Hey Homegirl

By Lashell Rivers

She was born in Washington, DC, to a very low-income family, a time in which the ’80s introduced drugs to their area. She moved to Virginia, where less black people resided, and had to figure out a lot on her own. Facing verbal abuse, she later became mentally disabled and found it difficult to accept. She pursued her dreams, even without success. She sought help and began to love herself; however, all of that came at a cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646545834

Book preview

Stop, Look, and Listen

And I listened, all right, to all the parties my family would have, especially since my mom could cook her ass off; and between her and my dad the family was big. The people that would come over, between all my uncles and their friends, would fill up that apartment living room, singing, drinking, and dancing. My father was the DJ and was so into technical stuff. The albums would play all that real good music from when they were growing up in the ’60s and ’70s. I watched them play spades, standing out on the balcony, smoking refa’, and eating whatever my mom had laid out beautifully, for she was a caterer for weddings sometimes and other events. I remember being a little girl and going along to help her cater with my dad and uncles. It was how she made extra money while going to school to become a professional at it. As for Pops, he mainly did construction work, and on those breaks in between jobs, he would have me to watch, along with keeping an eye on my brother and sister. We had our family moments where my dad would record us on the microphone, with my mom and us three children acting silly and singing to different songs; and back then my mom could sing her ass off! Everyone would always try to get her to sing at the house parties we’d have. My dad loved to record her and show her off as his woman, and they would just dance and groove, get drunk, and make their moves.

Of course a lot of the times all the children would be in the room playing while the adults were doing grown-up things as they would say it, and all my cousins and I would either be playing with our Barbie dolls or that husband-and-wifey roleplay we would see our parents doing. There was always that drunk uncle in the mix that someone would play, and I would draw pictures to sneak out there with all the adults to show off and be nosey at the same time. I remember drawing a naked woman when I was five and taking it to my mom while they were partying. Aw, Shell, that’s so beautiful. Now let’s give her a fur coat. And she scribbled over the tits and coochie to cover that part up while others laughed. Sometimes it was crab season at our dinner table, and we would eat bushels of crabs that sometimes lasted for days. And so many of the family members would come eat them while the kids ate the leftovers. Those were the fun times.

I always had an uncle sleeping on the couch—either he had nowhere to go, he and his lady were arguing, or they were just fucked up, period. These were my mom’s li’l brothers. There was the oldest one, Uncle Ron, who loved women and would spoil the hell out of me. He and mom had the same father, and Ron was a taxicab driver. I guess that’s how he picked up so many women, and I would ride with him sometimes in the front seat while he worked and drove all over DC. He would give me anything I wanted. He would rub my legs, and I didn’t know that was wrong. For some reason, as a little girl, I would become so jealous when he had a girlfriend; I guess that meant less time for me. But he made up for it when he bought me my first kitten, and I named her Cindy after the singer. The whole family was gathered around when he surprised me with her from behind his back and onto my lap, not to mention one of his girlfriends was there, lol.

Another uncle was Troy, who had this gorgeous dark-skinned girlfriend named Monique with the pretty hair, and they had my cousin Tiffany, who was dark-skinned like the both of them…just darker (shrug). I guess because her grandfather was African—hell, that’s how he looked to me. He died when I was very young, and I always remembered him sitting in a chair looking out of the window. He was old and looked very sick. Tiffany’s grandmother took care of him, and Tiffany and I were always together. She had soooooo much that I was like, wow! Any Barbie doll you could think of, she would have it—from the cars, the houses, dresses, oh my goodness; and she loved to do their hair. Whenever I was at her house, we played Barbie with the cousins on her mom’s side, and she did all the Barbies’ hair. Monique and her family lived a walking distance away in the nice houses, so I always loved being at her place because it was a nice house! That grandma played piano for the church, so we’d play on the piano, making noise. There was a large yard with their own playground for us kids. I mean, she had other aunts and uncles with their children; it was so much fun. I lived in a NW apartment. That was cool, but I would always love my cousin Tiffany’s house. And she was only older than me by two years, so we grew up together and went back and forth between each other’s crib while growing up. I mean, after all her father was one of my many uncles, and I believed she saw a lot while we were growing. So much that there were times when I would spend the night over her house, and of course with us being two little girls, we slept in the room and in the same bed. Shell, go get some toilet paper, she would tell me sometimes, and she would shove it into her underwear and hump me between my legs. Hell, sometimes she would have me do it to her, and I didn’t know what we were doing. She must have saw something, I mean she knew more than me. We would even have Barbie and Ken hump when we played with them. She was six when I was four, so I paid it no mind and simply looked at it as a fun thing to do.

However, eventually some drug-addicted skank came into my uncle Troy’s life. Maybe he sold some crack to her a couple times. I mean he did do jail time for something. I only saw pictures of him in there holding Tiffany, but later on, he was called out to be the woman’s baby father—a little boy. Now, my grandmother said that boy wasn’t his. Hell, everybody did, but drugs were a motherfucker back then, and between Monique and this woman, all hell broke loose. Ms. Betty, as I would call her, already had a drug habit; and then my uncle Troy got into that habit with her. And as the old saying goes, Crack killed Apple Jack. That woman destroyed everything. Hell, the drug crack destroyed so much of my family that it was unbelievable.

My uncle Troy began to deny Tiffany as his because of the crackhead in his life he fell in love with and left aunt Moe for.

My father’s brother Pat became so addicted that he began buying drugs from his little brother Walter, and he was on PCP so hard that when his own brother Patrick kept coming up with excuses on not paying him the money, the hustler he was working for told him to handle it. And he killed his own big brother while high—shot him to death.

I had another uncle that I never met. I heard he was killed in some gang/hustler incident. And his little brother, my uncle Lenny, found out who the man was that killed him years later one night, while listening to an addict speak of it to another. He knew and found that man and beat him to death. He shot him and dragged his body onto the train tracks to be ran over. I think my uncle Len only did three years in jail for that. I mean, hell, he did the police a favor.

And these three men were my father’s little brothers. His sister, Annie, was the only girl, and she was so strung out on drugs that it was unbelievable. She was so beautiful and had one boy—my cousin Kareem, who was like another big brother to me. But boy, she could not stand me for some reason. I was the second grandchild and a girl. Hell, I don’t think she could stand my mother. I remember her with another little girl. I was five years old. She had to have been four because I remember her being younger than I was. I guess Dad didn’t know she was getting high yet, and I did not want to be with her. But she had us one day and sat us under a bridge on the curb while buying drugs from a dude. I remember seeing them argue while she was giving him all the money and getting slapped in the face, then she came back, telling me, I can’t wait to take you to your father while grabbing the both of us and taking us to a bus home. She was sober when she had Kareem, but when she gave birth to my other two girl cousins, she was so heavy on that crack and heroin that she threw one in child the trash when she was a baby because of the crying and left the other in the hospital.

My grandma Joan used to love having her grandchildren over. We were there all the time and would go places, having fun. Just playing outside her apartment was fun. My cousin Kareem would always ride his bike to her, and little Pat (named after his father) was a crybaby. He used to be there with us. My uncle Walter was the only one living with grandma, and of course that was before the murder of little Pat’s father—his older brother.

I never really got to know my grandfather, maybe because my father was not his biological son. All the other children were, so only he knows the abuse taken from that. He knew that there was a chance my dad wasn’t his, but he didn’t care. He wanted to marry Grandma Joan and raise dad as his own. It just didn’t work out that way. But by the time I came into the world, he and Grandma Joan had already gone their separate ways so Mr. Bernard took his place. Yes, him I remember for, he treated my grandmother like a queen And they were together all the time until he was robbed and shot to death by an addict. After that, I guess my grandma chose to be by herself and focus on her last son and grandchildren.

Whenever my mother didn’t cook for the holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, Joan did; and we would all be in her little apartment having just as much fun. But there was this one time when my auntie Annie was feanin’ for drugs so hard that there was such this huge fight with her and the family at dinner. So much food went flying, we children stayed in Gramma’s room to hear the arguing. Fuck you! was screamed while she was smashing plates of food into her mothers work clothes. She kept hanging on to the door as Dad and the other brothers dragged her screaming tail out of the door and down the steps. Of course, Kareem knew what was going on. He was older than me, and he was going hysterical while the others tried to calm him. But my grandmother took it very calmly. I always noticed that about her. Even with losing two sons and her man through drug violence, she always remained calm, at least in my eyes. She was working at Washington Hospital Center and saw people going through a lot worse than her so; maybe that did it. No matter what damages would go on through the family, she would get with her cousins and other relatives to throw a family reunion every summer and wash it all away.

All this was happening before I reached the age of seven, and although I was the youngest and was getting good attention, I was also going through hell at the same time. Back then, I had some pretty long hair, and before the perm thing came along my way, I would have my hair pressed and hot combed by my mom. Bend your head down, and let me get that kitchen. It was another word for beady, nappy hair spots in the back of your neck, and whenever she couldn’t do it, I was in my sister’s hands.

My grandmother (Mom’s mom), died when I was five, and there was a time when fighting cancer became so hard that my mom moved her in to take care of her. She gave her my brother’s room. I recall her yelling sometimes because of the pain she would go through from trying to make it to the bathroom on her own, for it was right across the hallway and she simply didn’t want help. She wanted to stay strong and independent without the help of others. Eventually, she had to stay in the hospital, and they didn’t even alert my mother of her death. She simply found out on her own while going to check up on her. The funeral was full of so much hurt from my mother’s heart because she didn’t get to say goodbye and let everything off her chest before her mother left. I simply sat there and watched my dad hold her as she cried, until it was time to bury her mother. My sister loved her so much, for Eva (our grandmother) gave her the attention she couldn’t give our mother.

Olivia was the name of my sister, who began to treat me like shit when she became a teenager, for loving me the same way as a little sister vanished.

There was a time when she snuck out of the house just at twelve to see a boy in another building. She got caught because of the neighbors calling home, and another time, she was caught in our mother’s bed, with a boy. There I was on the balcony playing with my cat, and I was hearing screams coming from inside, only to see my mom choking her as Dad and Bill tried pulling her off. What could I do but look. It was from then on that I had to go wherever she went so I could be the tattletale and report to my mother everything that she did, which grew the hate she began having toward me. Before that, she did show me love (shrug)

Wherever she wanted to go, my mom would holler, Take your sister; and with that came the anger, the mental abuse, and the embarrassment in front of her friends.

She ain’t my sister. She’s my half sister.

Her father is broke as hell and can’t get a job.

I’m glad her father ain’t my father.

She’s dirty like her father.

Heifer.

Wench.

Go somewhere and get outta my face.

I wish you weren’t my sister.

Damn, you get on my nerves. Go somewhere and play. And that is exactly what I did. I would go to my neighbor’s crib or in other buildings, anywhere, and just cry. Whether it was to the people she couldn’t stand, because I would tell them all the things she would say to me, or just cry because my mother had me go with her. And whenever I would go outside, I would do my best to stay completely away from her so I would have nothing to tell. And yeah, my father didn’t work all the time; he would hide liquor in the Laundromat (probably from my uncles) and do his thing. He would smoke so much weed that he would sit and eat five plates of food. Hell, he wasn’t fed as a child (shrug). There was a time that I snuck a piece of bread off his plate, crawled under my bed, and ate it. He whooped my ass for the first and only time! I mean, he literally beat me until I pissed on myself. I came back into the bedroom, with my sister shaking her head while talking on the phone. That’s what your ass get, she mumbled so the one on the phone could hear. Boy, did that make her day, for I would always stand there, screaming and crying, while watching her get beat by my mom for talking back and disobeying, staying out past her curfew, getting into fights at school and being suspended, and for people just telling my mom the things they saw her doing with boys and other teen girls.

Go-Go music was hot in those days. It still is, but in the ’80s, it was hotter. With her light skin, long hair, and big booty, she would attract all them hustlers with money. She would sneak out and stay out late with her friends to see Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, Junk Yard, and Back Yard Band, or whatever group was hittin’ back then whom she liked with her girlfriends. There was a time my mother was getting ready to leave for work at five in the morning, while my sister was coming in. Boy was that more shit to hear. All could do was lie in the bed and hear arguments, especially since we shared the same room. My brother had his own room, and my sister couldn’t wait to have her own. That was another conflict.

How come Bill can stay out and I can’t!

Because he’s a boy, and you’re not, our mother would respond, and that seemed to be the main argument all the time. Lord don’t let the phone ring with two teenagers fighting over it.

There was a time they argued over the phone. If the line beeped, neither would click over for the other’s call. I have no idea what brought it out of her, but she