Mommy Dearest

The storyteller: Destiny

I grew up in a home which consisted of two older brothers, a little sister, and me. Our mother passed away when I was just three years old, and my sister was only three months old. My oldest brother was seven, and my younger brother was five. Our father had a close family friend that worked with my mother. She lived in our basement and helped our dad raise us. She was like our live-in nanny. She became our auntie as time went on.

Our auntie would cook, clean, wash our clothes, do the dishes, comb my hair and my sister's hair, give us baths, and make sure we went to bed so that we got enough sleep for school the next day. She made life fun for us. She gave us the love that we would have gotten from our mother had she lived. Auntie was the mother that we never got the chance to know. If she never told us that she loved us, we could wake up every morning and look in her eyes and see the love that she had for us. Auntie saved the day, but this was a lot of responsibility to place on a woman with no children. Our dad knew that this was not our auntie's responsibility, nor could he continue to burden her with such a heavy load.

After a while, our dad decided that he needed companionship and some help with all these kids. Finally, he met this woman and decided to move her and her son into our home to help raise us. This woman and her son had settled into our home while her older son was off in the navy. Our father was about twenty years this woman's senior, so calling him a sugar daddy would be an understatement.

I don't remember how old I was when she first moved into our home, but I do know that I was very young, and I never felt comfortable with her being there. I always loved her son though. I considered him a brother, and when he would visit his family for the summers in South Jersey, I would miss him so very much. I couldn't wait to take that hour-and-a-half ride down the turnpike to pick him up and bring him back home, where he belonged. I don't know if it was because he would stop his mom from picking on me or because I genuinely loved him or what. I'm just kidding. I really loved him. He was the best part of her. The only good thing that ever came from her was him.

The role that Joan Crawford played in the movie Mommy Dearest had nothing on my stepmother. We would come home from school and open the front door with the aroma of potatoes being cooked with onions and peppers seasons just right and steak smelling so good. I mean a feast prepared for a king. We would run upstairs to the bathroom to wash our hands to prepare for this delicious meal, only to hear her say, "No, I made this for my son. You all better make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is for my son." We would sit and watch him eat and feel like we were the children of the help.

Uhmmm, I could understand why she never liked me growing up because I got sick of her mess, so I began to speak up, while my siblings chose to stay quite. Heck, closed mouths don't get fed; and if mine don't get fed steak and potatoes with onions and peppers tomorrow after school, then her sons won't either. Believe that!

I decided to ask her why her son gets to eat steak and potatoes and we can't have any. She told me that that's her son, and he is the king, and he can have anything that he wants. Really! Okay, we'll see about that! Some time had passed, so I decided to talk to my father about the meal plan that she had the help on and the steak and potatoes dish that she had been preparing for the king. My father set her straight, and when it was all said and done, the real king had spoken. My father told her that he pays for the food that comes in that house and he buys more than enough for his kids to be able to eat steak and potatoes too; and since we are being mistreated, she is not allowed to purchase any more steak and bring it in the house for anyone to eat if his kids can't eat it as well.

Why did I go and tell my father. I know that when he left for work the next day, there will be a price to pay. Since my siblings played by her rules and kept their mouths closed, she decided to turn them against me. This would not just be while we were growing up. This would be a lifetime commitment of hers. She would not rest until my siblings hated me. When my sister was just a little girl, she would have her hit me in my face and tell me if I hit her back, she would beat me. She would allow my brothers to beat me up as well. I grew to hate my little sister, and every chance I got, I would abuse her.

My stepmother was this young party animal. The funny thing about her was that she was a closet freak as well. The respectable adults in the neighborhood thought that she was one of them, and my aunts and uncles thought that she was the model stepmom who stepped right in and filled our mom's shoes. She was so rotten that she made my teeth hurt. Mommy Dearest knew when to leave the house and just when to return home. She was just like Lucifer. You know his biggest defeat is making the world believe that he doesn't exist. Her biggest defeat was making everyone believe that she was the pure, angelic Christian trying to help our father raise his children. She was a wild card that drank, smoked weed, and on occasion did cocaine. When you do drugs with people that don't care who knows what they do at some point, they will tell who joins them from time to time. Party people have big mouths.

She wasn't a bar hopper unless she went home to hang out with her sisters. When she was in Newark, she was more of the house-party kind of a girl. You know what goes on behind closed doors stays behind closed doors. Not always true when you are with men that like bragging rights. She would sit on the porch and act like she was babysitting us, and in the meantime she would be on the hunt for the party people in the neighborhood. You know what the party people in the neighborhood look like? These are the people who, during the day, liked to get into stuff. On our street, these people were the young adults not doing much with their lives at the moment, the meat man at Red Star Meat. She used to take her bra off for him while she shopped around the store.

I can remember one more man. I called him the grease monkey. He worked at the gas station around the corner from our house. Boy was that man a new kind of black. She liked to hang out with people that knew where to get stuff that she liked. She would hang out with my stepsister and my stepbrother. When we went Down South, my aunt would be her hanging buddy.

Mommy Dearest never fit in with my Christian aunts because they were real church ladies. They were respectable women that she would have to put on her sheep clothing whenever they came to visit. My aunts always treated her with...