He lay on top of her. Kissing his way down from her neck to her chest. Imagining two voluptuous globes. Caressing her in ways that a man would touch a wife, girlfriend or lover. Sadly, as romantic as the act may sound the female involved is his 9-year-old daughter. As my sister, Jaime, and I bear witness to our father’s disgusting act – violating a helpless young girl – we ran to our mother, Veronica, who was in the kitchen preparing dinner. We told her what is happening in her daughter’s bedroom. What the man she promised to love, honor, cherish and obey for the rest of her days was doing to her eldest child. Would she believe it? Would she ignore it? Not my mother. Immediately, she acted and ran to the room. Whatever he was doing as we ran away, he had stopped. Did he know he had seen? My mother may not have seen what we saw, but she still did what any mother should. The police came, took him in and unfortunately let him go shortly thereafter. “There’s not enough evidence,” they said. What evidence could there be except the word of her children, ages 9, 7 and 3? Times were different, especially in the south, well as much as Florida could be considered part of the south in the traditional sense. After he was let go, my father returned home and things returned to normal, or as normal as things could be.
In the years following the incident, I met my half-brother, Michael, who was roughly 25 at the time, from my father’s side. At some point, I remember him giving me race car track and a firetruck to play with. In fact, because of him I grew to have a distinct interest in cars. I started paying attention to makes and models, the difference between vehicle years and the quality of the engine. I remember wanting to learn how to drive before I finished my first painting project in kindergarten. I even had my vehicle of choice picked out, the latest model of the Toyota Camry line which I learned more about thanks to Sister Joseph, from Mount Zion, the Seventh Day Adventist Church we attended, who drove my sisters, my mother and myself to church every Saturday morning and again later that evening falling the weekly meal. I came to love traveling in her car and looked forward to enjoying the comfort it provided. That doesn’t mean I liked going to church though. It’s one of the most boring things that a child should ever experience, especially when your family dynamic doesn’t include ultra-religious viewpoints. Back to Michael, I remember waking up one morning and finding him in a heated argument with my father in our closed garage. I guess my father was getting ready for work, or he just wanted to start his day sooner rather than later. I saw he and Michael arguing over my father’s allegations that Michael and my mother, who at that moment had a bruise on her eye, were having an affair. Not knowing what affair meant, I didn’t much care about the circumstances. I just knew my mother was injured and I wanted to protect her from my father. I wanted him to leave her alone and stop beating on her, which he did quite often. I remember yelling at him to stop it and my mother telling me to go back inside. It turns out the fight first began between my mother and father over his words of broken vows. Only then did Michael jump in to defend her and try to set my father straight. Watching everything go down, it was clear that my father was saying things just because he wanted to tell another lie about my mother. He did after all tell us on a consistent basis that she did witch craft and that she was wicked. No matter what he said, though, I knew she would never do something like that to him, especially not with us around. She couldn’t possibly have found Michael attractive enough to do that to us. She just couldn’t. If there was anything I knew about my mother, it was that she wouldn’t lie to me. She was my protector. She was my defender. I was the same for her.
Fists went up and hit their targets time and time again. My father had the bulk of the evidence displayed on his face: a busted lip and red veins around the brown eyed balls. Regardless, I didn’t care about what happened to him. He deserved what he got for all the things he was saying. He got what he deserved for what he did to my sister. It’s only fair that he paid for his crimes. But that’s not what ended up happening. After everything settled down, Michael was gone. Cuffs containing him. Sherriff department officers taking him to the station to be processed for assault. But he didn’t deserve any of that. He wasn’t in the wrong as far as I was concerned. He was taking a stand just like I would have if I were in his shoes. While I never knew if the fight with our father was a factor, or just one of a serious of incidents that kept building up, but I never saw Michael again after that morning. I was told years later that he committed suicide. It seems he decided that life wasn’t worth living and allowed himself to be taken by the Atlantic Ocean while spending time at his home in Connecticut. If you spoke with my father, however, he’d say the incident and the funeral all took place in Jamaica. But it was Connecticut where he was found, buried and remembered. I know because despite his suicide, Michael still received a military funeral as he was an officer in the Navy during his final days.
With three kids and a husband that beat her for no reason, while accusing her of having an affair with his son from another woman, the time had come for them to end their legal connection. After nearly nine years of marriage, my mother was ready to put an end to the torture. She just didn’t realize how hard it would be for a black woman, who has no license to drive nor money in the bank to support herself, much less her precious ones. As divorce proceedings commenced, the judge granted her full access to the five-bedroom home with the 4-inch deep pool where the kids had grown up. Her husband was ordered to stay as far away as the court allowed for the time remaining. After some semblance of normalcy, a decision was made and she got full custody of their kids. She even got a home out of the deal and child support. Had she known she’d be screwed outside the bedroom she probably would have made better decisions when it came to choosing her lawyer. A lawyer that allowed her to lose out on the five-bedroom home, while accepting a new address and three-bedrooms for a family of four. You see, my father had her sign her name off our home located at 317 Cortez Court and her lawyer never informed her of what she was losing out on. The same lawyer that allowed her to accept $160 a month in child support, not for each kid, but for all three. As terrible as the deal sounded, she officially untied herself from a man who accused her of infidelity and witchcraft. A man who abused her physically and mentally. Who broke her down to pieces where life wouldn’t be worth living simply because you’ve been made to believe that you aren’t worth life.
Inheriting the bedroom set she shared with her now ex-husband, I remember when my mother laid down on her comfortable mattress just to get a moment’s peace, probably the first time since all the turmoil she went through with my father. Knowing the man and dealing with him for over 20 years is one thing, being married to him is another. A lesson she learned and a lesson she would overcome. Finally, after a move that took a lot out of her both physically and emotionally, she could rest now that things were settled. The girls were sharing a room while I remained in a room of my own. A road long traveled had reached its end. “What to do?” was something I’m sure she pondered. What to do indeed.
A few weeks into our new living arrangement, my mother received word from her former neighbor, Don, that his dog had poodle pups. “Do you want one?” he had asked. Taking him up on his kind gesture, with no financial attachment, she took in a little brown pup and named her Nellie. She did so because while living with our father we never had any pets around. He didn’t like them. To be honest, he didn’t like us having much joy while we lived with him. Only, he didn’t realize much of the joy we did have was when he wasn’t around. The bitch that she was, Nellie never left our mother’s side, not even when she wasn’t around. Always waiting for her mistress in her room or somewhere in the living room, anywhere that was as close to the front door as possible. Nellie took command from my mother and growled when anyone else came around. Despite her small stature, Nellie was the perfect dog for our new family dynamic. In the moments when she let her guard down and let you come around, she was a loving puppy who would let you pet her, let you pick her up, and even let your feed her when she needed food. Ultimately, she was a good dog with her cute runny brown nose. She was loved by us all, even when she did disgusting dog things like licking your face when it was near or cleaning your feet when it was bare. Yeah, it grossed me out when she did both since unlike a human, pets couldn’t brush their teeth two times a day, or whenever they so choose to do.
Newly single and the parent of three young children, my mother had to work extra hours to support a household of four all by herself. Working as a housekeeping attendant at the Sheraton Lakeside Inn in Kissimmee, bordering on the edge of well-regarded Orlando, my mother cleaned the rooms of guests who were in town for their family trip to Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, or even the then less popular Universal Studios. She got to work everyday thanks to her former neighbor, Don, who also worked there in another capacity. They were friends and he helped her out since she still couldn’t drive, something she had long desired to learn. Something she wanted to take charge of now that she was on her own. Sadly, that desire would be the beginning of what became a tumultuous few years for my mother and our reduced family dynamic.
The year following my parent’s divorce and our move into a new home, and getting a dog, another person came into our world. His name was Manuel Ridgard. Just 17 years old at the time, Manny was from the hood. Coming to us from Brooklyn, New York, wearing baggy denim jeans and talking in slang, Manny was unlike anyone I had ever met. I was curious about him. “Who is he? What is he doing here?” were some of the questions I asked when he first arrived. My mother told me that he was my brother and that made us family, despite not sharing the same father. “If he is my brother, how come I never met him before? Where’s he been?” It’s true. I didn’t remember ever meeting him before. But I was told otherwise. We used to live in Brooklyn until my mother and father got married and decided it was time to uproot the newly formed family to Florida, Manny included. It wasn’t to last, however. Following an incident in which my father had enough and forced my mother to send Manny to live with her sister, Carmen, a woman I could best describe as resembling that of actress Kathy Najimy – the mole nearly in the same exact spot – my brother was kicked out and separated from our mother. He was barely even 10 years old. Although I don’t have any memory of it, apparently, my brother and I were playing a game of shopping cart near our home. Him riding his bike, while I was in the shopping cart being pulled. It got ugly pretty quick. The cart wasn’t sturdy and it tipped over, throwing me out onto my face, scrapping myself in the process. In hindsight, I’d be pissed too, but in my father’s case, since it wasn’t his child he wanted the other boy gone. My mother was forced to make a choice: keep one child, or lose the other three. No mother should be forced to choose between her children. It’s not right, even if there isn’t a way to prove right from wrong in this case. Her choice made, Manny went to live in New York, while the rest of us lived with my mother and father. I’m not sure who got it worse, him or us? I’m not sure we’ll ever find out, but he turned out alright. He wasn’t so bad. Of course, that was what I thought at the time until I no longer had a room to myself. My room became his and ours, until it became just his and I slept on the couch or often in my mother’s bed, wherever possible. It’s not that he kicked me out, but he also didn’t want me around. He started making friends from school, and when they came over he didn’t want his pesky little brother nearby. So, I placated him and dispersed when necessary, although there were still times I would ask to play a video game or two with he and his friends since I never had played before in my life. When would I? Video games wasn’t something I had even known about until Manny came around.
It’s November 1992. The weather is changing and it’s getting colder, or as cold as it can get considering Florida’s tropical weather. Attending Deerwood Elementary School, a year-round educational institution that gave its students lengthy periods of time off throughout the academic year, I was enjoying a three week break that went well into the Thanksgiving holiday. During one of my day’s off, my mother was home watching over me when a friend of hers came around. His name was Brother Simpson, one of the clergymen at our church, Mount Zion. After spending about an hour at our home talking with my mother and I, enjoying some lunch, Brother Simpson decided it was time to go, but he wanted to give my mother another lesson on how to drive. She had recently taken up lessons as she was still determined to get her driver’s license and eventually a car of her own so she could get us to wherever we needed to go without relying on others. She thought about it and concluded that in the process she would be able to pick up some things in town on their way back. So, she agreed. Luckily for her, my sisters had just come home from school. I wanted to go with my mother and Brother Simpson but my mother refused. Whether she knew it or not, it was one of the best decisions she could have made since I may not have survived the terrible accident that took place as they were traveling back from their journey in a pickup truck that barely sat three, much less provided enough security that would prevent a child from the danger that lie ahead.
As time went on, she hadn’t returned. It started to get dark. A phone call came in to the house. I don’t remember who answered it but the news wasn’t good. My mother was in the hospital fighting for her life. She was airlifted to the nearest trauma center that would do its best to bring her back to us. Once I learned what happened, and where it took place, I ran out of the house. Within minutes I was near the scene of the accident. There was no one there. Everything was seemingly cleaned up except for the backed-up traffic that remained and the shattered glass left over on the main road, remnants from the broken vehicle taken out of the lopsided ditch where it ended up as my mother swerved to her left to prevent a head-on collision with another vehicle from the opposite direction. My mother had blacked out but was thankfully wearing a seatbelt. She wasn’t in great condition though. She had broken her neck in several places and needed surgery to allow doctors to place wires in her neck to keep things in place. Brother Simpson wasn’t so lucky. He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle on impact. He had a massive wound on his forehead that would later turn into a scar. But miraculously he pulled through and was discharged within a few days. But several weeks after the accident, my mother remained in the hospital. She needed time to rehabilitate, though it wasn’t going to be easy as she had to relearn some basic abilities, particularly the ability to walk on her own, a process that would hopefully also give her the chance to adjust her neck as well.
More than a month after her accident, and after returning to school just in time for Christmas, I was in for a surprise. After learning about my mother’s situation and knowing that things were going to be rough for a child my age, my school collected bags of toys for me to enjoy. Toys to get my mind off what happened. I even got my first Super Soaker, a popular toy gun that you filled with water and squirted at others as you played around. But I missed my mother. I didn’t care about the toys. She was still the center of my world. “When will she be coming home?” I remember asking a friend of the family’s, a woman we called aunt Daphne. Living in Kissimmee, which at the time was the umbrella city of our town of Poinciana, my mother’s friend was nothing like my actual aunt Daphne, my father’s sister who lived nearby our former home. This Daphne cared about what happened to us. This Daphne was quick to take us in and watch over us as my mother recuperated. “She’ll be home soon,” she kept telling me. She was right. Before we knew it, my mother was back home and so were we. Although she now had shorter hair since they had to cut off much of it to better assist with her surgery, she was still the beautiful, strong willed woman that I admired. She could take on the world even at a reduced capacity. But no matter how much strength she tried to show on the outside, the stress from her accident and the years of stress built up from the abuse and torment she received from my father were just too much. Nearly a year following her accident, my mother couldn’t breathe one morning as I prepared to go to school. Clutching her chest, she immediately told me to dial 911. Shortly afterward, paramedics arrived and asked her numerous questions that I drained out. Before my eyes, my house was filling up with emergency responders trying to save her life once more. “Is this what she went through last time?” I asked myself. No, this was different. No blood in sight, no metal to break through, she was as accessible to them as she could possibly be. That was a good thing. But they needed to keep her calm. They needed to get her breathing in order. Taking her to the nearest hospital, they treated her as best they could. Instead of spending a few months under medical supervision as she did before, she was gone for just a few weeks. In those weeks, however, foreigners appeared in our home. Under the guise of being family, these people came inside our home and were out almost as quickly, leaving several of our belongings in the trash in their wake, including some of the toys that I got from school just one year ago. I never got to play with that Super Soaker. It was gone before I could even enjoy it. They even tried to rid of us of Nellie. Did they not think my mother was coming back? Is there something they knew that I didn’t? No, they just did whatever they wanted and no one could tell them different. This time the family was broken apart, me with them at my home, my sisters with Daphne and Manny with his friends. Thankfully joy came back into the house once my mother came home and they were gone.
Another year gone by, finally, no drama. No fights. No accidents. And no heart attacks. There’s not even any mystery figures coming in to change how our home looked. Things were finally running smoothly. I couldn’t be any happier.