When I describe my baby sis in her formative years, mean is not quite my word. Mine was always stout. Even in the few years, I was taller than her (we switched places when I was 15 and she was 8), she just seemed stout. Feet always planted solidly. Always ready to do battle. Stubborn and determined to have her way.
I have come to know over 47 years that her stance was a defense mechanism designed to cover pain, fear, and rejection. Great effort to reveal her layers gave a bird’s eye view of someone kind, giving and comical….albeit mainly with strangers and outsiders. There is safety in relationships with people who can’t bruise your heart.
My first fight with, over and for my baby sis came all on the same day! Incredibly while she was still in utero. I think I was the one who branded her for life or at least set it in motion.
I was 8 going on 9, and though separated from my mom during the school year, I would spend summers with her at the house of horrors on 28th. I called it that because there were mostly ratcheted kids in the neighborhood. Country kids like me didn’t understand city kids. Then also because of the “vision” issues my stepparent had. He couldn’t clearly distinguish between my mother and her vulnerable daughters.
That particular summer day, I was bored enough to join in a round of jump rope with some neighborhood weird girls. All was in fun until my mistep stopped the rope. Apparently, the 8th deadly sin to preteen girls.
The toughest of the bunch ( who ironically later became my ex-sister-in-law) started the taunts in rhythm. “Ya mama is a ho. He ain’t yo daddy though. She good and pregnant now and you got to go”
My country bumpkin ignorance was showing. I was not sure which part to be upset about.
I knew that man wasn’t my daddy. I was still waiting for mine to manifest and rescue me like in the little Orphan Annie movies.
The “ho” part didn’t phase me because I had heard him call her that a gazillion times. He had called my older sister this. He had called me that. I only realized it was something wrong when he bestowed the moniker on my grandmother, and I watched her turn her back, never to return, to 1616 N. 28th Street.
It was the “she’s good and pregnant now and you got to go” part that gave me the strength to overcome the bully. I was blinded in rage. I didn’t know why. But the word felt nasty. Demeaning. Evil.
I had no clue where babies came from. Well meaning but fearful elders had surmised that keeping a young, physically overdeveloped girl ignorant would somehow spare her. Worked until I realized in my 9th grade biology class what the weird butterflies in my stomach were.
But back to Nessa and the fight of the century. She still has the barely noticeable scar on her chin from my weapon of choice. A rock from the gravel parking lot of the bus dock across from the house
Snitches brought the adults in to pull us apart. 2 bloody she-gladiators determined to win. I was too angry to take the score, and she, too embarrassed that the runt of the litter had bested her.
I had some regrets that day. Her alcoholic mother stormed out of the house and gave her a public beating that I didn’t wish for. There is a shame in being overcome by a little one.
And mine. Silently took me home, cleaned me up, and never uttered a word. No questions. No answers. Summer would end soon, and I would be safely back in my country school forgetting.
But my mother had betrayed me. I would not be going to 28th for Christmas break. She needed 6 weeks for the stork to finish. Like that was a good explanation to a confused child. All I could remember was the last of the taunt “and you got to go”
12/12/78 brought a stout 12 pounder with her fist up in her first baby mug shot.
Easter break would come before I met Stout. Only then would I see Nessa again. In Mike’s corner store, I bought Apple Uglies for my mom and offered my nemesis one as an apology. It would be some 25 years later that she admitted she didn’t know where babies came from that day either.
Go figure!!!
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