Memoir - 1st Installment

Descriptions of My Early Environment

I have learned that madness has a rhythm to it, but you must learn it or it can drive you crazy. It was by observing the nature of creation that I learned to appreciate my own unpredictable nature and that I should no more despise my drifting thoughts than the clouds that float past on a sunny afternoon. My moods, like the ebb and flow of the tides can be fun to surf and sail through life but I remain ever wary of the potential for tempest. It was a long hard journey to arrive at this place of acceptance and understanding.

I had become accustomed at an early age to being an island unto myself. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel on the inside looking out. I enjoyed interacting with other children but I was never really one of the crowd. I believe I got the level of interaction with other children that I did because of the village-like project environment I spent a great deal of my childhood in; the familiarity was the only tie I had. Except for with a few friends who were able to accept me as I was from early childhood, and with whom I still enjoy a warm friendship. Warm in spite of my inability to share myself with them beyond the surface. I was somewhat aware of my disinterest in revealing much of myself, but I didn't realize, until I was in my 40's, that it was something that I did not know how to do. Between the ages of 27 and 40, I was finally diagnosed and offered some explanations for myself. The clinicians haven't gotten around to diagnosing the Asperger's yet, but on hindsight, it seems rather obvious to my mother and myself that I definitely had it. Among other things.

I was born into circumstances that fostered my eccentricities of character and outlook. My mother's pregnancy with me at 15 didn't go over well. Five years later, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but in 1966, it still was. Especially for the sheltered and naive daughter of the organist at the Mount Pleasant African Methodist Episcopal Church of Zion, for Christ's sake. It didn't look right and God knows that everything was all about appearances. Oh church folks will always deny that but why else would people be always discussing who was wearing what? You know what I'm talking about, things ain't so different from here to there.

I often wonder how things would have been different had Nana been alive. Nana was Nanny's mother. She was the primary caregiver for my mother and Uncle Jimmie, but she died of cancer when my mother was six months pregnant with me. When she died, there was no one to run interference for my mom with my grandmother; Nanny was cruel to Mommy. Even as a tiny child I could see that. She doted on her two sons, Uncle Dickie and Uncle Jimmie - and me too, so who knows why she was so mean to Mom. Mom thinks it might be because she was difficult to birth. My mother also came with a whole menu of neurological dysfunctions that no one understood about back then, which resulted in my grandmother referring to her as Stupid, more than by the the lovely name that she actually gave her at birth.

My father was also 16 when I was born. Intelligent as they were, both of my parents were very young emotionally, much younger than their 16 years. At a time when almost everyone I knew came from a two-parent family, I had two teenagers who lived with their mothers for my parents. When I was 14-months old, my Dad was sent off to basic training/boot camp at Parris Island. He was to go to war in Viet Nam. His six months on Parris Island would be over just as he turned 18 and would be of legal age to send off to kill, and or be killed. He was 17.
My mother, whom I called Mish, at the time, loved him very much, and so this was a very terrible turn of events. Her response to her fears for his safety, was to teach me my letters, before I was two-years old. I was an eager student and she was almost-eighteen and still precious enough - the way that children are precious - to believe that if I could only write him letters, my Daddy would survive his tours of Viet Nam. I can remember climbing up onto the scratchy, plastic-upholstered kitchen chair and kneeling on it as I leaned over the table where Mish would have paper and a pencil waiting for me. Across the table and leaning perched against the wall, was a big poster board chart on which my mother had written, bold and neatly, in black marker, the upper and lower cases of the alphabet, and also, numbers. She would tell me which letters in which case, one at a time, for each word that I announced as I composed what I wanted to say to him in each letter. Soon enough, I did not need her to tell me, "...Big D...small e...small a....small r <space> big D...small a...small d...small d...small y..." I began to remember and recognize letter sounds and words and so it was in this methodic and patient way that Mish taught me to read and write while I was still a baby. I believe that her homeschooling me to read so young, is why my memory goes back so far.

Another very cool gift that Mish gave to me when I was two, was my first Bible. It was the big, thick, Children's Bible that was very popular in the 60's and 70's and had a lot of great illustrations in it. Although my personality wasn't conducive to indoctrination, I was utterly fascinated with certain stories and read them over and over again. The Ark of the Covenant interested me, but the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Nebedneggo, really did. The most fascinating stories of all, were the ones about Jesus. But the Temptation of Christ by the devil just did it for me. I was completely enthralled by his rectitude - he could NOT BE BOUGHT; he would not submit to the glitz and the glamour!...it was the same rectitude illustrated in the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Nebedneggo. These stories shaped my direction from early on and taught me that no matter how small I was or how huge whatever was bad or wrong - there is a righteousness in truth and that within that, there is all of the strength one needs to stand up for what is right.

There were those times when I would cry and beg Nanny not to wash me down there, because I knew that the soap was going to sting me. It seemed like she always washed me more deliberately on those days. Those were always the evenings of the days that she would have her fiance`, whom I was forced to call, Uncle Frank, babysit me. I wonder how much of a scholar one has to be to figure that one out.
I'd been potty-trained since I was eleven-months old. I detested the feel of shit on my ass and used to take my diapers off and leave them where they fell; I was easy to train. During the same period that my mother was teaching me to read, while my father was losing his boyhood and humanity to the horrors of Viet Nam, my grandmother's boyfriend was chasing me into the bathroom whenever he was given the opportunity to be alone with me. . .which was often. It used to amuse him to watch me try to hold my pee until Nanny, Mish or Uncle Jimmie came home. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. It was all cat-and-mouse for him. I would dash for the bathroom, hoping to get in and lock the door. Sometimes I'd make it, but it never mattered because he'd open it with a butterknife or something. I would try to push against his strength but he opened the door easily. Frank's game was to sit on the toilet and put me on his lap while he violated me with his hard, rough, ashy fingers. His sharp nails always cut me inside. I ALWAYS fought him angrily, outraged by his violation. Furious and helpless by the threat of harm he promised to my mother if I told. He would laugh joyously as I fought. He was more than perverted; he was cruel. To this day my grandmother would like for me to engage in the lie that she's convinced herself of - that she had no idea.

When my mother was bathing me one day, she went into the kitchen to tell my Nanny that she suspected her boyfriend of molesting me. My grandmother's response was to punch my mother in her face. Nanny attacked my Mish so furiously, my mother ran away. She ran away and left me there, defenseless.

Now both Daddy and Mommy were gone, and it would be several months before I would see or hear from my mother again. But during the interrim, Frank stopped coming around. He just dumped my grandmother, pulled up stakes and disappeared with no explanation. That, at least, was some consolation. As much as my grandmother doted on me thereafter, there really was nothing that could have filled in the intense feelings of abandonment that I felt each day for most of the rest of my life - even when one or the other of my parents did enter into it again, from time to time.