“Beating the hand I was dealt”
Odds were against me from the day I was born; but even then I proved to be a survivor.
Years ago, while sitting with a few of my family members as they were drinking, smoking, laughing, and reminiscing about the past, my mother, Essie shared a little about my sister, Amy and I. The story started with the day I was born.
The day was August 4, 1965, in Cleveland, Ohio. I had to stay in the hospital for a few weeks because I weighed five pounds and had yellow jaundice. When I turned one month, Mama decided to move from her friend’s home in Cleveland, Ohio, to Toronto and then to Steubenville with my Aunt Emma. While we lived there family members spoiled me.
My cousin Lena, who is close to my mother in age, described how tiny I was. My cousins were laughing, saying that I was so tiny that my bed was literally one of my mother’s dresser drawers. She said that every time my mother would lay me down and come back to check on me, I wasn’t there. When she would look for me, she would find me in one of my cousins’ pants as they tried to sneak me out the house only to get caught when I would make noise.
I laughed. She said that would happen on different occasions, with different cousins, and the laughter continued. I didn’t believe them. I told them I wish they would have taken a picture.
A question developed in my mind concerning my name. I was wondering why I was named after a man, after one of my male cousins. My mother said a few days after I was born, she hadn’t named me yet. My cousin Ernest said he wanted me to be his namesake. Mama added stine at the end to make Ernestine.
I said, “I wish you would have given me another name.” I hated my name. It’s not only a man’s name; it’s also an old lady’s name. I asked her if that’s why my birth certificate has two parts to it. One part was incomplete. Everything about me was on it except my name. Attached to it was a small certificate that had my complete name on it.
Amy was born two years and two days from the day I was born in Steubenville, Ohio.
“How did you plan that?” I asked Mama.
“ I don’t know,” she said. “It just happened.”
Everyone continued laughing as she continued the story. She said not long after my sister was born, we moved from Ohio to Detroit. My mother said that everyone was upset because they didn’t want us to move. She said we moved to Detroit during the riots. At that point, a vision came to me.
I yelled out in excitement that I remembered that. They started laughing and said they didn’t see how I remembered when I was only two going on three years old. I didn’t know either, but I did. I told them I remember sitting in the backseat of my daddy’s car as he was driving. I could barely see the people as they walked past the car but I saw lots of them walking past my window. They were all wearing the same uniform. I heard them yelling that everyone must be in the house or off the street before dark. That’s all the memory I have of the riot.
I asked my mother why we moved to Detroit. She said that my daddy, Sam, wanted to move to Detroit because of a job. Either his job was relocating him or he was hoping to get a job. Detroit is known as the Motor City, because of the automotive plants. She said we lived in an apartment on the west side, close to Daddy’s job, Ford Automotive Factory.
She said my daddy didn’t like living in our apartment building because all the tenants had to share one bathroom. I was being potty trained and would have to be taken to the bathroom all through the night, and my father didn’t like that. When he came home one day from work, he had a big silver tub and a potty chair. It was big to me because I was only two. You can call me crazy, but I was fascinated with the big silver tub. I liked how it sounded when I hit on it and rubbed it with my hand. It was used for multiple purposes; we took our baths in it, I saw my mother wash clothes in it, and one day it was used to help stop my nose from bleeding after an accident at the grocery store. Let me explain.
