The dinner wasn’t even over, and she made us leave. It made no sense to me. I was so mad, but I couldn’t show it because I didn’t want to get smacked all the way home. The after-hours bus schedule was so sparse, we didn’t end up getting home until the middle of the damn night.
Today, I understand why she wouldn’t accept a ride: She didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. Her heart was so big that she’d rather be out in the cold at night for four hours than inconvenience someone for half an hour.
It was always just us—one hundred percent fucking us. And there was no hope for me to experience anything different, because her convictions and her patterns were set in stone.
Back then, I saw her as the worst, meanest person ever. I was irritated that she’d been much more lenient with my older brother. Anything he wanted to do, she’d say “all right.” Anything I wanted to do, she’d say “no.” When I’d complain that it wasn’t fair, she’d respond: “Well, look what happened to Kenneth. I made a mistake doing that with him. I’m not making that mistake with you.”
And that was why I never really rebelled. I saw where the road of not listening to my mom went. But I never saw examples of what happened on the other road. So I made the decision to suck it up, listen to my mom, and make the best of the situation.
As a single mother just getting by, she never let me know how hard it was for her to spend so much time and money looking after me. Even though we didn’t live in the best of apartments and our neighborhood was pretty rough, my mom made sure that we lived clean and had food on the table.
Her attitude was: I’ll figure it out by myself. I’ll find a way to pay for his swimming, put money away for his education, donate to the church, pay our rent, and keep the electricity on.
Throughout my whole childhood, I only saw her reach out to one person for help: Ms. Davis.
10
* * *
CONFESSIONS OF A LADIES’ MAN
Ms. Davis was old. Really old.
She lived by herself. She was one of those sweet, powder-smelling, church-going ladies who filled their houses with dogs and cats after their husband and children left or passed away.
Not long after my brother went into the military, my mom asked her for the only favor I’d ever heard her request. She had no other choice. There were gaps of time after school or basketball practice when my mom had to be at work, and she couldn’t risk losing her job by leaving early—or losing me by leaving me unsupervised.
“Can you look after Kevin when I’m at work?” my mom asked Ms. Davis one day. “I don’t want him on the street, so can you make sure he’s at your house and doing homework, and I’ll pick him up as soon as I get off work? I’ll give you something for your time.”
It turned out to be a good deal for Ms. Davis. This is how a typical afternoon of babysitting went:
Ms. Davis: See this here stamp? Notice how it doesn’t have any black marks on it. I’m trying to find stamps like these. So any mail that you see with a clean stamp on it, take that stamp off and put it to the side so I can use it when I send stuff out.
Me: You want me to take stamps that have already been used off the mail and put them to the side so you can stamp new stuff?
Ms. Davis: Exactly. And when you’re done, go clean off all those steps over there.
Me: What steps?
Ms. Davis: The steps down to the basement. I don’t go in there. I don’t do nothing in there, but them steps are dirty. They’re filthy.
Me: Why you want me to clean ’em if you don’t go down there?
Ms. Davis: Boy, you go wash those steps or I’ll speak to your mother.
Me: Yes, ma’am.
There was so much shit in that basement, it looked like a city garbage dump. I made more than a fort out of the junk down there; I built a high-end, multiple-room clubhouse, using old cushions and blankets as walls. I hid out there as much as possible to avoid doing more useless chores for her.
That was where I first saw a naked woman. I found a Playboy in a pile of clutter, so I took it to the reading room in my clubhouse, where I had a little chair set up. I devoured every square inch of that magazine. As I was reading, I’d hear Ms. Davis calling around the house and outside the front door for me. I’d yell back, “I’m all right.”
And I was all right.
* * *
Even though I’ve seen pictures of my mom’s mother holding me when I was a baby, I don’t remember meeting my grandparents much. So Ms. Davis became my play grandmother. I began thinking of her pets as my own, bringing them down to my clubhouse to hang out. I was a lonely mama’s boy living in an imaginary world created out of boredom and blankets.
However, thanks to Ms. Davis, I learned a skill that would serve me well in life: charm. She constantly threatened to tell my mom if I stepped out of line or didn’t listen to her. And if she said anything to my mom that remotely implied wrongdoing on my part, I’d get a whupping I’d never forget. One time, when Ms. Davis told my mom I hadn’t done my homework, Mom turned red and began reaching for something to smack me with. There was nothing nearby except for her key ring, which had a small canister of Mace on it. I’ll never forget the feeling of looking at it and thinking, God, please don’t let her Mace me. Please don’t let her be angry enough to Mace me.
Since preventing a beating was a matter of survival I learned to use charm to manipulate Ms. Davis. It turned out to be one of the first things in life to come easy for me.
One day, I went on a bike ride outside Ms. Davis’s house, and I pedaled around the corner and out of her sight. When I came back, she threatened to tell my mom, and I had to escalate to Stage 5 on the Charming Manipulation Scale (CMS) to shut that down. The stages were, as follows: Stage 1: Plead. “Can you please not tell my mom?”
Stage 2: Elicit pity. “She’s going to whup me so hard. She just doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a kid.”
Stage 3: Engage empathy. “If you had been out there with me, you would have done the same thing.”
Stage 4: Appeal to values. “I saw Tao on the corner and I thought he could help me with my homework.”
Stage 5: Appeal to self-interest. “I’ll clean your back room if you don’t tell.”
Stage 6: Run out of angles. Get ass whupped.
When Ms. Davis said, “Boy, if you take that bike around the corner one more time, I will speak with your mama,” I knew I’d succeeded. You never wanted to get to Stage 6.
11
* * *
HOT STUFF
The only relief from the monotony of being under my mom’s control was spending time with my dad. But between how rarely she let him see me and how rarely he remembered to see me, that wasn’t very often.
The great thing about my dad, though, was that he’d get me cool shit.
At one point, I wanted to be a professional BMX rider. It was the biggest thing in the neighborhood; all the popular kids were tricking their bikes out. So I asked my mom for one.
“Sure, you can get a bike,” she said. I was shocked.
That shock didn’t last long. The next day, she came home with a tricycle.