I know Pops is trying, but I sure wish things would hurry up and change for us. There’s only so much room inside a Yukon. A lot of our clothes, along with a few blankets, a couple of sleeping bags, and a small chest that contained our personal items like toothbrush and deodorant, made it impossible to be comfortable, plus a whip is made for going from one place to the next, not to live in.
I let my seat back as far as I could, but I was still cramped. My little sister was so close up on me, it looked like we were superglued together. But, I understood, because the blankets we had were hardly enough to keep us warm. We slept in our Wal-Mart foam jackets and I kept on two pairs of pants, two shirts and two or three pairs of socks to keep from freezing my butt off.
And when Nyla has her crying spells, man, I tell you it’s like living in a nightmare. I guess Nyla cried because, like me, she was tired of having no place to call home. And with Pops being so secretive, and sometimes downright mean, I think it made things even harder on us. He warned us every day before we got dropped off at school not to tell anyone about what was going on. He told Nyla if she told anybody then mean people would come and take her away from him and she would never see him or me again. I don’t know how much of that was true, but I wasn’t about to take the chance, plus I was like Pops, I didn’t want anyone to know that he couldn’t afford a place for us to live.
Thinking back over the last few years, naw, I’ll just say over the last three months, if somebody would have asked me if I could ever see myself living on the streets, I would have laughed in their face so quick that they wouldn’t have known what hit ‘em. Pops had been some kind of big time director at a manufacturing plant for almost twelve years when they up and fired him; and just like that, things started getting bad.
Pops used to get a check every week from the state; but then it ran out and Pops couldn’t seem to catch a break after that. I think me and Nyla get a check every month because of Momz, and maybe that’s what Pops uses to help take care of everything, but I guess it isn’t enough because here we are - homeless. It all happened so fast. First, the lights in our apartment got cut off but Pops got them turned back on when he found work through one of those places that sends you out on jobs for a week, sometimes a little longer. But things still didn’t get any better. The lights got turned off again, and we couldn’t even afford cable anymore.
And Momz, well it’s been three years since she bailed on us. No, I’m not talking about like getting on drugs, and she didn’t run off with some other guy or nothing like that, but sometimes I wish that was the case, because then I would still have a chance to see her every now and then. Naw, Momz died from a massive heart attack.
I remember that day like it just happened. It was on a Monday, August 9, 2010. I was going to Lanier Middle School. When I got home from basketball practice, Momz and Nyla were in the kitchen. Pops was still at work. Momz had cooked a big pot of spaghetti and giant, round turkey meatballs, my favorite food. It was smelling so good up in there. I couldn’t wait to dive in and eat a big plateful, but we had to wait until Pops got home from work before we could eat. Momz liked for all of us to sit down and eat together.
Momz was always about family. She used to say some corny stuff like, ‘Nyl, always remember that a family that prays together stays together.’ Just about every Sunday morning, she would wake me up and tell me to get ready for church. I used to hate it when she did that; I wanted to have at least one day where I could sleep late because most of my Saturdays I was involved in some kind of sports. When I was about Nyla’s age, they had me at the YMCA playing baseball, running track, and hooping.
When I got in middle school I played basketball and ran track for the school. I tried football but I didn’t like it as much.
Anyway, Momz and Pops used to take me and Nyla to church and that’s where I learned a lot of stuff about God. Some Sundays when I went to church it was fun because I had friends I hung out with, but all of that seemed like a long time ago now; and we hadn’t been to church since Momz died.
The day she died, we had just finished eating dinner, and I was rinsing the dishes to get them ready to put in the dishwasher. All of a sudden, I heard a loud noise; like somebody had dropped a bomb or something in our house. I dropped the glass I was holding when I heard Pops yelling Momz’ name. He was hollering, “Lillian, Lillian.”
I ran out the kitchen and saw Momz laying in the middle of the family room floor next to the sofa. Pops was leaning over her and Nyla was in the corner having a first class crying fit. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t move.
“Get the phone!” Pops yelled. I still couldn’t move. The second time he yelled at me, I ran and got the phone and brought it to Pops. He called 911. I started crying and kneeled down next to my Momz.
“Momz, wake up, please, wake up,” I yelled too. She didn’t move.
“Mommy, Mommy,” I could hear Nyla screaming and crying. “What’s wrong with Mommy?”
Pops started doing CPR on her but she was turning purple. Boy, was I scared. Nyla was still crying too and everything was crazy. Momz wasn’t moving or saying a word. I saw tears pouring from Pops eyes and he kept begging her to wake up.
When the ambulance got there, Pops ran and opened the door and then everything seemed like a big blur because I didn’t remember much after that. All I know is Pops wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance. I can understand him not letting Nyla ride because she was just a four year old little girl, but why couldn’t I go? I wasn’t a baby; I was eleven years old. Anyway, Pops made us go next door to Mr. and Mrs. Tillman’s house. They were standing outside watching as they put Momz in the ambulance and drove off.
Mr. Tillman took me to the hospital later that night. On the way, he talked to me about God, telling me stuff like God can do anything; that God was taking care of Momz and for me not to worry. I never understood how he could tell me not to worry when there was something wrong with my Momz. How would he have liked it if Mrs. Tillman had hurt herself like my momz? I wonder if he would be talking about God then.
When we got to the hospital, I saw Pops. He looked really sad. He pulled me to the side and that’s when everything, and I do mean everything, in my life changed. He told me Momz didn’t make it. Didn’t make it? At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Didn’t make it where? She was at the hospital, so what did he mean she didn’t make it? Pops finally had to break down and just tell me that Momz had died. I freaked out. I ran up and down the hospital hallways screaming and yelling like I was a little boy.
“I can’t believe it. Momz is gone. She’s gone; she’s gone,” I remember saying. “Come back, Momz.”
I took off running; I didn’t know where I was going. I fell to my knees yelling, “God, why did you take my mom away?” Mr. Tillman came after me and took hold of me. I fought against him. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want anyone but Momz.
“I know you’re upset; and it’s okay. You can cry. You can be mad. God understands,” Mr. Tillman tried to calm me down.
“I don’t want God to understand; I want my Momz back. I want her back now.” But little did I know that I would never have my Momz again.
That day I was a little eleven-year-old boy whose mom had decided she didn’t want to be with us anymore. At least that’s how I felt back then. And where was God? Where was the God Momz used to teach me about? Where was the God Mr. Tillman had just told me could do anything? Why did this happen?
The next days, weeks, I don’t know months, maybe years, I never felt the same. I was mad; real mad. I didn’t want to say it out loud but I used to think about why it had to be my Momz that died. Why couldn’t it have been somebody else’s Mom? Why my mom? She was thirty-one years old. The doctors told Pops that she was really, really young to have a heart attack. Well, if that was the case then why was she dead? Aren’t doctors supposed to heal sick people? Why couldn’t they save her? Pops said that the doctors said she had something wrong with her heart, some kind of defect that made her have a massive heart attack. Pops didn’t know about it and I guess neither did Momz.
At the funeral, seeing my her laying in a casket was the hardest thing I had to do in my life. I felt like jumping in the casket with her. Even now, I can’t stand to think about it. I miss her so much; and I can tell Pops does too because ever since she died, he hasn’t been the same. It’s like he lost a part of himself when she died. I understood, although I was only eleven at the time, I felt like I was dead, just like Momz.
That’s when Pops stopped talking to me like he used to do. We used to practice basketball together; and watch the games together but after Momz died we never had any father-son time anymore. All he did was go to work, and me and Nyla went to school; well Nyla was in a daycare back then, but everything was just different. And now, things are even worse because we’ve lost everything. I don’t know if I can really explain it; I just know that Pops wasn’t happy and I wasn’t either.
∞
Not too long after Momz died, and Pops got fired, I noticed that he started drinking more often and it wasn’t the wine or champagne that he and Momz drank on a holiday or a special occasion. And if he thought I didn’t notice, then he had me messed up. Just ‘cause I was eleven years old at the time, it didn’t mean that I didn’t know what was going on. Maybe I didn’t understand everything that was going on with him, but I knew he was drinking more than he used to.
Me and my little sister were left to do stuff for ourselves in a lot of ways. At first, I really didn’t sweat it because Pops said he would have another job real soon. He wouldn’t let us down. He had always been a good dad, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me and Nyla. Momz used to brag to Mrs. Tillman and some of her friends at church about how great a dad Brad (Pops’ name) was; and how good of a husband he was to her.
For me, I guess you can say one of the first signs that made me think we were in really big trouble was when we had to move out of our house about a year and a half ago. Pops still hadn’t gotten another full-time job, only temporary jobs. One day, he sat me down and I thought we were going to have one of the father and son talks we used to have. But I was wrong, in a way. He did want to talk to me, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. He told me that money was short and he wasn’t making enough on the temporary jobs so we had to move into an apartment. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad but when I had to sleep on an air mattress in the new apartment, We had to put some of our furniture in storage, and Pops sold some of it. We only kept a sofa, Momz and Pops king sized bed, and a couple of chairs. That was all the apartment could hold.
The killer part that made me angrier than I had ever been with my Pops was when he sold my PlayStation and Xbox to somebody who lived in one of the apartments upstairs. We had to move from a four-bedroom spread in Collierville into a cramped one-bedroom apartment in South Memphis. I hated it, but right now, I would give anything to be back in that apartment.
What had happened to saving and putting money aside for a rainy day? I wish I could answer that question, especially since Pops used to always talk to me about the importance of a man working hard and taking care of his family. So much for that.