“Our mother is not dead! Nett is our mother. She’s our mother and you know it, Ray!” This was Ray’s cue to back off.
“You are so stupid!” Ray would say as he headed toward the sanctuary of his room.
“She is too our mother!”
“Yeah, right, stupid. Get outta my face! You are so dumb it’s unbelievable.” With that, Ray would shut his bedroom door, leaving Rhonda fuming in the hall. Rhonda didn’t know what Ray knew for sure, but she knew it was more than he was willing to share with her.
It wasn’t Ray’s fault that people liked him better than Rhonda, or that Grandma let him sleep in her big four-poster bed while Rhonda slept on the floor. He could hardly be held responsible for the fact that his sister was accused of asking too many questions, talking too much, and generally getting on people’s nerves. What was he supposed to do when his sister was being beaten or punished for doing something that he had warned her not to do? So he ate the cookies Rhonda couldn’t have because she was being punished or beaten, and he enjoyed his television programs while she had to sit on the floor, in the corner.
It wasn’t his fault that his mother had died, or that his father was an angry, distant man who rarely had a kind word to say. Like his sister, there was little Ray could do about any of that. What he did do was stay out of everyone’s way and keep his mouth shut. Besides, he had his own problems.
For the first twelve years of his life, Ray’s biggest problems was staying alive. His silence was, in part, created by his history of having asthma. Whenever things got really bad, Ray’s asthma attacks would render him speechless.
When Ray wasn’t having an asthma attack, he simply had very little to say. He always said good morning and good night; he answered when called by name. But as far as general conversation was concerned, Ray was mute. It didn’t matter to Rhonda; she loved him no matter what. But she also knew how to get a rise out of him. If she took his toys or stood in front of the television or pinched him while he was doing his homework, then he’d have something to say.
“Leave me alone, Ronnie!”
“You’re such a baby! I wasn’t bothering you!”
“Were too!”
“Was not! Baby! You’re just a big crybaby. Crybaby, crybaby, crybaby!”
“I am not a crybaby!”
“Are too.”
“I’m telling!” And Ray would scream at the top of his lungs. “Ronnie’s bothering me! She won’t leave me alone!”
Once Ray started hollering, some adult would come into the room and either slap Rhonda or order her to leave the room. The consequences of their sibling rivalry were consistent. Rhonda was always the one at fault. She didn’t care. Once the adult had left the room, she would go right back to teasing Ray just for the sake of conversation. But she did understand that if she upset Ray too much, he might have an asthma attack.
Ray’s asthma attacks were a source of devastating fear and turmoil for Rhonda. So far in her young life, Ray had been the only constant. When Ray was gasping for air, Rhonda tried not to bother him or ask too many questions. Ray’s chest would swell to three or four times its normal size, his eyes would run, and the wheezing sound of his attempts to breathe would fill the entire room. Rhonda would sit as close as she could to him without causing him more discomfort. She would pass him clean tissues, and collect the dirty ones. If Ray was having a really bad attack, one of the adults would put a big lump of Vicks VapoRub in the humidifier, and Ray would sit as close to it as possible to let the soothing steam fill his chest. Because Rhonda was on tissue duty, she got to sit in the warm mist with her brother. If Ray needed something, like water or more orange juice, he would try to speak, but his words would come in painful gasps. So he and Rhonda developed a code. A flipping hand meant something to drink. Rubbing the nose or eye meant he needed a tissue. When he wanted to lie down, he would pat his lap, signaling for Rhonda to come sit next to him. When he reached out and grabbed Rhonda’s hand, she knew it was time to go to the hospital. It made Rhonda feel good to know that even though it was never reciprocal, when her brother was feeling bad, he would reach out for her.
Poor people who couldn’t pay for medical attention went to Kings County Hospital. It was the last place you wanted to be if you were sick, which is why people waited until they were in really bad shape before going there. As concerned as she was about Ray, Rhonda could barely contain her excitement about the prospect of having Tootsie Rolls drop out of the machine into her hot little hands. County was bad, but it had candy machines. They all knew there would be a minimum three-hour wait in the noisy, crowded, chaotic waiting room before Ray’s name would be called. During that time, Rhonda would have to sit quietly and anxiously on a hard bench in a filthy room and listen to her brother wheeze and gasp for his every breath.
On one memorable trip to County, Ray almost died. When they arrived, Ray was barely conscious. Nett carried him into the waiting room and propped him up on a bench between two strangers: one drunk, one bleeding. Then Nett walked right past all of the people in line and asked the nurse at the reception desk to please take a look at her son. The nurse politely ignored Nett. When she persisted, the nurse told her to take a number. Nett, who was always as cool as a cucumber, began to scream at the woman, “I don’t want a damn number! I want you to help my son! He’s not breathing, he’s dying!”
The drunk, who had been holding Ray’s head in his lap, jumped for some unknown reason. Rhonda ran over and tried to catch her brother as he fell off of the bench. Before she could catch him, people started coming from everywhere. Hospital staff appeared from everywhere. The last thing Rhonda saw was Nett holding Ray’s hand as she and the gurney disappeared through the swinging double doors. Rhonda stood alone in the middle of the crowded waiting room and wailed as if her heart were broken.
The strangers in the waiting room who weren’t bleeding or totally uninterested tried to console her. A nurse gave her some water in a paper cup, but Rhonda would not stop crying. Not only was her brother gone, but she had not had a chance to get a quarter from Nett for the candy machine. After a two-hour wait, she looked up and thought she saw the cavalry coming to her rescue. It was Daddy! As he rushed through the emergency-room doors, Rhonda jumped up and ran toward him.
“Daddy, Daddy! Ray’s gonna die!” she called to him. Rhonda couldn’t believe her father had passed right by her in this strange place, with all these strange people, without so much as a word of consolation. By the time he reached the nurses’ desk, Rhonda could almost grab the hem of his coat. But before she did, Daddy was on his way through the door that led to the treatment room. At that point, Rhonda lost it.
What Rhonda did on that day became a family story that was told and retold. She screamed, she bit people, she hit people and threw herself on the floor, howling, as Grandma would say, “like a child possessed.” She wanted her brother! She wanted her parents! She wanted a Tootsie Roll! Someone went to get Nett, who found Rhonda thrashing around hysterically on the filthy emergency-room floor. Nett grabbed Rhonda, pulled her to her feet, and held Rhonda’s face in both of her hands as she pulled her tightly to her body. Then she led Rhonda by the hand outside into the fresh air. Within moments, Daddy joined them.
“Ray’s going to be okay, baby. But he’s got to stay here for a little while.”
“Are you going to stay with him?” Rhonda was prepared to have another fit if necessary.
“No, I’m going home with you.”
After Nett reassured her that the nurses and doctors would take good care of Ray, Rhonda reluctantly went home without a Tootsie Roll and without her brother.
It was the longest two days of her life. The empty bed in their room frightened her. Though if Ray had been there with her, he probably would not have been speaking to her or playing with her. He would have been his usual quiet and withdrawn self. His not being there was very much like his being there. Still, Rhonda did not want to lose him. He never did anything to help her, but, he never did anything to hu
rt her, either. A time would come, however, when her fear of losing Ray would become a reality.
Though most of the adults in Rhonda’s life had betrayed her in one way or another, Ray was the first person to betray her publicly. The betrayal came in the form of a lie when Rhonda was five years old.
Every summer, the family went to Uncle Lowell and Aunt Dora’s house in Atlantic City. Just how Uncle Lowell and Aunt Dora were related to Rhonda was never explained. They were joined by more unexplained aunts, uncles, and cousins who came from all over the country every Memorial Day and Labor Day to party at the beach. The younger children spent their days on the beach or the steeplechase under the watchful eyes of the older children. The adults spent their days resting and their nights drinking, smoking, playing cards, and eating crab.
The day of the betrayal was gloomy. It rained, and the children were forced to stay in the house, fighting over the television set and playing games they made up on the spur of the moment. The grown-ups, anticipating that the rain would stop by nightfall, bought a bushel of crabs. The children from the South knew all about crabs. They were familiar with how the crabs were prepared. The water was seasoned, and the live crabs were put in the boiling water to cook so they could be eaten. Rhonda and the other children from the North, however, saw the process of putting living, feeling, defenseless creatures into scalding hot water and killing them as a barbaric act.
The grown-ups prepared the crabs, seasoned the boiling water, and dropped the crabs into the big crab pot. They turned the knob on top of the pot that locked the cover in place and left the crabs and the children in the kitchen. The northern children decided to help the crabs escape.
Much to the joy of the not-yet-dead crabs, one of the children—it was never discovered who—unlocked the pot. The crabs leaped out of the pot and ran for their lives.
Crabs were everywhere! They scrambled all over the kitchen floor and all over the northern children. The southern children knew better; they watched and laughed as the northern children tried to get the crabs back into the pot. The crabs latched onto anything they could, including the children’s hands, arms, and faces. The kitchen was in total chaos! Crabs clutching, clawing, and hanging on the children; children running, screaming, and stepping on the crabs that tried to get away. Rhonda was one of the youngest, and in her effort to save the crabs, she had gotten more crabs on her than anyone else.
When the grown-ups heard the commotion, they came running. Grandma was the first adult to enter the kitchen. Two unexplained aunts and one unexplained uncle followed her. Daddy was the next adult to arrive and the first to ask the question, “Who opened the pot?”
Had everyone stuck together, they could have gotten away with a unified “I don’t know,” but the North and the South still had issues to resolve. The southern children immediately blamed the northern children. The northern children were too busy yelling and trying to shake the crabs off to deny the accusation.
“Shut up! Everybody just shut up! It serves you right.” Grandma’s jarring voice cut through the room, and everyone fell silent. It was in that moment of utter silence that Ray spoke up.
“Ronnie did it.”
Rhonda couldn’t believe her ears and neither could anyone else, since Rhonda was one of the youngest and shortest of the children. She couldn’t deny it, or defend herself, because she still had crabs hanging off of her T-shirt. The other children were so relieved not to be blamed, they didn’t say a word. Before any of the adults could volunteer a more plausible explanation, Grandma backhanded Rhonda, sending her flying across the kitchen floor onto a pile of half-cooked, half-dead crabs.
“Oh, Ma. Please!” Daddy said weakly. “You don’t have to slap her like that.”
“You know she did it. She’s always doing something she’s got no business doing!”
Daddy was taking a big chance by challenging Grandma publicly. He approached Rhonda tentatively, but by the time he reached her, Grandma had grabbed her and slapped her again.
One of the aunts tried to help by offering, “She didn’t mean it. You know how kids are.” Grandma shot her a glance that shut her mouth for the next two days. Everyone knew Grandma was crazy. Everyone knew that she abused Rhonda. Unfortunately, no one in the room was brave enough to attempt to put Grandma in her place—on her broom, headed for the sunset. They were all afraid of what Grandma might do to them. Everyone, that is, except Nett. She had announced to everyone that she would “go to her grave willingly rather than stand by and allow her to abuse that child.” But by the time Nett made her way through the crowd into the kitchen, Ray was standing in the corner, Daddy was arguing with Grandma, and Rhonda had been slapped three more times.
Lessons in life come in a variety of ways. Children are so observant, sensitive, and impressionable that their most powerful lessons come from what they see and hear others do around them and what others do to them. They learn early in their lives that adults place value on perceived beauty. Children who are not valued and protected feel that they are not beautiful or worthy of protection. Ray was honored, valued, and protected for the most part. But he witnessed his sister being beaten, neglected, and ignored. He had to ask himself the question, “What is so good about me?” and conversely, “What is wrong with my sister?” In his circumstances in life, he was left to answer those questions for himself.
When they moved to Aunt Nadine’s, the silence between Rhonda and her brother turned to distance. They still ate every meal together. They still walked to and attended the same school together. Ray would protect his sister when the kids at school were teasing or chasing her. He would walk behind her and in front of the gang of boys or girls, daring them to touch Rhonda. They never did.
But at home, something was different. Ray had begun to physically push Rhonda away whenever she came near him. He had started calling her names like “fatty” and “blackie.” When Rhonda’s hair started to fall out, Ray seemed to get a big kick out of calling her “wiggy” and “baldy,” just like the kids in school. Rhonda knew he was just teasing her, but it was disturbing that her brother, who once had nothing to say, now had so many mean things to say.
The worst thing he called her was “ugly.” Ray told Rhonda that she was ugly to the point of being “oogly,” which he said was a cross between ugly and a disaster waiting to happen. Ray was her older brother, whom she loved. And she believed him.
Rhonda began spending a great deal of time in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the sink, and eyeing her ugliness in the mirror. She would pinch her nose, tuck in her lips, and pretend she was pretty like the women she had seen on television. She was particularly fond of the character Penny on Sky King. After her hair started falling out, Rhonda would bobby-pin yellow or red knee socks to her hair, pretending they were pigtails like Penny’s. She would twist her head back and forth so that the socks would swing across her face. In the mirror, Rhonda didn’t look so bad, but according to Ray, most ugly people didn’t know they were ugly. Rhonda believed that, too, until the day the woman showed up in the mirror.
Rhonda was sitting on the edge of the sink, just staring at herself, wondering what it would be like to be beautiful. Suddenly, as if she had come through the door, there was the image of a beautiful woman in the mirror. Rhonda couldn’t move. She stared at the woman, who was smiling at her. She seemed to walk right up behind Rhonda until their faces were side by side in the mirror. Watching intently, Rhonda wanted to speak. She could not, but the woman did.
“Your beauty is on the inside,” the woman said, and smiled. “Look inside for your beauty.” The words were melodic and seemed to linger in the air after the woman had spoken them. Suddenly, there was a banging on the bathroom door. Startled, Rhonda jumped, her foot slipped, and she went tumbling onto the hard, cold bathroom floor, bumping her head and mouth on the cold toilet on the way down.
“What are you doing in there?” It was Ray. He needed to use the bathroom. Rhonda quickly scrambled back to her feet and hoisted herself back
on the edge of the sink. But the woman was gone. The only image in the mirror was Rhonda’s “ugly” face that was now swollen and bruised.
Every now and then, Ray was good for a laugh. He would either do something or say something that would be totally hysterical.
Aunt Nadine and Uncle Leroy, like everyone else, seemed to like Ray more than Rhonda. He was a lot less trouble, and when he got in trouble with either one of them, he went to his room, not to be heard from for hours, sometimes days. Aunt Nadine and Ray tangled only once, but it was an encounter that Rhonda would never forget. Aunt Nadine was not in a good mood. You could tell by the way she was slamming things around the house. Ray obviously hadn’t noticed, nor had he learned that when some adult is in a bad mood, you stay away from them. Rhonda knew a lot about grown-ups being in bad moods. Ray was about to learn.
Ray asked Aunt Nadine if he could go to the park. She said no. Then he asked if he could go around the corner to his friend’s house. Again, Aunt Nadine barked, “No!” Ray was in rare form that day. He asked, “Why?” Aunt Nadine told him to get out of her face, not to question her, and to go to his room. Ray turned to walk out of the kitchen. On his way out, he started mumbling under his breath. Aunt Nadine hated mumbling. By the time Ray got to the staircase leading upstairs, he had a little chant going:
“Going to Uncle Eli’s, you can’t go! Going downtown, you can’t go! Going here, you can’t go! Going there, you can’t go!”
Rhonda heard what her brother was chanting, and so did Aunt Nadine. Ray, who had never talked back before, didn’t seem to care whether everyone heard him or not. This was obviously an act of rebellion and totally out of character for Ray. Either he didn’t hear her or he chose not to respond when Aunt Nadine told him to shut up. Ray started stomping up the stairs, chanting loudly. Aunt Nadine called out to him again. Once again, he failed or refused to respond. Furious, Aunt Nadine looked around the kitchen for something to hit him with. She grabbed Baby, the cat.
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