MY SINGLE MOTHER/ Beauty Reals

my mother and me in 1985

I am the only daughter of the most gorgeous woman in White Plains, New York. Over the years, I've worked tirelessly to learn her language, study her every move, and mimic her every gesture. And yet, I have worked the hardest trying to amass her wisdom. Wisdom, I've come to realize, had emerged from sullied and complicated situations; situations she'd wished I'd never have to experience for myself. And while it's taken some time, I now understand a mother's language is hers alone and that it's the responsibility of us daughters to develop a style of our own. Because if not for the fervent and sometimes inadvertent tutelage of our mothers, be they single or otherwise, we daughters would understand nothing.

My mother worked for the city; she was a single parent on a budget. This meant we had food on the table, clean clothes, comfortable beds, and a warm apartment, but we rarely traveled and had nothing left over for the spoils of sleepaway camp, dance classes, or designer clothing.  We were a family who used Mamaroneck Beach as our summer escape and television as our weekend retreat. Although my mother had plenty of opportunities to remarry rich and up our ante, at the protective advice of my grandmother, she'd made the wise decision to wait until I was older and off on my own. 

    However, for a short period, when I was around eleven years old, I'd begged her to remarry this radio jockey, whose interest in making me happy made him the most qualified contender for a stepfather.  He'd provided my friends and me with front-row seats to every New Edition concert in the Tri-state between 1984-1985. I still have one of Bobby Brown’s shoelaces and a signed album cover from a show in Long Island. And for a long time, after they'd broken up, I'd wonder why my mother didn't like him as much as I had. But as it turned out, he was a liar and a cheapskate, which is something my mother had shared many years later. Though I suppose that's why she played men-like video games: after mastering one, she was on to the next. Although interestingly enough, her former conquests sat idly on shelves, hoping my mother might play them again.

On my twelfth birthday, my entire family came over for cake. I’d received a video camera and twenty-five dollars, which I'd planned to use to buy rubber bracelets and Boy George stickers from the Galleria Mall. Later that night, a stranger standing on my dresser awakened me. My room was pitch black aside from the moon, which cast the palest light against my bedroom wall. So when I spotted the silhouette, I thought I was dreaming. The next day, my birthday money and the camera I'd received were missing from my dresser. When I told my mother, she appeared unaffected. But from then on, she'd kept the doors and windows locked and any loose change or particular items locked away.  

The Crack epidemic had hit White Plains, and a few of my family members had fallen victim to its lure. My aunt and uncle became thieves of the night, even when it meant stealing from their own. As a result, my mother had my brothers and I watch a true story of a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, from the summer of 1979 until the spring of 1981. She used the film to make us more aware of our surroundings and ourselves. That was around the same time a ubiquitous white van had topped the local news, abducting children in droves. Once, my older brother and I returned from the convenience store after picking up an afternoon snack of Susie Q's and Jungle Juice. But before turning the corner to our apartment building, a white van opened its doors, and a man wearing head-to-toe black yelled, "Get in!” At that moment, I was grateful that our mother had programmed us to drop everything and run. Because, unlike too many children that year, we arrived home safe and sound.

The following weekend I ran into a childhood friend whose father had been a buddy of my father's. He was distraught as he told me his father had AIDS. My limited education surrounding AIDS had me appear ignorant when I asked whether his dad was gay. A question mark appeared on his face as he replied, "No, my dad shot heroin like yours." I didn't know what he'd meant. My father died of an aneurysm; my mother had told me so. But when I'd mentioned to my mother what the boy had said, she'd said, 

“Don’t listen to what people tell you out in the streets-your father loved you!”

I hadn't asked whether my father loved me; I knew he'd loved me. And yet, my mother was the same person who'd taught me what’s done in the dark will come to light. But as she pontificated on people trying to bring our family down, something in her protest suggested the boy's words held truth. I’d later learn the boy was correct.

Later that night, I thought about how fragile life is and how much I'd had in common with people who were not my family, all the while itemizing the differences between my life and a boy I'd liked at school. He lived in a house with a basement. I did not. So he’d likely survive if Gaddafi dropped an atomic bomb, whereas I'd die. He still had both his parents. I only had my mother and a few items that belonged to my deceased father. He was white, and though some classless classmates considered me a white girl, I was a black girl, through and through. Back then, while straddling the blurred lines of adolescence, individuality seemed to be an anomaly. While at the same time, it appeared “Blackness" had emerged as this thing in a particular box. Several black classmates found my embrace of Madonna and Bon Jovi confusing.
Meanwhile, white classmates voiced their appreciation for the differences I represented while comparing me to my black counterparts. Although both were disturbing accounts of prejudice, the game of figuring out what box I belonged in took its toll. But thank goodness I had my mother, who insisted I reject any box put before me, and said, "Never wait for someone else to appreciate you; focus on loving myself." 

Even with the self-assurance my mother set in motion, blackness, on the whole, was polarized. Black men were put in jail for petty crimes. While black boys in black Mercedes arrived in front of my junior school to pick up young black girls I'd once befriended. One Friday after school, I’d missed the late bus, and a classmate offered me a ride home with her eighteen-year-old, car-driving boyfriend. During the trip, he'd offered me a piece of candy he'd kept on the dashboard. It was a white, rock-like substance inside a clear vial with a black plastic top. Common sense is what prevented me from accepting candy from a stranger. But when I arrived home, Channel 7 news flashed images of that same candy. They'd reported the candy as Crack Cocaine. And soon, Crack as a black-on-black crime was the reoccurring theme of the nation. Artists rapped fluidly and frequently on its effects on our communities, while Nancy Reagan, along with every school community, pushed the rhetoric: Just Say No as if it were that simple.

Once again, I thank God for a mother who delved deeper and made sure I watched the news. I learned Crack was an epidemic sweeping the nation. Celebrities set themselves on fire because of it; adult men and women sat half-naked in the streets begging for it while sacrificing everything just for a taste. Meanwhile, my mother repeatedly said to my brothers and me, 

    "Do drugs, and you'll be out on the street like those people you see laying in gutters!" 

What else was she to do or say? She was a single woman with young children and no one to rely on but herself. Not to mention, she, too, had lost a parent. Her mother. And after my grandmother died, my mother tried filling the void by trying to fill her shoes. But she'd learn all too quickly that attempting to fill my grandmother's shoes was too large a feat for her to bear. She'd had enough on her plate to raise three children alone, and it was asking a lot of herself to be the glue for our extended family. Besides, it was my brothers and I who needed her most. So she'd had no choice but to hammer knowledge into our heads and fear into our hearts and warn us of the daunting life of a drug addict, an uneducated person, or, worse, the wasted energy of someone who doesn't know their worth. 

   

In the winter of 1986, after a violent assault on three black men in Howard Beach, Brooklyn, my mother implored my brothers to protect their bodies in our suburban streets. She was a black woman giving her black boys the talk, "You need to behave yourself outside this house. If the police approach you, be respectful-say, yes, sir." Meanwhile, looks of terror and sadness spread across my brothers' faces. From then on, I also worried for their bodies, minds, and lives. I worried about the impact of racial discrimination might affect their entire lives. After all, they were my innocent siblings and my mother's young sons, black boys, who'd eventually become black men. 

That year, our Christmas tree was enormous. It was as if the rustle and swish of the towering pine eradicated the deafening silence swarming my mother's existence. Under the Christmas tree, I'd received a word processor and stacks of white typing paper. Ever since I was five, I wished to be a writer when I first heard my mother and father recite lines from the 'Three Little Pigs,' "I’ll huff, and I’ll puff and blow your house in." I recall the words floating off the page, transforming into three-dimensional images right before my eyes. I knew then I wanted to make words leap, flutter, and dance and someday spark the imagination of readers. But that night, I'd prayed for my mother. I prayed she'd one day have a better life. A life with a proper home that didn't require the girth of a giant evergreen to feel complete; I prayed she'd worry less about the mouths she had to feed and have less concern with putting on a brave face for people who didn't matter. She was my beautiful mother/surrogate father and deserved a beautiful life.

On New Year’s Eve, I'd watched as my mother stood over our deep porcelain sink cleaning chitterlings (pig intestines). It's a southern tradition meant to deliver prosperity in the New Year. Albeit a gross, indigestible, god-awful tradition, it reflected my mother's optimism. Meanwhile, twinkling, white lights illumined our small, warm apartment as the smell of boiled guts stifled the air. On television, NBC rattled off the year’s top stories. And yet, failed to mention the struggles of my single mother who, inside our fatherless home, worried herself to death about our safety; and felt pressured to secure a "man's job" only to be denied the position by the White Plains Fire Department because she was a woman, despite having the highest scores and best physical fitness results of all the applicants. 

My mother is also the woman who'd had to contend with my brothers and I, who, too embarrassed by what publicity might do to our social lives, had begged her not to seek vindication over job discrimination. And still, mine is a mother who took a job as a meter maid, which paid less but kept her children from embarrassment. I'm ashamed every time I think of the resistance I showed her; I wish I'd had her back every day, and I'd had a better sense of what it was like to be her: a hardworking, single mother who cared endlessly for her children. 

Today, my mother is retired. She is no longer responsible for feeding young minds and nurturing growing bodies. She is a woman who relishes Wednesday night bible study and looks forward to Sundays at church; she is a woman who takes frequent trips to North Carolina to visit her twin. And she is also a woman whose constant joy rivals all others, despite bearing the innocent eyes of a young widow. No longer a single woman, my mother is every bit the young, hot, and gorgeous single mother she once was. Only now, she carries the wisdom and gravity a well-honed life brings. It taught me to consider myself every time. I will forever marvel at my mother's irrefutable spirit.