The Lost Daughter: A Memoir

by Mary Williams

  During the drive to Tasha’s house, I told her about my memories of her as a child. About the night Donna went into labor and denied she was pregnant all the way to the hospital. I told her what I thought when I went to the hospital to see her for the first time. I was ten years old and thought my two-months premature niece hooked up to wires in an incubator was the ugliest baby I’d ever seen. She looked like a wrinkled old white man.

  I told her how much I loved her when she came home. How everyone loved her. How I mourned when Donna took her and moved away. Tasha listened to my recollections with a small smile on her face. When I was done, she told me that sadly she had no memories of me. I told her we would make new ones.

  Tasha lived in low-income housing on a very rough side of town. As we pulled up to her place, the end unit of a series of townhomes surrounded by a high fence, Tasha joked that the fence was to keep the residents in, not the bad elements out. Sista dropped us off with the promise to pick us up the following afternoon and was gone.

  Owing to the fact that Tasha is a single mother with six children living with her, ranging in ages from two to sixteen years old, I didn’t know quite what to expect of the living conditions in her home. I knew the house I grew up in with five siblings was nearly always in disarray. Chores were often neglected, bickering between us was constant.

  When we entered her five-bedroom duplex, I saw that it was clean and bright. Family photos lined the walls. I was relieved to exchange the sweltering embrace of a Houston summer afternoon for a spot on her sofa in the air-conditioned coolness of her living room.

  Within minutes, my great-nieces and -nephews came down the stairs and indoors to greet me. The two oldest girls were in high school and seemed to be the closest of friends. Kieaira was sixteen and looked exactly like her mother in complexion and personality. Breannah, thirteen, was the spitting image of my sister Donna, with her dark, smooth skin and athletic build. The opposite of her big sister, she was smiley and bubbly. Elton was eleven and a bit on the shy side but was very polite and inquisitive. He also resembled my sister Donna. A’Mya, nine, was in my lap from the moment I sat down and was full of questions. Maurice had shaken off his innocent angel routine and was solidly competing with his sister A’Mya for my attention. But the star of the house was two-year-old Hailey. She was an adorable little bundle of baby pudge and attitude in full-blown Terrible Twos mode. She had no interest in letting me touch or hold her and seemed to be just barely tolerant of my presence in her kingdom. Tasha told me the quickest way to her heart was through her stomach, a bottomless pit from which no food is excluded.

  I attempted to bribe her with bland, wafer-thin rice crackers I had brought to eat on the plane. I wasn’t confident she would find my offering appealing, but I gave it a go because I was desperate to get my hands on baby flesh. Surprisingly to me, but not her mother and siblings, she liked the cracker I gave her and begged for more. Within a few minutes she was munching happily in my lap.

  I spent the afternoon chatting and playing with the three youngest children, the teen girls having more important things to do than spend the afternoon with a great-aunt. While Tasha prepared a dinner of fish and chips, she told me all she ever heard about me was that I was adopted by a rich movie star. She had expected me to be snooty and she thought I’d have reservations about staying at her place. I told her that her place is the Hilton compared to places I have slept during my travels. I shared with her stories of the Appalachian Trail, Africa and Antarctica. She listened and asked lots of questions.

  Over the course of the evening I was touched by how close and loving her relationship was with all of her children. She was affectionate but when necessary chastised with love. There was no fear or anger in this house. The children freely shared sweets and toys with one another, something rarely seen when I was a kid. The youngest children were not allowed to wander the streets at will. Each and every one was accounted for with updates every half hour. There were thank you’s and yes ma’am’s.

  After dinner and after the children had been put to bed or on the sofa to watch a video, Tasha and I sat in plastic chairs on her back porch in the lukewarm night under an inky sky. It was Friday and Tasha pointed out that per usual there was a fight in the parking lot of the convenience store across the street. Knuckleheads from the neighborhood. We watched the pushing and shoving from our seats behind an eight-foot wrought-iron fence. I was secretly worried about one of the combatants whipping out a gun but Tasha didn’t seem concerned so I relaxed. After the fight broke up, I asked Tasha more questions about her life with Donna.

  I remembered, as a young child, how close Deborah and Mama were. How they joked and gossiped like girlfriends. So when Deborah left, I knew that Mama had not just lost a daughter but her friend. I was happy to see Donna fill that role. She became the one who always rode shotgun and was the boss when Mama wasn’t around.

  This all changed not long after Tasha was born. The once close relationship Donna had with Mama quickly deteriorated. They began to fight about money, the state of the house and about Tasha. Donna was very possessive of her baby and was quick to brush off any attempts from Mama to give her advice regarding the infant. Mama’s drinking was getting worse, too, and this did not help the situation.

  Just before Tasha’s first birthday, Mama and Donna had a big falling out. One night there was lots of cussing and threats coming from both sides. I lay in my bed in the dark not daring to leave the security of my room but unable to block out the yelling that easily penetrated the paper-thin walls. All seemed normal the next morning when I got up for school. Mama was asleep and Donna was changing Tasha’s diaper. I kissed the baby and tickled her ribs, making her giggle so hard Donna shooed me away fearing I’d make her rewet her diaper.

  When I came home from school at the end of the day, Mama was on the couch with her beer and a blues album was blaring from the record player. I went to play with the baby only to find the room she shared with her mother was empty. The crib was gone. The toys were gone. Their clothes were gone. All that was left was the sweet scent of baby powder lingering in the air.

  I didn’t know where they’d gone. I didn’t ask. I accepted that the people I loved were not always going to stay around. I pouted for about a week and moved on. It would be a now grown-up Tasha who would fill me in on what her life was like after she left our home.

  Donna took her baby and moved to Texas to stay with our great-aunt. Donna got a job and a boyfriend. Tasha tells me she had a happy childhood for a while, then a little brother came along. The boyfriends came and went. There was abuse. Abuse from the boyfriends and abuse from Donna.

  Tasha told me of a time she heard a little girl on TV call her mother “Mommy” instead of the term “Mama,” which is how she was taught. She said the word “Mommy” sounded much more loving and playful than “Mama.” She decided she would stop using “Mama” and start using “Mommy” instead. One afternoon after school, she went home and called out to Donna using “Mommy” and Donna responded by slapping her in the mouth. She told Tasha never to call her Mommy again. “What you trying to do? Act white?”

  I could see by the pained look on Tasha’s face that the memory and the sting of that unwarranted slap still lingered. She rose from her seat on the back porch and opened her back door. I could feel the chill of the air-conditioning, which she liked cranked up to an arctic blast, on my bare arms. It made me shiver.

  “I need a beer,” she said. I could hear the television and the children talking inside. Then the door closed and I was alone again.

  When Tasha returned, she told me how hollowed out she felt when Donna abandoned her. Despite the abuse, she still loved her mama. She still needed her. The great-great aunt who cared for her and her little brother believed in raising kids the old-fashioned way. Tasha’s brother, being a boy, didn’t have to do chores or stay in the house. It fell to Tasha to cook and clean, and playing outdoors with friends was strictly forbidden. On top of that, Tasha’s brother had close
family in Texas. His father and his father’s family lived nearby and they’d often come over to take him on outings and made sure he had new clothes and toys to play with. Tasha had no one.

  A few months after Donna left, Tasha got in the habit of keeping a telephone book in her bedroom. She’d scan the Williams section looking for Donnas or even D initials. There were a lot. She’d call these numbers and say, “Hello, my name is Tasha. I’m looking for my mama, Donna. Is this her house?”

  Tasha stopped her story, shook her head and giggled to herself.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  Tasha told me that it wasn’t funny then, but what she did made her think of an old joke told by the stand-up comic Katt Williams. It’s a joke about how annoyed black people get when a wrong number calls but how friendly and helpful whites are in comparison. The joke goes like this:

  Brrring!

  White Lady: Hello? . . . No I’m sorry there’s no Shaqueeta here. . . . Well, what number did you dial? . . . No, it’s a nine not a seven. . . . Well, try it! . . . If it doesn’t work, call me back! We’ll figure this thing out!

  We had a good chuckle. Tasha told me that story because she encountered a lot of annoyed black folks during her calling sessions. But this didn’t stop her from making the calls. Then one evening a white lady answered. Instead of hanging up, the lady asked questions and when she heard that Tasha had been abandoned and had been calling all the Williamses in the phone book looking for her mama, the white woman burst into tears and asked Tasha if there was anything she could do to help. It was an awkward encounter for Tasha. She politely thanked the lady and hung up. She never made another one of those calls again.

  When Tasha was fifteen, she got word that Donna was working in a store downtown. Tasha went to the store and sure enough there was her mama behind the counter. It had been more than a year since she’d left. She greeted Tasha warmly and told her curious coworkers that the girl was a friend. Then she sent Tasha on her way. When Tasha came back to the store a few days later, the manager told her Donna had quit. He didn’t have contact information. Years would go by and Tasha, in an attempt to build her own family that would not leave her, would have four children. Though she was a grown woman with children and a valued member of a chosen family, Tasha still secretly longed for her mother. She got a tip that Donna was living in a residence in Houston and went by after work to follow up. She knocked on the door and Donna answered. Donna seemed resigned to the fact that yet again she had been tracked down. She let Tasha in. A young girl came out of the kitchen.

  “Mommy, who is this?” she asked.

  “A friend from work,” Donna replied before ordering the girl from the room.

  Tasha said the moment that young girl called Donna “Mommy” really stung. For the first time, she realized why Donna had left them. She wanted to forget about her old life and kids. She wanted to start over and she did. Tasha had never felt any anger toward her mother. She’d been angry but the anger was generalized. But after hearing the girl call her mama “Mommy” and hearing her mama deny her to her face yet again, she felt her anger build.

  Donna offered her a seat and they made small talk. Donna told her she had two girls and was doing well. She asked Tasha if she had any children. Tasha told her she had four.

  “Damn! Four? Why you have so many kids?” Donna asked in disgust.

  “I have the same number as you. I just kept all mine,” Tasha calmly responded.

  The look on Donna’s face went from disgust to shock to anger. Tasha took it as her cue to leave. Despite this last encounter, Tasha still hoped to reconcile with her mother. Her children have never met their grandmother. She had her mother’s phone number and called from time to time. Donna blocked the number, so Tasha used her friends’ phones. Her half-sisters have been told to hang up on her if she calls. They still didn’t know that she was their sister. I offered to call from my phone and tell Donna who I am. Tasha looked hopeful then dismissed the thought.

  “I’m OK with things as they are. At least I know where she is.”

  I was amazed at how much Tasha and I had in common. We were both abandoned (she literally, me emotionally), both taken in by another family and cared for, but we have handled our abandonment totally differently. I hated my mother. The further the distance between us the better. When my anger got too great, I stuffed it down, tucked it away. Like Donna, I wiped the slate clean and started over with a new family. When I felt the void, I traveled. I could blame that disconnect on being in a foreign land, foreign situations with foreign people. That’s why I’m lonely, angry, scared. Not because my mama checked out. She was history. Irrelevant. Water under the bridge.

  Tasha on the other hand never stopped loving her mother. To fill the void she created family. Her children. To erase the trauma of her past, she became the mother she always wanted. We sat on the back porch talking until just before dawn and we both had so much to say. Unable to keep sleep at bay, we turned in. In the moments before I drifted off to sleep, I admitted to myself that I didn’t expect my visit to see Tasha to be pleasant. Women who have been dealt the cards she has rarely turn out to be pillars of the community. But I was happy to see that my niece was well and that she was raising intelligent, kind and interesting children. She was a wonderful example of how one need not look to the rich and famous for inspiration. I found it in refugees from Africa and now from a single mother of seven living in the projects. As sleep took me, my last thought was that it has been a long time since I’d had a more pleasant and enlightening evening in conversation with anyone as awesome as my niece, Ms. Latasha Williams.

  • • •

  As promised, Sista arrived the following afternoon to pick us up. Latasha and I had spent the morning and early afternoon trying to get the kids ready for an overnight stay while also getting the house in order for our departure. Sista’s mama arrived a few minutes after Sista in a truck. We needed two vehicles to transport all of Tasha’s children.

  Mama was well-dressed in a light summer pants suit. Her hair was long with streaks of gray. Her skin was light brown and unwrinkled. Like her daughter, her face was lovely in its symmetry. She greeted me warmly and then immediately began herding the children into the two vehicles, along with their overnight bags. Though Tasha and I had been attempting to get the kids ready to leave since early afternoon with little success, Mama, like a veteran drill sergeant, was able to get the crew ready and strapped in the vehicles in no time.

  The reunion was held in the backyard of a little farmhouse an hour outside of Houston. When we pulled into a dirt parking lot behind the little shotgun farmhouse, I saw three large smokers the size of short schoolbuses spewing smoke and permeating the air with the mouth-watering scent of roasting goat, pork and beef. A man in overalls was overseeing a large fryer filled with boiling grease in which he was dropping pieces of fish. There were tables with canopies and picnic tables enough to sit a small army. There was music blaring, a mix of pop, rap, R&B and old-time blues. Beer was flowing freely. There were at least three hundred people milling about, most wearing the family colors, red and black, represented by red T-shirts with black lettering.

  The smaller kids were let loose to join the others in chasing after a large litter of puppies that were seeking refuge under the porch. The older kids propped themselves self-consciously on the benches and people-watched as the neighbor’s cows in the pasture next door took in the scene with befuddled expressions.

  After introducing myself to a few people, I took a seat in the shade next to Sista and Tasha. Tasha pointed out Pop to me, one of the men tending the large smokers. Tasha told me that despite all the alcohol that would be drunk that afternoon, there was never bickering or fighting at their family reunions. I spent most of the afternoon playing with the children, chatting with guests and watching Tasha revel in being a part of her big, welcoming family. I reveled in the fact that I had my girl back.

  CHAPTER 21

  JANE CAME to the Bay Area in Jun
e 2012 to meet Mama in person for the first time. Jane had spoken to Mama on the phone months earlier and offered to take her out to lunch the next time she was in the Bay Area. Mama told her she’d go if Jane didn’t mind that she didn’t have any teeth. Jane assured her this would not be a problem for her.

  After their conversation, Jane called me to tell me my earlier assessment of Mama as cute and funny was spot on. When Mama called me to tell me of the invitation from Jane, she told me she was a bit self-conscious about her wardrobe. I told her not to worry and offered to take her shopping. She insisted on going to Wal-Mart. When we got there, she was suddenly shy about picking out the clothes.

  “Pick out what you like,” I encouraged her.

  “I don’t know. What do you like?”

  “You’re the one who’s going to wear it, not me.”

  “I know but . . .” she trailed off, looking overwhelmed.

  On and on we went as we made our way through the store. This interaction reminded me of the first time Jane took me clothes shopping. I knew I needed the clothes but I struggled with my pride. I didn’t want to feel like a charity case. I think Mama was feeling the same way.

  I decided to handle the situation the same way Jane did with me. As we walked through the store, I paid attention to the items my mother’s hands or eyes lingered on and suggested she try those things on. This strategy worked, and eventually we were able to select several outfits, several pairs of shoes, scarves, a muumuu and a purse.

  The afternoon before the meeting, Jane and I met in Berkeley to see a play called Emotional Creature, written by her friend, the playwright and activist Eve Ensler. The title aptly describes how I’ve been feeling the past few months. Since coming to the Bay Area to see my family, I’ve been an extremely emotional creature. I’ve cried nearly every night for the past few months and wanted to cry nearly every waking moment. When I see Jane waving happily at me from across the theater, I want to burst into tears at the sight of her. I’ve been rough on her the past few years. She has borne the brunt of my Terrible Forties like a saint and I want to thank her for keeping her promise to love me even if I’m not perfect. Even if at times I’m not lovable.