“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how.’”
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
When I was six, my three older sisters, my brother—although my brother was almost never around—and I loved going to school. School was our haven. It was right next door and we were big on school, especially my sister Dianne. She absolutely loved school. She never wanted to miss a day.
It was the dead of winter and we had no heat. Next, the electricity was cut off. And then we had no phone. It just kept escalating. When you have no heat, no gas, you have no hot water. . . . It was subzero weather. Freezing. Absolutely freezing. And the pipes froze, so there was no running water. We couldn’t even flush the toilet. To make matters worse, we were all extreme bed wetters. Not going to school was unheard of for us, but that day we all stayed home. I remember sitting in the living room all day in subzero weather, all huddled together, pissy, freezing, watching my mom.
Mama was lost. Just lost. Didn’t know what to do. No running water. Pipes frozen. No heat. No phone. We clutched together, all shivering, and somewhere around midday my sister Dianne stood up and announced, “I’m going to school.” She spat on her hand. She wiped all the mucus out of her eyes, and she asked, “How do I look?”
MaMama said, “You look good, ma,” using her southern term. “You look beautiful, ma.”
“Okay. All right, I’m going to school.” And she went.
The rest of us were still there shivering when MaMama finally said, “We’re going to have to go and try to get some heat assistance.”
We layered on every item of clothing we could find. Even on the best days, we never had the right size shoes or clothes. A lot of times, we couldn’t even find socks. We almost never had clothes that were new. Every once in a while, we would go to Zayre’s, a clothing store like J.C. Penney back in the day, and get something on layaway.
For the most part, we went to St. Vincent de Paul. We loved going there because it was an adventure sorting through everybody else’s used stuff. Everything seemed to have a story: books, old toys, roller skates, Skippy’s sneakers, even fur coats and furniture.
That frigid day, we put on whatever we had and started out into the cold. The heating assistance offices were in downtown Pawtucket, one town over. Mom, Deloris, Anita, and I walked in freezing, subzero weather. I was still the youngest at that time, and I would cry in a minute—I was a total crybaby. As we started walking, I howled in tears. When we walked by the school on our way, the principal of the school, Mrs. Prosser, saw us. She was a great woman, tall and thin, with bright red hair. She always looked so regal to me and was both powerful and kind. She saw me.
Mrs. Prosser would call me to her office, and whenever she did, I would think, Oh my God. What did I do? because I was really a troublemaker. Even when I hadn’t done anything wrong, I would wait for the shoe to drop. But often she would call me to her office and shower me with bags of hand- me-downs that belonged to her daughter, really cute clothes and little purses. I would wear them to school and just stand in the schoolyard during recess and pose in the clothes she had gifted me as if to say, Look at me! It was like I was demanding or begging for attention, positive attention, not wanting anyone to touch my perfectly put together outfit.
Mrs. Prosser knew our situation. When she saw us, she yelled from the window, “Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Davis.” MaMama stopped. We were huddled together, shivering when the principal ran out. She was so desperate to get to us that Mrs. Prosser didn’t even have a coat on. “Mrs. Davis, your kids aren’t in school. What’s going on?”
“We don’t have no heat, no electricity. We ain’t got nothing. And the pipes froze. There’s no running water. They can’t even wash up. We can’t do nothing.”
“Oh, Mrs. Davis, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at us and she touched my face. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something we could do.”
“We’re going to downtown Pawtucket to see if I can get someone to help us to pay the bills.”
“Okay. Well, just let us know if there’s anything we can do. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to know why your kids weren’t in school.”
That period of my life was filled with shame. The feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you have stage fright or humiliation, that was the shame of 128. Shame completely eviscerates you, destroys any sense of pride you may have in yourself.
One day in class I had to use the bathroom real bad and I just kept my hand raised but the teacher never acknowledged me. I couldn’t hold it anymore so I peed in my seat. It dripped on the floor and flooded my seat. My teacher got me a dry pair of pants from the nurse’s office, put my wet clothes in a paper bag, and sent me home. But the most humiliating part of this was coming back the next day to find my desk in a back corner of the classroom with the same big puddle of urine still in my seat. It stayed there until it slowly dried up. What? My six-year-old piss was too disgusting for even the janitor to clean.
I was embarrassed a lot, and 128 only heightened that sense of humiliation. Our apartment building caught fire so many times. The first time it caught fire, I was in first grade. All the kids in school peered out their classroom windows at the red fire truck in front of the building right next door to school. We watched firefighters reel out the hose pipe and spray streams of water in the building, smoke billowing out.
I heard an orchestra of voices:
“Oh my God!” “There’s a fire!” “Who lives there?”
“That’s Viola’s house.”
The teacher, Ms. Picard, stared at me. “Viola, is that your house?”
I’m in my schoolroom with my first-grade classmates, who already looked down at me for being Black, now looking out at my home burning. “Yeah,” I answered, watching as firefighters ran inside of my building with hoses. I did not know if it was our apartment that caught fire. It was a perfect metaphor for the devastation I felt in my heart. Because the source
of my deepest shame was now a source of horrified entertainment for people who had exiled me from the day they met me.
When I went home that day, the entire apartment was in disarray. It was our apartment that had caught fire. The fire damage was extensive, but the water damage was worse. The very water that the firefighters had sprayed into our house to save it also destroyed it. The linoleum was warped, bloated and curved like waves across the floor. Looking at the remains of our apartment, I thought not even the firefighters had respect for the place we called home. I knew it was shit. But it was my shit. It was my home.
So many of the fires were uneventful. I was awakened in the middle of the night, led down a dark and smoky stairway, and stood for a long time, sleepy, with my hair wrapped up. The source of the fire would be found and order was restored, so we went upstairs and back to bed.
Then there were times when Millie, our next-door neighbor, would come banging on the door, “Dan! Dan! Get ya kids outta the house! The house is on fire!”
Millie was Black and she had a daughter named Kim and a son, Reggie, who had been in Vietnam. Kim was a fast friend. She and my sister Anita were especially close, until they weren’t. Millie was one of those cigarette- smoking, hard-core, cuss-you-out-in-a-minute, light-skinned Black women. She was also the town crier.
“Dan! Get your kids out! This fuckin’ house is on fire! You can’t go down the stairs; there’s too much smoke!”
My father yelled and woke us all up. Black smoke was coming up the stairs and we were all on the third floor.
“Y’all go to the fire escape!” My father pushed us to the porch and everyone frantically started climbing down. Now, we were all experienced fire escape climbers. We were experienced climbers in general. We climbed the fire escape when we were locked out of the house. We climbed fences to pick apples, peaches, and pears from neighbors’ yards without permission. But climbing under duress when you are convinced you’re going to die is a different story.
Well, the fire trucks were there and the firefighters had already taken their hoses out. People lined the street, just looking and gasping. My family jumped off the fire escape one after another like the Incredibles. Only one, lone family member was left behind on the last landing. Me.
I just stood there crying my eyes out. “Mama!”
My mom, dad, and siblings were all screaming, “Viola! Jump! Just jump!” My mom was in an absolute panic. She started crying hysterically, “Baby! Jump to ya mama!”
I squatted down with my arms outstretched trying to reach her because I was terrified to jump. It was just too high. I imagined flames behind me, ready to engulf me at any minute, like Dumbo when he had to jump off that wire, but I just didn’t have those big ears that could help me fly. But, as sure as I’m Black, I saw my mom fly.
She took about five big steps back, ran, and just at the right moment, leapt in the air like Michael Jordan, grabbed my arm, and pulled me down. We both fell on the concrete together. She screamed in pain! My father picked her up and we just held on to each other, tight. My sisters just slapped me on the head. “Stupid. You shoulda jumped! It wasn’t that high. Mom almost got hurt.” I just watched my mom limping and saw my sisters and brother looking shell-shocked, lost, waiting for the fire department to clear us to go back into that hellhole. It was just a roof over our heads. Nothing about it was home.
The truth is no one cares. No one looking at the fire was aware of my little “dumb show” and there were no flames. We stayed at 128 for another two years. And yes, it remained a firetrap. But in my mind, no one cares about the conditions in which the unwanted live. You’re invisible, a blame factor that allows the more advantaged to be let off the hook from your misery.
At 128, the fires simply got more frequent. The rats multiplied. The first landing stairway had holes leading straight to the basement. A family of eight kidnapped children and two female guardians moved in on the second floor and many bloodied fights, scars, and stitches were a part of our day- to-day life.
Still, in the midst of the life shitstorm, there was one teeny, tiny light. A guide. A whisper. A voice.
That one question from my Dianne. “What do you want to be?”
