Hold Your Breath

Hard Days

My first day of kindergarten was hard. I needed my mother, hence the temper tantrum. I thought she had abandoned me in some monstrous brick and mortar building, old, void of love. Yanked by the arm, I was dragged off to an unknown destination for a meet and greet with the PrincipaI, Mr. Brooks. What an intimidating introduction. I, a young black girl, and he, a rotund white haired elderly Caucasian man, with a scowling red face. Me, with my tiny, scrawny body, arms and legs, resisting with tremendous strength though, even with the vise-like grip on my arm. It was a hard day. Five year olds are not supposed to have hard days.

That thought brings to mind a statement my then five year old son had said to me, while we were living in Onset, Massachusetts, a small coastal island on Cape Cod at my older brother’s side cottage connected to his house. A family argument ensued, and I made a decision to leave where other brothers and one sister lived in our family home, back in Derry, New Hampshire, home to Robert Frost and the astronaut Alan Shepard (which is why Derry was nicknamed Spacetown) some years after my mother had passed away. I had picked my son Tyrone up at the bus stop after school and he said, “Mommy, I had a hard day.” I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry because memories of my own hard day in kindergarten flood in. We were living in a new town, and any sense of familiarity and comfort was amiss.

My misbehavior followed me well into grade school and beyond. I wasn’t exactly misbehaving, yet it appeared that way. I was often warned by family members I would end up in reform school because of my behavior. I always felt part angel, part devil. Growing up as a child of alcoholics, life indeed was very hard. In my family of nine children, six boys and three girls, including me, we had to learn to fend for ourselves many times.

I was always filled with excitement, as well as fear to learn in my new educational environments. I do remember feeling somewhat relieved to be out of my house where family fights were part of growing up. Drunken fights between paternal uncles would disrupt a poker or pinochle game. As a child, to get away from it all, I would delve into my books to take me away from it all, or fantasize about being in a movie that I loved. I was lucky enough to find some source of spirituality from my mother as she was a devoted Catholic.

I would often read Biblical verses to her, warning, “Mummy, Jesus doesn’t like when people get drunk, but it is ok to drink wine if you want. Just don’t get drunk!” I tried to parse the voluminous sections and translate unknown verses, and many of these words were hard to decipher, so my mother would tell me to ask God how to discern biblical words. That if I asked for His help, he would come to me. When she had become overwhelmed at the fact that she had nine children born in the years ranging from 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, and 1963 in a span of 11 years, vodka became her solace.I would try to soothe her with words from God instead. And she was right. I could summon God through angels and spiritual guides.

I had grown up listening to my mother speak about her Catholic upbringing and the prayers contained in the Catholic Bible; the rituals of the church. I always thought the churches were so resplendent, the ceremonies so solemn and majestic. As time went on, my spiritual guides relayed to me in beautiful dreams wondrous things. In order for me to change my reckless behavior, for some reason holding my breath made me feel as if I was about to die, and then to exhale, I was expelling all of the bad demons out of me, as if being reborn. So I started to hold my breath and then count to ten. After count ten, (because I couldn’t hold my breath any longer than ten seconds), I was immediately transported into a new dimension. Things were “new.” I would now have a new smile, a new demeanor, and felt I was possessed with a new attitude. I am a new little girl now. I wouldn’t disrupt the class anymore, nor would I be sent to the principal’s office either, or cause grief at home, because now, I was perfect. That turnover of “perfection” never lasted too long though.

For some reason, I had always felt as a child that I had this magical connection with the Almighty. I recall many neighborhood friends suggesting that I was “special.” I remember relatives poring over me, revealing the same. “There’s something special about you.” I had some high ideals to live up to. I became a straight A student and competed with the Jewish students because they were imbued with this intelligence that was remarkable. Marcy Kaplan and Lisa Laibman were my Hebrew heroes. Warren Bulafkin, a heavy-set Jewish student, was smart as a whip and he would quote Hebrew passages from the Talmud. But I remember feeling sad that they hated Jesus and that the Jewish people had killed him. I would pray for understanding, never completely understanding it. I called upon my spirit guides but the answer never became clear to me. If I could call upon my spirit guides to help me find any lost item, like a pacifier for one of the babies in our family that was teething, (which could be a tremendous and gut wrenching time because a baby’s cry was more than I could handle) why couldn’t I get an answer about Jesus and the Jews that crucified Him.

If I lost my Barbie doll or a toy, I would ask my spirit guides to help me find the lost item, and voila, it would reappear. Since I never received an answer from my spirit guides about the crucifixion, I thought that I would go to the main sources- to the Jewish students and ask them personally about the murder of Jesus. To say they were highly upset would be an understatement.

My spirit guides would eventually lead me to a magazine ad. From what magazine I do not recall but it was a Christian/spiritual organization called the Fellowship Club that would send, free of charge, prayers for whatever ails you. They advised the members of the fellowship to say these prayers three times a day, and before bedtime, leave the prayers folded under your pillow. They were embossed in bright colors; green, blue and yellow. The yellow-colored papers were for extreme circumstances, meaning these prayers were of the utmost importance. One in particular called for prayers of relief for alcoholics. This paper was becoming battered and worn from nightly use, but still tucked ever so neatly under my pillow.

My nightly ritual was to make my bed, and on bended knees say the prayer “Our Father” three times. I was then to read the “Prayers for Alcoholics,” the invocation on the yellow paper from the Fellowship Club, which I was to read three times as well, before falling asleep, watching the stars from my bedroom window, praying for a miracle. I prayed that my parents would stop drinking. I knew it wasn’t good holy practice to wish the liquor store man’s demise simply because he gave my parents credit to buy liquor, so I had to atone for it somehow, some way. I would also ask for forgiveness when my “bad side” came out, feeling shame that my anger could reach such heights.

School was my safe haven back then, and my teachers had become my surrogate parents. They understood how much I loved learning, especially reading. My reading level in the second grade was equivalent to high school level. Trying to read along with the slower readers left me exasperated. I would wish the other students would hurry up and read faster. I was bored to tears and would pray that their reading speed would soon catch up to mine. Everyone had a small notebook encased with those golden sticky stars that showcased our achievements. My catalogue of those performance stars was voluminous. When they lost their stickiness, I captured them in my own personal scrapbook. There were many. There were so many compliments from my teachers, a barrage of kudos thrown my way each and every time I finished a book. Therefore, I wanted to read a lot because after all, after each book, I would get either a golden star or a golden compliment, especially with the speed that I read.

One particular remembrance, the last day of school in third grade, when I was to leave Ms. Sullivan’s class, as we were all being promoted to third grade, I was to be off on my own, to graduate and leave her tender hands and her sweet voice, and so I cried. I told her I didn’t want to be promoted. She asked me if I knew what the word promoted meant, exactly. I told her that I did know what it meant. She went on to remind me that I was a brilliant, pretty little girl, that I had a lot of passion and compassion for my fellow students, and how kind I was that I would read stories to the younger children. Her eyes welled with tears as she presented me with a stack of classic novels. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

She reminded me that as the younger students listened to me as I read to them, she could see their attentiveness that bordered on hypnosis. That I would put so much emotion into those stories, and that the little children were observantly quiet as they loved listening to me read. She insisted that I was sure to go far, I was sure to become somebody special. “A teacher! I’m gonna be a teacher!!!” I interrupted, as she nodded her head forcefully, with that big, beautiful smile of hers, her eyes welling with tears.

I was the last one to leave the classroom on the last day of school in third grade, lingering near Miss Ramsdell, fixating on her face so I could remember her forever; her hands, and her body language. Leaving that classroom, emptiness enveloped me; that fear of abandonment, fear of losing my favorite teacher, of not seeing her anymore. What should I do now? Leaving that classroom, I was so filled with dread, because more than likely, I knew that when I got home Mom would probably be drunk. I knew that the house would be a mess because Mom would have passed out, and I would need to clean the house. That the babies would have stinky diapers and there would be plates piled high in the sink and overflowing ashtrays.

But in all honesty, I did love coming home to the babies, or as we in the family tagged them, the “four little kids.” My baby brother Wayde, Dawn, Troy and Scott, in that order. My mother at this time had nine children, and she surely was overwhelmed. I can only imagine alcohol was her only refuge. I would tremble approaching my house coming home after school, as if in fear of a monster that was dwelling inside. I would never know what condition my mother would be in once I entered that door.

But the babies, they were my joy and my sanity, and I needed them, as much as they needed me. As much as Mummy and Daddy needed me. My parents weren’t monsters, just misguided souls, as gentle as could be. My parents would drink to excess. They were alcoholic, but in those days, they were affectionately called “drunks” within the brotherhood and sanctity of the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous, which my parents had joined in the mid 60’s, praises to my spirit guides and to God. But to a condescending, unforgiving outside world, they were labeled just your average drunken bums. Being a female “drunk” was a horrible title to hold, let alone the title of an alcoholic mother. Imagine being a female, black mother in the 1960’s. She was a pariah; lower than the scum of earth.

I can remember getting into a fight with a neighborhood touch chick, who egged me on to a fight after calling my parents drunks. She was a bit on the masculine side, and had challenged me to a fight, and I was no match, as I was 100 pounds soaking wet, while she played basketball with the fellas, and her 3-pointers were out of this world. She could outplay most of them. It wasn’t a long fight at all.

But the fight in me to get over these hard days still persists to this day. I’ll be a new woman, clean and sober. I’ve managed, by losing sight of my spirit guides and God, to bankrupt my soul through alcohol. Something inherent, and something I never wanted. I’ve started journaling, a practice that I should have started decades ago, that helps me stay somewhat sane. I still ask for help from my spirit guides and wonder if they’ve grown tired of me with my constant, unmet broken promises. But I hold my breath and I still count to ten.