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January 16, 1978
Dear Aj,
I think I may have written over one hundred letters to since I have been here, and I have never received one back. I have given you a thousand apologies. Your name and what you mean to me hits hard everyday of my life. I know it may seemed like I didn't care. That I didn't have an ounce of love for you, but that is not true. I do love you. Even though my actions have said different. You see, they say that actions speak louder than words, but I disagree. Some people don't know how to show love. They don't know what love is, and I am one of those people. I thought that love was about perfection. I thought it was untainted. But the older I get, and the more that I learn from my mistakes, I find that that is not true at all.
Love isn't perfection. It isn't clean. It isn't pure. Love is the messiest thing on this whole entire earth. Love is complicated. Love is fearful. Love is intimidating. Deadly. If you love the wrong person. You can end up ruining your life obsessing over them. Bitterness is what comes out of love. Hanging on to negativity, clinging on to lies, hiding from the truth. That all comes from the tree of love. The tree of Bitter love. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about it, Aj. I don't want you to run away from love your whole life. Love has its positive characteristics as well. Love is daring. It's adventurous. But you must always keep caution when it comes to it, because just as love maybe the best thing that ever happen to you. False love is something you can easily fall in to. I don't want you or Aleena to the same mistakes I made when I was about your age.
Love is also about being truthful to the person that you have love for, and that is why I am writing this letter. I want you to know that I will be out of here soon, and I think that it is that I let all my bones out of the closet before seeing your face again for the first time in five years. There some things you and your sister do not know about me, and honestly, I think you're too young to know. My life has been tragic and you wouldn't understand most of it. There is one thing about me and you that you definitely have to understand. It might be heart wrenching. It might be hurtful, I feel it is time you know.
I am not your mother. I know it maybe hard to believe, but it is the truth. I know that soon you would've started noticing that you don't really look like me or your aunts-and if you have-well, that is the reason why. No one knows, I don't believe. Not Liana or Sasha. Not even your grandmother. The only person who know is me.
When Momma came and took Leena from me, you were with me too. You were just a baby and she just assumed that you were mine. She didn't ask me no questions she just took the both you away from me because I was not fit to raise a child. I don't even remember it happening. All I know is one day, I woke up and you two were gone. I know I wasn't the best mother. I know I was unstable, and I wanted drugs more than I wanted the two of you, but that is just how it is when you have an addiction. That drug is your one and only priority, and you will do anything that get high. You will do anything to keep that buzz going on. You lose yourself and forget what is important. And I am not afraid to admit that the most important thing to me back then was my stuff. But that doesn't mean I didn't love you and Aleena. Like I said, "Words are louder than actions. Actions are louder than words." It goes both ways.
I honestly don't know who your real mother is, but I know who your father is. His name was Michael Phillips, who went by Miguel on the streets. He was twenty-three year old a bad boy from Detroit Michigan living with his uncle in Brooklyn while he attended some performing arts school for the gifted. He wasn't like Melvin, he wasn't like any man I had known actually. Even though he ran around with the wrong people, he never fully allowed himself to become caught in the world that I was in. I think he was just an outsider looking for somewhere to fit in. Anyways, he became obsessed with me in a way. He wanted to know why I did drugs, why I partied a lot, why I made the choices I made in my life when it hadn't started to begin yet. I would talk to him, I told him about my life, and he never judged me for anything. He never made me feel like I was the bad person. He made me feel like I was...human. And he believed that I could turn my life around. It's really hard to describe what I had for him. It was like...I was in a fantasy. It was like I was day dreaming. He was the easiest person I could talk to, and I trusted him instantly. For the first time in my life, my past didn't matter. And I fell for him because he made me feel real.
Miguel was an artist and a musician. He could draw, paint, play piano and guitar, and sing. I guess that's why he went to a school for gifted students, because he most definitely gifted. When he found out I had some talents of my own, he tried to talk me into enrolling there. But because I had dropped out of high school and I had a criminal record, that was completely out of the question for me. I had pretty much thrown my whole life away and I believed that I did too, but for some reason he never gave up hope for me. I don't know why he believed in me so much when I hardly even believed in myself. I never fully understood it.
Your name-your real name-is Andréa Paola Phillips. You are Puerto Rican and Dominican on Miguel's side. I know that it is rare that people actually have children with people outside of their race, but look at us, the Houghton's are a diversely mixed race family. Miguel spoke about you all the time. He called you his "Baby Girl". He loved you. He would always brag about how your birthdays were six days apart, and how much you look like him, and how he would teach you to play piano and paint. He has so much planned for your lives together. It pains me to say this because he didn't have that.
You were just a year old when he started bringing you around. You were a happy energetic baby. Your eyes were mesmerizing. Your smile lit up a room, and I completely fell in love with you when we first met. So did Aleena. We would spend days over his house while his uncle was out of town, playing games, dancing, and singing. Those were the happiest days of my life. For the first time, I saw some light in the dark world I had been living in. But that all ended when Melvin found out about him. Melvin thought he owned me and he wanted no man to think that they could have me. That's how it is. I was supposed to do what he told me to do whenever he told me to do it. I spoke to who who told me to. It was like being in prison when I was with him. I thought I kept my relationship with Miguel private, but someone found out and told him. One day, Miguel was out buying art supplies and left you behind with me. You were hard to put to sleep, and he had finally laid you down. He didn't want to risk waking you up. While I was waiting for him to come back, Melvin showed up, bursting through the door as if he was a police officer. He beat me so bad to the point that I lost consciousness and when I woke up I found myself lying on the cold hard floor, alone. You and Aleena were gone. I was in a panic. I thought that he had done something to the two of you. I was too afraid to face Miguel with the truth. Especially, because I honestly didn't know what the truth was myself. I only assumed that Melvin had done something with the two of you. It wasn't until I got a phone call from Liana who told me that Momma had took the both of you in. Moved you two to Alabama and that she would raise the both of you. God, I didn't know what to do. I was so scared. I was never fully in my right mind and I wasn't fully capable of making rational decisions. By the time I had found out about what really happened to the two of you, I was back in the drug scene. I had never seem or heard from Miguel ever again because I couldn't face him. I tried calling Momma to tell her that you weren't mine, but the number that I knew was changed. Momma thought that it would be best that I stayed out of y'alls lives. She did whatever she could to keep me away from you.
If I could go back and change everything, I would. Because I had not only lost the love of my life, but I took the love of his, and that was something I never wanted. You grew up in a different world. You lived a life you were supposed to live and that is what I feel the most guilty about. I truly feel that you would be a happier person if you grew up as Andréa and not Aaliyah. So, if you want to blame me for all your sorrows, you can. Because it is all my fault. I take one hundred percent of the blame.
