Three Miles in Baltimore

Chapter One: "The Lavender Baby"

I was not supposed to be born.

I mean that seriously. (No games, I promise.) The story goes that my mother was scheduled for an abortion on a Monday and went to jail on that Friday or something along those lines. She will be embarrassed that I am telling the world this but I feel you all need to know. Not only for the factual meaning but also to show the relationship between my mother and I. She was very open and honest to her kids - for the most part.

The story goes, she was involved in a fight where a woman kicked my older brother Phillip down a flight of stairs. Phil must have been six or seven years of age at the time and the way the steps in West Baltimore were, they sat the house high above the curb. I've never known the true reasons for the fight between my mother and this unknown woman; I just know that the woman kicked Phil, his arm got caught around the metal railing, catching him from hitting the pavement, and a few seconds later my mother had cut the woman across the chest with a box cutter.

One thing I want you to understand about my mom is that she loves her children. (I want you to know that.) In this book you will hear a lot of things about her, horrible things, amazingly inspiring things, stories I wish were not true and yet they are; but I must reiterate, my mom loved us. She loves us and that is why as a woman, I was able to forgive her. I realize my story is just as much as hers as it is mine.

While my mother was not in jail for a long time, she was put on house arrest and had to maintain at home with her other three children, my brother Phillip, my sister Kiara, and my brother Randy. There are not many pictures of my mother pregnant with me. There aren't really many pictures of my mom pregnant with any of her kids. I guess that has to do with our constant moving. (I'll talk more about this later.) However, I did find one picture of her while pregnant with me. She was in the kitchen of her old place, with her swollen leg up on the faded vinyl chair as someone helped her scratch at the skin beneath her ankle bracelet.

When I was born, my father was not at the hospital. (You will become used to Bruce, my father, not showing up to things throughout this story.) My mom arrived to University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She was driven to the hospital by my Uncle Kenny, accompanied by the man who would become my godfather, Jamar, who was also my dad's close friend. Shortly after, I was born. I arrived into the world as pale purple as a lavender. Yes, when I was born, I was purple. My godfather told me that my mother sat up in her bed and screamed, "Eww, what's wrong with her?" My mother said I was so bright that you could see every vein in my body, in my arms, in my face; all making me appear purple. I was bald headed, with big grey eyes, and duck like lips that I poked out frequently. As everyone that my mom loved started to arrive and proclaimed me to be funny-looking, (funny-looking is how black people call kids ugly without actually saying it.) my godfather held me in his arms and confessed that I was the most beautiful baby in the world. This would not be the last time he did this, but the first of many times he would hold me as I grew into a woman and cried, telling me how beautiful I was even from birth; even with everyone saying that I was not.

When my father did arrive, he and my mother battled over what they should name me. My father wanted to name me, Astrid. He said that he believed that name to be the most gorgeous name he had ever heard and that someone who looked like me, someone who was obviously going to be spectacularly different from everyone else needed a different name. My mother did not like the name. She wanted to name me Kennedy, after President Kennedy. She too thought that I was due a gorgeous name that she loved. Ultimately, my dad turned this name down. They even began being creative, almost named me Brucetta - a mixture of their two names. (Thank God that didn't happen and my apologies for any Brucetta's out there reading this. I have a right to not like a name.) Finally, they came up with a simple name that they both liked, which was Brittany. However, my dad being the innovator that he is, told my mom, "If we are going to give her a simple name, we can't make it plain. She's needs something creative." So that is where the spelling of my simple name became something of flavor, Brittanie, is what they named me. My dad didn't just stop there. He and my mom gave me a middle name that began with the letter M and I took his last name, Evans. So, I was to be called, Brittanie M Evans and to this day, if you ask my dad, he says it stands for the beginning, the middle, and the end of who I am - my father thinks he's the best name giver.

I don't remember much of my infant and toddler years (I doubt most people do.), but I do know that I was born on September Twenty-First, screaming, bloody and purple, to Bruce and Daunetta. Years later, I found out that my father, at nineteen years old, was just beginning his journey to become a dad; I was his second child - his second daughter. (I would meet his other children once I grew older.)

My mother on the other hand was only Twenty-Four when I was born; already a woman, a mother to three children by three different men. I was the last of her four children. I would turn out looking exactly like her, acting exactly like she had been at my age, and spending years hating her for making me who I would become.