My earliest memories are bliss – cutting the grass with my father on a riding mower and Mom feeding me rice and gravy and salad with blue cheese dressing at the kitchen table. I loved the contrast between the cool salad and the spicy meats and gravies. We lived in southern Louisiana, the motherland of cajun and creole food – both cuisines a staple in our home. Music was often playing in the background – Zydeco, Sade and the occasional George Clinton causing my beautiful mother to dance around the kitchen while she cooked. Her hair was the color fire and her skin was soft and kissed by the sun from tanning in our backyard. MY father enjoyed goofing around in the kitchen with us, doing silly dances and wearing Mom’s brassiere on his head and pretending to be a mouse or a dog with ears. His stature seemed to fill up the entire doorway when he walked in. Standing at a little over 6’2″ and his big brown hands made a basketball look like baseball they were so huge. Although it was the late 80’s his afro made him look like he was almost 7 feet tall. He was a big man but he was gentle and funny and my favorite person in the world. He rarely called me by my given name, Valerie. At home, I was Pooh and that’s what I answered to. My mother used my name when I was in trouble and added my middle name in if it was really bad. Valerie Elizabeth! I knew that meant trouble.
Our Dachshund, Sparky, was always afoot and enjoyed growling at me as I’d venture past him in the hallway. He was a mean little dog and took no issue with biting a small child. What I may have done to make him enforce his personal space is not a memory I can recall but I do remember being slightly relieved when he died. Sparky found himself afoot my father’s truck one afternoon as Daddy was backing out of the driveway. Mom was raging mad and cried hysterically when Daddy broke the news to her. Not understanding death at the time, all I knew was he was never coming back and that did not sound like a bad deal to me.
Our other animals were more entertaining and much nicer in my opinion. There was Mango, the blue and gold Macaw. Mango would travel on my father’s shoulder or sit on his perch outside, under the carport. That bird was every bit of the smart aleck my father raised him to be. If we were out in public and people would ask if he could talk, Mango would respond with “Birds can’t talk.” My favorite was when he would tease Sparky with food and taunt him by repeating, “Stupid dog.” I agreed. Unfortunately Mango met his demise while visiting friends and died in a house fire from smoke inhalation. OD, my occasional babysitter for short grocery runs or when Mom didn’t want to play with me, was a golden pit bull/lab mix. Mom brought her home after finding her tied to a stake someplace, starving to death. She was loyal and seemed to enjoy fighting snakes. It wasn’t until my mid 30’s, 25 years later, that I discovered OD was in fact a girl. I’d grown up thinking and referring to her as a boy. “Who named that poor girl OD?”, I asked my father recently. “Your mother found her tied up and starving to death. Looked like she had overdosed on drugs and was left to die,” was his reply.
Jessie was similar to the beasts you see in movies that never come completely out of their cave. All you ever see are eyes, black hair and you make up the rest of the creature in your mind. That is my memory of Jesse. I know it was a dog and I’d seen beautiful pictures of Jesse in my father’s office, along with big beautiful ribbons for the many titles Jessie had won. Jesse was a prize winning Bouvier when the white people in the photograph owned her. Now, she was a matted, dirty, black dog that never came out of her dog house. In hindsight, she may have been depressed at what her life had become. I’m sure there are many former beauty queens that can relate.
Onto the cats – Snoozley and Qualude. Snoozley was a fat tabby cat that lived indoors with the humans and Sparky. Snoozley and I were always on the same page when it came to our fondness of Sparky. They would fight in the hallway, occasionally causing Mom to run in and try to save one or the other. Qualude, named appropriately, was a black cat that may have had narcolepsy. When called in for breakfast or dinner, he would walk half way across the yard and then fall asleep, only to wake back up an hour later to finish the journey. There was also a hamster who rolled around the house in a ball and ran in a squeaky exercise wheel all night long. I’m certain there were a few cockatiels and a large fish tank in the living room and rabbits in the side yard at some point during our stay in the red brick house as well.
This red brick house in Sulphur, Louisiana held a great deal of happy memories for me. It was busy and noisy with laughter most evenings. My parents were both working hard but they knew how to have fun. Dad ran a construction business and my mother was busy taking care of people and animals. My older sister Rebecca had come to live with us while she was in high school. She was one of mom’s 2 other children from her second marriage. Our brother, Jason, would visit but I don’t remember him staying for any length of time. Darren, our oldest brother from Mom’s first marriage lived with us for a short period while trying to earn money. He worked for my father. My great grandmother on my father’s side, Granny, lived with us as well. Mom worked really hard to take care of everyone. She cooked and cleaned, mostly alone. She waitressed and bartended at the Sheraton to help make ends meet when she wanted some spending money.
Our kitchen was the epicenter of my life. Mom had an open kitchen policy. Visitors were always at our kitchen table and sniffing their way to whatever was cooking on the stove. My mother’s cooking was legendary. In southern Louisiana, that was a big deal. Granny, a New Orleans native that spent the latter part of her life in Biloxi, MS, would sit in the kitchen with Mom and share recipes that were passed down to her.
There were many get togethers and parties centered around that kitchen. Having a house full of people meant that I had kids my age to run around and play with. At 4 and 5 years old, playing with my older sister was never an option and neither of my parents were very hands on when it came to entertaining me. My favorite playmate was Chucky and his older brother Ronnie. They were Mr. Ron and Mrs. Pinky’s sons. Our parents would always sit around and drink while we ran around unsupervised. Chucky would pull of the heads from my Barbie dolls. We played He-man and She-rah using the pool table as Castle Grayskull. Ronnie was a pretty good sport and played Skeletor. When it was just Chucky and I, our favorite game was imitating Heathcliff and Sonya. Chucky was my best friend. Though a few years older than me, he never seemed to mind being my sidekick or maybe it was vice versa. Either way, we had a great time. He would sleep over and I would force him to watch Wizard of Oz or My Little Pony. Mom would make his favorite snack – fried okra. I wouldn’t touch the stuff but he could eat it by the pound.
When Chucky wasn’t around for sleepovers, my second favorite for late night fun was Granny. She required a walker early on in her stay until she was upgraded (or downgraded) to a wheelchair. This just meant at night, I knew where to find her. She was in her room watching Arsenio Hall and Johnny Carson. She wore her hair in two little buns on the side of her head. My sister called her Space Granny and I thought she looked like a little bear. It took me 25 years to realize Space Granny was my sister’s pop culture reference to Star Wars. Rebecca -1 Me- 0. Granny’s skin was dark brown and smooth like chocolate ice cream. She enjoyed having me around and I’d crawl in her bed to watch TV and avoid my bed time. Granny, whose real name was Alice Wright, had a little bit of sass to her. She smuggled a bottle of Sherry around in her wheelchair along with a pack of cigarettes that she hid from Daddy. I loved everything about her except having to kiss her goodnight but I’m sure any 5 year old can relate to the distaste of kissing their granny.
My second favorite room in the house was Dad’s office. It was full of long rulers in many different shapes that I’d never seen him use. He had a massive desk that he’d built himself and a sketching table with big pieces of paper and drawings of buildings laid out. Jessie’s ribbons, trophies and photos were also in the office. I never remember Daddy using the office so I would go in during the day and pretend to be a secretary, an architect and sometimes a doctor. Wherever it was that my Dad handled his day to day business, Mom was uneasy about it. There was tension in the house about how he did business, where he did it and where the money was going.
The red house’s exterior does not bring back as many joyful memories as the interior. We lived on a main road in Sulphur, La. Arizona Street was home to Sel-Mart, right across the street, and there was an elementary school a few blocks away. I remember walking to Sel-Mart with my dad occasionally, with Mango on his shoulder. During one of our trips across the street, I’d fallen on our gravel driveway and a pebble lodged itself in my hand. I still have the scar and remember my theatrics during its removal. It was similar to the many splinter removals but with a little more blood. The many bouts with poison ivy were my least favorite. A high school bus broke down in front of our home during one of the many times I’d been drenched in calamine lotion. It was a very exciting day for me because I was allowed to walk on the big yellow bus full of students – a first for me. My parents allowed the driver to use our phone and helped them get back on the road. It was my first glimpse of what it was like to go to school. The thought of other children was exciting and scary. I couldn’t wait.
I did start kindergarten while we lived in the red house. It was not as exciting as I’d hoped. We had to take naps and my name was on the chalk board every day for talking or not paying attention. I never knew what the teacher was talking about and even worse, I couldn’t see the board. Everything was a blur. Boys would chase me around the playground and try to kiss me on the cheek. It was a miserable place. I rebelled by putting my head down while the teacher stood at the board, refusing to nap and body slamming one of the annoying boys that caught me on the playground. The latter landed me in the principal’s office where I explained that Chucky and I used to do this move all of the time and it never seemed to hurt anyone. They didn’t care and my mother had to come get me. I was proud and was only upset that Chucky had not been there to see me execute the perfect body slam.
Kindergarten was nothing compared to the hell that was unraveling in our home. My mother started coming home late from work. I assume she was picking up extra shifts bartending and cocktailing. I’d fall asleep on the couch and see her wander in later and later. Occasionally she had male company. Mr. Keith was our family friend but even at 5, I knew they were not supposed to be in the kitchen together this late and alone. In hindsight, I have no idea where Daddy was either. He and mom had separate bedrooms but to be bold enough to bring a man home, she must have known Daddy was still out as well.
Mom was being pulled in all directions. I knew she worked hard to feed a houseful of people each day and cleaned up behind 5-7 people, depending on where my older siblings decided to live that month. She walked me to and from school most days and took care of Granny while I was at school. As she suspected, Dad’s business was not on the up and up. Men were showing up at our door wanting to be paid for work they’d done on my father’s behalf. Daddy wasn’t showing up to jobs he’d been paid for and Mom was accusing him of seeing other women. I could not understand everything that was happening in our home but things were changing rapidly. When the temperature started to drop outside, we had to leave the red brick house I’d called home. We moved to a much smaller, brown home in a different part of town. I was devastated and it was the first step to what would be the worst years of my life.
Saving Elizabeth 