Then my mom quit her job as a teacher. Technically, she went on a leave of absence. I can’t remember my outward reaction to this, but my inside reaction was a constant scream of “ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? YOU QUIT YOUR JOB????????!!!!!!” I can’t imagine I said that aloud, but I was worried again. When we left my father, I assumed I was going to have just one parent supporting us now. My mom. What the fuck was that one parent doing quitting her job? She was going to make money singing in the subway and maybe get discovered there. My uncle Roger had been a subway performer for years at that point. He was a big man with a powerful voice. Uncle Roger played guitar while singing blues covers and Motown standards. He made his own schedule, was his own boss, and raised his three children pretty well. After sometimes going to sing with him in the subway and seeing that he made enough money to survive, my mother was going to follow her brother Roger’s example and do it on her own.
The great thing about this very scary plan was that my mom is a phenomenal singer. The terrible thing about this plan was that not every phenomenal singer gets discovered. I was worried my mom didn’t have enough that was special to set her apart from all the other great singers. She had two kids, a broken marriage, and lived in her sister’s guest room. That’s not how Whitney Houston started her career. I was very pessimistic. I didn’t believe in my mother then because I didn’t believe in dreams coming true then. The irony of me as a grown-up being a fat black woman on prime-time television isn’t lost on me. I’ll get to that, but first I’ll remind you that being on TV wasn’t my dream then. At the time, it seemed like my mom was expecting a miracle, and I just didn’t believe in those.
My mom pretty much decided her own hours, and she made money exclusively in cash tips. On average, she made between $200 and $300 a shift, and worked between four and five days a week. So that’s $800 or $900 a week. This was as much as she’d made in a month working for the New York City Public Schools. But this did nothing to alleviate my fears. I was afraid because she had no insurance. She couldn’t work every day because her instrument was her throat. If she sang every day, she’d go hoarse and be unable to sing, meaning she’d make no money at all. I lived in constant fear of her getting sick and losing her voice. Who would take care of us? Certainly not my dad. As far as I was concerned, he no longer had any responsibility toward us. We weren’t family anymore.
My mom paid rent to my aunt Dorothy. But Dorothy was often annoyed with us. I didn’t put it past her to kick us out of her house. As an adult, I don’t think she would have, but as a kid, I couldn’t and didn’t trust her. I knew she didn’t want us around. I can’t say I blame her. I was a smart-mouthed asshole of a kid, and my brother was an angry child who drew patterns in her carpet with dish soap.
My mom would take us with her when she sang in the subway on weekends and in the evenings because my aunt didn’t like us in the house by ourselves. Ahmed and I would sit together on a bench on the platform and watch people commute to and from work. Commute to and from their homes. Commute to and from fancier lives than ours. My mother could always command a crowd to stand around and watch her in awe. Some people would miss their trains to listen to her sing their favorite song. People would dance and sing along. She made them forget about their long days in the office. She made people happy. I watched her work her magic on everyone. Everyone but me. I watched her and I was scared. I was scared of more than just being evicted by my aunt, more than just my mom getting sick. Watching all those people put money in my mom’s bag as she sang made me worry that someone was watching her and waiting to knock her down and steal that money from her. From us. I was afraid that she would get hurt. I was also afraid that one day I’d have to do what she was doing. That I’d have to grow up and become a singer in the subway like her but that I wouldn’t be as good as her because I wasn’t as good as her. That’s a lot to worry about as a child.
If my brother was worried like me, he didn’t show it. I think he thought we were doing pretty well; he could see the money she made. Also, Ahmed was super into trains as a kid, so he loved watching the trains come in and out of the stations. A lot of times, he would get on a train, ride around for a few hours, and then come back. This was before cell phones. Can you even imagine a nine-year-old riding the subway by himself for hours at a time? They don’t make kids like they used to. Ahmed and I were scrappy! I didn’t dig being on trains as much, so I would wander around the train station. Whenever our mom played Penn Station, I would stroll from store to store checking out magazines and books. I usually brought my own books or my homework, but I was always in the market for a new book to read. There was a bookstore down there called Penn Books, and I loved it. I was in there all the time, and the people who worked there would turn a blind eye whenever I picked up a book and sat on the floor to read it. It was quiet there, which I liked. I couldn’t hear any trains, I couldn’t hear any crowds, and I couldn’t hear my mother singing to pay the rent. As long as I couldn’t hear it, I didn’t have to admit that it was happening.