Blood Bondages
Things began to get a little hectic around the Atkins household. My parents hardly spoke to one another. At least, when they argued there was communication. Now all that’s left is a dark, cold, and empty feeling. My father’s long hours at work could be one of the reasons. Aside from that, my parents just didn’t have much to say to one another. I was a seven-year-old living with an Oedipus complex. I longed for the love, affection, and security of my father. I despised the woman who kept him from me. Tonight, I decided to win my mother’s heart by telling her a story that I made up. I turned on my strawberry shortcake night light and rummaged through my toy box. I pulled out my red view master and put in my Scooby doo picture slides. I tip- toed into my parent’s bedroom and saw momma wearing her favorite holey nightgown. Momma’s hot combed afro was now in sponge rollers. She was lying on her back with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth watching “The Honeymooners”. I overheard Ralph Kramden tell his wife Alice that one of these days……POW! To the moon!. I giggled. I tugged momma’s nightgown and told her that I wanted to read a story to her. Momma replied “girl, I’m busy, you need to get out of my face and go back to your room.” I insisted on getting momma’s attention, so I tapped her on the arm. Momma got angry and opened her nightstand drawer and pulled out some nylon stockings and two handkerchiefs. First, she pulled my arms behind my back and tightened them together with the stockings and hogtied my hands to my feet. Next, she took the handkerchiefs and stuffed them in my mouth. Then, she went to her closet and grabbed some tape from her top shelf. Lastly, she wrapped my head tightly with the tape. My head was mummified. She was kind enough to leave an opening for my eyes and nose. Then she went back to smoking her cigarette and drinking her beer. I heard momma say, “now maybe you’ll shut up.” I was on my stomach bound in the corner of my parent’s bedroom for what seemed like an eternity. I smelled like urine and poop. I never once struggled for help. I knew there was none. My sadness turned into joy at the slightest glimpse of first light through momma’s bay window. I heard keys jingling at the front door. The footsteps were loud and clear then SNAP! I heard the familiar sound of a gun belt dropping to the floor to let me know that I had been saved. Officer daddy walked into the bedroom and yelled “MADELINE WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR DAUGHTER!”
Momma became distant towards me after she tied and gagged me. She began to take comfort in her friendship with Veronica Reynolds, our next-door neighbor. It was only natural. They both had very young children and were married to young, energetic police officers who were climbing up the chain of command. Veronica Reynolds wasn’t just any housewife. She was a domestic goddess and a shrewd businesswoman. Her home was an immaculate palace decorated with expensive animal print furniture, rugs, and pictures. Her walls were filled with African masks. An African carving or sculpture stood in every corner. One day, I was eavesdropping, and I overheard Veronica talking about when they were in their early twenties. Those were the feisty 60’s. There were no children, no husbands, no household chores, and no bills. For Veronica however, there was the Black Panthers. Veronica was an eager and loyal member. She kept the minutes from each meeting and in addition she recorded their activities within the community. She had no political aspirations and became disinterested after only a couple of rallies at city hall. She wasn’t an avid reader of current events and couldn’t help build discussions or formulate solutions. She severed ties with the Black Panthers on good terms and that’s when she met and married Grover Reynolds in 1975. She immediately became pregnant with little Dana. Cassandra came two years later. Momma’s life was a tad bit different. My mother was the only girl out of eight siblings. Her brothers all had the pleasure of knowing grandma Madge but momma didn’t. The story of grandma Madge Austin is but one of the many urban legends floating around Cartersville. As the newspapers tell it, she was walking home late one night from her housecleaning job and was gang raped by four drunken sailors. They dismembered her body, set it on fire, and scattered the ashes in old man Hillman’s backyard. Back then, there was no fancy forensic technology. However, there were hound dogs, there were always hound dogs. By the time momma was two years- old she already had a new stepmother who envied her because she was another woman’s child. Envy grew into hatred when momma became a teenager because of her dark skin, thick Cherokee Indian hair, and had a big ol’ butt that most women would kill for. She was always undermining momma and putting her own children before momma. She treated the boys a lot better and made them do her bidding and sometimes made them beat momma for no reason. One time, she made my uncle Cecil tie momma to a tree and pour honey all over her until the bees and ants came stinging and biting. Grandpa Ossie never defended momma because he was so in love with his manipulating wife. He gave her anything she asked for, including grandma Madge’s insurance policy and momma’s inheritance. Things were so bad at home that momma was oftentimes smelly and her hair looked like a bird’s nest. She found solace in the next-door neighbor, a schoolteacher that everyone called momma Cassie. She always took momma in, fed her, bathed her, taught her how to do household chores and even about her menstruation. Momma Cassie was barren, and she never had gentleman callers. Her love for children was the remedy for what ailed momma and in many ways, she became momma’s savior until the Vietnam War occurred. All of momma’s brothers were drafted and so was her high school sweetheart Rudolph. Momma Cassie died of pneumonia and momma had no one to shield her from her wicked stepmother. Momma moved to Darlington, South Carolina to live with her aunt Boopsie, the meanest woman on the earth. That’s harsh to say because aunt Boopsie was the second meanest woman just in case the devil had a wife.
Aunt Boopsie was a trip; she killed all of her boyfriends and somehow got away with it. She took all of their insurance policies and had a rundown plantation remodeled. She converted half of the plantation into a juke joint and the other half she converted into rooms for all of her adopted children, mostly females. She drained and bled the system for more money. The older girls helped waitress and serve the dirty old men at the juke joint. God bless the females that couldn’t find their own way after eighteen, because they were forced into prostitution. Aunt Boopsie didn’t take in many boys though because she said a man child was more deviant and sneaky. The very few boys she took in were raised to run Aunt Boopsie’s numbers and make her corn whiskey. Momma got her mean streak honest because she learned from the best. Momma moved back to Cartersville after the war ended to wait for Rudolph to return home from the army. All of momma’s brothers didn’t make it though. Three of them died, two of them met Vietnamese women and got married and never returned. Uncle Rayford and Uncle Roman came home nice and healthy. They were just bat crap crazy, and every time they saw the color red they’d break out in cold sweats and go ballistic. Rudolph Atkins didn’t show any signs of mental illness. However, he was addicted to power, sex, and drugs. He was some kind of war hero over there. He was always bragging about his purple heart and how he saved his comrade’s lives. Marriage to my mother was the seal of his rite of passage into manhood and the key to her freedom into a lifetime of financial stability. Rudolph didn’t have a support system when he battled his nightmares. His mother was a drug addict who abandoned him as a baby. He had four other siblings that he didn’t know and was very bitter about that. He was adopted and raised by a loving and nurturing family, the Withingtons. Adolph Withington adored his wife Mildred immensely. He built her a baby mansion from the sweat off his back and the blood from his hands in West Haven, Connecticut.
This mansion had several acres of land and would be the place where my dad would grow, play football, and have his wedding reception, baby shower and live even after my parents separated. “Ouch Daddy! “What you go and do that for?” I thought to myself. Momma and I were spying on Officer Daddy one night. She told me to hide in the back seat while she drove daddy’s Cadillac down Bronson Street with the lights off all quiet like. We stopped in front of this rundown, brick apartment building with the raggedy shutters. I distinctly remembered that the air smelled like puke and pee from the neighborhood club at the corner. Daddy’s squad car was parked in front of the building and instead of him monitoring the nightclub, he was moistening his night stick. I heard momma say “Zhara, sit up girl and take a look at your daddy!” I saw my father with my own eyes walking out of the apartment building zipping up his pants while some scraggly, beat down looking hag was in the doorway talking about “see ya later baby!” OOOOOOH, betrayal burned my eight-year-old eyeballs and that’s when momma gave me her finest advice. Momma said “there are some good, upstanding men in this world, but they are few and far in between and the rest of them have smiley faces but watch out because those are the ones who can’t keep their pickles inside of the jar.” ……Whatever, that means.
My parents had some good and bad times. Momma loved my daddy and she overlooked his infidelity because he brought home big, fat checks and gave momma whatever she wanted. Momma had furs, cars, nice jewelry, handbags, and new furniture. Officer daddy had his veteran pension coming in and was mounted up in overtime at the police department. The Atkins and the Reynolds’s were living the high life. Everyone drank when they wanted, ate how much they wanted, spent as much as they wanted and travelled where they wanted. None was the wiser. Life was filled with birthday celebrations, tea parties, cookouts, promotions, salon appointments, remodeling, and a dark secret that would soon make the infrastructure of this glorious lifestyle collapse. It was my ninth July 4th traditional celebration cookout in the Reynolds’s backyard. Grover put the steaks on the grill and that’s when momma came down with bad stomach cramps. She was rolling around on the ground in the smoldering heat screaming “OH LORD, PLEASE DON’T’ TAKE ME NOW!” She was bargaining with God and promising him that she would quit drinking and smoking if he would save her. All of the neighborhood children were in the pool laughing except for me. I’ve never seen momma in so much pain. I overheard momma bargain with God so many times before but that’s because she and daddy smoked some fire herb and she thought she was having a massive heart attack. This time it was different. I could tell momma was hurting because I saw tears roll down her cheeks. Veronica called the ambulance and Grover followed in his squad car since he was on call. My father had the day off and it would’ve looked bad for the department if he showed up at the hospital drunk as a skunk. Veronica promised to drive my father to the hospital once he sobered up. The celebration officially ended, and Veronica made the children go home. Dana, Cassandra and I were ordered to go upstairs to dry off and watch television. Dana and Cassandra were busy chattering away and pulling each other’s hair when I decided to sneak off. I figured that if I could just make it down the stairs, out the door, and into my house I could make a telephone call. I would call grandpa Withington and ask him to rescue me in his pickup truck and take me to the hospital to visit momma. When I walked past the Reynolds bedroom, I heard a sound that was all too familiar in my own household. It was the sound of my father moaning and grunting like he does when he makes love to momma. However, momma was in the hospital so…….
“OH SNAP!” It was Veronica on the bed with her legs spread eagle to the east and the west. I knew those feet anywhere because her toes had corns and bunions on them. The door was cracked and I could see my father’s pure behind bobbing and weaving like it was his last day on earth. I’ve witnessed enough sins from adults who tell me to be good, but I am not living with the guilt of this sin. I couldn’t wait until momma was discharged from the hospital so that I could tell it all. Six hours later, the hospital released momma saying that she was infected with chlamydia. I didn’t even get the chance to tell momma about Officer daddy and Veronica. Hell had already visited the Atkin’s household and put its feet on the coffee table. The aftermath would be the worst blowout in Atkin’s history. My parents were arguing so loud that I ran downstairs to Ms. Hair’s apartment for comfort, now that’s bad. Ms. Hair and I heard glass breaking and heavy furniture hitting the floor with a loud thud. We became so frightened that we ran outside to watch the show from the curb. There was nothing we could do except call the police. HA! HA! HA! That was hilarious. The only cop that would show up in our neighborhood would be Grover since Officer Daddy was already on the scene. I heard a lot of name calling, a few references to money, drugs, me, and a whole lot of women names that I couldn’t remember. I even saw a flowerpot fly out of the window followed by a television, some shaving gear, and some of my daddy’s dirty drawers. Just when I thought the action couldn’t get any more dramatic. Gunshots rang out in the summer air. By that time, a whole crowd had gathered around the Atkins household because my neighbors were nosy like that. A group of brave men pushed passed Ms. Hair and I and bum rushed our apartment door. I overheard one of the men say that it looked like the place had been hit by a category 5 tornado. It would take days for anyone to clean the apartment or find my daddy’s pinky toe. My parents separated shortly after that. Officer daddy went to live with the Withingtons. Momma and I moved back to Darlington, South Carolina to live with aunt Boopsie.
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