I was in the middle of one fight, and too young to be aware that I wasn't alone. There was history. Similar battles.
My mother used to say that she never saw anyone quite like me. Trouble. Long before most of the white women faculty at the University of Wisconsin Parkside decided I was to be branded "trouble", the "troublemaker", my mother, grandmother, and aunt recognized me as nothing but trouble. In turn, I guess I thought of myself as a mutant. I had to learn about detours, distractions, and deceptions that obscured the pursuit of freedom.
I remember my mother telling me she wanted to be a singer. She had a good voice, my grandmother told me. I never heard it. By the time I came around, my mother had even given up her second option of becoming a nurse. On my refrigerator today, I have a picture of her in her white uniform. The uniform of a nurse's assistant. My mother was never a registered nurse.
My aunt might have made it to come a registered nurse. I'm not clear on this. I have seen a picture of her too in her nurse's uniform. But then she too, like my mother, her oldest sister, married and had children. Neither seemed to be close; in fact, they were always in competition to me, a young girl. To this day, I despise competition that results in resentments. Hateful resentments.
My grandmother might have desired a career as a film star in Hollywood. She so loved cinema. She grew up in a creole family in New Orleans where she married my grandfather, a Shreveport man, who sought work in the Big Easy. Maybe she thought she was light enough. Passable. Otherwise, I don't think anything was easy for this young couple.
My grandfather went ahead to Chicago, continuing to look for work while my grandmother stayed behind in New Orleans, giving birth to a son. A year or so later, now in Chicago, my mother is born. It's 1929.
I witnessed arguments that frightened me. Fights between grown people. People I loved. People who seemed to forget that I was present. I watched and listened.
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