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My Fingerprint: Act 2

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I felt bad for my sister. These were her teenage years. How would anybody ever understand that she slept with her momma and her baby sister in the same bed? Luckily by this time my brother had moved out. I’m sure he was sick of the maxi pads, hair curlers and all the other girlish junk every female needs. My brother moved out and my mother migrated to the twin bed. Why she didn’t take over the queen bed is beyond me but I never questioned it. It felt good to finally stretch my legs in the bed without fear of kicking either of them. I didn’t like sleeping at the top anymore not if my momma was there. I didn’t have the security of her thighs and butt, so my sister and I switched places. She was on top and I was on the bottom and even with all that bed, I couldn’t resist jamming my feet up underneath her just so I’d know she was still there. Plus my feet stayed cold. She used to push me away and yell at me to move my freaking feet but she had to understand that I had lost the comfort of my momma’s warm body and it would take some time before I was able to venture in that great big bed all by myself. I never had a set bedtime and my momma never had to make me go to bed. We all just use to go to bed together. I don't know why. That's just how it was.

My sister moved out in 1986 to attend Hampton Institute, some thirty-two miles from our little blue house on the corner. My momma packed up the Chevette, four doors and a hatchback, and took my sister and all her belongings to one of the most prestige black colleges on the east coast. My sister would potentially rub elbows with some of the richest and smartest people she had known up to that point. My family didn’t take family vacations so we weren’t exactly exposed to how the other side lived. From what I’ve described, thinking we had the most common things like central heat and air would be just plain old silly. There was one air conditioner unit in my grandmomma’s room and one in our bedroom. We rarely ran the AC because we were comfortable sitting around the old dusty circular fan in the living room. It wasn't too far fetched not to have AC in the car either. The Chevette only had AM stations and I couldn’t believe my momma would go out and buy a car with no AC and no real radio. I couldn't believe it. Even still, we did the best with what we had and never complained about what we lacked. We were just thankful to have anything at all.

Our summers were filled with Vacation Bible Study and church trips to some packed, overpriced amusement park. Kings Dominion was our usual destination which was only and hour and a half ride. It didn’t matter that we went every summer; I was always excited to go “out of town” so I could eat my fried chicken and grape sodas wrapped in aluminum foil. They would stay cold the entire day. My momma usually worked six days a week with the customary day off which was always Wednesday. From the time I was born until the time the café closed down in 1996, my momma was off every Wednesday. She had a routine for that day. She’d wash our clothes in the washing machine that was on the back porch. It was big and round and took up way too much space. Two roller pins were attached to the top of the washing machine so she could feed the clothes through to ring out the excess water. Then she’d hang them on the clothesline that stretched from the back of the house to the trunk of a big oak tree on the other side of the yard. Our clothes would smell like bleach and outside, I hated it. If the weather was shoddy, she'd lug our dirty clothes to the laundromat. I use to go with her but as I grew older it became more and more painful for me to sit there and be quiet and wait for her to meticulously fold each piece of clothing she took out the dryer. Another staple in my childhood that I hated. Washing and folding clothes.

The summers were hot and since we didn't have central AC, we made due with two window air conditioning units, one in each bedroom. We rarely used the AC anyway because if we used them both at the same time, it would trip the circuits and we’d have to go flip the switches back in order for the power to turn back on. My grandmomma usually ran the AC in her room on the weekends and we’d each take turns going in there to cool off if only for a second. Plus the only telephone in the house was in her room until my sister had gone to college and come home for the summer. She called the phone company and had a phone jack installed in our room. We had finally arrived! At least in my mind we had.

I hated the winter time even though it didn’t get cold like talking ‘bout it in Suffolk. To cut down on expenses we used two kerosene heaters, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. My momma would take the kerosene can to the gas station, no matter how cold it was outside when it ran out to fill it up. Whenever the heaters needed refilling, we’d have to go out on the back porch in the cold and refill them. That was far worse than ducking and dodging to dump the pot. I don’t like being cold and I hated the smell of kerosene because I could never seem to wash the smell off my hands. That smell stayed with me for years. That and the smell of bleach.

I used to sit so close to the front of the kerosene heater that the skin on my legs burned from the intense heat. It was well worth the pain. I loathed getting out of the warm bed in the early morning hours to wash up for school in the iron tub in front of the kerosene heater in the living room. I filled the tub with hot water from the facet in the kitchen and bathe standing right in front of the heater and hoped that I didn’t get sick or freeze to death in the process. I hated the winter time. I hated it! I hated it! I hated it!

I use to hover on top of that dang heater like my life depended on it and in theory it probably did. I could never get warm enough. I was always chilled down to the bone no matter how many layers of clothes or blankets I had on. This could be the reason why as an adult I turn the thermostat up to eighty degrees when it’s barely chilly outside. I can go without a lot of luxuries in life but I can not stand and will not be cold.

The big oil heater that took up about a third of the living room space always kept the house nice and warm (we only used it when the temperature outside was near or below freezing during the day) but my momma always turned it off at night. Oil was expensive and we had to be conservative and make it stretch as long as possible. Plus the house was made of wood and we all feared that if we left the heater burning overnight, we would somehow wake up and be engulfed in flames. To avoid a disaster of that magnitude, we piled in the bed and tried to use our body heat to keep as warm as humanly possible. It was pure hell because I was never warm enough. As the temperature dropped, we had to make sure we left the faucets running so the pipes under the house wouldn’t freeze and burst. Luckily that didn’t happen too often because it would’ve been unlikely that we would have enough money to replace broken pipes.

To be con't...

My Fingerprint: A True Story

I’ve shared bits and pieces of my story with a few folk and the reaction is usually the same – mouth open, eyes wide, speechless. I couldn’t make this stuff up even if I tried, I’m not that creative. This is who I am and why I am and I can’t be ashamed, afraid or apologetic because it is what it is. I will forever be my momma’s daughter and my daddy’s secret.

I was born on Monday, July 15, 1974 at or around 12:55 in the morning. My momma pushed all 7lbs 15oz. of me naturally through her small size eight frame. I came out calm, cool and collected just as I am today. I am the youngest of three, my brother, SB is ten years my senior and my sister, Sissy is six years older. I am the baby of the family and I can’t deny that I did not enjoy all the perks. I can not tell a lie, I used it to my advantage every chance I got. My momma was twenty-nine when she had me, four years younger than what I am now and I can’t imagine raising three kids alone. That is why I honor her and give her the utmost respect. She is truly my rock and the epitome of strength and courage. I asked my momma why she named me Wanda Monique. When I think about the name Wanda, all I can see is an old white woman with a bunch of cats so I was more than curious to know my momma’s reasoning. She said her first name choice was Tara Monique but her roommate in the maternity ward had named her daughter Tara. Had my momma and her roommate discussed the potential names for their brand new daughters? No. My momma wanted Tara but she got Wanda and I’m sure she would not exchange me for the world. I was destined to be here and destined to be Wanda which is of German decent and means “wanderer”. My birthday is 7-1-5, my birth weight was 7-1-5 and the time I was born can be manipulated into 7-1-5. I am here for a reason, my story says so.

Me, my momma, and my two older siblings lived in a four room house on the south side of Suffolk, Virginia. The house was made of wood and painted the ugliest color of blue I had ever seen. It wasn’t sky blue or the color of water it was just a loud variation of the two. I hated it because everyone knew the blue house on the corner. The front screened porch ran the entire width of the house. The house was divided into four evenly square rooms – two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. The back screened porch was an even smaller square that was cut from the kitchen. There was one food pantry and one closet so you can just imagine the clutter and chaos with one adult and three children sharing the same small space. It did not help matters that my grandmother also lived there but only on the weekends. She performed domestic duties for a white family in Virginia Beach during the week in exchange for room and board. My grandmother worked for the same family until early 2006. She was eighty-one years old when she finally retired. I have a long and strong legacy of hardworking women and independence runs deep down in my veins.

One bedroom was jammed with two beds, one full-sized and the other twin-sized. Me, my momma and my sister shared the full-size. Me and momma slept up top and my sister slept at the bottom. Every night we’d climb into bed like it was the most normal thing in the world. I’d throw my little leg on my momma’s hip because she slept on her side facing the bedroom door. My sister would sleep in the opposite direction so that I was smashed in the middle of butts and thighs. My brother had it good only because he could stretch his thin, lanky frame all over that twin-sized bed and not worry about where his foot or elbow ended up. He was living the good life and didn’t even know it. The other bedroom belonged to my grandmother. We were not permitted to go in there, let alone sleep in there when she wasn’t there. Five nights a week, while me, my momma and my siblings slept in a cramped bedroom sat a perfectly unused bed fit for a queen. Why didn’t my momma use this room as her own during the week? That’s something I’d never ask my momma about because I already know the answer. Nobody wanted to hear grandmomma’s fussing, so we did whatever it took to appease her. “Who’s been in my room?” she’d holler. Nobody wanted to deal with that so we left well enough alone and continued to sleep like one big happy family in a square room in the square blue house on the corner.

What really limited and suppressed my social skills as a child was the fact that not only did I sleep with my momma and sister every night but I also had to make sure none of my friends ever found out that I didn’t have indoor plumbing. The outhouse sat a few hundred feet behind the house, hidden among wild brush and low hanging trees. God forbid if anybody saw me sneaking to empty the “pot” we used in the house just so we wouldn’t have to go outside every time we had to pee. The pot reminded me of a pot somebody would use to cook a bunch of spaghetti in. It even had a lid. It was just tall enough to slide underneath the bed just so we wouldn’t have to stare at it and be constantly reminded that we did not have a toilet like regular folk. I was always afraid of the outhouse. It wasn’t big as nothing, just wide enough for you to go in and sit down on the high plank with a hole in it. I always wondered what lurked beneath the seat every time I had to go in and dump the pot. Each time somebody did ‘number 2’ in the pot they had to dump it unless it was at night then we would just pour a gallon of bleach in the pot to kill the smell until we were able to take it out the next day. I remember on many occasions gagging as I pulled off the lid to do my business and saw that somebody had already done their business and didn’t dump it. You can imagine that the pot stayed full with three kids and one adult. Somebody was either carrying the pot out, bleaching the pot or using the pot. I absolutely hated it. My grandmother had her own special pot and just like her bedroom, you were chastised if you used it. How would she know if we used her pot during the week? Sometimes I’d sneak and use it just so I wouldn’t have to duck and dodge all the kids who played up and down my street. If they would’ve caught glimpse of me trying to hide and sneak to the outhouse to empty the pot, I would’ve just died....

To be con't....

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