

A couple of times some kids at school were actually nice to me. One girl tried to give me some money, but I turned it down. “Thank you,” I said, “but that’s okay.” I didn’t think it was right to take her money. And it’s not like she really wanted to be my friend—she just felt sorry for me. Because when I tried to say hi to her after that, she turned her back.

There was another girl who also didn’t have a lot of money. She always came to school smelling foul. We were on the same level; she didn’t talk to anyone because the other kids wouldn’t come close to her. One day I brought her some deodorant from my house. I said, “Here, go clean yourself up a little.” She took it and told me thank you.

Art was the only class I did like. The teacher was the only one who seemed interested in me. “You have a gift,” she told me when she saw one of my drawings. In class I drew all the things I dreamed about. I drew big houses that I wished I could live in. I drew families sitting around the table having dinner. I drew kids in the park with their parents under a blue sky. I drew beautiful butterflies. I drew anything that could take my mind off all the stuff that was happening at home.

For some reason I also loved drawing wolves. I think they’re the most beautiful animals I’ve ever seen. In fourth grade I drew a bunch of wolves on every page of one of my spiral notebooks. At home, even though I was always moving around to different rooms, I kept my notebooks and pencils with me. That was the one and only thing that was just mine.

I also loved music. At a school assembly all the kids stood up and sang the Black National Anthem. “Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.” That song gave me the chills! It still does. Sometimes at night when the man in my house was on top of me, I sang that tune in my head to try to distract myself from what was happening to me.

At home I listened to a ton of radio, mainly R&B. I loved Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, Nas. I loved the beat. Sometimes I would sit in a corner and draw while my cousins slept in another room. If nobody was around, I got up off the floor and danced. Aside from drawing, dancing was one thing I was good at.

Even though I did badly in school, I liked to read and write. My favorite books were horror stories. I read Stephen King novels all the time. And no, they didn’t scare me—I loved the thrills and chills. Even now I still take in a lot of horror books and flicks. When I was in fifth grade, I once spent from six o’clock in the evening until early in the morning writing a report about a book I’d liked. I was so proud of what I wrote, and at least that one time I actually got my homework done.

When I stayed home from school, I had to take care of my cousins. Although my parents were at home, they still put me in charge. A lot of my cousins were much younger, and I always had to take care of everybody. There were a ton of cousins in the house: Danielle, Christopher, April, Ricky, Eugena, plus a bunch more.

At one point two babies, who my father nicknamed Kiki and Rah Rah, showed up at our house. They were one and three and had caramel-colored skin and curly afros. I think they were the daughter and son of a family member who wasn’t able to take care of them. No one ever told me what happened, but I did take care of those two little kids
a
lot
. Every day I combed Kiki’s black curly hair into pigtails and braided Rah Rah’s hair in cornrows.

“Ba-ba! Ba-ba! Ba-ba!” Kiki would call out when she wanted me to fill her bottle with milk. While Rah Rah played with a toy truck on the floor, I put Kiki right up in my lap and let her suck down that bottle. They were both so cute, even if they did always need me to change their stinky diapers.

I had some good times with my brothers and cousins. Once, we pulled a prank on Ma on Mother’s Day. We all went outside and got this big rock. We put some string on it to make it look like a rat with fur. I put it right on her pillow. When she woke up, she said, “Who put this thing here?” We all fell on the floor laughing! None of us ever confessed who did it, but I’m pretty sure she figured it out.

Eddie, Freddie, and I watched TV together sometimes. We loved a show called
Kenan & Kel
. Kel was this teenage dude, and he would say, “Who loves orange soda? Kel loves orange soda! Is it true? Oh yes, oh yes, it’s true-ooo! I do, I do, I do-ooo!” Every time we heard that, we laughed our heads off.

Out of all my cousins, I got along best with April, who was three or four years older than me. For some reason we just clicked. She had a part-time job, so sometimes she had extra money for clothes. She knew I didn’t have much, so she shared some of her outfits with me. Once she even let me wear these cool leopard-print pants. “Here, try these,” she said. “They’ll look good on you.”

She also took me places—my parents let me walk to Arby’s with her because it was in our neighborhood. “Get whatever you want,” she would tell me, pulling out a few dollars from the back pocket of her jeans. I usually ordered the fries; they were so good, especially with hot sauce slathered on them. April was mad cool—mainly because she got me out of that house.

During the summer when I was eleven April offered to take me skating. “Let’s walk down to the rink,” she said. It was only about fifteen minutes away by foot. “We both need to get out of this house and have some fun!”

I nodded, getting excited. At first my parents didn’t want me to go because they didn’t have the money. “I have some extra,” April said. “I’ll cover you.”

I threw on some jean shorts and a white tank top. Once April paid the $5 entrance fee for each of us, I put on my skates—a size two. I tried, but I fell down a half-dozen times, right on my butt.

“You’re doing great!” April kept telling me. “Just keep going!”

Toward the end of the night a fat kid fell right on me. “Get up!” April yelled. She tried to stop herself from laughing, but she couldn’t help it. When I stumbled to my feet, I started cracking up too. On the way home we laughed some more. It was one of the few times I ever felt like a normal kid, being able to do normal things. I loved April for letting me tag along with her and forget about everything else that was going on in my life.

W
HEN
I
TURNED
ELEVEN
I got my period. The only thing was, I didn’t even know it was my period because I had been bleeding down there since I was five. And by the time I was eleven the bad things that were done to me started getting worse. A lot worse.

It could happen anywhere. Like in the basement. Or in any bed around the house. Right after it was over I would lay there and rock back and forth. Later I would get up and go to the bathroom and just sit there on the toilet, blood flowing down. I don’t know what I said to God, but I did say some little prayers. Just in case he really was up there, I thought I’d give him a shot. But if he was, I didn’t understand why he didn’t stop the man. Most of the time I was so sad and miserable that I got used to feeling that way.

By the time I turned fifteen and we were living in a canary-yellow house in Tremont, I got totally pissed off about my whole situation. I wanted to do something to stop the abuse—
anything
. But I wasn’t strong enough to fight the man off because, at the time, I only weighed about seventy-five pounds.

So one night not too long before Thanksgiving I sneaked two sleeping pills into his drinking glass. As he drank his bourbon and watched a porno flick, I faked being asleep. I was hoping like hell he would leave me alone for just one night—and he did. The TV was very loud. Once the movie got finished, the screen went blue. He started going to sleep. That’s when I scooted my body all the way down under the sheet and waited. And waited.

By about midnight he was snoring. As quietly as I could, I got out of bed. I went over to a dark corner of the room and took off my gown. I put on my favorite pair of black jeans and my T-shirt with a wolf on the front, the one I’d cut the sleeves out of so my shoulders showed. Right about the time when I was pulling the shirt over my head, he made a noise. I froze and held my breath.

After a few seconds he started snoring again.
That was close
, I thought. I rushed to get on my socks and blue sneakers. Then I tiptoed into the room where Eddie and Freddie were sleeping. I had hidden my purple backpack in their closet earlier that day. I checked to make sure they were really asleep, and then I grabbed the straps on my backpack. It was heavy because I had put every piece of clothing I could find in there, and even a couple of my parents’ shirts. I also stuffed a thin fleece blanket on the top. The last thing I put in there was a bunch of pencils I got from art class, a little pencil sharpener, and four spiral notebooks. I didn’t have a coat.

I already knew how I was going to get out—I had planned it. I put my backpack on my shoulders and went over to the first-floor bathroom because people were sleeping out in the living room. From the window I could see the backyard. As hard as I could, I tried to pull up the window.
Creak, creak
. At first, it got stuck, but then it came open.

I stood on the toilet seat and looked out.
I can’t believe I’m doing this
, I thought. I was so nervous that I was going to fall and bust my leg.
Can anyone hear me?
I held my breath because I didn’t want anyone to wake up and grab me. One leg at a time, I slid out the window and jumped onto the grass.

I didn’t close the window. I didn’t look back over my shoulder at the house. I didn’t think about whether anyone had seen me get away. I already felt like my family didn’t give a rip. If they tried to find me and bring me home, it seemed to me that it could only be for one reason—to have me run around after all those kids.

In the dark I made my way down our street and turned into an alley. I had no clue where I was going or what I would do next. As a matter of fact, I had no real plan at all. The only thing I knew was that I had to get away from that house. That man. That life. The cold air hit me like a thousand knives. What I was about to walk into would be a heck of a lot colder than that.

3
______________

Under the Bridge

“S
WEETIE
,
WHAT
YOU
DOIN
’ out here with no coat on?” As the sun came up, a tall black man stood in the doorway of a Baptist church in downtown Cleveland. From a few feet away on the sidewalk, I stared up at him. He had a triangle-shaped haircut and a thick moustache. He gave me a big smile and waved me toward the door. “You know, you should come on inside,” he said. “You can have something to eat with us.”

My hands stiff from the cold, I came over to the door. Right inside the church’s entrance were some stairs leading down to a dining hall, where twelve or so homeless people were already in line. I took my place at the end of it. That’s how my Thanksgiving Day started.
At last
, I thought.
I’m going to get to eat!

I’d been homeless for one whole week. After I left the house that night I walked for a couple of hours. I wanted to get as far away as I could so I wouldn’t run into any of my parents’ neighbors or friends. Eventually I made my way over into a small park and found a stack of newspapers someone had left on a bench. I spread them out underneath the bench and got down under there like it was a little bed. I used my backpack as a pillow. I was so sleepy, but when you’re homeless, you really can’t sleep. You’re always afraid that a stranger might come up behind you in the dark to rob you or stab you. I dozed off a couple of times that night. But whenever I heard a car passing or a nasty rat digging through a trash can, my eyes opened quickly.

Once the sun was up, I mostly walked around—like all day long. I kept my head down low and tried not to look at anyone. I didn’t want some little old lady to stop me and call the police because she thought I was eight! That’s the thing about being short—no matter how old you are, people always think you’re a little kid. And at fifteen, I
was
still a kid. I just wasn’t one who felt she could go home.