“Y’all meet ya baby sister.”
—MAE ALICE DAVIS
When I was eleven, another girl was added to our family—Danielle. We didn’t have a phone, so when my mom went to the hospital in labor the night before Danielle was born, they said they would call the fire department once the baby was born. The next morning, my father made us wake up early and clean the house from top to bottom. It was his way of contributing and working out his nerves. We swept, wiped. Finally, a young man came running up the hill, out of breath with a piece of paper. It read, “Congratulations! A 7 lb, 6 oz baby was born this morning.”
We were so excited. We screamed and jumped up and down. It was a moment tattooed in my mind as pure, unbridled joy. My father told us to get dressed and we started our long walk to the hospital. It took us hours because we had no money for bus fare. But man, we were fueled by excitement. We walked single file, on the side of the road at times, on the sidewalk at other times. We finally made it to the hospital after a two-hour trek, walked into the room, and saw my mom. She was lying down with a blanket over our baby. I remember her words precisely, “Y’all meet ya baby sister!” She pulled the blanket away and revealed the most beautiful baby. Chocolate brown with the biggest Afro. We cried, melted with love.
I was the baby of the family before this time, but now I had a role of big sister. A type of transformation began to take place. At the time, I had no words to describe the shift to loving someone more than myself, seeing beyond myself. Words cannot explain our closeness. We did absolutely everything together. I never wanted to leave her. Ever. It was as if life was
injected into our lives. I changed diapers, put her to sleep, babysat, gave her medicine when she was sick. And held her tight when my parents fought. She was our cub and we accepted her into the pride.
I was eleven and had already had my period for a year but was by no means grown. I had attitude for days. When I was at home, that attitude stopped cold. I was too terrified of my father. But at school, I was out of control. Always talking out and back. My teachers sought every day to find ways to keep me still and quiet. I would get white and pink disciplinary slips. Pink was the worst. You get three pink slips, then you’re suspended. I had three white and two pink. I would forge my dad’s signature or get my sister to do it. It was a good thing we didn’t have a phone or that would’ve been my ass.
I was unsettled. I was an awkward, angry, hurt, traumatized kid. I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling and nobody asked. I didn’t believe anybody cared. I was saturated in shame. There was so much we didn’t have, or couldn’t do, so much anger and violence that threatened the love. I was trying to be better. I focused on not wetting the bed. There were days I woke up dry but still days that even after going to the bathroom beforehand, I woke up soaked to my neck.
My baby sister was a cure at this point. Not for the bed-wetting, but she was day-to-day joy because she loved me. She saw me.
One day, Deloris and I were coming back from school. We neared the house and saw huge drops of blood on the pavement. Deloris whispered under her breath, “Oh my God.” We got to our front steps and saw more blood and the front window on the door broken. We walked in and Anita and Dianne looked shell-shocked. Dianne was holding Danielle whose front shirt was saturated with blood. I almost screamed but Dianne said, “She’s asleep. MaDaddy is out looking for mom. He said he’s going to kill her. He busted her head open and she grabbed Danielle to leave and Daddy grabbed her back. We stopped them . . .”
The blood on Danielle was my mom’s.
We were terrified. Finally, my dad came back. Pissed. The night before, I tried to stop him from beating MaMama. He was still angry at me about that. “Get y’all asses out to help me look for ya mama. Soon as we find her, I’m gonna kill her.” Me and Deloris went out to help him look. He kept yelling at me to walk faster. Finally, he veered off to the right and told us to go to the left. Deloris was looking one way. I was looking another. I heard
Deloris cry, “Viola! Oh my God, look.” I looked to the left and there was my mom, in the Rexall Drugstore window. Her face was totally bloodied. Her eyes were swollen shut. She had on a dirty turtleneck and pants. She was standing next to the ice cream freezer motioning for us to come in. Deloris ran away to get my dad. I went in. People started gathering around and I heard the ambulance siren.
My mom was crying. “Vahla. Ya daddy’s gonna kill me. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
The clerk at the store who was married to our science teacher was leading the paramedics in and kept asking me, “What happened to her? What happened to your mom?” I couldn’t speak. I looked to my mom to tell me what to say. What do I say? Do I expose our dirty secret? The paramedics tried to get my mom to the back room. My mom looked like a frightened animal or child. She didn’t want to go back there alone and with her arms outstretched she screamed, “Vahla! Come with me! Don’t leave me.” I just stood there and couldn’t move. All I saw was the paramedics mouthing, What happened to her?
I walked out of that drugstore. People I knew from school were among those gathered outside. “Viola! Was that your mom? What happened?” I couldn’t tell them that my mom is more than what you’re seeing. The pity and the judgment saturated their faces. I wanted to scream out. This is my mom!!! My MOM!!! She’s scared. . . . but she is a survivor!!! She’s somebody!!! I LOVE her! But nothing came out of my mouth. I froze under the traumatic weight of the scrutiny and the judgment. Once again, I had no internal weaponry. It wouldn’t occur to me until much later that this moment was not just about shame, value, or protection. It was about inheritance. I was given her blood, her eyes, her survival skills, her pain.
My world was a constant train of imprinting.
Because of the “war zone” that was our home, I always felt that I had to stay home to protect Danielle. The fights were brutal, with little attention paid to a baby in the line of fire when punches or knives were thrown. Mostly, we, her big sisters, just loved her. That was the best protection we could provide.
After being the youngest for so long, Danielle’s birth gave me a sense of responsibility. It was as if Flo-Jo passed me the baton when I hadn’t been practicing. I now had the last leg of the race to run, the clock ticking, on a journey where every other runner has 0 percent body fat and mine is at 40
percent. My shoes are untied. I can’t see because I’ve got dry eye. But I still have to run my leg of the race. My practice run was being a primary- schooler who was sent home, soaked with piss. Piss-soaked, I must now run holding my baby sister.
I didn’t have words to explain our poverty, dysfunction, trauma to Danielle, but I could hold her. I could love her; and that’s it. I didn’t have the tools to protect. I didn’t know that I needed protection and guidance just as much as Danielle. I didn’t know, nor could I admit, that I was broken.
Danielle was eight years old the summer between my first and second years of college. A weekend, in the middle of the day, while I was working at Brooks Drugs on Dexter Street around the block from our apartment, someone ran in and said, “Oh my God! Viola. You’ve got to come. Something’s happened to your little sister.” I ran outside and the cops were there, with my mom screaming at the top of her lungs. MaMama had on my brother’s sneakers and stood there crying, just shaking one fist in the air at this man who was sitting in the back of the cop car, handcuffed. With the other hand, she was holding my baby sister close to her.
Danielle had been roller-skating and still had her skates on. She was crying in my mom’s arms. “That dirty bastard hurt my baby,” MaMama said. “Dirty motherfucker.”
Later, I found out that an older Portuguese man would frequent the corner store on Dexter Street and molest little girls who came in. Supposedly, he came to the store to buy cigarettes. However, he would hang out at the store and walk up and down the aisles offering to give young girls money if they allowed him to touch them.
Danielle and one of her young friends roller-skated to this store, which was maybe a minute from our house, to get some candy. They were in the candy aisle when the old man approached Danielle, speaking in Portuguese, trying to offer her money. She didn’t know what he was saying. When he touched her “privacy,” she freaked out and she and her friend skated out of there fast.
Her friend said, “You’ve got to tell your mom. You’ve got to tell your mom.”
Danielle told my mother and MaMama put on the first shoes she saw, ran down to Dexter Street, and yelled, “You, motherfucking son of a bitch, touched my daughter! There’s a man in this store who touched my daughter. I’m going to call the police.”
The guys who owned the store tried to calm my mom down by saying, “Ma’am, he does that to all the little girls. It’s not a big deal.” My mom said, “It is a big deal, you motherfuckers,” and then ran out of the store, into the middle of the street, flagged down the police, and identified the old man. “That’s the man. This is what he did with my daughter. I’m pressing charges.” That’s the point where I was summoned. The cops had arrested him, MaMama was cursing him, holding crying Danielle.
He didn’t speak English. The only thing the court system did was fine him. My sister got $9 a month for the next few months from the man who molested her. Nine dollars a month. That was the fine. No charges were ever pressed.
Danielle was our baby. Your first instinct when you love a child is to protect her from the pain of the world . . . and life. The most excruciating revelation is when you realize you can’t. To be human is not to be God. What that man was allowed to do is destroy souls.
It was hard to pick up the pieces after that. She had the mammoth task of healing. To this day, almost forty years later, she is still figuring out how to do that. Only thing I could do was love her . . . and I did and do. She is a reflection of me.
