It was around this time that Mama really checked out. She was drunk nearly every day. I did my best to stay out of her way. We all did. My sister Teresa used academics as a way out. She managed to get a scholarship that included early college admission with student housing. Sometimes she’d invite Louise and me to the UC Berkeley campus to visit her. We’d play video games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in the student lounge. But eventually we had to return home.
CHAPTER 4
IT’D BEEN ABOUT A YEAR since I’d last seen Deborah the night she fought with Daddy. After she ran away, Mama told us not to let her in the house if she came by. Deborah was deep into her crack addiction and Mama feared she’d steal things if she got into the house when she wasn’t there. I could tell my mother missed her because after she left, that’s when she started drinking more than ever. But once Deborah left, it was like she was erased from our family. Aside from the caution not to let her in the house, her name was rarely mentioned. Overnight my big sister was out of my life, but it would be because of her that I would learn sooner than later that being female was a scary, helpless thing to be.
The first lesson came one weekend afternoon while I was home sitting on the porch. A man pulled into our driveway in a slick blue car thumping loud music. He rolled down his window and waved me over with a hand laden with thick gold rings. Even as he sat in his car I could see he was a big man, broad-shouldered and light-skinned. He was handsome and flashed a smile at me before he turned his music down and asked if Deborah was home.
“She ain’t here,” I told him.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked, looking me up and down. I knew the look. Every girl over ten knew that look. Although he hadn’t laid a hand on me, that look made me want to run and hide. But I knew the worst thing I could do was show fear. Instinctively I crossed my arms over my tiny bosom and gave him my dirtiest look. The man pouted, tilted his head to the side, and looked up at me with puppy eyes. He knew he’d spooked me, but that Mr. Innocent look he gave me only made him look even creepier.
“If she ain’t here, can you tell me where she at?” he asked, giving me a full smile with big horsey teeth. His goofy smile reminded me of Mr. Ed, a talking horse in one of my favorite TV shows, and I smiled despite my unease. He took my smile as an invitation and reached his hand out to me. I backed away and could not have been more startled if his hand were a dead rat.
“She ain’t here!” I said, trying to sound unafraid while edging my way back up onto the porch and near the front door should I need to run inside. He changed tactics.
“If you tell me where she is, I’ll give you a dollar.”
A dollar was a lot of money to me and the prospect of getting it was tempting. I didn’t know where Deborah was but I wasn’t averse to telling him a fib to get that dollar.
“Give me the dollar first!” I said with my hand on my hip, trying to look tough.
He laughed.
“Come get in the car. Ride with me to the store so I can get change. I only got twenties,” he said, pulling out his wallet and tilting it slightly toward me so that I could see it was stuffed with bills. When I saw all that money, I felt my eyes bug out far enough to pop loose and roll down the street.
He reached a hand out toward me again, wriggling his fingers in a way that made me think of serpent tongues. When I hesitated, he opened the car door and began to get out. That did it. Something deep within me said Run! It was an instinctual fear as clear and undeniable as the fear of snakes or the fear of falling. This man was a predator and I knew as sure as I knew my own name that if I got in the car, I wouldn’t get a dollar. I’d get a world of hurt I was unlikely to recover from. I dropped any pretense of being unafraid and ran into the house and locked the door.
Once inside the house behind a locked door, I peeked out at the man through a crack in the curtains. He was leaning against his car and was digging in his jacket for what I saw was a cigarette and a book of matches. I watched him light the cigarette, and by the way he smoked it—holding it tightly between his thumb and index finger and sucking on it with his face all squinched up like a fist—I knew it was dope.
“Get out of here!” I said under my breath, willing him to burst into flames or get beamed up to a hostile planet somewhere in another galaxy. Instead he lingered in the driveway and took his time smoking the joint before he got in his car and disappeared down the street. It angered me that I couldn’t make that man go away when I wanted him to. He could have hurt me and been sure the police would not be called. Even for people who were not ex-Panthers, it was rare to call on the police for help. I knew my greatest defense was to show no fear. When Mama came home, I told her about the man. She said she thought he might have been Deborah’s pimp and that I did the right thing by locking myself in the house.
Many months later I was home alone playing Pac-Man when I heard pounding on the front door. I was so startled I dropped the joy stick. A pounding like that could only mean the police or somebody looking to settle a score. I sat quietly, with my heart beating in my throat waiting for whoever it was to go away. After what felt like minutes it did not stop, so I crept into the living room and peeked out the window. I saw a skinny woman in a tube top and tight jeans hammering the door, all the while staring furtively over her shoulder. It took a moment for me to register that it was my sister Deborah. She was at least twenty pounds underweight. Her cheekbones were protruding and her eyes were sunken.
I cracked the door open using my foot to keep her from pushing her way in.
“Open the door, Lawanna!” she said, trying to push the door open.
“Mama ain’t here. She say you can’t come in if she ain’t here.”
I could see that my sister was scared of something but I was even more scared of what Mama would do to me if she found out I let Deborah inside.
“Let me in, baby girl! Somebody is trying to get me!”
I stepped aside and let her in, and she quickly locked the door. She turned to me and said, “If a man comes looking for me, don’t tell him I’m here.” Then she ran to the back bedroom and closed the door.
Within a minute there was another round of furious knocking on the door. I cracked the door again using my foot as a doorjamb and I was relieved to see a short, skinny man instead of the big pimp from before. The scrawny guy was trying to see past me into the house.
“Whatchu want?” I asked.
“Deborah! I saw her come in here,” he said, now trying to push the door open.
I pushed back.
“She ain’t here, now get the fuck off our porch!”
The man suddenly pushed the door with all his might, sending me across the room and onto the couch. He walked right in like he owned the place, opening the door to the downstairs bathroom and violently pulling back the shower curtain. I didn’t have sense enough to be afraid. I still had a little bit of tomboy in me telling me that I was fearless and fully capable of defending myself from most dangers. So I trailed behind the man, cursing him out as he searched our house.
He ignored me and continued his search. When he reached the bedroom in the back where Deborah was hiding, he opened the door and saw her. He stepped into the room and closed the door in my face. I was about to enter behind him when I heard an awful sound that stopped me in my tracks and sent my tomboy spirit running for cover. I heard the sickening thud of a fist violently colliding with flesh over and over again. He was beating my sister and I could hear her grunts as she took the blows.
After a minute or two, he came out of the room breathing hard and rubbing his fist. I shrank away from him, suddenly realizing that I too was in danger. That I was in danger the minute he pushed his way into the house. I was only spared because he was so focused on finding my sister.
The man seemed not to notice me now that his mission was complete, and I was relieved to see him walk out the front door. I locked the door behind him and went to check on my sister. She was just getting up from the floor when I came into the
room and I helped her to stand. I noticed her arms were just bones when I gripped her upper arm. Her face was just beginning to bruise up, her nose bleeding, and she was holding her stomach.
“You OK?” I asked, nearly in tears.
“Yeah. I’m OK,” she said, as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Then she made her way to the living room and out the front door without so much as a good-bye. I was terrified. Hours later I was still terrified. That afternoon was the moment I realized that being female in my hood was to be vulnerable. The only power grown women had was over their small children. I wouldn’t be a kid for long. I was quickly approaching puberty and the phase in my life when I would no longer feel safe in the world.
CHAPTER 5
RELIEF CAME FOR ME that summer when Uncle Landon came over one evening to ask Mama if she was interested in sending me, Louise and my brother to summer camp in Santa Barbara. Mama was quick to agree and I was excited to get a break from her and Oakland. I didn’t know where Santa Barbara was, but I knew it couldn’t be worse than Oakland.
Landon told Mama the camp was owned by Jane Fonda and her husband, Tom Hayden. Both Jane and Tom were supporters of the Black Panthers and friends of Uncle Landon. They’d recently returned from a working trip to Africa. The camp taught theater arts and self-esteem to children of varied races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Jane told my uncle that it would be a good idea for some Panther children to attend the camp. My uncle agreed. That summer my siblings and I were put on a Greyhound bus. It would be my first trip away from home.
Laurel Springs Children’s Camp stood on a hundred and sixty acres in the hills above Santa Barbara. At 2,800 feet above sea level, it offered spectacular views of Los Padres National Forest and the Pacific Ocean.
Before I attended Laurel Springs, I had not known I was poor. I brought a light jacket, one pair of pants, two shirts and a pair of shorts that doubled as a swimsuit when worn with a T-shirt. Toiletries? A bar of Irish Spring soap, a worn-out toothbrush and an afro pick.
I couldn’t believe the stuff coming out of my bunkmates’ suitcases! One girl brought four swimsuits and a fresh pair of undies for every day of the week. (I knew this because the days of the week were printed on the back of each pair.) The other children received care packages from home crammed with food, magazines and books.
When we talked at night around the campfire, I found out many of them had their own rooms and bathrooms at home—and they thought about the future, speculating about careers. Would they understand anything about my life? I doubted it. So I put on a happy-go-lucky front, said little about my background and threw myself into theater arts, writing and performing skits with the other kids.
I signed up to try everything that was offered: arts and crafts, canoeing, swimming, hiking, baseball, gardening; but my favorite was theater. I loved getting onstage and becoming someone else. I played a nurse in my very first play. After a performance, the counselors were always very complimentary, as if no other kid in the history of the world could have played a better nurse.
I became close with the head counselor, a woman named Marin. She was a petite brunette who I saw as a maternal figure. We’d become pen pals when the summer ended. The other camp counselors were a ragtag group of hippies who made everything easy and fun. I felt I could mess up without it being seen as a character flaw.
I was devastated when my first summer at Laurel Springs came to an end. We all stood weeping, kids and counselors, in the world’s biggest group hug. Then I reluctantly grabbed my bag, jumped in the van and headed back down the mountain toward my real life back in Oakland.
When I got home I wouldn’t shut up about camp for weeks. My siblings were not as enamored as I was because they chose not to return the next summer. I went on my own. In fact I returned to Laurel Springs for several summers in a row, and I got to know Jane better. Smiley and chatty, she often wore snug sweatpants and a T-shirt baring her toned midriff, her hair bouncing and behaving. She invited me to her cottage for lunch one day and coached me on monologues. She focused on me, taking in everything I said as if it were the most fascinating thing she had ever heard. She hugged me whenever we crossed paths at the camp, held my hand when we walked together, scratched my back when we sat next to each other. This touch, this healthy loving touch, was a revelation.
I got to know her children, who also attended the camp. There was Vanessa, who was my age. She was a spunky girl with a pixie haircut who seemed even as a young girl to know exactly who she was. Then there was Jane’s son, Troy, who was a few years younger than me. He was spider-monkey thin and full of mischief, but he was a kind boy and seemed drawn to me. I enjoyed his company. They were my ready-made summer family and I looked forward to seeing them each year.
• • •
School was the closest thing I had to a safe haven outside of Laurel Springs. But it too became dodgy when I entered puberty. I was tall for my age, and to my abject horror I was developing sooner than the other girls. When I started growing breasts, the few girls I called friends singled me out for bullying because of it. On more than one occasion my hall locker was set on fire. The arsonist would squeeze lighter fluid between the air vents in the locker door and follow it up with a lit match. I got into physical fights with the boys, too, who made fun of my developing body. One boy made the mistake of copping a feel in the hall between classes only to find himself gasping for air in a headlock after I wrestled him to the ground. A male teacher also took notice and I had to look out for his groping hands and scanning eyes. I resorted to wearing baggy clothes and a jacket even on the hottest of days to hide the hateful new body that I believed was out to destroy me.
I envied the girls whose bodies remained as curveless as a boy’s. They didn’t have to worry about being betrayed by boobs and hips set on drawing negative attention like a picnic drew ants. My new wiggly parts prevented me from participating in games I loved, like baseball and basketball, because that involved running and jumping. The worst part was feeling that I could not talk to anyone about my problems. Personal problems were not shared in my family, especially if they were related to sex. Having problems that one couldn’t solve on one’s own was a sign of weakness, and I’d learned from an early age not to show weakness. One of the worst things you could be called in my neighborhood was a punk, which was someone incapable of defending themselves.
Mama was drunk nearly every day and I did my best to stay out of her way by heading straight to my room after school or visiting Uncle Landon and Aunt Jan. My remaining sisters looked for more permanent solutions to the problems at home. Teresa was enrolled in college, Louise devised a different plan. When home became unbearable for Louise, she moved out and, in the process, dropped out of school. I didn’t know where she’d gone and pined for her because she was my best friend. About a week after she’d gone, she showed up at school one day and told me she was living in the basement of an empty house. I could see she was quite proud of herself for finding her own place to live even though it was a basement. I was glad to know she was OK and eagerly accepted her invitation to visit her place after school.
I was expecting a dank, dark basement in a run-down, abandoned house but it turned out to be in a newer home that for some reason was empty. The room was dry and had windows that provided natural light. The floor was smooth concrete and she’d managed to furnish it: stacked cinder blocks and a piece of wood with a cloth over it was a table, a few beanbag chairs to sit on, a piece of carpet remnant for the floor and several layers of comforters on the floor for her bed. I was actually jealous of her setup and would have moved in with her, but I was scared of sleeping there at night because she had no electricity. She only lived in the basement for a few weeks, after which she enrolled herself in Job Corps and moved out of state, where she eventually would work for a GED and learn a trade.
I had no plan of escape. It was my summers at Laurel Springs that enabled me to get through the stresses of my life in Oakland. Even when I wasn’t attending
camp, just looking forward to camp each summer kept me motivated. I was also staying in contact with Jane and my camp counselors via letters. Their communiqués were always encouraging and I relied heavily on them to keep me feeling good about myself because they were always full of praise. They helped to keep me from internalizing the verbal abuse I was receiving from my mother, who was keen to call me worthless, no good and destined to be a teenaged mother.
It was around this time that my half-sister, Clara Jean, who was my mother’s firstborn by a different father, came into my life. She was raised by my mother’s parents so I never saw much of her when I was a young child. Mama said my father would not accept her when they got married so she left her with her parents in the same little house on Church Street where she met our father, whose family lived next door.
Clara lived in that little house throughout her childhood and the death of our grandmother. She was a young woman in her twenties and taking care of our grandfather, who was called China because when he was a baby he was fat and bald just like the Buddha. China had a lot of health problems. He had diabetes and was paralyzed on one side of his body as the result of a stroke. He was also an amputee, having lost his left leg from the knee down as a complication of his diabetes.
The house they lived in was run-down and Clara Jean was no housekeeper. The place was infested with cockroaches and mice that stayed active throughout the day and night. When Clara Jean entered college, she found it hard to study, have a social life and take care of our grandfather. While I was visiting with them one day, she offered to pay me to spend the evening with China on the weekends so she could go out with friends. I jumped on the opportunity to make a few bucks and get away from Mama.