The Ramifications of Childhood on Parenthood, Part I

It was a regular Saturday night at my house. Mom had a handful of visitors drinking, smoking, singing and dancing to Golden Oldies. I had been privy to this scene enough times to know that the joyous laughter would soon be drowned out by bickering (if it was a good day) or brawling (if it was not). This particular evening my Great Aunt, Isamae, was responsible for the shift. She went into the kitchen, grabbed a butter knife and returned, wielding the laughable weapon amidst a room full of much younger, much more violent people.

"I'ma kill every last one of y'all mother%$@!ers, and I'm fittin' to start with him." She pointed to my cousin Cedric's near lifeless body sprawled ignobly in the middle of the floor. Cedric was the worst of all the drunks at my house. For one thing, he lived with us, as did Isamae, her daughter Linda, Linda's son (Cedric) and her daughter, Annette. More importantly, he never had that moment of euphoria that the others experienced in the early part of the evening. He was mean when he was sober and he was mean and annoying when he was drunk. Despite his small stature, he was also as fearless as they come.

Had he been conscious to hear the threat his Aunt issued, Cedric would have remained right there on the floor, unmoved. But he hadn't. Instead, Regina, the neighborhood crackhead and "lady of the evening" had heard it. Unlike Cedric, Regina was afraid of her own shadow. She screamed and beat herself about the head as she climbed out of the living room window onto the fire escape. No one was going to kill her. She would kill herself, she said.

Perhaps it was the liquor that drowned out the noise Regina made, or perhaps it was because my mother's apartment was only one story up - hardly enough to kill anyone, but the other "guests" (excepting my father) ignored both Regina and the woman who set her on this ridiculous course. My dad, who had recently returned from North Carolina with the help of his parents, tried to talk Regina off the fire escape (or the "outskirts" as he called it). I can't remember how the night ended. I assume at some point I calmed down enough to close my eyes, hopeful that only the empty liquor bottles and the foul odor of drunkenness had remained.

The story has been told time and again with gleeful reminiscence, but, at the ripe old age of four, I was devastated.