Chances are Daddy wasn’t mad about Rhonda getting out of bed or the Listerine bottle being broken or the lipstick on the sheets. Chances were better that Daddy was shamed by having to sneak into his own home at night to avoid the landlord. Or that Daddy was mad because he hadn’t hit a number in months. Or that he was frustrated by having to be so careful writing numbers because he was on probation and didn’t want to go back to jail. Whatever the underlying reason, Daddy was on his way down the hall, enraged, and needing to take it out on someone, anyone. Lipstick on the clean white sheets and broken glass on the black-and-white tile bathroom floor gave him an excellent excuse to take out all of his rage, his fury and frustration, on his eight-year-old daughter.
Rhonda tried to escape Daddy’s grasp by running back to her bed and hiding under the covers. He came and got her.
There are spankings, there are whippings, and there are beatings. The beating Rhonda received that night at the hands of her father was the talk of the neighborhood for weeks. The beating Rhonda received that night resulted in her lying senseless in the bathtub.
It is not unusual for an angry adult to take their frustration and anger out on a child. It is not right, and the child is usually unaware that this is what is going on, but it happens all of the time. Adults who feel powerless, who feel they are at the end of their ropes, will strike out against the one thing or person they believe they can exercise power over. It doesn’t make them feel better, and if they really hurt the child, it will make them feel worse. In the process, the child who is being used as a punching bag, or an ashtray, is trying to figure out just what they did to enrage the adult. There is no plausible explanation. The adult can profess to be sorry, promise never to do it again, but it doesn’t matter. The child is wounded, sometimes physically. And in all cases emotionally and spiritually.
Rhonda’s father became even angrier when his wife tried to pull the child he was beating—his child—away from him. He became angrier still when he saw his son standing in the closet, staring at him in horror, and knew he was powerless to change the image of himself he saw forming in his son’s eyes. Daddy’s sense of powerlessness led to such frustration that he continued to beat Rhonda until his unbelted pants fell down. Despite the fact that the pants around his ankles made it hard for him to move, he continued to beat the child until she had slumped to the floor unconscious.
Her eyes were shut. Her lips were swollen. Her nightgown was torn. Her arms, legs, back, and face were covered with large welts and streaks of blood. Somehow, as Daddy had become more and more exhausted, Nett had managed to pull Rhonda away from him. She dragged her into the bathroom and locked the door. Nett filled the tub and placed Rhonda in the warm water. She left her only for a moment to speak with the police, who had been called by a neighbor. When Nett returned to the bathroom, Rhonda was regaining consciousness. She didn’t cry; she just grabbed on to Nett and held on for her life. Rhonda always felt that Nett was her only chance in life. Tonight, she knew it for sure. Nett rocked and rubbed and consoled the battered child, then whispered in her ear, “Why don’t you listen? Your Daddy loves you, but you must learn to listen!”
Rhonda learned a powerful lesson that night. Frustrated, angry people will hurt you. And if you don’t do what angry people want you to do, then they will hurt you very badly, and it will be your fault.
Something had to be done. And when something has to be done about the way you are living, children must be the first consideration. The marshal was coming within the next seventy-two hours to put Rhonda’s family out on the street. Nett hadn’t seen her husband in three days. She needed help, and that evening, when she picked the children up from their afternoon caretaker, she decided to ask for that help.
Nadine was short and round like a pumpkin. Though the exact family line had never been explained to either of them, Rhonda and Ray called her Aunt Nadine. They spent every afternoon with her, after they had been dismissed from school. Rhonda thought she was nice enough, but not nice enough to live with. Nett explained to Nadine that she needed six to nine months to get back on track and that she was going to live with her sister in a small one-bedroom apartment. Nadine, who owned her home and kept children for a living, said she’d be more than happy to keep Rhonda and Ray. After all, she said, it was her own flesh and blood they were talking about.
Nett promised it would only be for a few weeks, two months at most. Although it ended up lasting five years, it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, there were times when it was rather fascinating for Rhonda. It was the first time she’d lived in a house. As far as she knew, the only people who lived in real houses were rich people like the ones Grandma worked for. Nadine’s was a two-story house with a finished basement. There were two televisions on the parlor floor and one in the basement, where there was also a bar with stools, a record player, and a complete set of living room furniture. It was called the family room. The most exciting thing was that the house also had a backyard. This meant that Rhonda did not have to go out front to play, nor explain to the other children on the block who she was and where she came from. It also meant less chance that she’d see her father driving by with women in his car. She wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that her father was either ignoring her or had forgotten that she existed.
Aunt Nadine kept her house clean. The hardwood floors were always polished to a high shine. You could see your reflection in the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor. Every surface, every nook and cranny in every room was dust-free. Even with all the children who were through the house each day, all the rooms were spotless. Rhonda and her brother each had their own room. His was on the second floor; Rhonda’s was on the first floor, between Aunt Nadine’s room and the bedroom of Aunt Nadine’s only child, who was nicknamed “Beanie.”
Rhonda was expected to keep her room as clean as the rest of the house, which she did to the best of her ability. She was also given a myriad of chores around the house for which she was paid a weekly allowance. She missed Nett, though. She missed her so much she ached with the missing. Unlike Nett, Aunt Nadine did not talk to Rhonda. She told her what to do and how to do it, but not much else. Rhonda did her best to help Aunt Nadine with the children she kept during the day. She helped feed them, she played with them, and it was her assigned duty to wash their hands and faces just before their parents came to pick them up. Aunt Nadine never thanked Rhonda nor told her she’d done a good job.
Rhonda had never seen anyone take her hair off until she went to live with Aunt Nadine. Aunt Nadine had a whole dresser drawer full of wigs. If she got up late and was in a hurry to leave the house, Aunt Nadine would reach in the drawer, pull out one of her hairy hats, and pat it into place on her half-bald head. At first, Rhonda was fascinated by Aunt Nadine’s hair collection. But frequently, Aunt Nadine would put her wig on backwards. She’d brush it into place, then put on her glasses. Sometimes they’d be at the grocery store, or on their way to a PTA meeting, and one of their neighbors would lean in close enough to whisper, “Nadine, your wig’s on backwards.” Whenever and wherever this happened, Nadine would reach up, spin the wig around, and pat it into place. Rhonda would be mortified!
It was bad enough that the person who went to speak to the teacher on your behalf had a different last name from yours. But when she would adjust her hair, in full view of the public, moving her bangs from the nape of her neck to their proper place on her forehead, it was more than a child could bear! By age ten, Rhonda was ashamed of her own increasingly overweight body, and of the fact that her own father would drive past her on the street and not even speak. And on top of all that, she had to deal with the fact that her aunt, who really wasn’t her aunt and purported to be her mother, walked around with her wig on backwards.
Rhonda missed Nett terribly. She felt she’d been ripped apart from the only person who had ever shown her love, the person she believed to be her real mother. As long as Nett maintained contact, Rhonda found ways to fill the moments of separation. But as the months and ye
ars passed, Nett’s visits were less and less frequent. Rhonda had to work at getting the people she now lived with to notice her, to speak to her beyond the obligatory daily greetings. No one ever kissed her or hugged her. It was incredibly hard being in a place where she didn’t feel she belonged, where she didn’t feel loved or wanted or pretty. With Nett gone, there was no one to talk to her, to explain things to her. It was no wonder her hair started to fall out again.
Rhonda had gone bald at her temples and at the back of her head, so besides teasing her about her weight, the other children made fun of her hair loss. If Aunt Nadine had paid her any mind, she might have prepared Rhonda for the day she was sent to school wearing an auburn wig. She was teased, talked about, laughed at, and pushed around. Her teacher asked her, “Does your mother know your hair is red?” Several boys chased her halfway home, threatening to pull the wig off. Aunt Nadine’s response was to put more hairpins in the wig to keep it in place in case someone actually did try to pull it off. “Stop your crying,” Aunt Nadine told a weeping Rhonda. “It’s better than nothing, and it’s certainly better than being bald!”
Eventually, the kids at school got used to the wig, and so did Rhonda. Every week, Rhonda got 100 percent on the spelling test. She got an A on every book report. Rhonda was so smart in school the other children began to see her as potentially useful to them. Aunt Nadine’s daughter, Beanie, had introduced Rhonda to African culture and African dance. Rhonda, in turn, shared all she learned from Beanie with her classmates. It made her popular in school, and she was no longer teased about the wig or the smell of the sulfur-based hair-growing concoction that emanated from beneath the wig.
Saturday nights were when other family members came to Aunt Nadine’s to play cards, drink, and fight. For Rhonda, Saturdays were when she and her brother got money from total strangers who claimed to be their uncles or aunts. It was the day she and Ray got to drink all the leftover Coca-Cola and club soda. It was also the day when Rhonda got updates on Daddy and Nett, filtered through curse words and smoke and alcohol.
“She hasn’t called in a week. Next time she does, I’m gonna tell her a thing or two!”
“Who does that yellow b——h think she is?”
“She thinks she’s white, that’s what she thinks! Why should she waste her time raising a dead woman’s kids? She doesn’t care about them one bit, not one little bit.”
“Well, neither does he, and they’re his kids.”
“Why should he care about them when he’s busy making new ones on the other side of town!”
“He can’t feed the ones he already has. What kind of fool woman would have children with a man who can’t feed the kids he’s already got?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know how some women are. They will do anything, I mean anything, to keep a man. Especially a good-looking man.”
The grown-ups who came to the Saturday night basement parties always got drunk enough for their tongues to get loose enough to say things they wouldn’t say when they were sober. In fact, they were drunk enough to forget that the children they were talking about were listening. Children and who they belonged to was not the only topic of conversation. They also talked about each other. One drunken person inevitably said something outrageous to another drunk in the group. By ten o’clock, somebody would slap, or threaten to slap, somebody else in the face.
Aunt Nadine, the shortest and smallest one in the group, usually started the fight. She would insult someone’s husband, or call someone a nasty name. Before long, someone else would jump in to defend the offended party, and a free-for-all would start. Wigs flying. Bottles crashing. Rhonda thought it was funny, but sad, too. If it hadn’t happened every weekend, she might have thought it was exciting. It was Rhonda’s second lesson in domestic violence. She thought it was just the way things were and felt powerless to do anything about it.
Little girls learn a lot from the women they grow up around, whether they are related or not. Older women are like midwives who assist in the birth of a young woman’s consciousness. It’s not just what they do, it’s who they are, and how they demonstrate who they are, that provides young women with “womanhood training.” Young women and girls learn about themselves and what it means to be a woman by watching the older women in their lives. They watch how and what they cook. They watch how and what they use to clean. They watch what they wear and how they carry themselves, how they treat themselves and each other.
Whether they realize it or not, whether they intend to or not, older women, the “womanhood midwives,” teach younger women what to expect from life. Some things are taught overtly, but the most important lessons are taught covertly. The words and actions of older women teach whether to expect life to be peaceful or stressful, hard or easy, honorable or dishonorable. Only a woman can teach another woman what it really means to be a woman.
The principal midwives in Rhonda’s life—Grandma, Nett, and Nadine—had such a hard time learning, they had no idea they were also teaching.
Uncle Leroy was Aunt Nadine’s husband. He was a thin, quiet man, a functional weekend alcoholic, and he was deeply involved with another woman. Uncle Leroy went to work at 5:30 A.M. every weekday morning and returned home at 5:30 P.M. on the dot. He would mumble a greeting when he came in, take a bath, eat his dinner, and go to bed. Once Uncle Leroy went to bed, everyone had to be quiet and creep around the house to avoid waking him up.
But on Friday nights, Uncle Leroy never came directly home. And on Saturdays, Uncle Leroy would show up after the basement partying was already in full swing. Rhonda knew why and so did Aunt Nadine. Uncle Leroy had another woman on the side. He knew that Aunt Nadine had a habit of driving by the other woman’s house when he wasn’t home on time. If she saw Uncle Leroy’s car parked outside, she’d return home and start calling his girlfriend until the woman kicked him out and made him go home. Usually, he’d get off with just that smug look that Rhonda saw on Aunt Nadine’s face when he came in, dragging his tail between his legs. Occasionally, if someone at the Saturday night party made a snide remark about his absence in front of Aunt Nadine, Uncle Leroy would wind up with a dented hood or a broken windshield on his new Lincoln.
Adults who talk about and in front of children as if they didn’t exist were not the problem. Uncle Leroy getting drunk every single Friday night wasn’t the problem, either. What happened when Rhonda was left at home with drunk Uncle Leroy while Aunt Nadine went to play bid whisk was a problem, one that was impossible to understand, accept, or live with.
CHAPTER FIVE
What’s the Lesson When You Are Poor, Ugly, and Feeling Bad?
Like all your brothers and sisters, you suffer from a basic sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. You feel you have made terrible mistakes which will sooner or later be punished by humans in authority or by some abstract spiritual authority like God, or karmic law.
Paul Ferrini, in Love Without Conditions
BROTHERS AND SISTERS are expected to love one another. It is also expected that when life gets hard, siblings will hold onto each other and support one another through the rough times. Rhonda loved her brother, Ray. He was two years older than she was, and he was her hero. It was doubtful, however, whether he felt the same way about Rhonda. How Ray felt about himself, his life, or the life circumstances in which he and his sister found themselves was a mystery. Ray never spoke about how he felt except where his father was concerned.
Ray hated his father, and he was not shy about letting everyone know it. Ray would rant and rave so vehemently, he would bring himself to tears and sometimes to the brink of an asthma attack. Rhonda had not yet gotten to the point where she hated Daddy, but she would listen to Ray just to be supportive. She didn’t know for sure what Ray’s reasons were for hating Daddy; he never told her.
Perhaps, she thought, he hates him because Daddy is so distant and angry. Maybe it’s because he always criticizes and chastises Ray. Daddy’s pet names for Ray were “punk” and “sissy.” He would push an
d punch Ray just to “toughen him up,” but this was never balanced with much needed guidance and support. Maybe it was the time he’d watched Daddy beat Rhonda into a state of unconsciousness. Or maybe it was the normal male rivalry that exists between boys of a certain age and their fathers. Rhonda knew that Ray was sick and tired of the war stories and the “white man’s out to get you” stories.
Rhonda didn’t understand having so much hate for one person. She never asked her brother why, and he never tried to explain. As far as Rhonda could see, her brother had absolutely nothing to complain about.
“You better stop talking about Daddy like that,” Rhonda would caution her brother. But she was so glad to be having a conversation, she’d take advantage of Ray’s anger just to keep the lines of communication open.
“Why? Why should I care about him? He doesn’t give a damn about us!” Ray was vehement in his response.
“Yes he does. He’s just busy.”
“You are so stupid, Ronnie. You are as stupid as he is.” Ray and Nett were the only two people who called Rhonda, “Ronnie.” Grandma usually called her “a pain in the butt,” and Daddy, when he was around, called her “lamb chop.” But lately, “stupid” seemed to be Ray’s favorite name for her.
“What are you complaining about? Didn’t he buy you that bicycle for your birthday? He never buys me anything.”
“That cheap piece of crap? He probably found it on the street or in the garbage. Probably got it from one of his women.” That would always get Rhonda’s attention.
“What women?” Were the rumors she heard at the Saturday night card parties true?
“See, stupid, you don’t know anything. You see him driving up and down the streets with those women in his car. Who do you think they are? They’re not our mother. She’s dead!” Ray knew what effect his words would have.
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