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288 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
I gather that my father wasn’t sending stuff down to help my grandmother
and my aunt, so she said that he had to come and get us. He came and got us
with his new wife. Immediately we knew that we didn’t like her. You know the
stepmother story She was typical.
My father was still in the Navy at the time. We stayed in an apartment while
he was in the Navy doing service in the Korean War. Not all of us were united
at the same time, but we stayed with my stepmother, and she abused us. She was
tyrannical. She was mad because none of us belonged to her biologically. She
couldn’t have children, and she took that out on us. She made it a sad situation
around the house where we lived. We grew up, and there was no love in the
house because she didn’t show any love. As young children, you know, you’ve got
to have that. You need that to grow up to a healthy human being. We lacked
that love, and it affected me, I know, and a brother of mine, who’s been in prison
all of his life. He went first to reform school, and then to prison at a very early
age for stealing, and stuff like that. In 1976 he was convicted of multiple rapes
up in Cook County, Illinois. I guess he’s still doing time. I haven’t communicated
with him since then. We didn’t grow up as a family because there wasn’t
love. My stepmother didn’t create an environment for cohesion in the family.
I grew up in a decent neighborhood because my father was able to pay
higher rent with the job he had. I never did stay in the projects or in the ghetto.
He bought us a home in 1959. It was a decent house.
So I guess I got to blame my stepmother and my family situation again because
I remember so many days going to school hungry, dirty, pissy because I
didn’t know how to take care of myself; I was just a child. My stepmother
wouldn’t coordinate any efforts with my older sisters for us to get together as a
team to prepare ourselves for school. So I went to school ashamed and embarrassed
because I was hungry and I had to ask people for a piece of sandwich. She
sent us to school maybe with two dry baloney sandwiches but no breakfast, so
I’d eat the sandwiches as soon as I’d leave the house. So I’d be hungry in school
all day, and I’d be dirty and smelly. I couldn’t concentrate on my schooling.
We were so segregated that I wasn’t conscious of racism. In the seventh
grade I went to an integrated school, and that’s when I dropped out. You could
just feel the tension in the air. You knew that you weren’t welcome there. That
was 1967. I just stopped going. I did whatever I could to survive. My father, I
guess, was a basically decent man. Seems like he had an attitude against his children
because his wife had an attitude against us. He wouldn’t stand up for us
when he found out she had beat us for nothing. She always did something
mean—restricted us to the house—she always did something mean to make life
miserable for us, and my father never did stand up for us.
My father had a good job after he got out of the Navy. He worked for
Dupont and had one of the better-paying nonskilled jobs in the city for Black
people. He worked a swing shift at different hours, so he was rarely at home. He