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For me life started on a cold rainy night. If I could recall the year I would state it with ease, but unfortunately that is not a luxury that I have as I begin this story. I had to of been at least 2 years old, no wait I was probably three. With my father by my side, I walked into a house and met a family which, I knew in my heart was not a group of people that I wanted to be around. Greeted by a woman with an old haggard face, and what I now remember to be a red scarf covering old nappy hair, I could feel fear slowly dripping through my pores as I already began to anticipate the time in which my father and I would leave this god forsaken place. As time seemed to slow down, I remember a blur of laughter, and jokes being spewed out in Creole, while I sat down like a good little boy, not making much noise waiting for my father to conclude his conversations. In my mind things seemed so simple. Daddy would stop talking, and when he was done he and I would go back to mommy again. But as all children eventually learn in their ascension into adulthood, not everything is as simple as it should be.
While waiting for my father, I was also afforded the time to meet the children of the house. There was a boy and a girl, since I don’t remember there names, I will call the boy Eric, and the girl Jenny. Eric was a dark boy with scrawny arms and peasy hair, despite what was a timid body, he had a deep voice and seemed nice at least for first sights. He was fun to be around and liked to play games so being around him was alright. Jenny was a very pretty girl, with fair skin and a kind smile, she wasn’t as fun to be around as Eric, but she was pretty so I found no trouble being around them. In the midst of my games with Eric, I began to hear my father calling my name, I grew excited as I realized it was now time to leave although Eric and Jenny were nice, this was no place that I wanted to be for any period of time. I ran up to my father ready to go on about our business and reach home so that I could see my mother (not at the time realizing that my mother was in Haiti and we were in America). But when I reached to him, he gave me a kiss on the forehead and began to walk away from me.
I can’t fully explain the way that I felt, all I know is that I became very afraid and began to chase after my father. My voice outpaced my steps as the screeching sound of my voice bounced off of the walls “Daddy Don’t Leave Me,” but my dad kept going. The old lady grabbed me and tried to drag me back into the house, but I didn’t want to stay with her I didn’t want to be in the house with these people, things from here become vague again, and all I remember is struggling with numerous people, screaming for my dad to come back, and feeling the burning sensation in my eyes as tears bled onto my young cheeks. Soon my screams changed, now I began to scream at the people around me, telling them to let me go because I had to get home to my mother. But no one seemed to be listening. Instead of following my orders the struggle became harder and my screams became more frantic, “I have to go back to my mommy”, “I have to go back to my mommy” I screamed in English and then in Creole, but no this would be my new home, the struggle was won, by the haggard old woman, this was my home, and from here life begins.
Im not sure exactly how long I stayed In that house with those people, but I know that I don’t remember seeing my father for a long period of time (I later fount out that my mother was deported back to Haiti, and my father had put me to live with baby sitters because he couldn’t watch me on his own.). One of my clearest memories from that part of my life was sitting in the house waiting for Eric to come home from school, when he would get home from school he would let me play in his text books, I never understood a word in those books, but I always enjoyed watching him work. He would sit in the kitchen working tirelessly on whatever assignment the school had given him to do. I remember wishing that I could follow him to school so that I could join in whatever activities that he did while he was there. When Eric didn’t do his homework, the old haggard woman (who I later learned was his mother) would beat him so bad that he would scream at the top of his lungs. Watching Eric, pains taught me at an early age, that if you didn’t do your work, nothing good could ever come out of it. So as far as I was concerned a whooping would not be something that I had in my plans for not doing work.
Growing up with Eric and Jenny was constantly a learning experience. As I stated earlier I used to enjoy watching Eric return from school and do his homework the old haggard woman soon took notice to this and would make me help him with his work. I’m not sure what she ever thought he would get out of my assistance but while enduring this mandate I will say I was afforded the opportunity to learn a couple of small things. Eric fount that I was very annoying to be around as a mandatory tutor, so he would bring books from the school that he would let me color into, it was through this experience that I learned about animals such as, turtles, dogs, cats, and a few others. There were days when Eric did not come straight home from school, and when these days’s occurred I would accompany Jenny. I used to hate when that happened, because there would be no one home when she got back from school, so she would bring her boyfriend over. When it was just Jenny and I, we would have all kinds of fun, we would play hide and seek, tag, and all sorts of fun games; and when there were no games to play she would help me with my alphabets and my numbers. But when her boyfriend came over she was very neglectful and mean. It was from this behavior that I began to become self reliant, there was no need to rely on other people if this was the way that I would be treated.
Life with this family did not last that much longer, and after maybe 6 months I moved to another family. This process of moving from one family to another continued until I was four years old. It was at this time that my father returned and took me home with him. From there I begin my path through the many stepmothers that have been in my life.
Esther
Esther was the first of my many stepmothers. I met her when I was 4 years old and spent maybe a year and a half of my life with her; we lived in a basement apartment in Flatbush New York, a couple of blocks away from a Sears. Esther was a kind hearted Haitian woman who was stuck in her traditional ways. She cooked clean and took care of my father and me. With these tasks she found her life to be satisfying. Under Esther’s care, I can say that she and my father began to seriously plant the seeds of education into my head. Both she and my father would bring workbooks home for me to use. There was no question as to what I was supposed to be doing with these workbooks. Both my father and Esther required that I go through the books and learn as much as I could from them. Neither one of them had any idea what I would or could learn from these books, but according to them it was absolutely important that I took something out of reading through these books. But since I couldn’t read, and I had yet to accumulate any writing skills, the only thing I ever really did in those books, was match up different shapes, and throw around some scattered scribble scrabble to add a little bit of my personal touch to it. My real life learning experiences didn’t really begin until I had long since left Esther, and moved to queens with my newest stepmother, Terri.
Terri was for lack of better words, a straight hood individual. She smoked weed, drank lots of alcohol and cursed so much a stranger would assume she was the one who created the words. Terri was a lot younger than any woman I had ever seen my father get involved with. She was a 29 year old woman from Brownsville New York, and unlike Esther had no plans to ever submit to the submissive house wife standards. Terri along with being extremely ghetto was also very loud and obnoxious, if for whatever reason she did not get her way, there would be hell to pay, because of her aggressive nature, she was either getting her way by embarrassing you and making a scene by screaming at the top of her lungs; or she was using her mastery of violence to assault you into submission. Terri is the second step mother in my life, and she had the biggest impact, both negative and positive. During my ten years living with Terri, I learned the true definition of despise, I despised, loved, and hated Terri, and I can honestly say that she felt the same way towards me. I give her credit for helping to make me into the young man that I am today, but I also feel a shudder of disdain and frustration when I think of the hurtful and traumatizing experiences she assisted in taking me through.
One of the most important things Terri ever did for me was teaching me how to read. I remember that day like it was yesterday. The book was titled “A hippopotamus and the frog”, and it was 30 pages long. I remember sitting at the kitchen table going through the book, even though I had no idea what was going on, when Terri sat beside me and began to read the book aloud. She went through the book one time, and I don’t remember her doing anything that stood out or made me retain the information in any kind of way, but I do know that I remembered every single word that she said. Once she was done, I began to read that same book every single day, reciting the words by memory. Before long I had outgrown the book, and needed something new to read. At this point I was two months into first grade, and began to enjoy reading the books in class. I enjoyed reading them so much that the teacher would let me read the books out loud in the class. The more books I read, the more I began to fall in love with literature. When my father and Terri noticed the liking that I took to reading, they began to take me to the library where I found myself reading more and more books. When I didn’t have any books to read, I would read the signs that I would see in the streets, it didn’t matter where I was reading was my infatuation. Throughout my entire elementary school and junior high school career reading and writing were my strength’s, they were two things that I never found any trouble in. I was always a very strong reader, and although I have never had the best grammatical skills when writing, I have always had a big imagination that I was able to articulate through my words.
But of all of the places in which I experienced the most personal growth, I have to say that I experienced the most while attending high school. East New York Family Academy for four years of my life was the only home that I really had. The students were my brothers and sisters, and the teachers were my parents. At family academy, I was afforded the opportunity to learn about the history of African Americans, while at the same time developing my own opinion of the world at large. At family academy the idea of college became a reality, no matter what the class was, the idea of looking at colleges and applying to colleges with the intentions of going to one, was jarred into our heads. By the time I entered my freshman year it was a common thought that I would go to college right after high school graduation. Teachers like my global studies instructor, Mr. Mitchell took us on college tours, and brought in brochures of other colleges for us to see, he used things like this as a motivational tool. I remember day’s when I saw no reason to do work in school, and he would say, “well when you get to college you will be paying for your classes, so be grateful everything is free here”, and of course I would respond by arguing that I could pick what classes I wanted once I got to college. But he would always win the argument by saying that “I could not go to college if I did not first pass global studies and high school in general. Teachers like Mitchell pointed me in the right direction and gave me the tools in life that I needed to make it to college. So when I finally did make it to college I would begin the growth in which I continue today.
