Jazzy's Chocolate City - Part II - Somewhat a memoir, but not quite

I didn't tell on Sleepy, not because I didn’t want to, but because mama was in a funk about daddy staying out at night and some stuff about some other woman. I heard it all from my bedroom, which means my brothers heard the most of it, but nobody talked to me...they barely acknowledged me. I was like the mop and the bucket that sat in the kitchen, like the pots that sat on the stove. I was there, but it seems nobody paid attention unless they had a need for me. That don’t excuse my daddy or my mama, I was sick. Sick with worry about what they was gonna do. It aint’ like I never seen them fight before, these two fought like cats and dogs, they beat up walls and everything in the way, but they would always come out unscathed, me, I fell into a bucket of dirty water and I cried. I don’t know why I cried, I wasn’t hurt or anything, I just didn’t want to be dirty.

My daddy and mama were like opposites, he was for the most quiet, until he drank and she was live even when she didn’t drink. She was sassy, bold, you know that type of woman that you only heard of, but never saw, and well I saw her every day. So I knew when my daddy came at her with his fists balled up she wasn’t about to lay down and take it, hell naw, mama put up her fists too, then she grabbed their gun…that’s when things got really out of hand. Mama was never afraid of daddy, she loved him with everything she had, but she was a woman of her own upbringing, married at 17, left the house at 16, hung out with baseball teams, actors and musicians before my daddy found her. She was her own making, and she wasn’t letting anyone make her into no one else. Now daddy, was more steady, I think. He was raised by both parents, lost all of his siblings before he was grown, and so he was an only child. He was for most parts the quiet one, but it was another thing when he was drinking, that firewater turned him into the prevalent one and mama wasn’t having it. I used to hate when they fought, because I knew before long they was gonna kill each other for real. He shot his gun into the bedroom wall, she grabbed knives, pots, brooms all kind of things to bang him in the head with, and here we were 6 little kids trying to stop it all. I look back and laugh, but at that time I cried. I cried so many times for them to just leave, one of them at least, cuz I didn’t want to see any of them dead. Well, that day finally came in September.

Mama was gone for over two weeks. Two weeks of hell. In those two weeks dad fed us hotdogs and beans at least 4 times a week, sometimes alone, mosttimes together, and then some other mixture with whatever was in the fridge. The first times I liked it, I mean who didn’t like beans and franks, but when the menu never changed I was like my siblings, a little bit worried, but more worried about Ma. See when Ma left, dad went off on the deep end. He used a kitchen knife to cut up all of her clothes. I see jumpsuits cut in half, dresses sliced down the middle, shirts at their seems and jackets with one arm hanging. I remember shouting and screaming... “No daddy, what are you doing?” but my voice was small and rarely heard until that day he turned to me in anger and said,“What the hell is she doing, go’on Jazzy, get out of here.”

So I left, I left in tears, I left with regret, I left knowing my mama would have a shitfest and somebody was gonna die the moment she returned. So I prayed that she would never return, while praying that she would because I hated hotdogs and pork and beans and I could use some greens and cornbread, some neckbones and rice, anything but hotdogs, but please, please God, don’t let daddy kill her.

to be continued...