Three Miles in Baltimore

Chapter Eight: "I'm Every Woman!"

Like I've stated before, my mother has always found a way to turn a night of homelessness into an adventure.

I have story after story about these adventures, so exciting and so elaborate, where in the last ten years I realized were because of us being homeless. I need to iterate that the love my mother has for her children is unmatched. To this day, I know I can call on her and she will be there. She may give me attitude, she may say something sarcastic and witty, but she will always be there.

For years, I didn't appreciate her enough for the beginning years. The years my siblings and I spent unknowing, the first eight years of my life where she was able to hide things from me, successfully. While I had questions that pondered in my brain and I knew that my life was different from others, my mother tried her best to make it all seem a bit of fun - that the others were the ones doing it wrong. It took me until I was in my early twenties and a homeowner to realize how it must have felt for her. To know that she was doing it all alone, raising four very specific children all on her own. I had to put myself in her place.

My mother didn't have much higher education. She did not graduate high-school and if I am not mistaken, it took her years after we were all born for her to get her GED. My mother was very street-smart. She was from the projects. She always made a way out of none. She came from an abusive home - where one parent hated her and the other parent sexually offended her - she knew struggle in a way I will never understand. 

With all the painful memories that I have of my mother, it's the ones that were wonderfully insightful that contributed in my acceptance of my mother. I had to first accept that what she did to me, to all of us, could not change. Once I accepted the trauma, I was able to understand why my mother decided what she did, even if I still do not agree with them, I understood, and ultimately was able to appreciate and recognize her for who she is now. 

One of my favorite adventures (a night we had nowhere to sleep), was at my mothers hair salon. I was young, VERY young, much younger than Brittanie that lived on Carrollton and Brittanie that lived on Edmondson Avenue; even Brittanie that slept in the room of the lady's apartment. My mom had a friend named, Ivy. I remember Ivy well. I remember her home, her children, and her allowing us to stay with her for a while. She and my mother were great friends and yet I always thought we were so unwelcome at her home. I remember Ivy ordering me to stand in the corner with one leg up for overhearing her complain on the phone with a friend, about my mother. 

During the time we spent at Ivy's my mother worked at a hair salon not that far away and on one night, one very late night, we were all in the salon; my mother and her four children. I didn't understand why we were at the salon so late, it was a school night. But my mother had distracted us with entertainment. She ordered pizza and sodas and we ate and laughed, unknowing. She turned the radio on, blasting Whitney Houston's, I'm Every Woman, and we all performed in a fashion show, my brothers included. We walked from the front to the back of the hair salon; tying towels around our necks like scarves and fanning ourselves with Hype Hair magazines. My mother cheered us on and laughed hysterically at my brother Randy's attention to detail; he had a towel tied around his neck like a cape and walked like a superhero. 

As we all dozed off, tired with food-comas, my mother brought out hair-towels for us to lay our heads on. She draped our coats over our bodies like delicate blankets. I peeked through my falsely closed eyelids as I laid on the floor of the dark hair salon. My mother was watching us, all four of us; Phil cuddled next to Kiara, Randy spread out like he was on a king-sized bed. I watched my mother as she sat motionless in the broken salon chair; she looked so young. She sat there all night, looking at us while silently crying.