My Fingerprint: Act 2

previous entry

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...