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Fuck Nickels and Dimes, All I have are Pennies

I love when people who think they have the answers try to shove them down everyone else's throat. What business does anyone have reporting on things that they couldn't possibly understand. Would you send Peter Jennings or Snoop Dogg to do a piece on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? I'd send Snoop. Not that Old Pete can't understand, but Snoop gets it. There is a real difference. If you find yourself disagreeing you are probably on the other side. Not that I would call myself a literary critic, but I think that people should talk (and write) about what they know and otherwise shut the fuck up. This is not a critique of "Nickeled and Dimed" but an answer...

I was raised poor, that is very different than pretending to be poor for a few weeks and writing about how much it sucks to be a Merry Maid. Try writing about pulling yourself out of poverty and still having no money. No I guess that is my job. I am going to tell this story because I need to tell it. I hope it doesnt hurt anyone but it might.

I was raised by a very strong single mother on the West Side of Buffalo, NY. When I was little it was not the ghetto but it almost was. Now it definately is, and I still live here, in the same house where I spent my youth-- just upstairs instead of downstairs. You could argue that I was raised by my mother and grandmother, but my mother would probably not agree. She worked really hard, but whenever she needed back up it was gramma, so in essence she was our father. We always got her fathers day presents. Things like flowers we picked in the yard that stood inbetween our houses or food to share or something she needed. She laughed but I think she understood. We bought fathers day presents for our mother too, but never for our dad. My mom got those, usually socks and underwear or cans of food-- for her ex-husband -- because he needed them. Because she knew he still needed her. She never needed him. Never. I could never give her a better complimemt. She taught me that you only need you to survive. She taught me to love deeply, but that sometimes love just isnt enough. That is a concept that is almost impossible to fathom for me, because we were always loved and we always knew it. Things were hard and we struggled --but we knew the yelling that went on and the not so often but present terrible times were more due to worry than anything else. There were terrible times, although at the time we didnt really know it. No one ever let the evils of the world touch us when we were little. The 'we' I speak of are my sisters and I. I am the oldest, then there is Lynette- three years younger, and Elizabeth five years younger (who proclaimed when she was about 3 "no Beth" any time anyone addressed her any other way.) I usually call her Elizabeth though. Who knows why. My mother was going to name her Giana but when I was 4 I told her it was a stupid name and that she would be laughed at with it. My mom just couldn't ignore my feelings because they were so heartflet so she listened to me. Looking back I think Giana is a beautiful name but probably doesn't suit our Beth. Oddly Lynette is the only one of us that was born in wedlock. Yes we all have the same father... You see I came first, before the marriage, interrupting my parents crazy youth in Florida. My mom moved away from home and that is where I came about. I guess she lived away from her family for about 3 years or so. When she found out about me she came home. She didnt want to raise me without a family. Didnt want to raise a child without her own mother. My parents got married and although I was only about one year old at the time, I remember the wedding. I remember how excited my mother was and the tension all around us. I remember the house all decorated with flowers and my grandmother paying attention to detail after detail, and food cooking. I can still see the black preacher in my grandmothers living room. I remember watching the sunlight coming in through the curtains. I heard the preacher say 'I now pronounce you man and wife' and I distinctly remember yelling 'praise the lord' mainly because that is what people said in church after the preacher made a proclamation. I just thought it sounded right. I remember everyone being suprised that I had said that and everyone laughing. It wasn't a big party. I don't think I have ever seen a picture of this wedding. I'll have to ask about it someday. There was also tension because in a span of 6 months my Uncle, age 21, and my grandfather, suffering from MS died. There was tension because grief breeds many evils. There was also tension because my dad was who he was. I dont know how much of his life story the family knew but they thought he was bad news. He was and he wasn't. He used drugs and had a terrible temper when he was drunk. When he wasn't drunk he wasn't so bad and back then I adored him either way. That said, I knew he was bad. I knew he was not nice to my mother. I saw him purpously annoy her and go against her and it hurt me, even as a very little girl. One day my dad took me to the zoo with my uncle Jon and some other children who were probably my cousins. My mother mother put a bonnet on me that she wore as a baby too and asked him to please be careful with it because it ment so much to her. I was proud of that bonnet. I couldn't believe it when, as soon as we were out of sight they took it off me and let it blow away in the breeze. I think I was sitting in the back of a pick up truck... but I can't be sure. It is almost unbelievable that I can remember this because it happened when I was maybe 1 or 2 years old. It is definately one of the reasons I just knew my dad was bad. I saw my parents as villan and victim. I remember a lot of fighting. Then my sister was born and things setteled down.

Maybe they didn't but I had my sister to focus on so I paid less attention. I have always found it pretty amazing a that I can remember so long ago so well. I can't explain it. I can remember times before I could talk when my mother would hold me and rock me to sleep when I'd wake up in the middle of the night. She would bounce me and hum a droning put-the-baby-to-sleep hum. Mmm-mmm-mmm, Mmm-mmm-mmm, Mmm-mmm-mmm. I can still hear it. I do it whenever I put a baby to sleep. I remember as a baby hating that humming because I wanted her to hold me all night, not put me back to bed. It is amazing how much a baby needs its mother, amazing all she does for it. I honestly remember being in the womb and being born. I was really startled at popping out, I remember falling. It was jarring. I wasn't ready. God talkled to me in the womb, as I suspect he talks to every baby. I remember making some decisions but not what they were. God spoke to me throughout my early years as well. I dont know if I was supposed to remember it, but something tells me that I wouldnt if I wasnt supposed to. Every once in a while I remember a man in a white suit appearing to me. I remember him teaching me my prayers when I would play alone in my room. This man taught me about the father, the son and the holy spirit. He was there a lot when my parents fought. I remember him showing me something about the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I have to mention that I only remember him as 'the man in the white suit' because that is who he told me he was. It wasn't until recently, when contemplating these memories, that I realized who this person actually was... The image in my mind is the same image I have seen for years in my grandmothers house, in a framed photo of my uncle that died when I was 6 months old. I told my mother about this 'man' when it was happening and she told me must be an angel. I wonder if she ever had any idea that it might have been her brother. I wonder if it really was. Somewhere along the line I stopped seeing him.

My parents separated a little while after Lynette was born. We moved into the apartment on my grandmother's property. My great aunt and uncle lived upstairs, my grandmother in the carriage house out behind ours. My mother became pregnant during a reunion of sorts with my dad but they got divorced anyway.

We never really had any money. My mother was on welfare because otherwise she couldn't take care of us. She went to work when we were all in school but nothing got much better. She was very stressed out and took a lot of frustration out on me. In a lot of ways I hated her for it but knew she did her best. I understand now that she must have really been struggling. She definately taught me to be independant. She depended on me to watch my sisters and to wash dishes and to pick up a lot of slack that wouldn't have been there if my dad had been around. You know it is really funny but no matter what happened, we always ate well. My mother and grandmother made up for our lack of wealth by doleing out love by the bucketful. That love often came in the form of food. Food is central because when you have nothing, it is all you can give your kids, so you give it all you ve got, you make it special because nothing else can show them you love them in such a material way. You dont have enough to give them extra stuff, so you give them extra love. And sometimes if they are very lucky you use a few potatoes to make deep fried chips to show them a good time. My dad wasn't there but by that time he was hardly missed, at least by me.

He was in jail. I think for writing bad checks or something stupid. I remember getting a letter from him during that time period and my mother gave it to me to read. When I went looking for the envelope so I could put the letter back I saw that it was addressed from some "correctional facility." Correctional facility I thought, well isn't that jail? My mother didnt think it would help anything for us to know where he was. I never mentioned it until years later, when she freely admitted that yes, he had been in jail. She was just waiting for us to ask where he was. I guess we never did. I'm kind of glad we didnt know, it kept us innocent.

Some things happened that probably wouldn't have if he was around, but for the most part we were ok.

My mother had a stalker when I was 7. He peeped through the windows at us. The police could never catch him, and one day he broke in. My mother woke up to him on top of her. She never said so but I'm relatively sure he raped her. She called out to her cousin Peter upstairs and a closet door in the house popped open and the peeper must have thought it was him coming, so he ran away. When they went to check on us in the room we all shared, our door was closed. The door was never closed at night. More than merely alarmed my mother made her cousin go in first. They found us all tucked in as if we had just been put to bed... by a stranger. Our mother never actually tucked the sheets in when she put us to sleep. The room was neater than it had been when we went to bed. The intruder tucked us in and tidyed up. I dont think anyone ever asked if he hurt us. They should have. By the next morning I had blocked it out almost completely, but over the next 20 years it came back to me. Fuck that evil bastard. I remember trying to read the note my mother sent my teacher the next day and telling myself that everything would be fine. As I walked down the hall to second grade, I could barely remember the night before, and the memory was totally gone soon after. The human mind is really amazing. But I attribute my forgetting to God. He couldnt or didnt protect me from the man but he could protect me from a life of torture... I didnt remember anything that I couldnt handle... two decades later.


Things were not the same after that. Never. My mother had a lot to get over and my mind was working over time to hide the truth from me. We had some rough years, that I dont particularly remember.

posted by Angela @ 4:12 PM