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Grandma was the greatest woman on earth and nothing could change that. Well—nothing but brain cancer. In the fall of 1969, life as I knew it crumbled. Grandma Betty, my wonderful, sixty-two year old, precious guardian fell victim to a massive cerebral hemorrhage brought on by a brain tumor. Grandma Betty was a proud God-fearing woman. She was a hard loving woman. Although we were enormously poor and had it rough, Grandma made sure that I always had enough. I grow misty eyed as I reflect on how she made the best homemade potatoes smothered in onions, and her delicious gravy and grits. These foods were a simple, but very tasty solution to hunger pain that would frequently visit my rapid growing body.
I remember Grandma in her wicker rocking chair as she rocked back and forth ever so slowly, sometimes reading, but always listening to her radio. Although the air was smoggy and filthy from the major three rubber plants, she never complained. She just smiled and quoted parts of the bible. I remember when she told me about Job, one of God’s most faithful servants. She taught me that suffering was good for the heart and soul. Grandma must have had the greatest heart and soul ever because she suffered greatly with her illness and with mom’s mistreatment. Nonetheless, when money and food were low, my stomach and I had a hard time accepting such truths. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of a single benefit of being without the basic necessities in life.
Grandma Betty was my world, and I loved her more than flies loved shit. Her smile, strength, three O’clock in the morning cooking was now gone, a bittersweet memory of what used to be. Some jive pastor that claimed he knew Grandma from years ago gave Grandma’s eulogy. Although his spoken words didn’t move me, his song selection did. He sang Mahalia Jackson’s Trouble of the World. Every note climbed up and down my spine.
Tears flowed unevenly down each cheek as I stood over her plastic looking lifeless body. Why did the sweetest woman in the world have to leave me so soon? Her death birthed the true meaning of misery. Life took on a new definition and sent me spiraling in a new direction.
At this point of my life, I was a tall, frail, insecure one hundred and thirty-five pound, thirteen year old boy left all alone with a mother that was a mean-spirited smack addict/whore. My malicious mom gave me so little to cheer for and my six-foot frame harbored little respect for an emotionally deficient woman. Respect or not, I still hungered for her love and acceptance. Even if I didn’t have any respect for mom, she wasn’t putting up with any of my disrespect.
I remember one time she told me to clean out the tub and I defiantly raised my voice and said, “I didn’t dirty the damn tub.” Boy was that a mistake. Mom ran into the bathroom and twisted my left nipple with all her might. I screamed like I was falling off of a 40,000 ft. cliff. I never experienced something so simple yet so painful in my life. I quickly learned that some resentments are best left unsaid.
Mom, once a very beautiful woman, had withered away into an animated form of the living dead. Her dark, exceptionally dry chapped lips no longer possessed the glossy magic that once drove men wild. Her eyes were sunken and encircled with heavy dark raccoon-like bags. Some of her veins were collapsed, most were scarred, and many were infected. Her young-looking flesh was now weathered, aged, blemished, and blotchy. Her pretty pedicured feet were now marred with layers of ever-present thick, flaking, dead skin, and crunchy calloused heels; her toenails were thick, dark, flaky, and fungus infected. Her hair was thin, patchy, kinky, and unkempt.
All mom wanted to do was smoke, drink, and drug. She totally negated her maternalistic duties. She didn’t even attend Grandma’s funeral. The only thing she attended faithfully was a dope den. She was supremely docile to her addiction. Drug addiction was a mighty slave master. Drugs were a form of modern slavery. Day after day, night after night, addiction waged a winning war on her severed soul.
As for my Dad, I faced a sad reality that he was a mere paying customer, one of numerous proportions. I was not only physically fatherless, but my mother was in name only. Often I stole food because she rarely ever fed or clothed me and when she did, I never heard the end of it. She spoke to me for one purpose and one purpose only— to degrade me. She always called me a dumb bastard like she had nothing to do with my bastard status. And if I dared to smack my lips or roll my eyes, my ass would quickly have her foot buried in it. It was as if I was a part of her nightmare, a product of the stark reality she had prepared for herself. Maybe looking at me reminded her of the sins she committed to conceive me, looking at me as a symbol of sin rather than her progeny.
Although she turned tricks constantly, mom never had time or money for me. Every red cent she earned went directly in her arms. I hated her goddamn drug sucking arms, her drug thirsty veins, and her wicked crutch for this numbing poison. I hated the attention they received over me, the dedication, and commitment she directed towards them. The only thing she knew how to love was her high. Mom was a high whore on a very low road.
Nonetheless, I yearned for her love, but all that was left were traces of what had once been young and beautiful. Even buried underneath all of this physical and emotional ugliness, I still loved mom to death. I wanted her to notice me. I wanted her to flash even a phony smile like she did at her dates and dealers. How can you want something that you never had so bad? Murder would still fall short of quenching my thirst for her dealers’ destruction because maybe she would have loved me if she weren’t so in love with her drugs. Why did pushers prey on our poor people? Who did they think they were in their flashy suits and fine cars? What made them so heartless and greedy? Why did they sell such a destructive product to my mother, to their own people?
Mom’s severe addiction crippled her ability to care, numbed her from maternal responsibility, it hollowed her heart. Mom beat me with broomsticks and tossed ashtrays at me; daily bruises kept me from attending school regularly. I was teased enough as it was for being a trick baby. Mom was a woman of incomprehensible darkness. She was never sober long enough to shower me with maternal affection because when she wasn’t high, she was occupied trying to get high. Death couldn’t deter the love of dope from a desperate dope-fiend.
Although it was extremely rare when she couldn’t find a way get high, when she couldn’t get high, she’d get tremendously sick. She’d sweat profusely, vomit violently, bleed and have vicious convulsions then eventually recover only to go get high all over again. She had to get high. It was insane. It was a type of self-crucifixion. When her heavily sedated arms weren’t pumping poison through their veins, she was busy repressing me with a sharp tongue and an iron hand. She cursed me, kicked me, slapped me, and spit on me; she fucking hated me.
In spite of it all, I loved her and endlessly so. I was miserable but too afraid to do anything about it. I wanted her to love me like I loved her, unconditionally. I had no one else to care, period. The more she punished me, the more I wanted her love, the more I needed her acceptance; however, the more I tried to be perfect, the more I failed. Yes, I resented the fact that she was a drug-lusting whore, but being her one and only son, I learned to love her in a distant way. She couldn’t love me because she didn't know how to love herself. She knew not the remotest aspect of—love.
Furthermore, she continued to shower in self-destruction by shoving dirty needles in any vein that wasn’t blown. I cringe as I look at her once smooth skin, now laden with puss pockets, burns, scratches, and weeping wounds. She could no longer demand the high prices from tricks because her fleshly commercial wares were depleted. Her breasts were no longer perky and her smile was no longer bright.
Sour looks meant lower trick fees. Since she made less profit per trick, this meant she had to turn even more tricks to feed her increasing addiction. She turned a train of tricks right before my starving eyes, day in and day out. If she didn’t have a cigarette butt parked in between her lips, she had an unloaded penis pulling out of them.
To make matters worse, mom didn’t pay bills so the house was always cold and dark: no electric and no heat. As a matter fact, if she didn’t sleep with our old perverted landlord next door rent wouldn’t have been paid either. In the winter, even the mice would shiver. It seemed as if mom detested me, as if she wanted to raze any humane instinct I harbored within. Maybe she wanted me to be a witness. Maybe, she wanted me to grasp her immense misery, so that I would never ever put a needle in my arm. She used, high-humped, and withered right before my very eyes, so that I wouldn’t have to suffer the immeasurable humiliation of being a pharmaceutical slave, of being a dirty half-dead dope fiend. She crawled under the contamination of the needle, so that I wouldn’t have to. However, my struggles were more of a psychological nature—no needle could ever numb my pain.
In the meantime, I was continually shunned for being a trick-baby, a poor dingy yellow nigga. I was the unlucky local bastard because everyone in the ghetto barraged my mother’s womb at some point in time in fairly recent history. Everyday she gave out discounts, but when she turned three tricks for a grand total of five dollars, it about killed me. Not even Woolworth’s was giving out deals like that. The thought of three teenaged strangers inserting their ungodly flesh in her mouth for a measly five dollars drove me to tears. But it was her body and her choice, so what could I do?
As disturbing as the three for five dollar event was, nothing stained my mind as much as walking in on mom while this tall white man literally wiped his face with her unwiped ass. He was bathing in her loose stool. Even my mean ass mom looked disgusted as she held her legs wide apart so that he could have complete access to the soft shit as she squeezed it out into his mouth. It was the most revolting thing I ever witnessed, ever.
Literally, anyone who had a few dollars had a sexual stab at my mom. She was truly an equal opportunist. Since I was tall, but lanky, I didn’t exactly put a lot fear in the guys’ heart just on looks alone. One day this cordial young man in the neighborhood ran up and said, “Hey, man fuck them suckers over there talking their stupid shit. They’re just jealous because you’re unique. You’re a cool nigga, you dig. So what’s your name?” However, before I could answer, he continued, “By the way, guess who I fucked today?” He pulled my head toward him, so that he could whisper in my ear.
I was so glad that someone else other than me could share the ridicule that I happily responded, “Who man?”
He cuffed his mouth then pointed at me with his index finger. He laughed, “Your raunchy ass momma.”
I was part of his joke because all of the guys standing on the corner busted out in laughter. I was pissed and quickly popped him with a quick jab to the mouth. I was even faster than I expected. However, what I didn’t expect was for the mob of guys to run over and jump off in my ass. Beatings weren’t unusual; the only thing different was the source of it. It was a long painful walk home that day. I wondered if anyone else experienced such misery or was life just mocking me? Did dreams ever come true? Niggers had too many problems to have dreams. Life was unbearable but what could I do to change it?
