Every Sunday we would dress in our
finest and Gran would usher me and my little sister to church. At the time we
were Catholic so there was no talking. The priest would recite his script and
the congregation would answer. We stand,
sit and kneel at the proper times. I
don’t remember when exactly, but I found myself sitting next to this girl my
age. She was also with her grandmother. Somehow we were able to communicate
under the watchful eyes of our grandmother and the priest on the podium. There
was no lingering around the church, when it was over everyone left.
The girl, ‘M’ and
her grandmother were walking the same way we were walking. I don’t remember
details. I’m going back almost forty-five years. We went to different schools. I was in
Catholic school and she went to the public school a few blocks around the
corner. M is Guyanese mixed with
Chinese. She was shy and didn’t really fit in. Everyday afterschool she would
get chased home, by ‘KC’. KC lived about five houses from me and my ‘bougie’
(bourgeois) family.
My grandmother
called KC’s family the ‘Rinky Dinkys’. Basically she meant they had no class.
In the front yard they bar-b-que’d, they were loud and fought and partied at
all hours of the night. They were my kind of people. But I was forbidden to
associate with them. A few years later
they had the best refer around and of course I couldn’t go to get my own. I had
to get somebody to go for me.
Anyway back to my
story. M use to run home from school because KC use to chase her. By the time M
got to my house she would be tired and run to my back yard. She wouldn’t come
in because she was afraid of my gentle dog, but we would talk over the fence
until we figure KC was gone.
Over the years M and
I have remained friends. We confide in each other, support each other and love
each other. We have shared our
children’s births and adventures. We spoke about our relationships, our jobs
and now that we are aging we talk about menopause and our aging bodies. Last year M was looking for a Bible. She
wanted to read Revelations during Lent and she found a Bible I gave her in
1974. I signed it, telling her I hope she could use it someday. Who would thought
38 years later, would be someday. Over the years M and I have done our own
thing, but we were always a constant in each other’s lives. She was straight
lace, okay she was a nerd. Me I was a party girl. But our lives always intermingled. She was
there when my mother died and I was there when her grandmother died. I was with
her when we mourned her fiancé’s death on 911 and thank God that she went to
work late that day. The memories we have
are long and I am so grateful for her friendship.
In the 5th
grade I had a friend, ‘C’. We went to
school together and we shared so many secrets. We shared cigarettes. She was
the first person I told when I had sex for the first time. She told me about
her first time. The school we attended closed when we were in the 7th
grade and we went to different schools.
We talked on the phone but we rarely meet up. You see she lived on the
other side of town and it was too dangerous to venture into each other’s
neighborhood back then. (Gangs) We ended
up going to different high schools. After high school C and I got together and
hung out when I lived upstate NY. She visited me when I moved back home with my
mother with my kids after my second child and second failed relationship. But
we lost touch with each other. I’ve connected with another one of our classmate
on FaceBook and she say C is still in the old neighborhood but she doesn’t know
what’s up with her. I’ve searched for her but like so many of my friends they
aren’t in cyber world.
In high school my
sister-in-law, sister, ‘S’, and I became good friends. We shared secrets. We
experimented with drugs and drank, back then, quarts of beers. We use to go on
the handball courts, get high as kites off our joints then drink our quarts of
beer and kick everyone’s ass on the handball court. The higher we got the better we played. We
use to tell everyone we were sisters and we use to say our father would go
between our mothers and make babies. I have a younger sister and her brother
and sister were younger then my sister. We use to go shopping or bowling and
pretend that our siblings were our children. We would pretend we spoke a
different language, what came out our mouth was gibberish. We had fun I could
fill these pages up with all the fun we had.
When I gave birth to
my son S brought all these baby things for him. You see my mom wouldn’t let
them give me a baby shower because I wasn’t married. Remember my family was
‘bougie’. They had these set of values, today
I find myself accepting some and rejecting others. I know I’m not better than
anyone else, maybe that’s why I lived the life I did. But that’s a discussion
for the shrink. If you are interested in my dysfunctional life read my blog Me
Verse Lupus.
S went to school up
in Oneonta. I moved up there when my son was about 6 months. I lived with S and
her man. We partied and played house. I met my daughter’s father and I ended up
playing house with him. I don’t remember
what happen but S and I had some kind of falling out and we stopped talking to
each other. I use to pass her house on
the way to where I lived. One day I knocked on her door and asked her if she
was going to still be my son’s godmother. She said. “No, I don’t think so.” I
can’t remember what our quarrel was about but I do remember that conversation,
because it hurt, a lot. As I turned my son’s carriage around she called me and
told me her cat had babies and asked if she could show my son. Our friendship was
reunited but it wasn’t the same.
S was my friend in
the neighborhood. When I started high school, I had two friends from my new
elementary school that went to the same high school as me. They were ‘T’ and ‘D’.
We got in trouble together when somebody told the nuns we were by the train
tracks smoking. T had a friend from her neighborhood that went to the same high
school with us, that would be ‘Y’. She was my friend for all of 4 months. I
wish I had never met ‘Y’. She introduced me to cutting classes and playing
hooky. I did more drugs then a little bit with her. I was wild. I wouldn’t go
home after school. Well I actually wasn’t going to school. Y was a bad
influence but I thought she was cool. I was sheltered my whole life up until my
first semester in high school. I was stupid back then, but the pass is the
pass.
My mother sent me to
Oneonta with my brother and sister-in-law. It was cool they were young, I
helped with my nephew. I could drink, smoke weed and cigarettes. But I still
hung out during school hours. My brother sent me back home after that year and
I ended up living in Pleasantville, NJ with my Aunt T and uncle V. They were cool, as soon as my mother pulled
off my uncle called me in his room and asked me if I knew how to roll. I told
him I did and he throw a baggie full of refer. My eyes lit up. We smoked right
there in his room while my aunt was in the back yard in her screen house, My
aunt T was older then my mom. She didn’t care that I smoked and drank. She told
me later, ‘you can cut a class here and there but go to school.’ She let me
drink, smoke and party all I wanted. I didn’t stop cutting but I didn’t do it
so often I had supervised freedom. Aunt T use to put a birth control pill next
to my breakfast plate.
When I started
school that September I knew ‘B’ she was my aunts’ friends’ daughter, we were
close but she didn’t party. I miss B today and wish I could find her. No one
seems to know where she is. I knew a few people because my sister and I use to
go to P’ville during the summer growing up. But I didn’t have a BFF, I was
basically a loner.
One day I was in the 3rd floor bathroom smoking a
joint. In comes ‘J’. (I’m smiling as I type this. I had no respect for authority) J smelled the herb and said, “ooo it smells good in here.”
I offered her my joint and a new friendship began. J and I are still friends.
My son and her two oldest sons are first cousins. J was pro black, she’s dark
skin and she was one of those black girls that didn’t like light skin girls.
Today she would tell you that I was the blackest friend she had. Back then I
was so into black power that I was militant.
I was like free Bobby, free Huey, burn the pigs and step off
honkie. What did I know I was 16 and
chasing drugs and men/boys. I had to have something else to talk about. J and I
became joined to the hips. We grew up together. We were so close everyone
started calling us lesbians. Today we are still friends. We always have each
other’s back. J got caught up in the crack life and would call me and give me
these stories about needing money for rent or bill or something and I would run
to western union and send her $50 to $100. I wouldn’t hear from her for a
while. Then I’d get another call with same kind of story and I was at western
union again. She would start out I know I owe you, but and I promise.
When I became sick and couldn’t work anymore J was sending
me dollars here and there. Trust me they came in handy. Today J is working in
the educational system and working on her masters. I am so proud of her.
There have been friends in between all these years. Friends
that came and gone, those I’ve mentioned were my oldest friends. They knew the
young and confidant me. My mother died
when I was 33 years young. I moved into the family house with my children and
my youngest daughter father, ‘F’ who I was with for 23 years. His son moved in
with us and everything was cool until F started smoking crack again. F’s cousin,
started hanging out with us. The cousin had a girlfriend “Ch”. We hit it off,
her mom died recently and she wasn’t close with her family. She had 3 children
with 3 different fathers too. We became
family, sharing holiday dinners at one or the other’s house.
We use to vent about our men and kids. We started hanging out
together, hitting the clubs, sniffing coke and just partying. Our men were
doing their thing smoking that crack and they weren’t helping to pay the bills.
We took care of our homes. CH and the cousin broke up but our friendship
continued. We are still friends and both of us are suffering with auto-immune
disease. I have lupus and she has Lyme disease. I remember when she was bit by
the tick. We were sitting on the balcony of her apartment just chilling one
summer evening and something bit her and she complained about it for days. Ch
gets bored easily and she’ll change her job. She would even pack up and move. But
she always gets back in touch with me. She is a strong woman. Our friendship
has last almost 20 years now.
I met another friend, ‘B’, on the city bus. Call me naïve, I
wasn’t sure if she was flirting with me or just being friendly. She invited me
to come and hang out at the bar with her. Every time I saw her she would invite
me. So this one Friday after work I went to the bar and waited for her. B came
in and sat next to me. She asked me to tell her about myself and I told her I
was married, had three children was an administrator at a home care agency. The
first thing B told me, “well I’ve been gay since I was 15.” I wasn’t really
surprised but I was shocked. During my whole life I was never approached by a
woman. I rolled with the flow and ended up having a good time. It surprised me
how excited I was. She treated me like a man would. She wined and dined me. She
gave me gifts and flowers. All those romantic things that make a woman feel
special. We went away on weekends. I would take sick days and spend them with
her. We had a thing and it was exciting. I loved that bar scene.
I was dealing with my home life and that was kind of rough.
F was seeing this woman and it was apparent he had been seeing her for a while.
Ch told a long time ago she saw him with this woman and that they had a
baby. I choose to ignore it because I
was doing my thing but they never became serious. My youngest daughter and her
man had a baby and they were living in my house and they weren’t contributing
to the bills. F wasn’t either and I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage and
everything else that went with keeping up a house. B put me in touch with this
guy who did mortgages and there wasn’t anything he could do to help me
refinance. Thanks a lot Fannie Mae. My next avenue was to sell. My daughter and
her family went into the shelter. F moved in with his girlfriend, now his wife.
Me I went to stay with B. It was suppose to be temporary. But I ended up losing
my job. I collected unemployment for the 6 months and had a hard time finding a
job. I finally found something but I was now broke and my permanent residence
is now with B. We have our ups and downs. We aren’t lovers like we were. We are
more close friends now. So I guess you can say that B is my best friend.
