My Life: Cursed or Blessed?

Copyright © 2013 by Karla Johnson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7901-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7902-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 10/07/2013

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

Life as a small child, living with my grandmother in phoenix, arizona

CHAPTER 2

The move to California 1964

CHAPTER 3

Growing up in the 70’s

CHAPTER 4

The beginning of the end of my promising career in Law enforcement

CHAPTER 5

The beginning of my breakdown

CHAPTER 6

Losing just about all my material possession’s and forced to live in my car in front of my Grandmother’s yard.

CHAPTER 7

Moving to Las Vegas—A new beginning

CHAPTER 8

Adjusting to living with my daughter and granddaughter

CHAPTER 9

Starting over again

CHAPTER 10

My first trip back to California

CHAPTER 11

Adjusting to life without my son, ron jr., And other people and places that I love so much.

CHAPTER 12

Trying hard to make things right

CHAPTER 13

Adjusting to life after a Major Heart Attack

CHAPTER 14

Living my life without illegal drugs

FINAL REMARKS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I have to thank God, and the Angel he sent to me, because without them I surely would not be here today. Many times throughout my life I wanted to give up on life, but God wouldn’t let me. He kept trying to show me that there was a reason I was put on this earth. He gave me many gifts that I do not have today, but I still have the greatest gift of all, my granddaughters. He also kept trying to show me that I had a purpose in life, and also that things would get so much better in the end. He was so right.

I thank Berry Gordy and all the singers, writers, musicians and everyone else that had anything to do with Motown records. The music that came from there in the mid 60’s and 70’s was, and always will be, the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I started listening to Motown in 1971 when I was 17 years old. I was without most of it for a few years when I left my mothers house to get married at 18, but when I left my husband I started right back listening to it. It helped me make it through life. There has always been a song to express the way I feel. Your music always made me feel like there was someone out there that understood the way I felt. During Motown, before and after, there were quite a few other great artist too. I want to thank them also, because I love their music just as much. Since the mid 80’s I have heard many great songs, but none that moved me like you all did. I will be listening to it until the day I die. You all will always be the greatest to me.

I thank my oldest granddaughter, for always believing in me, and for helping me with this book. I thank all my six granddaughters for always being the best they can be. They are truly my inspiration. I love them all. Keep up the good work. Without you I wouldn’t have a reason to live.

I especially want to thank my girlfriend and my daughter for helping to save my life the two times I was in the hospital and for sticking by my side until I was able to take care of myself.

Even though my uncle/twin is not here on this earth any more, I want to thank him for always encouraging me to write a book. Here it is uncle; this one’s dedicated to you.

Last but not least, I would like to also thank my aunt, my sisters, and also my ex-husband.

Everyone mentioned above and some I may have neglected to mention have been great. God bless you all.

MY LIFE: CURSED or BLESSED?

How did I get in the position I’m in today? Broke, disabled and left with only about ½ my normal physical abilities, due to a variety of problems I now have. Once in a while my brain seems to overload like an old computer for a few seconds, leaving me unable to think clearly during that short period of time. When it clears I’m okay. Oh wait, I remember. It all started when I was first born, as you will find out. Thank God I was in such good shape before. If I hadn’t been I probably would have been totally disabled or dead. I remember all the way back to when I was almost four years old, at least the most important things. My grandmother was a single black woman. She was very independent and proud. She gave birth to eight kids. Her kids started having kids. A few of them, including me were more or less abandoned by their parents and left with my grandmother to raise. My grandmothers motto was, none of her kid’s or grandkids would ever go into the system.

CHAPTER 1

LIFE AS A SMALL CHILD, LIVING WITH MY GRANDMOTHER IN PHOENIX, ARIZONA

1957

I’m the oldest grandchild. My name is Karla Johnson. I was a lonely and unhappy little black girl, almost four years old. I lived in the projects in Phoenix, Arizona with my Grandmother my younger sister and five or six of my aunts and uncles. My mother nor father lived there. I really didn’t know much about them. I called my grandmother mama. The first and most important thing I remember from my childhood was this. I slept in a room at the end of a long hallway with my younger sister Tanya. I also slept on the outside of the bed which was right at the doorway. The light was always on in the hallway at night. One night I was laying in bed looking down the hallway the way I always did because I couldn’t fall asleep. All of a sudden I saw another light appear at the end of the hallway. I didn’t know what it was. It started moving closer to me. I looked harder to see what it was. As it got closer I could see that it was a beautiful angel. I don’t know why but it scared me so bad that I put my blanket over my head and didn’t take it off for the rest of the night. After a while I fell asleep. For years I never told anyone, but to this day I still remember. I never saw the Angel again but I could always feel it’s presence. Throughout the years I wondered why I never saw the Angel again. I figured it was probably because I was so afraid when I saw it.

I was always very smart and very alert. I would wake up for anything unusual during the night. One night while everyone was asleep I was awakened by a strange noise coming from the living room. I got up to see what it was. It was coming from the front door. I opened the door and in fell my uncle Kenneth, covered in blood. I was so scared. I went and woke up my grandmother Sally. I went and got back in bed. I never knew what had happened or what they did to help him but he survived. I guess someone had beat him up.

I found out about school and couldn’t wait to go. My uncle Jason was born one year before I was, on the same date, January 5th. He was 4 almost 5 and he started school. I couldn’t wait for the next year so I could start. Jason and I were very close. We were more than uncle and niece. We were more like twins. We played together all the time. I was like a little tom boy. When he was four, almost five he started school. I missed him when he had to go but I knew in one year I would be going. I wanted to go so bad. The next year I was devastated. That’s the year some law changed for the school system. Because I was born in January, I had to wait another year to start. That made us two years apart in school. Finally I was able to go. I was so happy. In school I got a bit of attention for the first time in my life and I liked it. It was almost time for the winter break. I was making some sort of plaque at school for my grandmother when all of a sudden I got sick. My grandmother told me I had the mumps. She told me I couldn’t go to school for a while. I told her I had to go I had to finish my work at school. The next day when it was time to go to school I tried to go anyway but she wouldn’t let me. I was so sad. I had to stay in my room for a few days. That was right before school let out for Christmas break. When I went back to school my plaque was not there. I never saw that plaque again but I never forgot about it. It was so important to me.

One night my Uncle Jason was playing with matches. I saw him do it but I didn’t realize what could happen. I went on playing somewhere else. Later I went back to the room. I saw a big blaze of fire. I went and woke up my grandmother Sally. She was able to get everyone out safe before our apartment burned up. We all had to move in with someone else until we got another house. I don’t remember whose house we moved into.

We found a house soon It was a 3 bedroom house with a huge dirt yard. It was much different than living in the projects. There was only three houses on our block, all on the same side. Across the street was what everyone called the River bottom. There was no water over there, all the water had long ago dried up. All the ground around us was dirt and rocks. The first chance I got I went across the street to see what was in the River bottom. There was jack rabbits, lizards and all kind of insects over there. I loved it over there. There was plenty of room to run around and things to chase. My grandmother got busy planting all kinds of vegetables and fruits. She bought some live chickens and ducks. After a while we had fresh eggs, and after some of the eggs hatched and grew up we had plenty of chickens and ducks to eat. We had just about all the food we needed. Sometimes I would go over to the river bottom and catch jackrabbits for dinner. Now and then we would go to one of our relatives house where they had pigs and cows. That’s where we would get our other meat. Sometimes I would have to help catch pigs. Just about everything we needed my grandmother made or grew. There were a few things she needed like flour, sugar, cornmeal and maybe a couple more things.

One day my cousins, my uncle and I were arguing over who got the biggest piece of watermelon. My grandmother got mad and gave us a whole half of watermelon and made us sit there and eat it. After a while we were so sick from trying to eat it. We never argued over who got the most again. We had to ring the chickens necks to kill them for dinner. At first it didn’t bother me. As I grew a bit older and wiser I realized what I was doing and didn’t like it. After a while I stopped doing it. I didn’t like the way I would be left holding the chickens head and neck while his body would be running around on the ground for a while and then just fall down dead. All of the family seemed to really love the house. I loved all the open space. There was also plenty of things around that we could make toys out of. We all pretty much stayed busy. Whenever my grandmother saw any of us kids just sitting around she would say an idle mind is the devils workshop. I always remembered that and tried to stay busy playing or helping my grandmother with yard work. My grandmother always stayed busy doing something. We always had indoor toilets but a lot of our relatives didn’t. They had outhouses way out in their back yard. It was like a big wooden box with a door. Inside was a wooden board with a hole cut out of it for you to sit on. The Insides of most of the Outhouses were so nasty, and stank so bad that I hated to use them. Most of my relatives built or helped build their own houses. Maybe that’s why they had Outhouses. My grandmother never built the houses we lived in but she built other things in the yard. She knew how to put in a new toilet and all sorts of things. She was always putting up fences and gates around things. She made chicken coupes and other things so the small animals would have a place to live.

Sometimes we used to all go pick cotton for extra money for the household. All the girls and the women wore long dresses and bonnets that my grandmother made. I guess that was to help keep the sun off of us because it was so hot. We each carried long sacks to put the cotton in. One time after working all day, I made seventy-five cents. My sister Tanya made twenty-five cents. After going there a few times we stopped going there. I don’t know why. I guess we just didn’t have to anymore.

Every now and then I would get lonely and wanted some attention from my grandmother so every now and then I would sit in the room along with my aunts and uncles and listen to everything they would say and go tell my grandmother. Nobody told me to do it. I just thought maybe it would make my grandmother like me more. When I told my grandmother what I heard, later my aunts would get in trouble. They would get whippings. They never found out how she knew what they were saying. They thought my grandmother had some sort of extra special hearing. My grandmother seemed to like it when I told her the things I heard. After a while I realized what was happening I stopped listening to them and telling. I know my grandmother didn’t like it when I stopped telling but I just couldn’t do it anymore. My aunts never found out it was me. A while later I guess someone else must have started telling on them because my aunts and uncles learned about a new way to speak to each other called pig latin or something like that. After a while I learned to understand what they were saying but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t telling on anyone anymore.

My uncle Robert had gotten married and had a couple of kids. I guess him and his wife couldn’t get along very well. They ended up divorcing. I think my uncle moved to California after that. His wife would bring their two boys over every now and then for my grandmother to baby sit. The boys were a bit younger than I was.

When I was about six or seven my Aunt Shirley met a man that she fell in love with. She was about 15 or 16 years old. The man was about 35 years old. He owned property, had his own business and had a lot to offer my Aunt. He asked my grandmother if he could marry my Aunt. She said yes and they married and she moved out. My Aunt Gloria was the last of my grandmothers daughters living with her. She was a bit older than Shirley. She got pregnant by a Mexican guy. She had no plans to marry the guy. She thought of adoption for the baby but decided to keep it and raise it on her own. My grandmother wouldn’t have let her put the baby up for adoption anyway. Every night I would hear the baby cry. I would get up from my room go in my Aunts room change the baby, give him his bottle and put him back to sleep then go to sleep myself. A few months later she moved out of state. Around that time my Aunt Shirley had her first baby. I liked going to Aunt Shirley’s house. It was the most modern and the most beautiful house I had ever been in. In the living room there was an extra door. Through that door was my uncle Marlon’s barber shop. Whenever I could I would sneak in there and play on his chairs. I loved the way they could go up or down and turn around. There was a soda pop machine in there too. None of us kids drank soda at that time, only the grown-ups. Most of the grown-ups were crazy about them. They were especially crazy about coke’s. I would always hear them saying bring me a coke. They just had to have a coke. Once in a while my aunt would have me go over to their house to babysit while her and her husband would go out for a while. I was about seven or eight. The first time they left I was doing fine with the baby, he had been fed and was asleep. I was asleep myself when I heard the baby crying. I got up gave him his bottle and picked him up to burp him. I was walking with him when all of a sudden I dropped him on the hard floor. There wasn’t any carpeting back then. My aunts floor was made out of some type of hard tile. The baby started crying so hard. It was steady crying with no breaths in between, more like screaming. I got so scared. Then there was total silence. I had seen babies like that before. The baby’s mouth was open like he was trying to breath but he couldn’t. I was so scared. I thought quick about what I could do. I had seen other people take their mouth and blow into the babies mouth so that’s what I did. The baby started gasping for air and then crying a little and then he seemed back to normal. I sat up for a while and then he seemed fine. I put him back to sleep and never told anyone. Thank God he turned out fine.

It had been quite a while since we had seen our mother. One day she appeared with a little girl about two years old. She told Tanya and I that the girls name was Cindy and she was our sister. We were very happy to see her. My mother stayed in the house along with everyone for about two weeks and then she left again and probably went back to California. I hated to see her go but I had gotten used to it. When my mother left she left Cindy with us.

Before long my Uncle Kenneth’s white wife from California brought her two babies, ages maybe 2 weeks and 2 years old. She gave them to my grandmother and told her whatever she does don’t ever let the father have them. Now living in the house was, my grandmother two of her sons, me and my two little sisters, and Uncle Kenneth’s two babies. My Uncle Richard was around 20 or 21. The way I got it was at one time he was a boxer, he was married with two kids and doing fine. He had his own home. One time late at night a car came through the yard, busted through the house and killed his kids. He was never the same. He sank into a depression. Him and his wife ended up divorcing. He then moved a trailer into my grandmother’s yard and that’s where he stayed.

One time my mother sent me and my two sisters a bunch of toy’s, including a trike and a bike. All six of us kids played with those toy’s and had a good time. We never really had store bought toys before so of course none of them lasted for long. Before then we made all our toy’s and enjoyed them. The only store bought toys we would get for Christmas were jacks with a ball, marbles and jump ropes. We all rode on the bike and trike. One day Jason was riding my little sister Cindy. Somehow Cindy fell off and hit the ground so hard. One side of her face was scarred up pretty bad for a while. My grandmother kept putting some kind of cocoa butter cream on it and it went away after a while.

A few times my father came to visit my sister Tanya and I. He would always try to talk my grandmother into letting him have us but she wouldn’t. One time my grandmother let him take me and my sister Tanya to the store to buy us something. He took my sister Cindy too even though she wasn’t his daughter.

I had been getting a glass of water and mixing sugar in it for maybe a couple of years. I didn’t like milk and never drank it. I would take a glass to bed with me in the night time. My grandmother found out after a while and started whipping me whenever she found it. I stopped putting it under my bed but somehow for a while it would appear anyway. The whippings continued. Although I stopped taking my sugar water to bed at night, I didn’t stop drinking it. I would sneak and make some every day. I never drank milk. I don’t know why but I hated it. After a while my teeth had started to hurting me. I didn’t say anything to my grandmother because I didn’t want to make her mad. She always said over and over to all the kid’s A child’s place is to be seen and not heard. We would get hit sometimes just for talking. After probably months of hurting, I finally told my grandmother one night. She got up and we walked for what seemed like miles to our Preachers house. She told him the problem. The Preacher prayed over me for what seemed like hours until finally I couldn’t take it anymore. Listening to that Preacher praying for what seemed like hours when it wasn’t doing any good seemed to make things worse. Even though my mouth hurt worse than ever I told him it didn’t hurt anymore. That’s when I first learned to really deal with pain. My grandmother took me back home and I went to bed and never spoke of my mouth again.

Quite a few of us had started eating dirt. The dirt where we lived was like red clay dirt and we loved to eat it. My uncle Richard and I had empty candy cans we would fill with that dirt. To us it was like candy, a good snack. We never had candy or anything like that unless it was Christmas time.

My grandmother so I was told used to be both a teacher and a cook. She would help me with my homework during the first couple of years of school. When I was about seven she started teaching me how to cook all kinds of food. Then to wash dishes and clean up the kitchen. Soon she wanted me to clean the kitchen every night and cook with her every day. At first it was okay, then it got to be too much. I was already like a mother to all the little kids in the family trying to keep peace and teach them everything I knew and still getting up at night with the little ones. All the little kids had started calling me mama jack. Sometimes me and my uncle Jason would get into fights because he would pick on the little kids sometimes. My little sister Tanya would pick on the smaller kids too. I would always stop her.

My grandmother I guess would work in the yard if she didn’t have a job to go to. I never knew for sure and never asked. I just knew she wouldn’t be at home sometimes. She had a large tub and a scrub board where she washed everybody’s clothes. She made home made ice cream sometimes out in the yard. Everybody loved that ice cream.

My grandmother had started waking me up in the night whipping me if the kitchen wasn’t clean every night. Sometimes even if it was. I hated it but I started getting used to it. I was a very good kid but for some reason she always had a problem with me. I felt so unwanted and unloved. I tried to do everything she wanted me to but sometimes it didn’t get done. One time she whipped me with an extension cord. It left a permanent mark on one of my legs. It made a terrible scar, like a half moon that I still carry to this day. Sometimes I used to jump fences for fun. One time I jumped a bob wire fence. I didn’t jump high enough and it made another terrible scar, this time on my other leg. The teacher would make me go to the nurses for a band-aide whenever she saw my scars. It took a long time for my scars to heal because for some reason I would eat the scab off all my sores for as long as I could. I liked eating it. When the teacher would see the other scars she would tell me to go to the nurses office for a band-aid. The last scar she saw was so bad and nasty she whipped me to the nurses office. I didn’t like that. After that I stopped eating them and all my scars would heal like they were supposed to. I still carry those scars to this day. Half the time I would walk around not thinking about what I was doing. My mind would be so full from thinking about all the things that were going on at my household. I would have accident after accident. I had become so shy and clumsy. I didn’t care about myself anymore. One thing that kept me going was taking care of the little ones in the family. I loved those kids. I never wanted them to feel what I felt. They all still called me mama jack and I thought it was so cute. I continued doing what I could to look out for them. I kept getting good grades in school. I continued trying to do whatever I could to help and please my grandma but that didn’t change the way she felt about me.

There was a baby duck that I had gotten attached to. I saw him when he was first born. He was my pet duck. I never told anyone though. When he was fully grown I went off to school one day. When I came home there was a duck fully cooked on the table. I went outside to look for my pet and he was gone. I didn’t eat any of him and never ate duck again. My grandmother would braid me and Tanya’s hair using strips of stockings so our hair would stay neat longer. Our hair was thick and nappy, it wasn’t very long either so she had to keep it braided. Cindy and Karen had long hair that was pretty easy to comb. It wasn’t thick like me and Tanya’s so it wasn’t hard for her to comb their hair. She braided their hair without the strips of stockings. Because of the braiding, me and Tanya’s hair grew pretty long. One time Tanya and I got ring worms. I guess because our hair stayed braided too long and we played in a lot of dirt. Once in a while my mother would come to visit. She happened to come around the time we had the ring worms. Our hair had grown quite a bit but my mother cut all our hair off bald. She took Cindy, Tanya and I to live with her. As soon as we went to school I knew the kids would be laughing at us. I was already prepared for them. I took my wig off, tossed it up in the air and caught it. I put it back on my head and started laughing. I made a joke out of it before they could. They all laughed too. Tanya and I didn’t have a problem after that. One day my mother took my sisters out to eat. When we got back home, for some reason my mother told me to never call her mom again. I didn’t know why and didn’t question it. I did as she said to this day. I never called her by her name either because I would feel disrespectful. She told everyone I was her sister. She never told my two little sisters not to call her mom. That just added to my sorrow and confusion. By this time my smile was just about totally wiped away. I still carried on as usual. As far back as I can remember I never made noise when I cried, tears just came out.

There was a time we lived with my mother. I guess she worked in the day and most of the night. I just know she was hardly ever there. One morning my mom wasn’t there and it was so cold in the apartment. Me and my two little sisters had on the pajamas with the feet on them but we were still cold. I might have been 7 or 8. There was a wall heater but it wasn’t on. I had seen my mother do it so I tried. I turned on the gas, then I went to find a match. As soon as I found one I went back to light the pilot light on the heater. Before I could get the match all the way up to it, out came a big ball of fire. It made a big whoosh noise. I fell back onto the floor. I saw that the bottom of my pajamas had caught on fire. I started jumping around. I got a small blanket or something and started hitting it against my feet and soon the fire was out. I took off my pajama’s and hid them so my mother couldn’t find them. She never came back home though. Someone else came to get us and took us back to our grandma.

All kinds of things would happen to me. Back in Phoenix one day we made a see-saw. We found a huge flat board put it across the wooden fence. My sister Tanya and I got on. It was working real good. All of a sudden we heard the Ice-cream truck. Without warning my sister jumped off. I tried to get off too but before I could, my end went soaring up in the air and somehow I was left dangling off the end by my skirt which meant my panties were completely showing. We all wore hand-me-down clothes. One day my teacher called me to the front of the class. Soon as I got up there the pin popped on my skirt and it fell to the floor. I was so embarrassed I just went and sat back down. My teacher didn’t bother me again that day, she knew I was embarrassed. I had to walk a long way to get to the bus stop for school. My grandmother made my lunch everyday. We didn’t have whole bags. The bags were torn into strips to wrap sandwiches. I got on the bus and had made it halfway down the isle when the paper came loose and out fell my sandwich, a biscuit and chicken feet. Everyone laughed so hard at me and my sandwich. I just sat down quietly. I loved chicken feet before that happened. In our town just about all the kid’s went around barefooted all the time or wore thongs which are called flip flops today. I was so proud when I got a pair of thongs. When I got baptized I wore those thongs into the lake. The Preacher was trying to lower my head into the water when one of my thongs came off. He tried his best to hold me but I broke away first and got my thong. He had to reach under water and grab me because I couldn’t swim.

In 1964 Gloria sent word to my grandma when I was about in the fifth grade that she wanted me and my two sisters to go out to California and live with her.

CHAPTER 2

THE MOVE TO CALIFORNIA 1964

My uncle Robert and aunt Gloria drove out from California to get us. When they came out to get us, my grandmother had packed some of her clothes and the rest of the kids as well. When my aunt and uncle came they were so surprised when our whole family got in the car. They didn’t say anything, they just looked at each other. I knew the look by now. Some of us sat on top of each other. The car was so crowded but we were all trained to be quiet. My uncle Jason made the mistake of whining about it being too crowded. Before we knew it my grandmother had reached from the front seat to the back seat and gave him a back hand lick. She was very quick. The rest of the trip you never heard another noise.

Everything was so different in California, so beautiful and so green. Looking back on it we were kind of like the Clampett’s on The Beverly Hill Billy’s when they first moved to the big city. There were so many people in Los Angeles. I just couldn’t believe it. I had been out there before when I was a smaller child. I wasn’t old enough to know the difference then but now I could. There was a big difference between Phoenix and Los Angeles. I just loved it. There was so much empty space in Phoenix and hardly any grass, but not here. People lived so close to each other. My family lived with my Aunt Gloria until we got a house. My grandmother would not release me and my sisters to my Aunt.

While we all stayed at my aunt’s house. She showed us a place we could go to to play. It was called the Catholic Youth organization. We started going there every chance we could. They had all sorts of games to play and also taught us a Catholic prayer. We loved it there. My aunt was Catholic. My grandmother and us were Baptist but we kept going there anyway. We prayed with them and everything. One time we got home from school, I got into my play clothes and ran outside to go to the CYO, when I was maybe less than halfway down the street I heard my sister Tanya yelling my name. I stopped and looked around just as she had stepped out into the street. A car came speeding down the street and hit her. She flew up in the air and hit the ground. I went rushing to her. I called to her and asked her if she was okay. She sat there a couple of minutes and got up. Somehow she was okay and able to walk. We went on to the CYO after that. We also found a park down the street. My first time there I saw something they called a merry-go-round. I had never seen a park or one of those. It looked like so much fun. There was quite a few kids on it. While it was still going round fast I ran and jumped to get on. It hit me in the side so hard that I fell on the ground. All I could do was lay there for a while. After some of the pain went away I got up and started looking at how other kids got on and I figured it out and got on. It was so much fun.

When Christmas came it was so beautiful. We had a tree filled with all kinds of wonderful store bought toys and stockings for us all. With my grandmother we always had a tree with stockings hung on it. There were also presents always under the tree. We would get presents like jacks and balls, marbles and jump ropes. We all loved our presents, but this tree had lots of different sizes of presents under the tree. One of my presents was a pair of skates. I never had skates before. I had seen kids skating since we came to LA so I knew I could do it. I put them on and went outside. I was a little wobbly on the skates at first but I learned how to skate pretty quickly. I was skating down the sidewalk when I came to a little hill. I skated right on up. I slipped and fell. I hit the back of my head so hard. I asked myself what’s your name? I knew the answer so after a couple of minutes I just got up and continued to skate. We also got dolls and other things. We all were very happy.

One time my grandmother took all of the kids with her on our first city bus ride. There was me, my uncle Jason, my two sisters and the two youngest cousins Ronnie and Karen. I don’t remember where we went but when we got off the bus all I heard was my grandma yelling Taaaanya, Tanya real loud. I looked at the bus and saw Tanya in the window of a bus seat as it took off. We all had to go all the way to the end of the line to the bus station to get her. It took quite a while for us to get used to all the changes but we did. I think it was harder for my grandma though.

After a while my grandmother found a house and we moved in. There was now my grandmother, her two sons, me my two sisters, and my two cousins living there. My Aunt Gloria would take me to her house once in a while so I could baby sit. Her husband Mark was a nice man. His mother would come over once in a while to visit. One day she pressed my hair. I think that was my first time getting it pressed. She got attached to me and asked my grandmother if I could live with her. Of course my grandmother said no. That woman really liked me. She only had one child, her son Mark. While I was at my Aunt Gloria’s house she found out about my teeth and took me to the dentist. I was around 11, it was my first visit. They pulled a couple of my teeth. It was wonderful. No more pain for the first time since I was around 6 years old.

My grandmother put all the kids in school as soon as she could. I was in the sixth grade. I had been playing the flute for a while in Phoenix so I kept playing it. It was something I really loved to do. I took the flute home every day and practiced every chance I got.

My mother would come and get me and my two sisters and take us to live with her every now and then all throughout our childhood but it would never last long. She would always end up in prison or one time I was told a mental institution. One time she had a car. She took us somewhere and as we were getting out I accidentally shut the car door on my little sister Cindy’s hand. My mother hit me so hard up side the head. One time we stayed with her when she had a boyfriend, she got into a fight with him. He got a knife grabbed my sister Tanya and put the knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. As my mother fought with the man she yelled for Cindy and I to get out of the house and that’s what we did. Before long Tanya came outside too. My mother came outside after a while and took us next door to our Aunt Cynthia’s house (the white one). She left again and didn’t come back. I don’t know what happened to my mother or her boyfriend. I never saw the man again. My Aunt Cynthia was the mother of the two cousins that lived with my grandmother and the rest of us. She kept us long enough for my grandmother to come and get us. She took care of us the best she could. She didn’t know how to comb black kids hair so she had a neighbor next door do it. We were just there a few days. Another time we lived with my mother she had a girlfriend. When Christmas time came she took me my two sisters and my uncle Richard to Pep Boys late at night. Her and my Uncle Richard broke the window of the place, we all went in. We all picked whatever bike we wanted. They broke the chains off the bikes and we all got on a brand new bike and rode home. Not long after that she disappeared. We went back to grandma’s. A couple of times she had us she would break into Pike’s Peak at Long Beach. She would give us a great time. She would let us ride whatever ride we wanted. Another time she had us she was growing a backyard full of marijuana and making home made liquor and selling it. She had me helping her. She had a cigarette machine. I had to roll cigarettes for her too. I was maybe in the 7th grade. After a while she got arrested. My Mexican Aunt who was married to my Uncle Robert came to stay with us until my grandmother came to get us. There was another time my mother had us with her while she was stealing from a dept. store downtown. When we all came out of the store the security guard tried to stop her. It might have been a policeman. Somehow they ended up shooting her in the leg while she was running down the street. She never stopped running though. My grandmother had to come to get us because my mother disappeared. Of course we ended up with my grandmother. When I was about in the 7th grade and lived with my mother I was still very clumsy. One evening I was making a salad. I accidentally dropped the big glass bowl I was making the salad in and it broke. Without warning she hit me in the eye with her fist. I had a black eye for a while. There was another time we stayed with my mother, she had dressed us up as cute as she could. She always dressed me and my two sisters exactly alike. She had tried her best to teach us all to walk and talk a certain way. She wanted us to be models or something. The only one who had a talent for it or wanted to do it was my sister Tanya. It came natural to her. My mother had just bought a used car that barely worked. While she was driving to the modeling agency she told me that if the brakes go out to get on the floor and pump them. I didn’t know anything about cars or brakes, I was just a kid. I just told her okay because if I had said anything else I might have gotten hit. While she was driving all of a sudden she hollered for me to pump the brakes. I got down on the floor and started pushing the pedal that I thought was the brakes. I don’t know what happened but the car started going faster. My mother kept steering with the steering wheel until she turned up into a driveway and ran into a cement wall. It just happened to be the place where we were going, the modeling agency. She sure knew how to drive that car. None of us were hurt, just minor injuries. The car didn’t crash very hard. I was surprised my mother didn’t yell at me or hit me. She just told us to get out and we all went inside. They asked us to walk around. The only one that walked the way they wanted was my sister Tanya. The people there were very impressed. When we left we left the car there and went home. My mother disappeared again shortly after that. My mother had disappeared so many times in our lives that we had gotten used to it.

I did one year of elementary school in California with my little sisters. I was a good kid and never got in trouble. There was only one incident there that I handled on my own. My smallest sister Cindy came running to scared one day saying some boy was trying to hit her. I talked to the boy. He went and got his big sister who was my age. She told me to meet her after school to fight. I told her I would. I had made a good friend named Sarah, who was in my classroom. She told me not to go because the girl would bring her bigger sister from Junior High. I was not afraid of anything or anyone so I went all by myself. Just about the whole school showed up. The girl did have her sister there. The girls sister put a stick on her sisters shoulder and told me to knock it off and I did. When I did we both started fighting. I was winning so her sister jumped in. I wasn’t crazy, I took off running but nobody could catch me.

The next day at school it was like nothing had ever happened. Me and the girl turned out to be friends after that. I invited my friend Sarah (The one who told me not to go to the fight) over to my house one day. There were four apartments. Two upstairs and two downstairs. We lived upstairs. There were walls on both sides of the staircase so you could only see from the bottom of the staircase or top. While we were sitting at the bottom of the stairs talking, we heard a noise. We looked up and saw a terrible thing. My uncle Richard was standing at the top with his penis out. He had his hand on it moving it back and forth. I had never seen him do that before so it was very frightening to me. It reminded me of when I was smaller. I always walked to school and back by myself. There were a couple of houses along the way where men stood in the windows doing the same thing. Whenever I knew of a place where they did that I would try to avoid going by that house. Sometimes there was no other way I could go so whenever I got close to that house I would just make sure I didn’t look that way. I didn’t want to continue sitting on the stairs when I knew what my uncle was doing. Sarah lived right across the street so I asked her if we could go to her house. She said yes and off we went. I never had friends over again after that. I never went to my friend Sarah’s house again either. I don’t know why. Sarah and I would just talk when we could at school. I also had her phone number so every now and then I would call her. Sarah and I never talked about my uncle and never told anyone. I guess she had already been exposed to things like that just as I was. There was only two apartments upstairs. We lived in one and the other was empty. My uncle Richard and my uncle Jason had started going over there sniffing glue out of a paper bag along with some other kids. Once when I knew no-one was in there I peeked in there. It was horrible. It was filthy and smelled really bad. I never looked in there again after that.

Me and my two sisters slept in the same room in the same bed. One night I felt a hand go down in my panties and I woke up. It was my uncle Richard standing over me. I got so scared. I jumped straight up and went and woke my grandma up and told her everything. She slept in the living room on the couch. She said If you don’t get your ass back in there in the bed. I walked back towards the room like I was going to bed. Soon as I thought my grandma was sleep I snuck back in the living room, climbed up on top of the back of the couch above her and slept. For some reason my grandma would go off sometimes and take all the little kids, leaving me alone in the house. One time she did it My uncle Richard came home. Soon as he saw me he started coming after me with a weird look in his eyes. I started running through the house. He was chasing me. He caught me by the arm and I started yelling. From out of nowhere my uncle Kenneth appeared. Uncle Kenneth told Uncle Richard to let me go. He wouldn’t so my Uncle Kenneth started fighting with him. Before I knew it my Uncle Richard hit my Uncle Kenneth in the head so hard he fell. I took off running out the back door. My Uncle Richard was not far behind. Soon as I opened the back door instead of running down the stairs I just jumped over the rail down to the ground. my legs hurt so bad when I hit the ground. I looked up at the top of the stairs to see if he was still going to chase me. He just stood there looking at me and shaking his head looking puzzled. I was able to walk so I decided to get out of his sight until my grandmother came home, just in case he wanted to come after me again. Taking a bath was difficult too. One time I was in the tub I didn’t think he was at home. Even if he was I didn’t think he would bother me because everyone was at home and awake. I was in the tub when he burst in. I jumped straight out. I grabbed a towel. He tried to grab me but somehow I got out the door and out of the bathroom without being harmed. I didn’t bother telling my grandmother. After that for some reason he stopped bothering me.

A while later when I was 11 or 12 I started my period. I knew what it was because in school we learned about it. My grandmother did not want to discuss anything personal like that. She barely wanted to talk to kids about anything. I was afraid to bring up my period but I had to. I told my grandmother. She said You’d better stuff some rags in there. She never gave me money to buy anything either so I used the rags. I guess that’s what she always did. I don’t know. I know in Phoenix I would see her tie her breast down with a rag. That’s why when I started getting my breast I did the same time. When I got to LA, someone bought me my first bra, probably my aunt Gloria. I had never seen one before.

I went into Jr. High still playing the flute. I was still clumsy and shy. When something too embarrassing would happen to me, I would transfer myself into a different school. One day I got a pair of new shiny black patten leather shoes. They were so beautiful to me. It was raining when I wore them to school. The recess bell rang. I went stepping outside so proud. Soon as I got right out in the middle of the school in front of everyone, I slipped and fell all the way to the ground with my skirt up over my back showing my panties. I left school right then and never went back to that school. There was another time in the auditorium we had some sort of assembly. All the kids were there. Someone said out loud what’s that smell? Someone then reached out their hand and touched my hair and shouted uuuugh real loud. Everyone looked at me and started laughing. My grandmother had started pressing my hair with lard. I guess back in Phoenix that’s what everyone who pressed their hair used. My hair did have a bit of a smell to it and it was really greasy. I transferred again. I started paying attention to the way the other kids looked. I started trying to make myself blend in the best I could. I asked my grandmother for money to buy me and Tanya new clothes. I was surprised she gave me some. It wasn’t much but I was glad to get it. I went to a cheap clothing and shoe store I new about. It was hard for me to find an outfit for myself because I had picked up quite a few pounds since we came from Phoenix. I finally found a couple of outfits for myself and a couple for my sister. I bought us each a pair of shoes too. We both loved the way the shoes looked. The same day we wore them we came home with sore feet. The shoes looked pretty but they were made cheap. They had given us bruises. I kept wearing mine though. I didn’t have another decent pair and I knew not to ask for more money. When ever my mother would come to get us she would always buy the three of us nice matching clothes and shoes but when she would get taken away it would be like open house in our house. A lot of relatives would come there and get all of our clothes furniture and anything else she had. My mother loved nice things and always managed to fill her house with expensive antiques and unusual things. She would always buy fine clothes for herself and for us.

My sisters and I were back with my mother again and I was going to a different Junior High near my mothers. It really didn’t matter about which Junior High I went to because I didn’t have any friends in any of them. The only friend I had made In California was my friend Sarah, back in Elementary school. I knew her phone number but I didn’t feel right calling her. There was a boy down the street that liked me and I kind of liked him. One day he took my sister Tanya’s ball away from her. She started crying and came to me. I went to the boy argued with him and made him give the ball back. We didn’t speak to each other again after that. A while later I got into a fight with another boy over Tanya. I was very protective of the little ones. Even though I had my two little sisters there at home, I started getting lonely for a friend or someone to talk to. We were new to the school and I really didn’t know anyone. I tried to think of a way to make friends at school. I thought hard. My mother kept a lot of cans of candy in the house that she would sell to make money. The next day at school I got a big bag. I put as many cans as I could carry in it. Probably around 6. I gave a can to whoever I wanted for a friend. I got a lot of attention. Word got out I was giving away candy and I had the whole school trying to be my friend. Word also got out to the Principal. The School called my mother. I got a terrible whipping. I stayed at the same school for a while. For the next few days kids kept asking me for candy. After I would tell them I didn’t have any more they didn’t have anything else to say to me. After a while things went back to normal. That’s when I learned another valuable lesson, you can’t buy a friend. By the time I reached about the ninth grade I had decided I didn’t need a friend. I would play with my sisters and cousins sometimes and other times I just tried to keep to myself. I guess my music and my books were my only friends. I loved to read.

My Aunt Gloria was divorced from her husband Mark. She got a civilian job at the police department where she met and fell in love with a divorced cop. He had two kids. My Aunt Gloria needed me to babysit while her and her boyfriend Desmond the cop went out on a date. I took my little sister Cindy with me. I was about 11, my sister about 7, my cousin about 5. They left and everything was fine. I was in the living room when I heard a loud noise in the bedroom. I ran to the bedroom and there was my little cousin Raymond frozen in place holding a gun. It was aimed at Cindy. I carefully got the gun away from him. It must have been my Aunt Gloria’s boyfriends gun. On the wall directly behind where my little sister was standing was a hole in the wall. I put the gun back in the holster. None of us ever talked about it. I guess my Aunt never found out because she never brought it up.

My mother was in prison at one time. My uncle Robert came by and took us to see her. I was maybe around 13, my