Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (3 page)

Soon after my mother’s seventeenth birthday in 1966, my father traveled down to South Carolina to get my grandfather’s permission to marry his daughter—in Maryland, you need parental consent to marry when you’re under eighteen. My mother was eager to take her vows so she could get out of Aunt Juanita’s house. She loved her aunt, of course, but she sometimes felt that Juanita was possessive. Mommy once even wrote a letter to her mother and asked if she could return to South Carolina; she sealed the envelope and gave it to Aunt Juanita to mail for her. Months later, Mommy found the unsealed letter in her aunt’s room. She had never sent it. A few years later, we all discovered one reason my aunt might’ve held on so tightly to my mother: Juanita had realized that her husband was having an affair.

Back when my uncle was a young man in Severn, he had a hometown sweetheart. He eventually joined the army and left for a post in Arizona—and while he was there, he fell in love with my aunt Juanita. My aunt got pregnant, so my uncle married her. My aunt lost that child, and over time, my uncle began cheating with his first love. In 1970, Uncle Ro Ro was on top of his mistress—and right then and there, he died of a heart attack. At the time, I was too young to even know what sex was. Yet when I overheard my mother telling that story, I became paranoid that the same thing could one day happen to me.

When my father made his way down to South Carolina to ask for my mother’s hand in marriage, my grandfather—the Reverend John Jacob Jackson Jr.—gave his blessing. A few months later at the Metropolitan United Methodist Church at the end of Queenstown Road, my parents had a “rainbow wedding”—Mom’s bridesmaids wore a variety of colors, like red, blue, and sea-breeze green. But my parents don’t have any pictures from their wedding day: The film got ruined, or at least that’s the story they told me. So a few weeks after the wedding, Mom put back on her dress, Dad put back on his suit, and they posed for a photo with Aunt Juanita and Uncle Roland. After the marriage, my aunt and uncle gave my parents two acres of their land, and Mommy and Daddy put a trailer on the plot.

On October 7, 1967—less than a year into their marriage—my parents brought me home from the hospital and settled me into our white, two-bedroom trailer with the turquoise shutters. I’ve often wondered why Mommy gave up her chance at a singing career to become a wife and mother—and because my mother is still so guarded about her childhood, I may never know the reason. But in a way, I’m here today because she made that choice.

I ADORED MY
aunt Juanita. As a toddler, I couldn’t quite pronounce her name, so she let me call her Nita. Especially since I was Mommy’s first child, my aunt spoiled me. “Pick out anything you want,” she’d tell me whenever we’d stop at Woolworth’s, the five-and-dime store. We were usually on our way back from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore—by the time I was five, my parents had discovered that I had the trait for glaucoma. So each time I returned to the hospital for a follow-up exam, I had to have my pupils dilated—and that meant I needed sunglasses until my eyesight returned to normal. “How about these?” Nita would say, holding up a pair of seventies psychedelic shades with sparkles on the rims. I nodded yes. We’d sometimes leave the store with a couple pair of glasses, plus a bag filled with candy and bubble gum for the road. At times, Nita felt more like my grandmother than my great-aunt—especially since she’d adopted Mommy. Even once my other siblings came along, I was still my aunt’s favorite.

I’ll always remember the day Mommy brought home my little brother, Mikey. My grandma Eva, who lived in Baltimore, had a reddish-orange tabby cat named Snowball; Grandma probably had a white cat at some point, and after she lost it, she named every new cat Snowball. To me, Mikey looked just like the Tabby cat. My brother was tiny and pale, with red hair and greenish eyes that he likely inherited from my white grandmother. “Mommy, the cat is crying,” I’d say when Mikey let out a whimper from his crib. Though my brother was odd looking, he was the most adorable little brother I could’ve asked for.

As Mikey and I grew up, we both always looked forward to visiting our maternal grandmother, Beulah Jackson. Dad would drive our family from Severn to our grandparents’ home in Cayce, South Carolina. We usually pulled out of our driveway at two in the morning while it was still dark so that we could avoid traffic. When the sun was finally up, I’d awaken in the backseat of our sand-colored convertible Bonneville and start asking my parents, “Are we there yet?” The trip was only about eight hours—but when I was small, it felt more like eighty-eight hours.

Mommy would keep my brother and me occupied with toys and a coloring book in the backseat. Somewhere along the route, we’d usually stop at KFC and buy a bucket of original recipe chicken (no baked back then!). I knew we were nearly at Grandma’s place once we reached a certain landmark we always stopped at—a roadside attraction called South of the Border, which is located between Dillon, South Carolina, and Rowland, North Carolina. The rest stop’s mascot was Pedro, a Mexican bandito dressed in a poncho and sombrero. From there, we only had about two more hours to go.

At the rest stop, Mommy would call Grandma from the pay phone and let her know what time we’d arrive. Long before we even pulled into her driveway, my grandmother would sit in her rocking chair on the front porch and await the first glimpse of our car; Grandpa would sit alongside her, chewing tobacco and spitting it into a blue Maxwell House coffee can. For hours, they would sway back and forth and wave as friends and neighbors passed. My grandparents lived in the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else; in their little suburban town, most of the modest rancher houses came with a porch and a small yard enclosed by a wooden picket fence. “Hey dere!” Grandma would call out whenever she spotted someone on the sidewalk out front. That’s just the kind of thing traditional country Southern folk did—sit, wave, rock, and wait.

As soon as we rounded the corner onto her street, Grandma’s eyes lit up. “Hey, ya’ll!” she’d call out, welcoming us from the stairs of the porch. Once we pulled into the driveway, my brother and I nearly leapt out of the car because we were so tired of sitting. “Hi, Grandma!” we’d scream, running toward her. She’d sweep Mikey and me into a warm embrace and squeeze us so tightly. “Come here!” she’d say. “Grandma needs her sugar!” Even from the front driveway, I could smell what she had on for supper: yellow rice, biscuits, hog maws, and fried chicken.

Before we entered the front door of the four-bedroom house, we had to unpack the car—which was a job that I absolutely hated doing. My parents had loaded suitcases and bags into every part of our Bonneville: in the trunk, in the backseat, even on top. When Mikey and I were little, Mommy would take us straight inside—but when we got old enough to help, my brother and I had to drag in each of the bags, one at a time, as my parents unloaded them.

Later, our efforts were richly rewarded: Grandma Beulah always served us a slice of the most delicious homemade pound cake I’ve ever tasted. Grandma’s friend, a lady across the street, had baked the cake—she was known around the neighborhood as one of the best bakers in the Carolinas. Everyone called the lady Miss Red Dress, which puzzled me. “How come they call her Miss Red Dress?” I once asked Mommy. “Because one day, she wore a red dress,” Mommy explained, “and Lawd, she must’ve been
wearing
that red dress ’cause the name stuck!” Whenever Mommy told us a story, she acted as if she was narrating a commercial for the United Negro College Fund.

All of us kids spent a lot of time in the backyard—we weren’t allowed to play in the main sitting room because we might break something. Out back, an old rusted well sat in one corner of the yard, and though it worked, my grandparents didn’t use it. A clothesline drooped across half the yard; whenever Grandma brought in dried bedsheets and made up our bed, the sheets smelled like a mix of earth and chickens. Yes, that’s right: My grandparents kept a gaggle of chickens and one rooster. I used to hate seeing the rooster pounce on top of the chickens and bully them—at the time, I had no idea that the rooster’s aggressiveness is what produced so many eggs for my grandparents.

Grandma also kept a small garden in her backyard. Tomatoes, collards, string beans, a little corn—you name it, and you could find it in Grandma’s garden. Both at Grandma’s house and at our home in Severn, we ate well. Our dinner table typically overflowed with fresh vegetables, smothered chicken, baked yams, and buttermilk biscuits with strawberry preserves that we’d canned ourselves. When Mommy was a girl, Grandma taught her how to preserve everything from watermelon rinds and jam to cucumbers and peaches. Though my grandparents and parents were working-class people, one thing is for certain: We ate like royalty.

Indoors, my grandparents’ furniture was covered with plastic—that’s how old folks used to preserve their sofas. I hated to fall asleep on the couch; my face would sweat and stick to the plastic. Underneath the covering, Grandma’s velour couch had been reupholstered many times since she purchased it in the late 1920s; the sofa’s golden-colored fabric had tones of dark royal purple. The rest of the living room was like a museum celebrating our extended family: Grandma’s fireplace was flanked with old photos of aunts, uncles, and cousins I’d never met.

Some had on caps and gowns; others wore military uniforms. “Who’s that?” I once asked Grandma, pointing at a face I didn’t recognize. “Baby, that’s your cousin!” she said, laughing. The man in the photo looked older than my mother, so I thought he must be my uncle. But since my mother is one of the youngest of her nine siblings (Grandma Beulah was forty-two when she had Mommy!), some of my mother’s older siblings have children who are older than Mommy.

After supper, our whole family would gather ’round an old upright piano and sing. Aunt Vernaree, Aunt Earthaleen, Aunt Loretta, and Aunt Hattie—four of my mother’s sisters—lived within a minute by foot of Grandma Beulah. Each time we came to town, we’d always start out at my grandparents’ house before dispersing to my aunts’ homes. My uncle, who lived fifteen minutes away by car, usually drove over to join us. All of my aunts had pianos; once we’d assembled, one of my aunts or cousins would start out by singing an old Negro spiritual in a low minor key. Later, they’d transition to a jubilant church song. “Oh happy day!” my older cousin Brenda—Aunt Hattie’s daughter—would belt out in her thunderous voice. “Oh happy day!” By the end of the song, all of us were on our feet, clapping along and chiming in. Afterward, someone would say, “Lawd, that Brenda sure can sing!” I couldn’t wait to grow up and become one of the main singers.

At bedtime, my whole family retired to my grandparents’ back room, which was right off the kitchen. In that gigantic room, Grandma kept two of the hugest king-sized four-poster beds I’d ever seen. In fact, the beds were so big that my siblings and I could share one of them; Mom and Dad took the other. To this day, I still love four-poster beds.

Just before we left town, Dad would drive us over to a local produce stand so we could pick out watermelons, cantaloupes, wild bullet grapes, and green tomatoes—the tomatoes had to be green in order to make it all the way back up north; afterward, we’d all return to the house so my grandparents could see us off. Grandma always sent us back to Maryland with a round of hugs, a lot of love, and plenty of fresh collards from her garden. “Y’all drive safely!” she’d yell toward us as Dad slowly backed out of the driveway. “And call me when you get home!” She’d then stand there on the porch and watch after us down the road until the rear end of our Bonneville disappeared.

Every summer and at least three times a year during my childhood, we made the trip to South Carolina. Most of the time the journey was filled with laughter, music, and celebration—but I do remember one year when the energy was somber. Aunt Vernaree’s daughter, my older cousin Lisa, died when she was seven. She and some other kids went swimming in a pond and Lisa drowned. Aunt Vernaree rushed over to the pond at exactly the wrong moment: the arm of the tractor that had raked the pond held Lisa’s lifeless body up in the air. I don’t think my aunt ever fully recovered from the heartache, and our whole family felt deeply saddened by the loss. “Don’t bother your aunt right now,” Mommy kept telling me and Mikey during that trip. “Her nerves are bad.” For a while, that changed the spirit and energy of our trips. But over time, the joy slowly returned.

Each time we arrived home to Severn, our lives quickly settled back into a familiar rhythm. My father arose at six each morning to get ready for his job. Daddy worked as the display manager at Korvettes, a discount department store that was the Target of the seventies. Dad’s store was on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, Maryland. For most of my childhood, Mommy stayed home with us; when she and Dad first married, she’d worked as a candy striper at the University of Maryland, but she gave that up to become a full-time homemaker. So every morning, she awakened just as early as Dad did, made her way into our kitchen, and prepared my father’s breakfast—usually an egg sandwich, which was her version of an Egg McMuffin. Once Dad had swallowed his final swig of coffee, he headed toward the front door of our trailer, sometimes with his half-eaten sandwich still in hand. I’d often stumble, sleepy eyed, from my bedroom and catch my parents pecking each other on the lips to say good-bye.

LOVE, FAMILY, FAITH
, tradition—those Southern values filled every part of my earliest memories in Severn. We relied on God. We shared our lives with each other, with our friends and relatives, and with the neighbors who lived alongside us. And above all else, we built a rock-solid family foundation—one that would soon be tested.

M
y family was always religious—but the year I was seven, they became even more religious. “From now on,” Mommy told me one morning, “you’re going to be wearing dresses. The Bible says a woman should not wear anything pertaining to a man.” At our new church, Pillar of Truth, this was the strict rule—one of many I’d soon discover.