Champ and I clamored over each other, trying to shield ourselves with the other’s body. We screamed and screeched in pain as Momma raised the belt over her head and brought it down on one of our butts, backs, legs, or arms. At that moment, it didn’t matter which one of us she was hitting; we both felt the sting. Momma swung and we fled. It was like a jousting of sorts, only our side was weaponless and on a constant retreat into the kitchen. Momma finally stopped swinging as Champ and I stood in front of her at the sink.
Tears stained our cheeks and our chests rose together as each sob left our mouths. Momma towered over us, both hands on her hips, still clenching the leather fly. She looked like a belt-wielding goddess, with electrifying bolts shooting from her eyes through our bodies. She raised her hand, pointed at the mountain of dishes, and asked with a resounding voice, “Why didn’t you clean this kitchen?” Champ and I looked at each other, ready to begin the blame game, but Momma raised her hand and said, “Don’t even open your mouths. Clean my kitchen, and clean it now!”
Champ and I hurried to action. We almost bumped into each other rushing to the sink. We heard Momma in her bedroom, fussing about our laziness and nastiness. We tried to be as quiet as possible as we began stacking dishes and filling the sink with water. “It’s your fault,” Champ snarled.
“No, it’s yours,” I replied, rolling my eyes as hard as my eyelids would allow. Then we both heard Momma walking toward the kitchen.
“I better not hear your mouths,” she said. So we silently fought, pushing aside each other’s hands in the sink, shooting looks of disgust each other’s way. I ended up doing the dishes, but Champ helped with the pans. We scrubbed the floors, stove, and table with determination and cleaned each grain of flour on the counter. As we were finishing, Momma came back into the kitchen wearing her nightgown. In the light, her gaunt silhouette was visible through the sheer fabric. Her usually free head of hair was bound with a rubber band and she stood in the door of the kitchen, shaking her head at us.
“Now, why couldn’t you two have done this before you went to bed?”
We both started at the same time, “Well, Champ . . .”
“Well, Laurie . . .”
The look on her face showed it wasn’t a question she wanted an answer to.
“You know, I work hard every day to buy y’all good food. I come home on my break to cook it for you, and all I ask is you clean up the kitchen afterward. That’s all I ask you to do and you can’t even do that. Then I have to come home and see my kitchen all messed up. Who’s supposed to clean it up? Me, after working twelve hours today?”
“No ma’am,” we responded in cadence.
“Do you think that I wanted to come home and have to beat you?”
“No ma’am,” we sang again.
“All I wanted to do was come home, eat a little bit, and go to bed. Now, you two make me beat you.”
Momma then turned her back to us, facing the darkness of the living room.
“I just want a little help. I just need a little help,” she said to the empty room. I’m not sure if Champ and I knew at the same time, but I could hear the tears before I saw them on her face. I wanted to reach out to her, to hold her like she often held me, but I felt unworthy. At first, it was a war between Champ and me, but I never imagined Momma would be our casualty. “Just go to bed,” Momma said, as she remained turned away from us.
Champ and I shuffled into our bedroom. The darkness and the small snores of Mary, Dathan, and Tom-Tom quickly enveloped us as we entered. Champ and I felt around the room until we found our beds. “I’m sorry,” I said, not really to Champ, but in his vicinity.
“Me, too,” Champ said as I heard him slipping into bed next to Dathan.
I wished I could have said that to Momma, to let her know I hadn’t done it on purpose. I mean I had, but I hadn’t. I wished real hard she’d just know, just as she’d always known when I was the one who left the spoon in the peanut butter or that I was the one who hadn’t folded the clothes just right. Like most childhood wishes, that thought hung between my mind and the room’s walls. Thankfully, I heard the sounds of television floating through the cracks of the bedroom door. Any sound was better than the darkness of the living room, where I could still hear Momma’s tears, even though I could not see them or her.
Prayer List
After what Champ and I deemed the beat-out-of-sleep night, we all tried to work together better and help Momma around the house. Mary and I made it our business to take care of her when she was off work, cutting apples, oranges, and even grapes into small squares and making fruit salad. We’d serve her breakfast in bed with toast and tea after she’d finished a long night of working. I’d take to memorizing pages of Shel Silverstein’s poems and reciting them as she brushed her teeth in the morning.
Once I realized how hard Momma was working, I began worrying about her health. She’d always been small-framed, but she’d grown so skinny after we moved to Academy Park that her arms were as thin as mine. The long nights of working and days of caring for us were devouring her. She was only one person and we were, in fact, five.
The more we grew, the more food we consumed. Momma took to fasting or “not being hungry” whenever there wasn’t enough to satisfy us all. I noticed her sitting in the living room while we ate, sipping on unsweetened tea and eating a dry biscuit—a meal unsuitable for a child, and yet, she survived on it. She never complained, even though I could feel the rumbling of her stomach when I hugged her and headed off to bed. It was on those nights, when the rumble followed me into the bedroom, when I spied her inspecting our leftovers for edible pieces, that I cried for her. It became a ritual for me, where I’d spend the final minutes in bed, before sleep overcame me, crying, praying that Momma wouldn’t die. On one such night, Momma walked past the room and heard my sniffling.
“Laurie,” she tiptoed in and sat on the bed beside me. “Why are you crying?” I wiped the tears from my eyes and the snot from my nose, startled out of my moment of crisis.
“I don’t want to tell you, Momma. You might get mad.”
“I won’t get mad,” she said tenderly.
“You’re gonna die, Momma,” I said as I hurled myself to the bed, face first. Momma giggled softly and began rubbing my back.
“What do you mean, Laurie?”
“You’re gonna get sick and die.” Momma paused for a second, probably pondering whether I was a psychic or a medical prodigy.
“How do you know I’m going to die?”
“I don’t know. I just do,” I said in between tears. Momma laughed again.
“But everybody’s going to die one day, Laurie. Even you’re going to, so I’d rather you cry for yourself than for me. Okay?” I thought about that for a second and erupted into a new set of tears.
“Why are you crying now, Laurie?” she asked.
“Because I’m gonna die.” Momma gave me a hug and rubbed the back of my neck.
“It’s okay, girly. Can you do me a favor?” Momma asked. “When you worry like this, I want you to pray to God. Just pray he’ll watch over all of us and it’ll be okay. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, get to sleep. I gotta go to work tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
Momma slipped out of the room and I began the job of praying. Praying for her, and then praying for myself. But halfway through that prayer, I thought about Champ, Mary, Dathan, and Tom-Tom, so I had to pray for them, too. And then I started thinking about Aunt Vonne, and Aunt Bir’t, Uncle Bruce, and Aunt Della, so I had to pray for them as well. And I couldn’t forget all of my favorite cousins, Tricia, Sherry, Lisa, Tedren, Lynette, and Latrice, so I began praying for them one by one. By the time I moved from the world of the waking to slumber, there were still prayers bouncing around in my head and my list of prayees began to look like an upside-down pyramid, starting with Momma and ending with friends and relatives that hadn’t been met or born yet. Thankfully, I never cried about Momm
a’s death again after that night. I had the more pressing charge of organizing my list of prayees, so I could get them all in before sleep hijacked my thoughts.
The Good Reverend
Even as we worked to make Momma comfortable and to help around the house, we were still a rowdy bunch. Dathan, considered the middle of the middle, was the rowdiest of us all. Sandwiched between Champ and me and Mary and Tom-Tom, Dathan was easy to overlook, once, but after you met him, you’d never make that mistake again. He was an ebony boy, with coarse hair shorn close to his head. He was the darkest of Momma’s kids, and that we considered a fatal flaw. We referred to him according to his color: Blacky, Darky, Midnight, Spookdust were all names we used in order to call on him.
We’d deemed Dathan the goat or the garbage disposal of the family because he ate anything. If one of us was eating an apple, Dathan happily devoured the core. If we ate chicken for dinner, he’d meticulously pull any remaining meat off the bones we left behind. He’d eat the backs, booties, and innards like they were thick, juicy breasts. Momma praised him, lauding her “Snooky” for willingly accepting what no one else wanted. Dathan basked so heavily in Momma’s adulation that he sucked the skin off of the bone, cracked the ribs, licked his hands, and “mmm, mmm, mmmed,” just so Momma could see how grateful he was. For his kissing-up we ridiculed him until he ran into the bedroom, sucking his thumb, or retaliated with a quick swipe of his hand at one of our faces or arms. That was the way it was with Dathan. He was either soft, easily hurt, or hard, easily angered. We had the same father, so I believed that was the Carl in him. If one of us ever got him to the fighting point, we knew he was nothing to play with. Yet, we toyed with him to no avail.
One night before falling asleep, Dathan and I were arguing. Now, I can’t even remember what we were arguing about, but it probably had something to do with him touching me, Mary, Tom-Tom, or my stuff. It really didn’t matter what the matter was, he was annoying me and he wouldn’t stop. So, we squared off in the middle of the bedroom and began pushing and tussling each other into submission. We bumped chests for a minute, while Champ, Mary, and Tom-Tom egged us on. Suddenly, Dathan cocked his hand back and punched me square in the arm. I could feel the large frog that responded to his punch jump under my T-shirt. I was not having that. I was the big sister and the one who inflicted pain. So, I cocked my arm back, aimed right for Dathan’s nose, and put as much power as I had into the wallop he was about to receive.
As I was revving up for a punch that was going to make the children still in Dathan’s scrotum flinch, Dathan was ducking. My hand went vaulting past the vacant space Dathan had once inhabited right to the window hiding behind the curtain. There was a large crash as I heard the glass shattering, falling in the windowsill and on the hardwood floor. I looked around and saw Dathan hopping into bed next to Champ, while Mary, Tom-Tom, and Champ’s heads snapped back on their pillows. Their eyelids quickly closed as if they’d always been that way.
When Momma entered the room, I stood alone, my fists still clenched, looking as if I had decided to wake up and punch the window while my brothers and sister slept peacefully. Momma didn’t say a word. She just turned, went into her bedroom, and got the leather fly. I attempted to make it to the bed, under the cover of blankets, but Mary and Tom-Tom kicked me away, not wanting to be hit by a stray belt slash. Momma came back into the room and pulled me to my feet. “Why did you do this?” she shouted.
Now, there was a code in the Carter household. If you got caught doing something wrong and you were the only one who got caught, you took the hit for that one. This, in turn, limited the amount of beatings we got because every now and again each of us got a pass. I had a decision to make. I could do the noble thing and take my beating like a Carter, but I imagined Dathan under the covers, smiling, waiting to hear my screams sing throughout the room, so I immediately pointed to the lump that was him and said, “Dathan made me do it, Momma.”
Like the beat-out-of-sleep night, Dathan and I danced around the room, attempting to duck and dodge Momma’s swings. When the belt connected, there was a sting, which felt like rows of needles running straight to the bone. When Momma missed, she sometimes hit herself, which meant our pummeling lasted longer. Once Momma finished whipping us, we were both in tears. Our previous episodes of bravado were nowhere to be found. Momma made us clean the glass while she watched and then ordered us to bed. The cotton sheets stung against my newly formed welts.
“Now go to sleep,” Momma ordered and charged out. As soon as the door closed, snickers populated the room. While Champ, Mary, and Tom-Tom attempted to contain the laughter inside of them, I lifted my head from the pillow, already wet with my tears and said, “Ain’t nothing funny. I hate all of y’all, especially you, Blacky.”
Champ returned my statement with laughter. Dathan spoke with the same tears in his voice, “I hate you too, Bucky,” and then there were more giggles.
Aside from being what we deemed the “certifiable” one in our family, Dathan was also a thief. We always joked God made him dark so he couldn’t be seen at night and that he was so bad he even stole from himself. When I was thirteen years old, he stole food stamps Momma intended to use for food. We searched the house trying to find those stamps until Dathan got tired of looking and told us they were behind the water heater. Champ and I took turns trying to reach the stamps while Momma beat Dathan’s butt.
Despite what we considered his flaws, Dathan had such a good heart. When he stole Momma’s jar of fifty-cent pieces, he didn’t do what I would have done, which was buy Banana Now and Laters and eat them in front of my brothers and sister. He took the fifty-cent pieces and gave them to the children in his class. When he stole Momma’s boyfriend’s watch one morning before school, he didn’t walk around school, perpetrating like he was hot stuff. He gave it to a teacher who’d been nice to him.
Even though most everyone in his life treated him like an outcast, Dathan longed to be accepted. We returned his longing with relentless badgering, teasing that often left him alone, hurt, and then angry. But, there were times we appreciated Dathan and his goodness. Whenever we needed entertainment, he was always happy to oblige as he morphed into Reverend Carter.
In the summer, when Momma went to work, we’d pull her chest of drawers from the wall and put a chair behind it for “the Reverend” to stand on. Dathan would hover above us on his makeshift pulpit. Then, the fun would begin.
“Hallelujah,” Dathan would yell with his hands outstretched in the air.
“Hail glory,” I’d reply.
“God is good. God is good,” his voice becoming coarse with his words.
“Preach, brother,” Champ added.
Dathan would then erupt into a sermon, chastising us all for succumbing to sin, healing us of whatever ailments we could dream up, and rebuking our evil thoughts in the name of Jesus. He’d pray for us with such sincerity, laying hands on us as if he were a weathered holy man.
We sat on Momma’s bed with our heads upturned to Dathan, Reverend Carter, our preacher. Mary and Tom-Tom, our designated shouters, jumped and gyrated after the Holy Ghost got into them. Dathan was more than willing to give our sermons whenever we got bored. He was the “crookedest” preacher we had ever seen in our lives, but he did give a good sermon. As we sat on Momma’s bed, with our eyes staring at him in admiration, he must have felt normal, like just another kid playing with his brothers and sisters. Those were some of the only times we weren’t berating and torturing him. It was then we allowed Dathan to be one of us and not the outsider we made him.
Stubble
Academy Park was definitely a step up for our family. Our little white home could never aspire to be what others referred to as a “house,” but it was more of a house than the apartment on Victory Boulevard had been. And we lived in it hard, running patches of dirt into the once greened-over backyard. We dirtied the walls with our grimy hands. In turn, Momma made us wash them each weekend. We lived in every part of that house and, at times,
often used the outside as our living space. On warm summer mornings, Momma let us drape a sheet over the clothesline and make our very own tents. We’d imagine we were campers and try to start fires with sticks and stones. Momma supplied us with cherry pies she made with flour and canned cherries. We stayed under the sheet, under our tents until we were covered in red stickiness and filled with the abandon only childhood brings.
The autumn after my eighth birthday, Mary was starting school and I was more excited than anyone else. At first, I adored Mary and all of her cuteness, but the truth of the matter was she looked a lot like Momma, more like her than I ever could with my yellow skin, red hair, and brown eyes. Anytime someone came to visit, I was reminded of how much they looked alike. Visitors showered her with compliments, “Girl, you’re the spitting image of your Momma,” and “You’re just as pretty as Pretty. You should be Lil’ Pretty.” Then, there was always the traditional, “You’re cute too, Laurie, but Mary is just so pretty.” Soon, I resented Mary and her prettiness.
When I was seven, we began the battle over Momma’s affection. Skirmishes included debates over who got to sleep next to Momma and which daughter she loved more. Those fights usually ended with Momma appeasing Mary because she was the “baby” and quick to cry. Despite our sibling rivalry, Mary and I were as close as sisters could be. With her puffy round cheeks and deep dark eyes, I adored my baby sister, even as I battled her for Momma’s affection.
One day, Mary and I were playing in Momma’s bedroom, trying on her earrings and combing our hair. Momma was at work, so we had free rein over her room. I began combing Mary’s hair, which was much nicer than my dry knots, which crunched like potato chips when Momma attempted to pull a comb through. I protested in pain whenever Momma did my hair, so she kept it in little plaits that lay on my head like worms, struggling to be free.
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