Even though Mama supplemented her hospital job by occasionally cleaning homes in the white suburbs, eight mouths is a lot and we were still very poor. When I was a toddler, we were forced to move into an old, abandoned Baptist church on Jefferson Street to avoid homelessness. About nine or ten of Grandma Small’s sixteen children were already living there. My family was in the basement, only two windowless rooms for Mama and the seven of us kids. Mama strung a towel on a rod to separate our space from Aunt Louise’s and her three kids. We shared a kitchen with them and, oh, you can imagine the drama, especially when there wasn’t enough to eat for one family, let alone two.
The church basement was dark and cramped, but my mother was an immaculate housekeeper. We slept three and four to a bed and even though we had no windows, Mama hung curtains on the brick wall to make the place look as nice as she could. She kept our hair pressed, our clothes ironed, and made us use that milky-white shoe polish on our tennis shoes every week. The Lewis children were always well groomed.
We were happy to move from the church to a creaky house on Wesley Street that had no hot water. Now that I was older, I had to use the outhouse. My ass froze on that seat in those subzero Missouri winters. The alternative was to do your business in a bucket in the house—which somebody had to carry out later.
A coal stove in the middle room heated the entire small house. We’d huddle in front of the small black-and-white television to watch Godzilla, Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman, or Frankenstein (with one of my favorites, Boris Karloff) on the one channel we could get. Good reception depended on adjusting a wad of aluminum foil around the antenna and giving the console a few shakes.
Being the baby of the family was a drag. Everything I got was a hand-me-down—even bath water. After we heated pots of water on the stove, Vertrella and Wilatrel would share the first tubful. Then the boys, Edward and Larry, would do the same. Then Jackie and Robin would have a fresh tub to share. I used the same water after them, lukewarm and dirty from two kids. I felt like an afterthought.
The struggle was real, economically, physically, and emotionally. Our house was oppressive—not a happy place. There was always a sense of pressure—from unseen outside forces that prevented us from having a nice house, new clothes, and plenty of toys to the very identifiable fear that we would incur our mother’s wrath. She was volatile and seemed to be angry about something or other most of the time. There were few hugs or kisses; she did not act as though she cherished us. She criticized us and ordered us around. If you disobeyed or gave Mama sass, a beating was the consequence.
But don’t get it twisted! Mama was a great woman. She instilled values in her children that served us well throughout our lives. She was a model of hard work, civic involvement, and of making the best with what you got. She learned from life’s hard knocks and wanted us to succeed. She would call us together, sit us down, and tell us of the dangers of the world. Education was the only defense: “You will go to college and you will finish college. Land in jail, and you will stay in jail.”
I was considered a “bad” child. Quite unruly. I lied, tattled, teased, and yelled, making myself a general nuisance. I’d hit my siblings on their backs and then run and climb onto Mama’s lap, thumb firmly planted in my mouth. I lacked companionship. My six brothers and sisters paired up into three couples and avoided me. I felt left out. More than once, I heard one of them introduce our family and end with “and then there’s Jenny.”
There was little or no discussion about why I behaved poorly, no “time out.” Our parents, our village, grabbed a switch and beat your ass when you were bad, and Mama did not spare the rod.
One memorable beating took place when I ruined my freshly pressed hair. On Saturdays, Mama straightened her five girls’ hair and neatly rolled it around brown paper strips so we’d look our best the next morning in church. Mama finished my hair and sent me to sit quietly on the front porch. But it was so hot, I couldn’t resist running through a lawn sprinkler. When I heard Mama looking for me, I crawled into the doghouse and sobbed as my hair went back to the nap. I stayed there until dark. When I emerged and tried to sneak into the house, Mama was waiting with a switch. She whupped me in the street.
Now calm down, y’all, it wasn’t terrible all the time or I wouldn’t be here, for goodness’ sake! I do have some wonderful memories of my childhood. I always loved our family reunions, the excursions up and down the Mississippi River on the S.S. Admiral steamboat, and marching with my siblings in the May Day parade. I can still almost feel the sun on my face through the grapevines behind the old church when my sisters and I hid amongst the vines, laughing and shrieking hysterically as Ba’y Bro and Larry chased after us riding their hobbyhorses. I remember Mama had a real fox shawl, with a head and paws that fascinated me. When I was very little and Mama wore the stole to church, I’d sit next to her in the pew, toying with the fox’s hard little mouth. It was so nice when Mama would break out in her clear soprano, “This is my story, this is my song.”
A very special memory is of Daddy coming around on payday; that is, when he had a job. He’d arrive and call out, “Where’s my baby?” He was there every Friday with that money because he knew the mountain of anger he would face from my mother if he didn’t show up. There was a story that she had put him out once and when he tried to sneak back in through a window, she bloodied his poor head with a cast-iron skillet.
One of my cherished recollections is of tending to my mother when she was sick. I made her a bowl of cornflakes with six tablespoons of C&H Pure Cane Sugar from Hawaii and powdered government milk. She said, “Mmmm. This is really good, Jenny, a little sweet but it’s really good.” I was so proud of my li’l ol’ self!
Looking back, I see how hard my mother worked to provide for us. But throughout my childhood, she was either emotionally absent or swinging her feelings around like a hammer, figuratively and literally. Sometimes she struck people, especially those who were closest to her. And sometimes she drew blood. Her rage had no end, but then neither did the obstacles she faced.
Dorothy Mae Lewis was never the one to mess with. One day, when I was about six, I held Mama’s hand as we walked from Miss Woods’s store where Mama had bought a bottle of Coca-Cola. If I had been a good girl, I knew she would give me the last swallow, careful not to let me have too much sugar. Well, out of nowhere, her boyfriend, whose name was Jelly Bean, pulled up in his station wagon and called out for my mother, “Hey, Dorothy! C’mere.”
Now, my mother was pretty much the queen of Kinloch, and the one thing you didn’t do was summon her to do anything (and y’all wanna know where I got it from). My mother ignored Jelly Bean.
He said, “Dorothy, you hear me talkin’ to you?”
She stopped. I stopped. I squeezed her hand a little tighter, because I knew Jelly Bean was in trouble.
She said, “Go on somewhere else, Jelly. Cain’t you see I’m with my baby?”
Jelly Bean then made the biggest mistake of his life. He pulled the car over to where my mother and I stood, reached out of the window, grabbed Mama’s right arm, and said, “You gonna talk to me right now, Dorothy.”
I was still holding her left hand tightly, aware of the time bomb that was about to explode.