You Can't Fall Off The Floor

I must began by stating, a perfect little girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, two parents playing with me through the nursery window and looking at me as if I were a precious jewel, with a nursery full of items waiting to greet my birth and usher me into a picture perfect life is not who I was, or how life began for me.

My birth actually was clouded in mystery. My mother never told me if she was happy or sad the day I came into this world. There were no pictures that demonstrated their love for me on that special day. I do have enough sense to know that I was not a planned pregnancy. I reasoned this because how many black families really planned pregnancies in the 70’s. I don’t know if my father was at the hospital or even in the same city the day that I was born. Maybe he was sober, but most likely not.

My name is Mona Lisa, I was born May 15, 1970. I often thought that it had to be raining the day that I was born, because that would be the forecast for the most part of my life. I was born to common parents of a black community that was plagued with poverty. My mother was a nurse, my father, a jack-of-all-trades. I was never sure of what job my father had when I was born, or if he even had one. All my life he would leave every morning as if going to work, but would rarely bring money home to help support his six children. The one thing that I did know was that my mother worked. I know she worked because I never really remember her at home. She lived in her sterile white uniform all of my growing years. The only time she ever stayed home that I can remember is when she had my little sister, and she could not even enjoy that down time, because as I said, daddy went to work, but the money never quite made it home on Fridays.

Anyway, I always knew I was the opposite of everything my mother hoped for because if the truth be told she married my father because he was mixed with African American, white, and Indian. That was very important back then, because being dark skin back then automatically earned you a life of trouble and struggle. My mother is what you would call color struck. My father was fair skin, and she hoped that his light skin would overshadow her extremely smooth pretty dark skin, and bring to birth a light skinned baby…oh, don’t forget with good hair, because you can’t have a nappy headed light skin baby. That would go against everything that was considered beauty during the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I guess no one ever told my mother “the nurse” about genes! Well, I came into this world not only dark skinned, but with a bald head, that I would keep until about age 3. No wonder there are very few pictures of me before age 6 in my parents’ home. I was the 5th child of 6 children born to the same parents. I would be considered an outcast today because my parents actually did the death do us part thing, and you see most African American children today don’t even have a concept of what a marriage looks like.

The home that I came to was a two room apartment in the Marcy Projects of Brooklyn New York. There were no bells and whistles in this home. It was just a place to keep the rain and other elements from overtaking us, and store the little bit of stuff we had. The little that I remember about the home was that it was in great need of paint, and the elevator never worked, and we lived on the 10th floor.

My sister Sherry was very happy about my birth. As a matter of fact I know she was the only person that actually prayed to have me. Sherry already had one older brother, Mike, and two younger brothers, Donald and Ronald. So many times she desired a little sister to play and grow up with. She was 7 already when I was born, but she never minded carrying me on her little hips. Sherry had been very sickly as a baby, and even when I came home she was gripped with asthma and a very fragile body. My sister Nikki would come on the scene 4 years after me, but I don’t think Sherry was as happy to see her…I know I wasn’t.

They say that most kids don’t remember things before age 2 or 3, but I beg to differ. I feel it depends on how much of an impact a memory has on your life will depend on how well you remember it. I wish that I could say that my earliest memory was sitting near the Christmas tree with loads of presents surrounded by my siblings, parents, extended family and friends; But my earliest memory happen when I was a little over 1 year old. We were still living in the two bedroom apartment. We had cats, and in the projects just like in a trailer park, all you have are wild cats who bring friends. I was very scared of them, and I still have a fear of them to this day because many days I would wake up from a nap or in the morning and they would be licking the milk from my mouth and scratching my face. The scariest times were waking in the morning knowing my mother had left the bottle in my mouth to keep me sleeping, as she quietly darted down the stairs to walk my brothers to school; then I was attacked by cats for my food. Fighting wild cats is not fun for a 1 year old. I would wake crying and screaming, as I hugged the pillow for protection. Looking back on 39 years, it seems I have been fighting cats all my life.

I remember some mornings being in the bathroom on the sink watching my father shave. Like an artist with his work, my father would take great care in grooming himself. My father was so handsome that it didn’t take much for him to look good. I just liked being in there with him because that was the only time I was able to get attention all by myself. Just that 10-15 minutes in the morning made me feel good, because even in my little, one year old mind I knew that for the rest of the day many of my cries would go unanswered, and my brothers, who always had each other to play with, would take pride in the hours of terror and teasing inflicted upon me. My mother would be too busy with the blows of life, or tired from working to concentrate on my little voice calling to her. At that point, during her down time from her two jobs she had five calling, needing and wanting kids, and one husband who was worse to deal with than any of the children.

Well, the first day of my true memory started the usual way. Daddy was shaving, and I was being a good student to all of his “teaching.” He put the shaving cream on my face and used the back of the razor, pretending to shave me. I laughed because the back of the razor tickled. I also found joy in the way he smiled at me, and his hazel eyes shimmered in the dim light of the bathroom. After shaving class, I would trail at his heels into the kitchen. Though my father was not a chef, I remember him fixing pretty good meals for us. Meals we had to eat even if they were not appetizing because daddy did not believe in throwing food away. Not eating all your food in our house was like an Indian girl having sex before marriage. It was a sin, and it could get you hurt, if not beating to near death.

That “memory” morning was cream-of-wheat day. In most northern homes during that time, and even today the breakfast cereal was either oat meal, cold cereal (for black families, corn flakes, you would add your own sugar) or a bagel with jelly and cream cheese, or cream of wheat. I never remember grits and eggs before age 5. In fact, finding a bag of grits in Brooklyn was like finding a black woman at a hockey game. But I digress, after eating all of my breakfast I went in the living room to watch my morning shows, which were Sesame Street, Electric Company, and Zoom.