By the time I graduated high school I had attended 9 schools in 3 states. I was enrolled into a new school every year up until the 3rd grade. I had pretty much lived with a different family member for each year of life until I moved to Louisville, Kentucky at the age of 7 to live with my father time. My father had full custody over me since before I was one.
My father’s eldest son had moved to Fort Knox for the military first and then my father followed. We lived in a senior citizen high-rise building when I first moved to Louisville but then we moved into the public housing that was just a couple of blocks away a month later. My father was born in 1934, my mother in 1964, and I in 1989. My paternal side of the family like to tell me about how no one believed that a 55 year old man could raise a little girl on his own but how he proudly superseded.
I have very little recollection of my life before the age of 6 and very few of those memories are pleasant. My maternal grandmother (the only grandparent I have ever known), says that knowing this makes her sad. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the role that she played in it but I love her regardless, especially in my adult life.
Second grade was interesting. I moved in with my Irish godmother Lisa and her three daughters after my mother “went missing” and left me with her husband that was short lived. My mother ended up being jailed during this escapade and my father granted parental guardianship to Lisa for a year. My father had just moved to Kentucky to get things ready and my mother was released to a halfway house.
My father’s youngest son fathered Lisa’s youngest two girls. Shannon and Jasmine were technically my nieces but we called each other cousins. Well, I called them cousins and they called me “auntie”. The three of us were close in age because of my parents’ 30 year age gap. I’m one year older than Shannon and 3 years older than Jasmine. The funniest thing my father used to jokingly say about Lisa was that all she knew how to make was noodles. Spaghetti noodles with salt and butter was a staple in her household but very good to a 6 year old. If my cousins and I weren’t eating noodles, we frequently ate a canned asian soup that had baby corns in it.
I used to see my mother on occasions. Lisa would drop me off at the halfway house where she lived and she would comb my coarse, 4C hair. I have an area in the middle of my scalp where the hair won’t grow in properly. I tell Lisa that it’s from when she had cut out 4 rubber bands that held large plaits to take my hair down. My move to Lisa’s was unplanned and happened after the school season had started. I was enrolled into the second grade of the school where Shannon and Jasmine were already attending. Lisa used to walk us to the bus stop every morning which was across a multi lane street but, at some point it was just us girls crossing it.
I have one vivid memory of a time when the three of us really struggled to get across because traffic was of rush hour traffic. The three of us would get ready to run across the busy street together but then a car would come and only one of us would make it. We did this over and over until the last one made it across, which I’m sure was me because I was always overly cautious. When we finally crossed the street the bus drove right past us.. not bothering to stop.. just like all of those other asshole drivers.
I hated that school bus. There were two boys that used to pick on me because of me being black in a predominately white neighborhood and school. I was the only black person on the bus and they were so mean to the point that we had to sit in the front row. One day Shannon chased one of them down the block when we got off at our stop for picking on me while on the bus. I didn’t do anything.. I was always “scary.” Shannon was the toughest of us.
Another time Shannon had to stand up for us was when two neighborhood boys took our big electric car. She had us find them ourselves instead of getting Lisa. Shannon fought two boys on her own once we caught up to them. She held one down as the other ran off and yelled for me to pick up a wooden plank that had nails sticking out of it to hit him with. I ran off too… She got our car back on her own.
I was “married” off in this same park to a cute brown boy who lived in our apartment complex. My cousins and the other kids would get everything set up for my wedding ceremony under the park-set and would stand on the sides, proud of their setup. I would be cued to walk down the aisle all of a sudden I would take off running. Running, while clutching my fresh, handpicked dandelions. Every. Single. Time. I was nicknamed “runaway bride.” My should’ve been husband was the brother of Lisa’s oldest daughter’s friend. I didn’t care for his sister because she took Gravy, the grey cat that Shannon birthed, away.
One night Shannon had woke the whole house up shrieking from the top bunk bed. Our pregnant cat had started birthing a liter of kittens while curled between her legs. Traumatizing, right?
One of my last second grade memories was the Spelling Bee. I have always accelerated in all things English literature (reading, writing, spelling, etc). Our class was holding its own spelling contest to decide who would represent us for the school Spelling Bee. Our english teacher asked me to spell: ‘because’. I spelled the word correctly the first time but doubted myself when she asked me to repeat it since she didn’t hear me. I spelled it a different way. I’m sure she knew that I had spelled it right because she asked me to spell it a third time, asking if I was sure that that’s how I spelled it the first. I fibbed. I was so frustrated later, having to watch as a different classmate stood in what should’ve been my spot. I had to watch the students on stage spell all of the words that I knew, including B-E-C-A-U-S-E.
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