Hey Homegirl. Lashell Rivers
Whenever my mother didn’t cook for the holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, Joan did; and we would all be in her little apartment having just as much fun. But there was this one time when my auntie Annie was feanin’ for drugs so hard that there was such this huge fight with her and the family at dinner. So much food went flying, we children stayed in Gramma’s room to hear the arguing. “Fuck you!” was screamed while she was smashing plates of food into her mothers work clothes. She kept hanging on to the door as Dad and the other brothers dragged her screaming tail out of the door and down the steps. Of course, Kareem knew what was going on. He was older than me, and he was going hysterical while the others tried to calm him. But my grandmother took it very calmly. I always noticed that about her. Even with losing two sons and her man through drug violence, she always remained calm, at least in my eyes. She was working at Washington Hospital Center and saw people going through a lot worse than her so; maybe that did it. No matter what damages would go on through the family, she would get with her cousins and other relatives to throw a family reunion every summer and wash it all away.
All this was happening before I reached the age of seven, and although I was the youngest and was getting good attention, I was also going through hell at the same time. Back then, I had some pretty long hair, and before the perm thing came along my way, I would have my hair pressed and hot combed by my mom. “Bend your head down, and let me get that kitchen.” It was another word for beady, nappy hair spots in the back of your neck, and whenever she couldn’t do it, I was in my sister’s hands.
My grandmother (Mom’s mom), died when I was five, and there was a time when fighting cancer became so hard that my mom moved her in to take care of her. She gave her my brother’s room. I recall her yelling sometimes because of the pain she would go through from trying to make it to the bathroom on her own, for it was right across the hallway and she simply didn’t want help. She wanted to stay strong and independent without the help of others. Eventually, she had to stay in the hospital, and they didn’t even alert my mother of her death. She simply found out on her own while going to check up on her. The funeral was full of so much hurt from my mother’s heart because she didn’t get to say goodbye and let everything off her chest before her mother left. I simply sat there and watched my dad hold her as she cried, until it was time to bury her mother. My sister loved her so much, for Eva (our grandmother) gave her the attention she couldn’t give our mother.
Olivia was the name of my sister, who began to treat me like shit when she became a teenager, for loving me the same way as a little sister vanished.
There was a time when she snuck out of the house just at twelve to see a boy in another building. She got caught because of the neighbors calling home, and another time, she was caught in our mother’s bed, with a boy. There I was on the balcony playing with my cat, and I was hearing screams coming from inside, only to see my mom choking her as Dad and Bill tried pulling her off. What could I do but look. It was from then on that I had to go wherever she went so I could be the tattletale and report to my mother everything that she did, which grew the hate she began having toward me. Before that, she did show me love (shrug)
Wherever she wanted to go, my mom would holler, “Take your sister”; and with that came the anger, the mental abuse, and the embarrassment in front of her friends.
“She ain’t my sister. She’s my half sister.”
“Her father is broke as hell and can’t get a job.”
“I’m glad her father ain’t my father.”
“She’s dirty like her father.”
“Heifer.”
“Wench.”
“Go somewhere and get outta my face.”
“I wish you weren’t my sister.”
“Damn, you get on my nerves. Go somewhere and play.” And that is exactly what I did. I would go to my neighbor’s crib or in other buildings, anywhere, and just cry. Whether it was to the people she couldn’t stand, because I would tell them all the things she would say to me, or just cry because my mother had me go with her. And whenever I would go outside, I would do my best to stay completely away from her so I would have nothing to tell. And yeah, my father didn’t work all the time; he would hide liquor in the Laundromat (probably from my uncles) and do his thing. He would smoke so much weed that he would sit and eat five plates of food. Hell, he wasn’t fed as a child (shrug). There was a time that I snuck a piece of bread off his plate, crawled under my bed, and ate it. He whooped my ass for the first and only time! I mean, he literally beat me until I pissed on myself. I came back into the bedroom, with my sister shaking her head while talking on the phone. “That’s what your ass get,” she mumbled so the one on the phone could hear. Boy, did that make her day, for I would always stand there, screaming and crying, while watching her get beat by my mom for talking back and disobeying, staying out past her curfew, getting into fights at school and being suspended, and for people just telling my mom the things they saw her doing with boys and other teen girls.
Go-Go music was hot in those days. It still is, but in the ’80s, it was hotter. With her light skin, long hair, and big booty, she would attract all them hustlers with money. She would sneak out and stay out late with her friends to see Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, Junk Yard, and Back Yard Band, or whatever group was hittin’ back then whom she liked with her girlfriends. There was a time my mother was getting ready to leave for work at five in the morning, while my sister was coming in. Boy was that more shit to hear. All could do was lie in the bed and hear arguments, especially since we shared the same room. My brother had his own room, and my sister couldn’t wait to have her own. That was another conflict.
“How come Bill can stay out and I can’t!”
“Because he’s a boy, and you’re not,” our mother would respond, and that seemed to be the main argument all the time. Lord don’t let the phone ring with two teenagers fighting over it.
There was a time they argued over the phone. If the line beeped, neither would click over for the other’s call. I have no idea what brought it out of her, but she grabbed one of mom’s cooking knives and ran toward Bill for not getting off the phone. His reaction was to knock her the fuck out! I was at school, but Dad came in the door like “WTF” while seeing her on the floor.
“She came at me with a knife!” And that’s all I know from that story. Bill could just get away with things that my sister wished she could get away with, and between the two of them, when I would be walked to school and picked up, I’d rather it be with him than her; for she would terrorize me with words and have me truly wish that I was never her sister or was maybe with another family (shrug). But when it was just me and Bill, just anything without her, had me at peace (prayer hands). We would talk, have fun, go to the store; and sometimes we loved hitting the Kennedy playground before going home. There was a time while we were going into the building that one of the neighbors my age came walked up behind me with another boy and humped on me as though my brother wasn’t there. Bill gripped him, nearly tossing him to the ground. He said, “Don’t you ever come to my sister with that shit, you hear me, little nigga!” And then he got on me. “Don’t you ever let them little boys do that to you, do you hear me? Don’t let that shit happen to you no more!” I nodded while saying “okay.” He grabbed me, pissed off from seeing that. Guess they were doing that “I dare you to” shit.
My sister stopped picking me up because she was always getting into school fights and was just tired of me. She was hanging with her friends and living the teenage life, with other girls being jealous. I mean, she was gorgeous, and they were ugly.
She even had her own team of homegirls. They would have street fights and jump bitches for talking shit to her because of other boys, and those were true ’80s—ass-whooping groups jumping each other. My goodness could she fight. And simply watching her fight built more fear in me, for I would simply imagine her beating me up. With all the hateful words she would say to me, I was too afraid to say anything back. I had the strong fears of her beating me till I bled. She would say “Fuck you” and call me a bitch like she did the others, so running and crying was my only safety. I knew her friends wouldn’t