on the 21st anniversary of my mother’s Death.

Donald Trump was inaugurated on the 21st anniversary of my mother’s death from AIDS. I was far too busy mothering my own children on that day to really give space to the gravity of either of those events. But only one day into his presidency, I listened in horror to the details of his plan to remove protections from immigrant families. Suddenly it hit me. Hard.

There are real people that I love, that I consider family, that my children go to school with, that I coach in basketball and sled with on the community hill- that are at risk because of these threatened policies. It might feel like a stretch to connect the AIDS epidemic to the immigration issue, but that’s how I make sense of my childhood experiences. I carry them around. I take them out and study them and I try to turn them into something useful. Something I could have used when the target was on my family.

Maybe if it wasn’t the anniversary of my mother’s death, the flashbacks to the presidential response to AIDS wouldn’t feel so relevant, but to me it’s a sickening echo. Presidents help to set the tone for how the country feels on an issue. Spreading fear and hate at that level cuts through communities not only at the policy level but on the more intimate personal level as well.

I remember being 6 years old and sitting in class trying not to wet my pants, heart racing with fear, worrying that people living with AIDS might be shuttled off to some remote location. Isolated from the citizens who deserved to be protected from them. I worried that I would be sent into quarantine too as the child of a person living with AIDS. or even worse, that I’d be removed from my mother as an HIV-negative one. These fears weren’t completely the vivid imagination of an anxious child. I was hearing those threats on the radio.

It’s why when I hear this new threat today to immigrant families, I feel it in my guts. Why do we torture people like this? It makes me sick to think that there are families, terrified that they will lose citizenship or be separated from each other. Kids in class barely holding it in because we live in a world that won’t protect them. I hate it so much.

I was still reeling from the news when I scrolled through facebook and came to a comment on my local Public School’s page. Something to the effect of, “Come here legally, or you don’t deserve access to education.” That hit too close to home. I chose to respond even though I know that social media battles really don’t have a meaningful impact, because when I was a kid it would have mattered a lot to me to hear even one person stand up against those scary hateful words that targeted my family. I never heard from the other side. It seemed that those shouting about how dangerous and immoral people with AIDS were and discussing what we didn’t deserve had a louder megaphone than those acknowledging our humanity.

Right now, the threats seem to be coming for so many of us at once. It’s overwhelming and it’s terrifying. I used to consider myself an activist. These days I have all I can just to keep my own head above water, but I will never not be a loud voice acknowledging the humanity, dignity and rights of those caught in the crossfires of politicians today. I will never be so busy or distracted that I won’t get loud when I hear these hateful threats. I say this at the end of so many blog posts, but it’s so pressing for me. When will we learn from our collective history and do better for today’s children?

Which brings me back to my mother’s “deathiversary.” She was not a very “political” woman. She didn’t know how to read, and we didn’t have the internet. She wasn’t exactly informed on the issues. I have no idea if she would have voted for Donald Trump or if she would have voted at all. But I know that she was driven by love. I honor her legacy by choosing to be guided by love instead of fear.

My Mama has been gone for 19 years, but last week she shared the stage with Madonna.

I am not going to lie to you, I had mixed feelings when I was first invited to share my mother’s picture with Madonna for her then upcoming Celebration Tour. I feel guilty for admitting this, because I believe it was a sincere and meaningful gesture on her behalf. I appreciate it so much now and I am grateful to have participated. That first day though, I felt my shame and grief like a rock in the pit of my stomach.

I have no idea if my mom liked Madonna’s music. “Papa Don’t Preach” spent 2 weeks at the No. 1 spot of the Hot 100 the same year that mama was diagnosed HIV+. Madonna was 28 that year and my mom was 22. I wonder if my postpartum mother listened to that song when she was abandoned and alone in her low-income housing apartment, or if she just couldn’t relate to pop radio? I have no idea. I called my mom’s twin, Brenda, to ask, but she wasn’t sure either.

My emotional reaction wasn’t because I didn’t know if my mama was a Madonna fan though. I was struggling with knowing deep down that most of the people who would be seeing that image of my mother and honoring her now, would never have celebrated the woman that she was when she was actually alive.

My mother was born into multi-generational poverty. She was raised in a 2 bedroom trailer with her parents and 7 siblings. Her smile in the picture I sent to Madonna, reveals decay and neglect. My mom spent all of her school years in the Special Education Program and still managed to graduate illiterate and unable to do basic math. Society does not celebrate people who look and live like my mother did.

Part of my grief and shame is because I also did not do a good enough job of recognizing my mother’s beauty while she was still alive. I am ashamed of almost nothing, except this. I knew that my mother was dying my entire childhood. I loved her more than anything in the world, and still I often saw her through society’s eyes. I saw ugly. I saw stupid. I saw unworthy.

I was too young to appreciate her because the world around me told me, and told her, everyday, that she was nothing. Even worse, because nothing was what she was before AIDS. That diagnosis made her worse than nothing. She was dangerous. The world felt terrified of people living with AIDS during those early years of the pandemic and even though opinions shifted, her perception of herself was too damaged to recover.

I wish that I could go back and tell her that she was the most beautiful person that I have ever known. I wish that I could wrap her in a hug and tell her that I pour the parts of her that I find in myself into my children. That I ache for her every single day and that she is and always was worthy of the world even when the world couldn’t or wouldn’t see that. I am too late, and the world is too late, for my mama. My hope is that as we honor her life, and all of the other lives lost to AIDS, we also open our eyes to those living today who are pushed to the margins and who are not seen as worthy of our love or protection.

Over the past few weeks, messages have trickled in from people that I do not know in real life. People who follow my mama’s story through Instagram or through my blog have sent variations of, “Hey! I saw your mama’s beautiful face at the Madonna Concert!” Reading those messages of love from people who recognize my mother’s face from a 2 second display finally moved my grief into gratitude. It’s remarkable that there are so many people who know who my mother was and care enough to reach out to me to say that they recognized her. I don’t know if my mother was a Madonna fan, but I am sure that she would have loved this. She would have loved to have her photo on display at an international concert for one of the greatest pop stars of all time. She would be proud that people from all over the world saw the videos and said, “Hey, that’s Debbie!”

Thank you to Madonna for sharing the stage with my mama, and thank you to all of the people who read these stories and help me to keep her memory alive.

“Uncle-Dad”

I was scared of my father’s side for most of my childhood. Ever since the gun incident. Even though he wasn’t alive anymore, I still avoided anything and everything to do with my dad. Like when my older brother got a summer job as a “Carnie,” I didn’t ride the ferris wheel, even though it was my favorite because it was too close to the ride he was working. Or if I spotted one of my sisters in the Rite-Aid, I would put down whatever I had intended to buy and duck into whatever aisle was closest until I could sneak out. One time the store manager confused me for a greeting card thief when I was in stealth mode and banned me from the store for a year. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it wasn’t one of 2 stores in the whole town. Anyway, at least my sisters didn’t see me.

I hadn’t spoken to my siblings since I stopped going to our dad’s, but I knew they would still recognize me. Everywhere I went, people would take one look at my matching dark hair and eyes and say, “You must be a Gamet! I bet I know who your daddy is!” The truth is, and I never confessed this before, I was equal parts ashamed and comforted when people said this. It is true that I was terrified of being associated with my father’s side, but it is also true that I still loved him, and them.

I wasn’t just scared about the gun either. It was also about AIDS. I was still trying to keep my mom’s status a secret and that was much harder to do if people knew my dad. It was still a secret that he died from AIDS, because his wife was still living here in this small town with her own HIV status and of course there was still the matter of all of us kids. None of us were positive, but the town didn’t know that, and they would punish us the same as they would punish our parents if they knew. Still, there are always whispers in a small town and I knew that at least some people knew how my 36 year old father died.

My father’s people had been living in this region for many generations. In fact, some of our ancestors are Indigenous so yeah, some of our people lived here forever. You couldn’t take two steps in any direction without running into one of my relatives. I had to do a lot of fancy footwork to stay under everyone’s radar. It helped that all of my siblings were so much older than me. There was one relative though that always surprised me. I couldn’t dodge him no matter how hard I tried and eventually I quit trying. My brothers and sisters, who grew up with him in a way that I did not, call him “Uncle-Dad.” I call him this in my heart but I have never said it out loud.

To me, he was “Uncle Don” and he was my father’s best friend and brother. My dad had a lot of brothers, but I never took much notice of the other ones and they never seemed to notice me either. But Uncle Don kept tabs on all of “his kids.” He took in all of the stray kids in our family who had lost our parents to drugs, to incarceration, to AIDS and to death. Most of us were biologically related to him at least, but I know he watched out for kids who weren’t even blood.

The people that I respected most in my life were women. They were the ones who were doing all of the loving and hard work of caring in my community. I saw men as a source of violence and pain. But, my Uncle Don was this amazing exception. Now, I know he is a real person and not some fictional character. I know he has flaws like the rest of us, but at that time in my life, I thought he was a superhero. After my step-dad died, mom and I didn’t have a man to fix the little things that would break. I know that’s unnecessarily gendered and mom and I could have rolled up our sleeves and learned how to figure things out like broken heaters and mice in the walls, but we didn’t and we didn’t even know we could. We would just sit in the freezing cold waiting for the landlord who would never fix anything until my Uncle Don would suddenly appear and just like that we would be warm again and the mice would be gone.

I remember one time, this time of year actually, that’s probably why it popped into my mind. It was snowing just a few days before Christmas. Mom and I were feeling low. We didn’t have any presents and we didn’t have any food and we were flip flopping back and forth between grief and rage about that. All directed at each other. We had been fighting all morning and the snow just kept coming and coming. neither of us cared because we had nowhere to go anyway. Our car was already buried under a foot of snow and there seemed to be no end in sight. We would eventually have gone out and brushed the snow off with our arms and took a broom handle to the top. But the sidewalk would have stayed impassable for the whole winter. I don’t think we even owned a shovel.

That’s where Hero Uncle-Dad Donnie comes into the picture. Mom and I pushed the curtain aside to find him digging us out. I hardly knew this man, and yet he loved me enough to show up in a snow storm and make sure that my mom and I could get out safely if we needed to. He would never come in to say hi or look for acknowledgment. Most of the time, he would sneak off without us even knowing he had come, but when we stumbled on his small acts of kindness, we always knew it was from him. There was no one else as generous and thoughtful.

Even though I didn’t have the same anxiety around him that I had for the rest of my dad’s side, I still was a little shy around him. I would mumble a thank you if we found ourselves face to face and try to take in as much of him as I could without looking directly at his face. He is a bald man with honey colored skin. Other than those two features, I look exactly like him.

I went home for my 26th birthday, and was able to spend some time with Uncle Don and Aunt Luann at their restaurant “Don and Lu’s.”

Uncle Don was perceptive enough to understand what I needed without me ever having to ask. He would remind me every time I saw him no matter the setting or the circumstances. “Your dad loved you so much. He loved your mama too. That was his only crime. Loving too much. He was a good man who just happened to be in love with two different women.” I couldn’t agree completely with that sentiment. Loving wasn’t the only bad thing my father ever did, but I still loved to hear him say it. I only ever heard terrible things about my father and hearing good things, especially from such a good man, really made me feel hope that my father was a good man even in part. Maybe there was more to my father and to me than I knew. Once Uncle Don planted and watered that seed in my heart, he would always leave me with this. “Your Uncle Donnie is always here for you. And your mom. You hear me?” Then he would lift my chin so that I had to make eye contact. Looking into his eyes would always make a whole lump of tears form in my throat and I would just nod while he spoke the same words he said every time. “You guys were my brother’s responsibility, so now you’re mine. We’re family and no matter what, that doesn’t change.”

I never gave my Uncle Don any indication that I was hearing him or that this meant the world to me. In fact, I never said much beyond the mandatory polite phrases in response. So, I am writing this now to tell him and to tell the whole world. Thank you to my Uncle-Dad, Uncle Donnie, for showing me the kind of person that I wanted to be in the world and for still being an inspiration for me. I haven’t seen him now in almost a decade, but here he is meeting my oldest two children the last time I made it home. I am so glad that I have these pictures so that I can give my children a face to go with my stories. I want them to know that they come from more than trauma. They come from kind and good people who despite immense pain, continue to love and give generously.

I hope to see my Uncle Don and my Aunt Luann someday soon so that they can meet my youngest and we can update these photos. ❤ ❤ ❤

Candy Cane Vomit

C came over to my house after school. I was in the 10th grade and she was one year ahead of me. She was my only friend now. Strange that she would walk willingly back into my life after everyone else walked out. Any other year, I would be in the locker room right now tucking in my jersey and lacing up my basketball sneakers, but not this year. Not after that night. I lost everything that night, even basketball.

Everyone was coming out to the game tonight for the “6th man” where the crowd dresses in the team colors and gets extra loud and involved in cheering on the team. C and I were already decked out in our tight vintage orange and black Phys. ed. tee shirts and hip hugger jeans. We applied some shimmer to our eyes and took out our Sharpies. We each had a giant Orange Posterboard laid out in front of us and we wrote something like Go Gators! on one side and Brian W Riz-ocks! on the other side. Brian W riz-ocked because he had promised to bring us a bottle of vodka and escort us personally to the game. He was older, cooler and also…he was part of that other night. I know now that he was a player and even a curator of the violence I experienced that night, but at the time I felt like I owed him something. He had escorted me to that party. I was supposed to end up in his arms that night but that is not what happened. I could not believe that he had apparently forgiven me enough to invite me, again after all that, to hang out. I had no interest in this boy personally, but I saw him as an olive branch from teenage society. If he could give me a second chance, ,maybe everyone else could too?

…not the most important thing about this photo…but yes that is Vin Diesel on my wall…and if you could see the poster beside that one, it would be Ja Rule! Lol This is me at about 15/16 years old.

“Girls! Welcome! Come on in.” Brian opened the door to his mother’s van and C climbed into the back while I took the front seat beside him. “I have been working on this for weeks. I have something really special for you girls. Here.” He handed me the bottle first. “Taste it.” I had been drinking alcohol for some time by this age, but I had never drank liquor straight out of the bottle. Like most of my rural peers, I was mostly drinking cheap awful beer that I pretended to love and jungle juice supplied in excess to all girls at every party.

I tipped the full bottle back just a little. Brian was saying something but I couldn’t hear him. My eyes squeezed shut and my mouth was on fire. It tasted like peppermint. He informed us that he bought the bottle weeks ago and saved it just for tonight. He had even gone through the trouble to soak a couple of candy canes in the bottle to give us a festive surprise.

C was laughing at me. “Come on. Let me try it!”

I passed her the bottle grateful for a minute to let my stomach adjust to this heat before pouring more alcohol down my throat. I could feel the boy watching me as he drove. I looked out the window watching the lights flicker past. My cheeks were red and I was embarrassed. I knew he was thinking about that night. We had never talked about it.

C passed the bottle back up to me. We were all pretty quiet even though we had been rowdy back at my house. C and I had bought a couple of orange candy referee whistles to blow at the game whenever we wanted to cheer our team on. Plus, I had already digested the notion that it was my job to be sexy at all times and that drawing attention to my mouth with a candy sucker was an easy way to grab that attention from boys. For now, in that van, I kept it quiet in my hand. I did not want to make this boy think about my mouth like that. I did not want him to think about anything that would make him think about that other night.

“You aren’t drinking it! Don’t you like it? I made it just for you. Come on, isn’t it delicious?”

“uhm…um…yeah. no. thank you! This is so sweet that you made this for us!” I gushed and turned to C for encouragement. “Right, C? Isn’t this so good?” I wasn’t doing a good job of being appreciative. Especially since this boy was being kind to me after everything I did. I remembered my place. I shifted my weight just a little toward him. Just enough for him to notice. I took a deep breath and put the bottle to my lips. I tipped it back and this time I took a big swig of it. “Yummm! MMMM Oh my god, Brian. This is Sooooo good.” I was lying but boys don’t care if you are lying as long as you say the right words.

He grinned at me. I could feel my body melting from the heat of the sugary minty alcohol and the last thing I remember of the entire evening is this moment with the Christmas lights flooding the van and Brian saying, “Have you ever drank liquor before? No? Well, don’t worry if you don’t feel anything right away. Just keep drinking until you start to feel it.”

I know what happened after that. I know most of the details of that night, which is lucky actually. It is worse to not know. Everyone made sure that I knew every moment of the rest of that night for all of the remaining years of high school. They loved how fucked up I was. The kids at school. The ones destined for college, and marriage and security. They loved that I was so ruined. We pulled up to the high school just in time for the Varsity Boys Game. The gym was packed to capacity. Thank God my mom wasn’t there. She went to every game back when I was on the team, but now she spent her Friday nights at the Church boxing up her old medicine bottles to send to Missionaries in some other poor place. She would carefully tear off all of the medicine labels so that no one would know they were AIDS medicine bottles. Too risky to just smudge them out with a marker. She would sit in our living room for hours with a kitchen knife, scratching away at the dangerous labels. Then she would throw away all of the evidence and carry her prayers down the street to the church.

That is where she was when the police called her. But I am getting ahead of myself. At first, C and I were the center of attention. It was a roaring crowd, but we were the loudest. Maybe I would have been able to maintain my jovial spirit and avoid my unraveling if the crowd had stayed with me. But this crowd hated me. It did not take much for them to remember that I was vile and I was to be eradicated. I was apparently walking down the bleachers maybe headed to the bathroom to pee out some of the vodka, when my ex-best friend came up behind me and pushed me down onto the court. I landed hard on my face right in front of the cheerleading squad. “SLUT!” She said loud enough for everyone in the now dead silent gym to hear. She was trying to save herself from the shame of being my friend. She needed to publicly disown me. The gym was quiet now as everyone watched to see if I would peel my body off the floor. I laid there with the eyes of my whole community on me. No one stepped forward to check on me. The players were frozen in their spots on the court and a few of the boys started to laugh. Apparently this is the point in the night where C and Brian realized I was way more intoxicated than them and that I was going to bring us all down. So they left. By the time I brought my body up to my feet I was raging. I hated all of these kids. I hated them for hating me. I hated them for hurting me so badly and then blaming me for it. I hated them for being normal kids whose parents weren’t dying of AIDS.

Brian was wrong. He had been lying too. Liquor does not immediately hit you as you drink it. If you aren’t careful, you might drink too much and not realized it until it finds its way into your bloodstream. My blood was mostly just alcohol at this point. I stood up and directed my hate at the closest targets, the Varsity Cheerleading squad. I don’t know how they reacted. I don’t remember and their reactions didn’t make it into the many re-tellings of that night that I heard about. All I know is that I started spitting on them and then… I vomited all over myself.

I was escorted off of the gym floor by a teacher while the crowd erupted in laughter and taunts. By the time the police came I was barely able to sit up by myself. I laid there sprawled on the steps leading to the boys locker room. So fitting. I could not get the taste of candy cane flavored vomit out of my mouth and I was still spitting and spitting. I was told that I kept spitting on the police. So much spitting. I have never once since that night spit on anyone on purpose. I guess that night it was my only weapon.

By the time my mom made it from the church to the high school, I was out of police custody and being strapped onto a stretcher. This is where suddenly my memories come back. The last thing I remembered from that night was the Christmas lights, but the first thing I remember when I started coming back to life was the sirens. Sirens had always been so terrifying and triggering for me. Now they were blaring in my head and I could see the paramedics, this time here for me instead of my mom. How was I the one on the hospital bed and my mom was sitting right there?

I awoke also to my own voice. I was sobbing and screaming. “Nobody loves me! Nobody loves me! Nobody loves me!” over and over and over again while my poor mama watched in horror. The paramedics rubbed my back and told me, “your mom loves you. She’s right here. Do you see her?” but I was devastated. My mom did not know anything of the horrors that had been happening to me lately. she did not know about boys in tents or girls who abandoned. She thought this was my second time drinking alcohol. I had already been found out for my first time drinking when the Rite Aid photo lab reported inappropriate pictures that my friends and I took while playing strip poker and drinking her mother’s Drambuie. But my mom was insanely naive and really truly thought that I had only drank the two times that I had been caught drinking. I hated lying to my mom but she could not know this. I was her angel. She could not know how far I had fallen. It would destroy her.

I was 14 when I started drinking alcohol. Here I am that first time where my friend and I decided to invite a boy over and play strip poker. My oldest daughter is almost this age now, so when I look back at this picture, I see a child here and its hard to believe how grown up I thought I was. or that this is what I thought grown up meant.

Mom did not punish me. She wanted to and she even tried on some vague level to say “your grounded,” but there was no heart behind it. I think I broke her. She looked scared more than angry in that conversation back at home after the hospital had pumped my stomach, filled it with charcoal and tested my blood for drugs. The school punished me. The law punished me. My peers punished me the most. but my mom was too scared and too exhausted to punish me. We never talked about how I told the paramedics that nobody loved me but I know that she was deeply affected by it. I knew my mom loved me, but at that moment in life I did not think I deserved love. I did not feel love from any source outside of my mom to affirm that I deserved it.

An afterthought: I wrote a whole blog post one time about white privilege and still there were people who could not understand what I meant. This moment where I am drunk in public acting up and SPITTING ON POLICE and they take care of me and safely get me to medical attention is a moment that is clear to me that I experienced white privilege. I think of all of the young black kids who were acting out or even not acting out but just being typical teenagers and the police used that as justification to take their lives. I deserved to be handled with care in this moment and so does every child that is hurting and messes up. Black Lives Matter.

Blackberry Pie

Mama held my hand tight as we approached the electric fence. We crouched down into the grass and she gave my hand a squeeze before letting go and sliding her body all the way flat against the ground. I watched her army crawl under the live wire, knowing that it would be my turn next. I knew about electric fences. I had gotten too close before. When I was five. The shock had thrown my tiny body through the air and I had landed unconscious for a few seconds before coming to. Mama and I used to pick up the “drops” from a big old apple tree that we passed on our way home from the grocery store and feed them to the horses down the road. That time, like this time, the risk was worth the reward.

Mama whispered even though no one was around. “Come on now, Crystal Fawn. Come slow just like I did and you’ll be alright.” I loved my mama. I would go anywhere she went. I would do anything she told me to do. Plus, I knew why we were crossing this pasture. The blackberries would be ripe now and there was a big patch up on over this hill.

I looked down at my clothes again to make sure I wasn’t wearing any red. This was the bull field and I could see them grazing between us and the patch of woods we were aiming for. We weren’t scared of ticks back then so the danger was only the current in the wire and the bulls. I was scared but in an exciting way- an adventure way. Mama swept her hand over my chest knocking loose the strands of hay clinging to my tee-shirt. I was allergic to hay back then. She gave me a mischievous smile, “Ready?”

It was hot hot hot. My hair was always wild back then. Thick and curly and mama did not know how to manage it. She had thin, stringy straight hair, but I had my daddy’s hair. And maybe some of my great-grandpa Walter’s. Now it was plastered to my forehead and a bead of sweat dripped off my curls and down into my eyes. It burned. I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes and focused my attention on the patch of woods, so close now. There were a few bulls nearby and they were big and fierce-looking, but they weren’t paying us any mind.

I looked up at my mom and grinned. “Ready!” We ran. My fingers throbbed in mama’s grip, and she about pulled my arm out of it’s socket, dragging me across that field. When we slipped into the safety of the trees, she finally let go and we fell into the dirt gasping to catch our breath. I don’t know if I started to giggle first or my mom but soon we were rolling on the ground laughing wild and free. I had never heard my mom laugh like that. Where was Tom this day? I can’t figure out how we got away on this little adventure without him. It was delicious. Just mama and me and the blackberries waiting for us.

Mama and I picked as many blackberries as we could carry. We dropped them one by one into plastic grocery bags that we brought. Some were getting mushed from the weight of the ones on top, but these were all destined to be pies so it didn’t matter all that much. I popped one in my mouth and then another and another and another. Blackberries were my favorite. They were my mama’s favorite too.

We didn’t run through the bull field on our way home. We were weighed down with bags of berries. We strolled down the hill with our treasure, arms and legs scratched and clothes berry-stained. Right past the bulls. Mama sent me under the fence first this time. I gently placed my bags at mama’s feet and slid under the wire. Mama carefully passed the bags of berries one at a time under the fence to me and when there were no more bags, she slid herself under the wire. That whole adventure had not taken us more than a hill away from our trailer and once we made it past the bulls and then fences and the thorns, it was all downhill to home.

That afternoon, mom and I drove into town to pick up my aunt Brenda, her twin sister. We went to visit Aunt Brenda all the time, but I can hardly remember her ever coming to our house. That is just the way it was. I guess because we had a car then and mama had a license. Aunt Brenda didn’t. She still doesn’t, actually. Plus, aunt Brenda lived in an apartment back then, not very big, but bigger than our trailer. This time is one of the few times I remember them coming to us. Mama and Aunt Brenda sat up front with Tara in the middle and the rest of us kids crammed into the back all piled on top of one another. This was before my younger cousin, Tara died. She was the baby of the family, not just the youngest of her siblings, but one of the youngest of many many cousins. We all still miss her terribly.

My beautiful aunt Brenda when she was young. I am so glad that my mom had a twin sister. ❤

We drove the dirt roads slow all the way back to our trailer with all our heads banging together at every pothole. We didn’t have much space inside for company, but the thing about being rural poor is that there is often lots of space outside. Our trailer was at the base of a hill and there were just wide open fields between us and the creek. The older kids went off exploring but us younger kids crammed into the kitchen to help with the pies and listen in on grown people’s conversations. I was always attached at the hip of my mom and I loved to listen to the ruckus that she got into with my aunt Brenda. Mom didn’t have many friends, but when she was with my aunt Brenda, she was most fully herself. Once all the pies were assembled and just waiting to be baked, they got a game of cards going on the table and played hands between checking on the oven.

One by one, us kids got dealt into the game until the trailer was rocking with the chaos of us. It was hot as death in there too. there were just a couple small windows and that oven baking for hours and hours. So many pies to bake for all the relatives. Plus all the body heat from us kids was just too much.

“Everybody OUT!” My Aunt Brenda was pushing us all out the door. “Crystal Fawn that means you too! Out! Out! Out!” I did not want to go out into the night. I hated being away from my mom even for a second. Everybody used to always laugh about how “if you can’t find Crystal Fawn, just look behind her mama’s skirts!” I was always hiding out behind her, clinging to her as much for my own sense of safety as to tether her to life and to me.

It felt better outside. It was still hot, but fresh air hot instead of stuffy trailer hot. The porch was even smaller than the kitchen so we were even more cramped now, but none of us went farther than the stoop because there were bats zipping all around the porch flying in every direction. We sat there for the first time in silence and just watched them swoop and dive for mosquitos. It was beautiful.

Some of my cousins at my 8th birthday party in the exact kitchen from this story. I love the BILLS holder that my mom made out of plastic canvas behind us with the frowny faces. I circled Tara when I was younger and using this picture in a scrapbook. ❤ Tara ❤

When our moms finally came outside and the pie marathon was over, they were wiping tears from their eyes and laughing with exhaustion. We drove them all home over the bumps, heads still banging together and no one fought or pushed or shoved because everyone was too tired and filled up with pie. The next day, our phone rang and it was Uncle Bud.

“You gave me a pie with no sugar in it!” He wasn’t mad, just giving my mom a hard time. In the hectic pie assembly process, they had forgotten to add the sugar to one of the pies. They realized it later when they were cleaning up and found a cup of sugar left on the counter, but they didn’t know which pie didn’t have the ingredient!

Mom called up Aunt Brenda laughing, “Guess who got the sour pie?” and they laughed together about giving their big brother an unsweetened pie.

broken promises

I do not remember if Bill and my mom gradually stopped seeing each other or if there was a big dramatic break-up. There was probably a fight, but there was always a fight. I only remember the sudden safety. The days and nights accumulating where no one was trying to kill us. I would sleep in my mom’s bed every single night during this time of no men. I would curl up next to her and wrap my whole body around her. I was 5 years old and forced to spend the long school hours away from her now that I was in Kindergarten. Then I spent the weekends at my father’s. So, weeknights were my mama time.

One Sunday night, I was getting picked up from my Dad’s as usual. Mom would either walk to get me and hold my hand all the way back to Brooklynside or she would get a ride with one of our relatives, often Uncle Alfred. I remember that. The phone rang and my big brother handed it to me. He stayed close so he could hear the conversation or at least one side of it. I don’t think my big brother was a fan of my mom.

“Hey, sweetie!” Mom was gonna be here soon. Why was she calling? She sounded weird. Was she ok? The anxiety was already flooding my senses and I think that is why I remember this exact moment in such detail. I knew that our life was changing. I knew it the second I heard my mom’s voice. Mom had called to tell me that she would be picking me up in a different car than usual and she wanted to warn me. She had a new… ”friend” and she was excited for me to meet him.

I can still see myself walking up the small hill behind my father’s apartment leading up to the parking lot where my mom once gave birth to me. She was now standing leaning against a red corvette with a thick black stripe going down the front. Mom was a looker back then. She had on acid-washed jeans and a flowery crop top that tied just above her belly button. Her hair was feathered in a 70’s shag. I could tell that she was feeling herself and she was loving every minute of this moment. I walked slowly toward her even though I usually ran, grateful to be back in my mom’s arms. I remember that it had been school picture day on Friday and I was still wearing or wearing again, the lacy powder blue dress that I felt so pretty in. A plastic pearl necklace was attached with thread to the front of the dress. There was a small hole in the sleeve, but you wouldn’t be able to see it in the pictures. We had gotten in at the thrift store and I felt like a princess in it.

I could feel the eyes of my step-mom and all of my siblings peeking around the curtains to see who had brought my mom in this flashy car. My father was bedridden on a hospital cot in the living room. They would definitely be reporting this display back to him.

I was scared to look directly at the man grinning from behind the steering wheel. I didn’t want to meet him. I did not want my mom to have a “new friend.” I did not like men. Well, I did not like men who weren’t my grandpa or my Uncle Bud, or my Uncle Alfred.

“Baby, Say Hi!” My mom was trying hard. I could tell she was nervous about this greeting. She knew that I would be polite. I was always polite, but maybe she was worried that he wouldn’t like me. “I have told Tom all about you all weekend. I have told him how smart you are and that you are my sweet little angel!”

Tom was a charmer. He knew how to perform and he was already in character. “Nice to meet you, young lady.” He said in a formal tone. I noticed that he talked a little funny, but my mom later explained that Tom was deaf. He could hear a little bit, but mostly he read lips. I didn’t know that yet, so I just mumbled, “hi,” shyly from the backseat.

“I have a surprise for you ladies tonight! We have to celebrate! Let’s go get ice cream!”
Mom and I never ever got ice cream out. For one thing, I had recently won a coloring contest and earned a year’s supply of ice cream from the local grocery store. Some days, that was the only food we had to eat. For another thing, going out to get ice cream was expensive! I even knew that at 6 years old. Who was this guy? Bill never took us out for ice cream. He never took us out anywhere other than the paper route.

Maybe that specialness of this moment explains my detailed memories. Mom and I stood there in line with our heads held high. We usually both slumped into the shadows trying to avoid people’s stares, but we wanted to be seen standing in line to buy ice cream cones at the window! We wanted to be seen getting into this red sports car.

I risked a glance at Tom. He was handsome. He had thick jet black hair and dark blue eyes. He had full dark lips and the beginnings of a beard. He wore his button-down shirt tucked into blue jeans and he had on a big silver buckle. He didn’t really look like the other guys I knew. He didn’t look like Bill. There was something different about him that I couldn’t place yet. Maybe it was the formal way he acted during that time.

I didn’t know it then, but Tom had just been released from Prison. He had immediately moved back to PA where he had some relatives. Tom had a wife and daughter back in Florida where he was incarcerated, but the wife had had him locked away for Domestic Violence. You can be arrested for that? This was news to me.

“She lied about me. I would never hit a woman. I’m a real man. She just wanted to take my daughter away from me.” Wow. I couldn’t believe that he had gone to Jail or Prison even for hitting his wife when he didn’t really do it! I felt bad for him. I thought he knows what it feels like to go through hard and terrible things and some part of my heart made space for him.

Tom moved in right away. He was homeless. All that he had to his name was a backpack with a few outfits, a bible that was a gift from the halfway house he was coming from, and his favorite brush. He loved his hair and he loved that brush.

Mom and I were living in Public Housing so we tried to keep his moving in a secret, but we were good at secrets so this should be no big deal. Plus, when the Housing People came to do our monthly inspections, we wouldn’t have anything to hide, except for his physical body since he didn’t own anything.
I wonder about this. How did he get that car? He didn’t have a license and he didn’t have a cent to his name. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe he stole it in Florida and then drove it all the way to PA. It is definitely a possibility knowing Tom.

My mom told Tom about my asthma, how I would just stop breathing sometimes and other times I would breathe so fast that I would pass out. He knew just what I needed. A little basic training, and he was the perfect drill sergeant. For those first few months, Tom and I would wave goodbye to my mom and head outside to run. I would race along behind him going up and down the hills in my town. Everything is hills where I am from and I would quickly be huffing and puffing. Tom told me that was good. I needed to build my strength. If it was raining, Tom would stand above me in the living room and count out the push-ups and sit-ups for me. If I did not do enough, he would not yell at me. He would just walk away and look disappointed. “You’re not even trying!” was all he needed to say. I never wanted to disappoint him. I never wanted to let him down. I had never felt such a need to impress anyone in my life.

I practiced day and night going through all of the exercises that Tom taught me. Now, I know he probably had done these exercises in prison. I can see how he must have loved to be the person in power looking down on me and training me to be a better version of myself the way that maybe some guard had stood over him. I don’t know but that is how I have always seen this memory.

Tom made me a deal, if I could do 100 sit-ups and 50 push-ups and run our whole route without stopping, he would buy me a new doll. He would buy me the baby check-up doll that I desperately wanted. I had my sights on being a Dr. Someday so I could keep people like my mom and dad alive.
I loved that doll so much. I can still smell that new doll smell as I type this up. I was in love with the doll and in love with Tom. I started calling him Dad soon after that.

One night my mom and Tom were in their bedroom. There was a lot of yelling and I was terrified. I wanted them to come out, to open the door so I could see my mom and know that she was ok.

Finally, the door flew open. Tom was in a rage. He looked just like Bill did when he hit my mom. He was yelling and ripping pages out of my mom’s bible. The pages were falling all over the floor around me. I was curled into a ball hugging my legs watching those papers fly around the room when I realized I was screaming. “MOOOOOOOOMMY!” I didn’t even hear myself, I just realized Tom was squatting down in front of me when he pried my hands off of my ears. I just kept saying that over and over. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” Until she was in front of me too. I needed to know that she was ok.

I will never forget what Tom said to me. He pulled me into his lap. He hugged me close and he said, “Did you think I was gonna hurt your mommy?” I nodded my head with tears still sliding down my cheeks. He lifted my chin with one hand and looked directly into my eyes. “I will NEVER hurt your mom. I would never hurt either of you. I promise.”

Later I learned that mom had disclosed her HIV status to him that night. Mom had been sleeping with him for months at this point and she was only now just telling him. This was 1991. AIDS was still very much a death sentence.

Anxiety in the Mundane Moments

Sitting in the hard metal chair, I heard my stomach rumble. I put my hands over my belly to muffle the sound. Lunch was still an hour away and I never ate breakfast at home. There wasn’t anything to eat and I was always running late anyway. Back in Elementary, the bus would drop me off early enough to take advantage of the Free Breakfast Program, but I guess they didn’t have enough mini cereal boxes or styrofoam bowls for the Junior High kids.

It was hard to focus on the algebra problems in front of me even when I wasn’t hungry. Numbers were never my strength. I forced myself to focus on the page and get it over with. I didn’t want this assignment to turn into homework because then I’d never do it. I was a smart kid and Aced pretty much anything that I attempted, but I never did homework. If it couldn’t be completed in study hall or homeroom, it was going to be turned in incomplete. It wasn’t a political statement about only working on the clock, it was just the way it was.

I had separated my life into two separate worlds. Home and school could not comfortably overlap. If my mom sat in the bleachers during my basketball game, I was grateful she was there but also distracted. If people saw my mom or talked to her, I thought they might see our secret written on her face. Could you see AIDS when you looked at her? I thought I could. She looked too old for 30. Her teeth had already fallen out, her hair thinned and greasy and she was too skinny. Better to keep my mom hidden away at home.

There was a whistle in my hometown that would blow at noon every day and then again anytime that there was a local emergency. If the firetrucks, ambulance, or police needed to be dispatched, the whistle would sound. Adults took note of it. In a town of fewer than 2000 people, a person was likely to know whoever that alarm was sounding for. Kids mostly ignored it, consumed in play or learning. I was never really much of a kid.

When that alarm blared, my heart picked up speed and my head screamed a million anxieties to me. Is my mom okay? What if that is about her? If she died, would someone come to tell me right here at school? Did we say I love you this morning? Yes. Definitely. We always said I love you because we knew that we would not have the privilege of saying that forever. If the phone in my classroom rang, I had the same reflexive body responses and racing thoughts.

That is what happened that day that I was solving for x while counting the seconds until cafeteria pizza. Brrrring! Brrrrring! Brrrrring! Mr. Andrews looks up annoyed. He was buried in a stack of tests from the first period and I had been watching him mark all over them with his red pen. I hope he goes easier on us tomorrow when we have our test. Answer it! I was glued in my seat but I wanted to race and answer the phone myself. Please! The lump in my throat was barely letting air through and I knew that I was white as a ghost.

I searched Mr. A’s face for any kind of clue as to what was being said on the other end of that phone call. “Mmmhmmm. Mmmhmmm. Ok. I will do that.” Do that?! Maybe they are telling him to send me to the principal’s office or the nurse so that they can tell me what is wrong?!

Mr. A dropped the receiver on the hook and sighed. I had not done a single problem in that entire time. I was still too terrified to drop my gaze. He stretched and walked back to his desk without addressing any of us in the class. Phew. I guess this wasn’t about me. We were still safe.

My shoulders were tense as I now scanned the room to see if anyone had noticed my bizarre behavior. I should not have been so obviously stressed out. People might figure out our secret if they saw me act so strangely. I needed to try harder next time to hide my fear. I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans before picking my pencil back up.

The bell rang announcing that class was over and we were that much closer to lunch. I would have to finish this assignment in study hall.

Can you imagine how many times this scene played out in all of my years of schooling? When I heard the whistle in Kindergarten, I would sometimes pee my pants. I would sit there in terror waiting for my world to collapse while also hoping that the wetness squishing under my butt would evaporate or at the least, not be too obvious when I stood up. Later, when I realized peeing was not helping me conceal my secret, I would chew on my hair. Thick chunks of it sucked into my mouth until I had a mass of wetness fringing my face. These would all have been “tells” alerting my peers that I was a freak and my teachers that I needed help if anyone had been paying attention to me. But I had learned to make myself invisible long ago. Being invisible is the easiest way to keep a secret. If I never spoke up in class, I wouldn’t accidentally say the wrong thing.

My report card from 6th grade says, “Crystal is a pleasure to have in class. She is always quiet and polite. She does her school work and does not not involve herself when classmates are disruptive. She is a good student.”

My mom saved every one of these report cards. I have them now too. The little A’s and S’s proved that I was going to make it. I was going to survive this and become something better than this life we were trapped in. We both knew that she wouldn’t make it. But knowing that I would, was all that my mom cared about.

Our secret being revealed would mean that all of those hopes would be lost. If people knew the truth, we would be shipped off to live in quarantine on a deserted island. That’s what some people said should happen to individuals living with AIDS. Maybe our neighbors would show up at our house with pitchforks and chase us out of town. There was no way of knowing exactly what would happen if people knew the truth, but mama and I were committed to never finding out. I locked that secret deep in my stomach and kept it there.

I never once brought it out to examine it, even when it was safe. Mom and I didn’t discuss it when we filled her med box. She just sat there handing me bottles and watching me read the labels that were beyond her reading level. I would carefully pour the little pills of every color into my hands and count off however many needed to go into each little box. We could have unclenched our teeth and let the secret slip out in these moments. Let it stretch out and relieve us of its weight for a second, but we never did. That is how we kept it locked up for so long. I had built a fortress to protect our secret until one day when I looked at my mom and saw that she was dying. Saw that we were at the end, and took down every brick and fence myself. I told my friends from school, I told our neighbors, I told the people in the grocery store, I scheduled an appointment with the important men from the Rotary Club, and I told them.

17 years, I kept that secret, until my mom was on her death bed and we were facing our greatest fear. It has now been 17 years of living with that secret outside of my body. Sometimes it tries to creep back in, but just the feel of it scratching at my insides, sends me to the computer, or to the phone or to a friend. I need to let it out anytime I notice that I am hiding again.

I don’t have a lot of use for secrets in my life now. I am happy to protect someone else’s but these days, I feel safest when I am living fully in my truth.

Walter LeRoy Hyde- Uprooting Shame from my Family History Part 1

Sundays meant church growing up. After services, the congregation would pour out of the chapel but no one would go home. We would run to our cars or reach in our bags and pull out casseroles or cookies to share with each other. Mama and I lived in an apartment only a block from my grandma’s church. We ran home to find a dish to share one Sunday, my mama with her long legs way out ahead of us, and Grandma and I straggling along behind deep in debate. I don’t remember the sermon that Sunday or what exactly got us going, but I know that this particular conversation never left me. I could feel the charge from both of us. We needed the other to understand. Grandma was known to back hand a kid across the mouth for any kind of backtalk or swearing. I felt the hot sting of her fingers on my mouth enough times that I only dared to disagree with her when it was critical.

The sun was hot. It was the summer before I went into Sixth grade. We were barely controlling our tone but managed to keep the conversation hushed until we made it the porch. I imagine that we meant to go inside to finish the conversation, but we were getting so frustrated with each other we were just locked in place. Grandma was probably double my size still but we were braced for battle, eyes locked on each other and shoulders squared up.

“I KNOW that God made all of us! And God doesn’t mess up! He made all of us and he loves all of us NO MATTER WHAT!” OMG, yes, you should know that I was quite a little child preacher and had the influence of the Pentecostals to give me some FIRE in my sermons.

“You don’t know ‘nothin! You are a know-it-all child who don’t-know-nothin!”

“UUUNNNGGGGHHH!!!!” I stomped my foot down and shook the whole porch. I don’t know how this didn’t earn me a smack in the mouth. Maybe Grandma was distracted with what she wasn’t saying out loud. What she was deciding to finally tell me.

“Yes, God made all of us and he loves all of us, but it’s not like that. You just don’t understand. You don’t know anything about all of this.”

“Jesus loves the little children! ALL the Children of the world…RED OR YELLOW, BLACK OR WHITE, we are precious in his sight cuz Jesus loves the little children of the world! Why would God make us all so different if only some of us were going to go to Heaven? Do you think he made some people the wrong way?!”

We had this conversation before, but this time my grandma seemed out of control of herself. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled my face right up close to hers. “Crystal, you don’t understand what it’s like to be Black! You don’t understand what it’s like to be the only Black person in town. I have to tell you something.”

I looked at her suddenly differently. I could tell we were not debating issues of justice, but getting personal.

“Crystal. My father was Black.”

She was still talking. Saying that it is so hard “for the children when they have a white parent and a Black parent” saying things like, “That is why you should never BE with a Black man…” saying, “Do you understand?”

I couldn’t make sense of this revelation. I looked at my grandma. She was white. All my aunts and uncles were white. All of my cousins were white. We were white trash. Everyone called us that. What the hell was she saying that her dad was Black? I had no examples of light-skinned Black people in my mind to pull from. I did not have a lot of access to television up to that point (and mixed people were not depicted on television a lot even if I had) and my mostly white town didn’t offer up any examples either.

Maybe if she had not said that next part about me being with a Black man someday, I would have been able to focus on her Big Reveal, but I had heard those violent words before out of the mouth of my step-dad and they made me see red. I just started ranting at her about how closed-minded she was being and she left me there on the porch. The trance was broken and the conversation was over.

All of these years, I have seen myself as somewhat of the hero of this story. My grandma of course the obvious old white racist villain. I knew this story mattered to me and to my life, but I thought it mattered as part of my origin story as a person who is always striving to be anti-racist. I did not ever once think about the fact that it was an even deeper part of my origin story. My grandma was offering me a truth that she never again tried to share.

Thankfully, the Universe decided to bring this back to my attention this year. On New Year’s Eve, I got a letter in the mail concerning some relative of my Grandpa. I don’t really remember any of my Grandpa’s relatives, so I reached out to an aunt on Facebook to get more info. She didn’t have a lot to share either as she didn’t know them well, but she said that she did have a little more information about Grandma’s side. She sent me a link and I skimmed it while making homemade waffles for my 3 kids. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me until I came to Cora, my great-grandmother.

She was someone that I loved a lot. My mom and I would go to visit her in the nursing home every single week when I was little, even though we didn’t have a car. Grandma would drive us or we would get a ride from someone else. Cora had helped to raise my mom and her siblings when grandma was in a psych hospital so she was an important figure to my mom. Cora’s nurses came to expect my visits, and they would give me cookies and balloons. I remember them and those visits vividly. When Cora died, I didn’t really understand what happened, but I remember lying beside my mom in bed while she cried and cried. I didn’t understand what death was yet, but I understood grief. This was the early years of my mom’s diagnosis, and she was sure she would not live much longer. She used Cora’s passing as a teachable moment. I don’t remember her words, but I remember the lesson. Death would come and come for us and it was scary and really really sad. I named my first child, Corah in her honor.

Cora stood alone in my mind because her husband was not alive when I was born. No one ever spoke of him. I didn’t even know what his name was and I had never seen a picture. But there he was on my broken i-phone screen beside Cora’s name. Walter Leroy Hyde. My great-grandpa! He was a beautiful child. Light brown skin, dark brown eyes and short curly black hair. He took my breath away. My mom’s side is all fair hair and eyes and even though I spent so much time with my mess of aunts, uncles, and cousins growing up, I just didn’t see myself in them. I didn’t look like anyone on that side at all. But looking into Walter’s face, I saw myself. I saw my dark eyes and curly hair. Not as curly as his, but my first thought was, “That’s where my curls come from!”

Suddenly, my conversation with my grandma 2 decades ago, filled my head. Oh my God. My Grandma’s dad was Black. She was right. Of course, she was right. I had done what everyone did to women in my family and just wrote her off as an old crazy rambling woman, but she was telling me something. Something really big. Something she never tried to tell me again and now that I desperately want to hear these secrets, there is no one left to finally listen to. Maybe because this bit of information came to me like a gift on New Year’s Eve, or maybe I was just ready for it, but I feel committed to finding the truth in this story. I want to know who Walter was. What happened to his parents? Was he “passing” at some point in his adult life? Was my grandmother considered “passing?” Did my mom know? She must have. I called her twin and we had a conversation about it. I got a little more info from that conversation and from a sweet internet friend who helped me do a little research. (Thank you Amy!)

Before moving back to the region in PA where my people are from, My great-great-grandparents moved to Virginia and bought a 600-acre farm. I thought I came from deep multigenerational poverty, and I do, but apparently, somewhere back there, someone had money. Great-Grandpa Walter was born in 1892 on that plantation in Virginia. Slavery was abolished 27 years before he was born but there were slave cabins on the property and I found accounts saying that Black people were “working the fields where they grew watermelons, corn, peppers, and beans.” There was a canning factory on the property and my great-grandfather’s siblings worked alongside the “colored help” processing the harvest. My great-great-grandfather , Edson (raised Walter but wasn’t his biological father) also owned and ran an oyster farm in Maryland. He would leave to go work there for long periods of time. The story goes that while he was away, Addie, my great-great- grandmother was having an affair with one of the Black people working in the fields. When I was told the story, I was told that she “fell in love with the gardener.”

My gut was full of fear because in the late 1800’s a Black man could be lynched for even looking at a White woman, let alone having an affair with one. Lynchings were happening all the time in Virginia the year that Walter was born. I was surprised at first that the Black ancestor was a man because I also feared that the legacy of white men raping Black women and especially the women who they enslaved would be a part of this story. I mean I can’t write that off here. Women can rape men and of course even though slavery ended officially, Addie held a lot of power in that situation. I will continue to dig into this because the truth is so important and because I want to know.

I think about Addie’s pregnancy with my great-grandpa, Walter. Did she wonder if the baby would be born brown? Did she know it was the unnamed man who was the biological father or did she not know which man was going to be the father? Addie’s husband, the White man who is on Walter’s birth certificate, was getting older. He was 57 years old the year that Walter was born. Addie was only 37.

Addie had married Edson at 18. She did not come from the same money and privilege as Edson. She had dropped out of school in the sixth grade and began working in the small town hotel soon after. She met Edson while working there. Was there love in that marriage? Did she marry him to escape? How did Edson react when their child was born and had brown skin and dark curly hair? Was Addie in love with this other man? And my biggest question of all…Who was the man that history erased from the story? Was he in love with Addie? What happened to him when their affair was discovered. Did he ever even see his son?

And Walter. I can only imagine what growing up was like for him. The family moved back to rural Pennsylvania “following some tragedies,” including the death of one of Walter’s siblings. Many of Walter’s siblings died. He was one of only three of their children to survive to adulthood. What was his childhood like being raised by this white family with who he was only biologically connected to the mother?

I can not imagine Walter’s reality, but I relate to some parts of it in big ways. I relate to living in secret and shame and fear. I relate to being raised (part-time for me and full time for Walter) in a family where I was the product of a parent stepping outside of their marriage. My father was married with 4 kids when he had his affair with my mom. Being in that house with his wife and their kids (who I love!) was not a comfortable feeling. I didn’t understand why completely, but I understood that at least in part, I was not a welcome addition. I was not a part of the family in the same way that they were and their mom was not My mom. Walter was raised full time like that in a family where he did not look like any of his siblings or his parents. He did not look like anyone in his whole town.

I am only at the beginning of searching for answers to my questions about my great-grandpa, Walter, but I atleast have a couple of stories now that I have gotten some of my aunts to open up a little bit. Their stories paint Walter as kind of larger than life man. Brilliant and brave. I wonder how no one ever told me any of these stories even though it is clear that he was loved and admired? The story goes that Walter and his older brother once built a little glider plane and they would climb the hills where I grew up and fly off the edge with their neighbor friend. One day the neighbor boy flew too close to a barn and clipped the wing off and that was the end of that. Another story is that Walter worked for the local electric company and he one time got shocked while up high working on a wire. The jolt sent him crashing to the ground, but he was so tough, he got right back up, climbed the pole, and went to work.

Part of me hopes that family will read this and have some more pieces of the story to share with me, but mostly I am sharing it because when I started digging the only official record is that Walter is white and that his father was white and the same man that fathered all of his siblings. The last generation that knows the truth is aging or already gone and the truth is disappearing along with it. I don’t know what happened between Addie and Walter’s Black father. I don’t know what happened to erase him from the story, but I can end the shame and stigma around talking about race in my family. I can speak the truth as I know it and learn from our history and our ancestors. I find it so interesting and bizarre that I have spent my whole life overcoming secrets and shame only to discover that that pain already took root in my family long before AIDS. I owe it to Walter and to myself to step out of shame and secrets and into the truth. I see this as part of my work as a white person committed and re-committing every day to eradicating white supremacy in me and in my society.

I am sorry that I did not listen to my grandmother that day. I wish that I sat in silence and let her tell me her experiences. I wish I could hug her and promise to carry the truth and speak it for her. I still know that my grandmothers stance on mixed race relationships is wrong but I am not so arrogant to think that I have any understanding of what her experience was or her fathers. I can not go back to that day or that moment, but I can move forward with intention and love and carry her in my heart as I search for the truth.

Remembering my great-grandpa Walter Leroy Hyde 1892-1963 and my grandmother Caroline Pearl Kellner 1936-2008

For Joy…and for Me

A few days ago, I saw a person die on the side of the road. I was driving my kids to the Skate Park and happened to be stopped at the longest red light of my life. First responders took turns giving chest compressions. First the woman. Then the man. They wore masks because of Coronavirus and I quickly realized that they were doing chest compressions ONLY with no mouth-to-mouth. This is all while I am still at the red light. I dont know how long I sat there. Was traffic just not moving? Was everyone glued to this horrific scene as I was. I realized I was not breathing. I feel trauma in my throat. It closes up until my chest aches with lack of air. When I was a child they diagnosed me with asthma for this exact reason and no one ever mentioned the words “trauma” or “anxiety.”

At some point I had to drive away. I had three children in the car. They were afraid too and they also wanted to keep going on to the skatepark. When I velcroed and snapped all of the pads and helmets into place, I realized I was still not breathing well. I was still trapped in the scene I just saw with an overlay of the scenes I saw in my childhood.

My mom attempted suicide more than once, but I have one time scarred into my mind. We are living in public housing. I am upstairs at the neighbor’s house. Another child is with me. We are 4, maybe 5 years old. We are supposed to be playing in his room but we are watching with our faces smooshed between the bars on the stair banister. My knuckles are white, clenching like my teeth. Maybe this is the beginning of my throat closing and holding my breath in fear? I am silent, but I want to scream and run to my mom. I can barely see her between the paramedics. They are surrounding her, but they are not touching her. They are in a circle and none of them know what to do and none of them want to be the one to touch her. There are three of them. My neighbor is the one who is holding my mom’s limp body upright in her kitchen chair. She is saying words I don’t understand. It is so loud. Every once in a while one of their radio-phones makes that cracklings sound and a loud beep. Then they push the little button and shout into it. I can hear noises coming out of it too but they are too mixed with the crackles to sound like words.

At this age, I dont know exactly what is happening. I only know that my mom was right when she told me that people will be afraid to touch her. That she is dangerous. I touch her all of the time. I want to touch her now, but I am too afraid.

As a grown-up I learned that my step-mother had the same thing happen when she collapsed and the paramedics refused to care for her because of her HIV diagnosis. Probably anyone who was living with HIV in the 80’s and 90’s has similiar stories. We weren’t just fighting for survival. We were fighting stigma and people’s fear.

This is what I am trying to grapple with at the skate park. “Mama, watch this!” I smile and say, “Wow! That is amazing. You have worked so hard at that.” But as soon as I watch the trick, I am glued back to the sliver of sidewalk winding past the field where I know the person is dying. I can still see the police from here. The paramedics are here too now and the fire department. There are a lot of trucks. No one is doing chest compressions anymore. My mind is racing. Would this person still be alive if they had done traditional CPR with mouth-to-mouth? Did they not do that because of Corona Virus or is that outdated? I have taken CPR courses many times but it has been years since I re-certified. Maybe some protocol has changed? Or maybe I am witnessing another horrific reality of this pandemic.

We do not stay at the Skate Park for long because every inch of pavement is occupied with man-bro’s. These grown men are apparently oblivious to my masked children who are clearly trying to respect social distancing. Aside from my children, there is not a mask in sight. I want to scream and cry and yell at these men that someone is dying just a stones throw from the park and do they not care about anyone else? But I know that would do nothing. So we leave. And my throat remains clenched.

I talk to my kids on the way home about the complexity of policing in America. They know about Black Lives Matter. They know that policing is rooted in institutionalized racism and directly linked to this country’s history of slavery. But in this moment, I talk to them about how policing as an institution and police as individual people are two different things entirely. While the institution is inherently racist, some of the people in the occupation are likely people who want to be helpers. People who get into it to save lives. Some of the people are the ones giving chest compressions to dying people in the park during a pandemic. I am overwhelmed with grief and gratitude but I am also a mother so I keep my cool to the best of my ability. I drive us home, get the toddler down for a nap and start making dinner.

Over the past few days, a woman’s picture has been circulating on Facebook. Her name is Joy. She is beautiful. I don’t recognize her even though we live in a small city. Still, her face is familiar and warm. The Facebook posts say she froze to death a few days ago in my city. My city, although “progressive” has abandoned the most vulnerable among us. We have left an older woman to die in the cold rather than provide safe housing and compassionate care for her alcoholism. I do not know if this is the same person that I saw die the other day in the park. Are people dying outside every day in my city? But even if this is not the same person, I feel connected to her. I feel accountable to her. I feel like I have to finally scream, and cry and add my anger and grief over her death and the deaths of so many to the community call to action.

I read all of the comments on the Facebook posts about Joy’s death. I am searching for clues as to who this woman was. I am searching for a way to quiet this shaking inside me. I still feel the tightness in my throat. I read a lot of comments online from people who have said things like, “Why didn’t she stay with a friend?” “Why didn’t someone take her in for the night?” and I am thinking back to my own experience of being homeless. And a Woman.

There was a period of time after I dropped out of college where I had no money and no place to stay. As an orphan and a 19 year old, I was completely on my own financially. A human angel and student at the college I just left, let me store my belongings in the apartment that she was renting with two other girls. We had all just finished our freshman year and their parents were paying for them to live off campus for the summer. Everything I owned in the world was shoved into a few plastic totes and some bags and pushed into an unsightly heap in their living room. These roommates of the angel friend tolerated it to my face, but I could feel their contempt. Some nights, I would sleep on their couch, but the guilt of taking up even more space in their apartment would often win out and I would search for other housing options. The nights I stayed there, I would sit outside on the sidewalk of their downtown apartment and chain smoke rather than be an eyesore upstairs.

I wasn’t old enough to go to the bar and the only other place that stayed open until 2 am was a coffeeshop called the Beehive. I would buy one cup of coffee for like $.95 and sip that for hours while smiling at people at other tables and scanning the room for a kind face. Usually by closing time I would have found someone who felt safe enough and nice enough to ask if I could stay at their house that night. I tried not to ask the same people too many times because I didn’t want to impose on anyone.

Some nights, the barista would start stacking chairs and I would not have found a safe person to go home with. On those nights, I would grab a chair and turn it upside down and put it on top of the table. They knew that I was helping because I didn’t want to leave because I had nowhere to go. If I was lucky, the person working that shift would be the sweet blond boy from West Virginia who was happy to play his guitar for me and tell me stories of the hills. Stories that felt familiar to me. That boy never touched me. Even though I was sleeping on his couch. Even though he was doing me a favor.

Other nights, the worst nights, I would go home with the red haired barista. He was not safe, but I knew what to expect from him. He wouldn’t kill me and leave me in a dumpster. I would be expected to kiss him and let him grope me all night. I knew that if I stayed smart and alert I could avoid anything further because his sister lived there and I would just scream for her if I had to. He tasted like cigarettes and not in the good way that I actually liked back then. He tasted like old man cigarettes and alcohol and rape. He was in his 30’s. I was 19.

I was mostly right about being able to stay relatively safe in his house accept for one night where he was particularly drunk and he was getting angier and angrier that I wouldnt have sex with him. When he got up to pee, I grabbed my cell phone and ran out the door. I spent the entire night walking around Pittsburgh talking on the phone with an ex-boyfriend who was in another state. I was terrified of being on the street, but it seemed like I used up my luck at that baristas house. It was time to pay up so I got out and never went back.

Another night, I was wandering the streets, looking for a new late night hangout when I noticed a truck driving very slowly behind me. It was the middle of the night and there were not many people around even though this was downtown Pittsburgh. The driver was emboldened by my glances back. “Hey, sexy! Come on, hop up in my truck and I’ll take you for a ride!” Every cell in my body was screaming at me. This was my worst nightmare. Rape was just a reality for a girl like me, but something about a stranger dragging me away into his truck to rape me felt worse than just the boys I grew up with.

I took off as fast as I could down an alley. I saw him turn his truck around and follow me. I cut across a lawn and dove into some bushes in front of a business that was closed for the night. I was curled in a ball praying that he couldn’t see me in there and also dialing the phone number of a friend I had met at the coffee shop. “Please, come get me!” The coffee shop friend was a boy just a year older than me that I felt safe with. I hadn’t ever been to his apartment but I was desperate. I hoped the man from the truck couldn’t hear me whispering the address to my friend as he drove by with his window down and his neck craned out the window looking for me. That night I got into a big fight with the safe boy because he couldn’t understand why I was so scared. “I’ve been beat up lots of times and mugged too, it’s not a big deal.” safe boy said to me.

“I’m not scared to be beat up or mugged. I have been beat up and mugged. I have been shot at and had knives held to my body. I am scared to be RAPED!”

No matter that I was trembling all over, this boy felt like he needed to mansplain to me that rape was no worse than being beat up. He insisted that he was just as at risk on the street as me. I thanked him for taking me in for the night and went to sleep wondering where I would sleep tomorrow and how could he not understand that rape is more than just an assault on a body. It is an assault on your whole soul. It is an assault on your humanity. It is just….For me, the one thing I still have a hard time talking about. I can talk about child abuse, AIDS, death, oppression, stigma, anything, but everytime I write a story about rape, it remains in my google docs and not in my blog.

I continued like this for a couple of months before I landed a position with Americorps working at a Women’s Shelter with mothers who were struggling with addiction. This job got me off the street and into a room with some kind adults who were all in their 30’s. My Americorps stipend covered rent but there was barely any money left for food. I was a lot safer than when I was on the street at night but I continued to find myself in the position where I depended on men for my survival.

I know that I am privileged to be writing this blog now from a different position than I was in back then. I partnered with a man outside of my class and saw myself lifted out of poverty. But I also know that if I had not met this particular man at this particular time in my life, I would likely have continued to find myself to some degree housing insecure and food insecure. I may have grown up to be a woman like Joy.

We live in a country with enough empty homes to house every homeless person. Yet, we refuse. We leave human beings outside to face all of the risks of being in that vulnerable position and sometimes those human beings die out there. We need to expect more from the society we live in. We can live in a world where every human being has access to housing, food, healthcare and dignity but we must demand it. I felt compelled to share my story today even though it feels a little vulnerable.

To Joy, I am so sorry. I saw you. I’m so sorry it was too late. I’m so sorry we will never get to hear your stories. I will remember.

There are no pictures of me during the times I wrote about because I had a flip phone and no camera but these two photos were taken when I finally got into a room in an apartment. Here I am Wearing my “professional clothes” that I bought at Goodwill for my Americorps job.

I know… “how were you smoking and drinking when you didn’t have any food?” You might not get it, but at this point in my life, cigarettes made me feel safer. They made me feel less shaky and they helped my throat and chest relax when I got that tightness from anxiety. Plus, my mom was a smoker so it always made me feel closer to her.

A very special interview for World AIDS Day 2020!

Thank you to Corah, Burton, Aida and Jamie for helping me with this blog post.

An honest peak into my life. Messy house in the background and toddler chaos. ❤ I’m the luckiest mama in the world to have these sweethearts.