Hey Homegirl. Lashell Rivers
that he began to use again to stay up all night, driving a big rig while high. She began drinking more, eating more, and smoking cigarettes to the point where I had my head out the window more. And I read from the encyclopedia to her about how smoking turns her lungs black, begging her to stop. That was never a project for me though. I became the art girl in school and began to feel cool. I went to slumber parties and began to sing with the neighborhood girls. Sometimes I would just be quiet and observe, comparing the life of others to my own.
While sleeping one night and Tyrone was home, I heard screaming coming from downstairs. It could only be my Mom, so I ran to help, only to see him with her on the floor, pulling her hair, while fighting and screaming, “Shell, go call your brother!”
“What!” Ty yelled, and without even looking back, I went to my neighbor whom I was friends with, crying to her mom about my parents fighting and asking if I could call my brother, not the police.
They let me right in on the phone. “Billy, Mom and Tyrone are fighting, and he has her on the floor!”
“What! Wait, wait, wait, Shell. Slow down. What the fuck you mean on the floor?”
“He’s choking her!”
“What! Where the fuck are you?”
“At the neighbor’s house.”
“You call the cops?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t! Here I come.”
And he was coming from Warrenton, Virginia, which was a distance away. But being that the neighbor whose house I was over lived right behind us, I stared out the window, seeing Tyrone leave.
She checked up on me while staring. Her daughter, Tasha, was my friend, and we didn’t wake her. “I see him leaving. I can go back now.”
“Okay, be careful.” She hugged me like a mother would their child, and I walked in the dark with my pajamas on. I saw the door cracked open and walked in with a racing heart.
There was a bathroom both upstairs and down, and I heard the water running while coming in. I knocked on its door and called out, “Mom?”
Only to hear her tears in reply, so I sat there on the steps. Then I saw car lights pull up from the side window and ran again. Billy was with a car full of men, and I ran up to it. All I saw were big guns, and I heard loud music. At this time, he was only twenty years old. He jumped out of the car so I wouldn’t see everything.
“Shell, come on, I don’t want you seeing all that. Where’s Mom?”
And I just finally burst out crying while he held my arm, as though I was falling to the ground. “In the bathroom. I haven’t seen her.”
“You haven’t seen her?”
“No, I heard her crying.”
“Oh, fuck that. That nicca still in there? You see him leave?”
I simply shook my head to show that he left, then he had his homeboy Rick come out of the car.
“Aye, man, watch Shell real quick. I’mma check on Ma,” he said and walked to the house.
I blocked the rest of that night out, for that was a Saturday and there was no Sunday dinner or Tyrone the next day. It was more so silence and staying in my room, playing on my record player, and drawing. The other kids didn’t see me until after that at the bus stop. Actually, I avoided them; you can tell when people know things. Children are bold enough to ask, “Did your parents really fight this weekend?” By then all I would say was, “Yeah, they argued, and I called my brother.” I ignored the other stuff. With Mom at work before I even left for school that morning or dealt with the others, Bill showed up with Uncle Ron.
“Hey, Shell, you okay?” I just jumped in his arms, for I hadn’t seen him since we left the city as well.
“Go ahead to school, Shell. We gonna chill here.”
Having my brother hug me, I rolled out.
I didn’t see anything, but I heard mouths running about it days later.
Like Tyrone coming back that very morning I left, thinking no one was home. And out of the bathroom, Ron dropped his ass to the floor while he and Bill beat his ass. Mom came home from work having no clue, but Ron did call her at work, saying that he was at the house. And he hadn’t come to the house before this so (shrug). And she walked in to see her beat-up man with a gun being held in his mouth by my brother. She didn’t even jump.
Tears coming down Ty’s eyes. “Tell me now, Mom, ’cause I’ll kill this nicca!”
“No, don’t kill him. He just better never put his hands on me again.”
“Baby, I’m so sorry” he said with a dull, busted lip, and then the knockout punch with the handle followed.
He woke up knowing that she then had a gun in her possession, for Ron told him he was giving it to her and to kill him if he’d ever touch her again. That hurt never came again; however, different types followed.
Tyrone was a crazy man who blinded my mother with good dick and attention, I say that from one night of waking up and hearing her holler, thinking something is wrong. But no, he was on top of her, fucking. And I never heard her with Dad. She did drift a few times with other men, but this one caught her. It was a man that was a veteran, who moved to Washington, DC, from Atlanta, Georgia. He had his own daughter whom I met one time before moving, but he didn’t biologically claim her. The child he did claim passed away as he slept next to her. He rolled over, suffocating the baby to death; and that was his excuse for using crack. I guess you can get any lonely woman with that story. :/
And mom took that bullshit, along with us all of a sudden attending church on a regular.
Tyrone sung in the men’s choir and cursed like a sailor afterward, and yes, she would chastise him while becoming more deep into the Word. She was in so deep that she read “The man came before the children” in the Bible and she literally took that to heart. By now I was twelve years old and had my first period. I was getting ready to start junior high school. She came home with maxi pads, asking if I had any questions, but I learned sex ed in elementary. And besides, the comfort in coming to her was starting to fade because of that man she chose over my dad and began to choose over me.
That ex-veteran would be off from his truck routes sometimes, and he’d make me clean the house like true training camp. I would vacuum with all the line patterns facing a certain way, mop, and use a toothbrush to get the corners of the floor. I cleaned every inch of the toilet to the point where I was on my knees doing it, not to mention at the same time, he talked shit about my father and the child support payments he was giving mom. When I did have time with Dad and I complained about Tyrone, he would say, “Your mother chose him” or “Talk to your mother.” And this was that same man who once loved my mother so much. The only thing I had to show for it was a photo of him with “To the love of my life and my wife, Brenda” written on it. I kept that picture in my room, and that crackhead bitch she married painted nail polish on my picture! Mom ain’t do shit. There was even one night that I forgot to take out the trash. He had my mother wake me @ 2:00 a.m. to do so. She even went on a diet to lose weight for him, and I remember us going to see my sister in the city. She was renting a house with her friend, and I heard Liv giving Mom compliments while getting out the car. We went to see her after church one Sunday, and I’m sure I had the “fuck it” look on my face. Olivia, seeing Mom with the same man we saw after school in her bed a few years ago, made smirks and remarks on the down-low to her girls and jokingly said “Have fun” to me because of that man! I now dealt with that along with Mom. If only I could shit talk back!
Sometimes, Mom would still get pissy drunk with him in their hangout room. They would sit in there, playing slow jams, and liquor was his substitute when not hittin’ the other stuff. It was when he had withdrawals that he’d turn me into the “clean the fuck up” slave junkie. But she did slow up on drinking with him. There was one time I actually began to question my body to her. I noticed