Category Archives: Youth

Writing For The First Time, Almost The Last Time

14 Thursday Jul 2011

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I spent most of the summer of ’81, my summer before seventh grade, A. B. Davis Middle School and Humanities writing my first book. I’d been inspired by my second-place finish in Mount Vernon’s city-wide, K-12 writing contest, which came with a $15 check. It wasn’t really a book in any adult sense of the word, but for eleven-year-old me with all my interests in war and weapons back then, it was a magnum opus. It was a book about the top-secret military hardware the Department of Defense didn’t want the rest of America to know about. I remained consumed with reading about war and military technology in my spare time — I wouldn’t have learned the word “fortnight” otherwise! Everything from the B-1 bomber to the M-1 Abrams tank to the Trident submarine and MX missile was to be in this scoop on the latest in military high-tech.

M-1 Abrams with 105 mm cannon, circa 1980. (Source/www.cj-jeep.com)

I even wrote a letter to the Pentagon for declassified pictures of these weapons, which I received in mid-July. It would be another two years before the M-1 Abrams with the 120mm cannon went beyond the prototype stage, so I knew even then that someone at the Department of the Defense had made a mistake in sending me these photos.

By the time of my brother Yiscoc’s birth (one form of Hebrew for “Isaac” and pronounced “yizz-co”) later in the month, I’d written nearly fifty pages on these weapons and why they were so cool for the US military to have. Especially in light of the Soviet military threat. Unfortunately, they didn’t declassify the fact that America’s latest tank used depleted uranium in parts of its hull or in its cannon shells. That would’ve been a real scoop at the time.

Three weeks after Yiscoc came into the world, all of us spent the afternoon at White Plains Public Library. I did some more research for my military book. But I deferred on this book, not really sure that this was what I was meant to do and be. Not only would it be the last time I worked on my military hardware book. It would be the last time I’d write anything that I’d hope to publish for a decade.

Honestly, I’m not sure why I stopped writing, except for school or to journal about getting beat up by my

Peacekeeper (MX) Missile test launch, November 26, 2002, Vandenberg AFB, California. (US Air Force). In public domain.

stepfather Maurice. Maybe it was because of the cares of this world, the steady drop into poverty and welfare, the very nature of being a Hebrew-Israelite for three years, or having a stepfather who terrorized us for so long. Or maybe it was going from one to two, then three by ’83, and four by ’84, younger siblings in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. Maybe I just looked at myself through the eyes of my Humanities peers and saw someone who could only play Jeopardy! and sing high-falsetto, not a person with a gift for the written word.

As I’ve thought about those lost years — an eight-year writer’s block, really — three things come to mind. One is that my father Jimme was completely absent from my life for more than a year between April ’81 and August ’82, mostly because of a baseball bat (more on that next week). Two is the reality that I grew to hate, actually, literally, hate, my stepfather, who saw himself as a writer (he was an okay writer, never published, but not really the point). I dare say that I couldn’t hate him as passionately as I did and then turn around and embrace myself as a writer at the same time.

But the third thing involved answering the question, what kind of life would it be for me to pursue writing as a passion, a career and calling? The only people who ever asked me that question were my teachers. My eighth-grade and twelfth grade English teachers Mrs. Caracchio and Ms. Martino and my Western Civ II TA Paul Riggs. They at least made me realize that my biggest fear was being as impoverished at forty or fifty as I was at seventeen or eighteen.

Luckily, once I left Mount Vernon for Pittsburgh and Pitt in ’87, I became interested in writing again. And then once my stepfather became my ex-stepfather two years later, I found myself writing for me in volume for the first time in seven years. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d have writer’s block. Still, the longest I’ve had writer’s block since ’89 has been a day or two.

Yes, I’m still a struggling, though published writer. But I’m not Edgar Allen Poe, like I thought I’d be in pursuing this calling.

The Curious Case of Mrs. O’Daniel

30 Thursday Jun 2011

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I meant to do a post on this last month, but got caught up in other work and other posts. This one’s about the unique experience me and about thirty of my William H. Holmes Elementary School classmates had between ’77 and ’81, and my unique experience in particular. That experience, at least for me (and to a slightly lesser extent, for my classmates), was in having a number of caring, highly qualified Black teachers before we went off to the vicious worlds of A.B. Davis Middle School, Nichols Middle School, and Mount Vernon High School.

Starting in first grade in ’75, I had Ms. Griffin at Nathan Hale Elementary (now Cecil Parker Elementary), Mrs. Shannon — my first teacher crush — in third grade at Holmes, and Mrs. Bryant, a great teacher, in sixth grade. But the toughest and yet very caring of all the Black teachers I had in K-6 in Mount Vernon was Mrs. O’Daniel, my fifth grade teacher. She was the teacher that made me realize how troubled the world around me really was.

I and we learned early on how not to cross Mrs. O’Daniel. Once early in the school year, when our class was wound up and acting out, Mrs. O’Daniel threatened to “introduce [us] to the Board of Education. Do y’all know what that is?” After raising my hand, I said, “Yeah, it’s the building next door to us.” “No, not that Board of Education,” Mrs. O’Daniel said with a slight smile, “this one.” This Board of Education was three yard sticks taped together, and she tapped the palm of her left hand with it to emphasize what it was for — our behinds.

She used it on me one time, because I happened to take something that wasn’t mine from her nook in the classroom, what, I don’t remember. Five taps with the Board of Education across my hand was quite enough for me in the ’79-’80 schools.

Mrs. O’Daniel, though, did much more than provide discipline for our classroom. She spent a lot of our time that year on history, American history, African American history, reading and writing. I read parts of W. E. B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk in her class that year and wrote a small and wholly inadequate book report on it. I learned about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the first time in May ’80. I learned so much about MLK and Malcolm X that year, more than I’d learn all through middle school and high school.

I also discovered how far behind some of my classmates were. We had two twelve-year-olds and a thirteen-year old in our class, and all of them read well below the fifth grade level. Mrs. O’Daniel assigned me and two other classmates the task of working with the older classmates to help them build up their reading and writing skills. That spring, I spent a month working with the oldest member of our class, going over words that I once struggled with in second and third grade. I felt bad for him, but even more puzzled about how a teenager could be stuck in fifth grade reading only on the second grade level.

There was a mystery to Mrs. O’Daniel as far as I was concerned. I still can’t remember if she’d grown up in North Carolina or Alabama, or if she had any kids or grand kids, or if her husband was still alive. When she announced in the early spring of ’80 that she had just turned sixty, we were stunned, thinking of how old sixty was compared to ten, eleven or even thirteen. She seemed a bit strange, but certainly not old beyond our knowledge that she was born in 1920. Mrs. O’Daniel was as tall as teacher as I ever had, but hardly frail or old outside of her salt and less salt hair.

She died in ’83, sometime during my first weeks in Mount Vernon High School. Some of my former Holmes classmates, who were now in Humanities in ninth grade, broke down and cried when they heard the news. I must admit, I was stunned. I’d never known anyone who had contact with me and died before. All I knew was that an older person who cared about me, about all of my classmates, had passed away.

It made me sad, but it didn’t sink in until much, much later how fortunate I was to have had Mrs. O’Daniel and Mrs. Bryant, Mrs. Shannon and Ms. Griffin as my teachers early on. I had no idea that the only teacher of color that I’d have until I reached the University of Pittsburgh would be Ms. Simmons, a first-year, seventh-grade math teacher I stood toe to toe with by Xmas ’81. I think that my understanding of African American history and culture would’ve been much more limited prior to my Pitt years if it weren’t for Mrs. O’Daniel. And for that, and so much more, I thank her.

Peaking As A Sixth Grader

24 Friday Jun 2011

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William H. Holmes Elementary, Mount Vernon, NY, November 23, 2006. Donald Earl Collins

I can’t believe that this Sunday’s the thirtieth anniversary of me and my cohort finishing sixth grade. Thirty years since I first felt that feeling of reaching the mountaintop, as if I’d accomplished something in my life. Three decades since the last time I was unknowingly naive and unnecessarily arrogant.

Combined with having become a part of a bizarre religion, I had a new point of view on my life by the time graduation day on Friday, June 26 of ’81 rolled around. My family was now two months into our serving Yahweh, and I was six weeks removed from losing my best friend Starling because of this nutty religion. It was a time in which I felt overwhelmed about my present and immediate future. Yet I acted as if I’d published a book that was both a New York Times Bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize winner. I couldn’t have been more pumped up if I’d been on Walter White’s blue crystal meth from Breaking Bad.

But I had some basis for seeing myself as great. As far as I was concerned, I was the unofficial valedictorian of my elementary school class at William H. Holmes Elementary, the ’50s structure next to the big Presbyterian church on North Columbus and East Lincoln Avenue. My teachers had chosen me out of all of my classmates to speak at our graduation ceremony. On that last Friday in June ’81, I served as the opening speaker, introducing the city councilman who served as our keynote. I even wrote the short introduction that I delivered on that wonderful day.

I firmly believed that no one in the world was smarter than me. In the three years prior to graduation, I had straight A’s. Still, that paled in comparison to my performance my last year of elementary school. I figured out that I earned an A on forty-eight out of fifty-two quizzes and tests in sixth grade. The lowest grade I earned that year was an 88 on a spelling quiz. I’d won a Dental Awareness Month award for Best Poster and came in second in a city-wide writing contest that included essays from high school students. If anyone had known how big my head had grown that year, they would’ve stuck a pin in my temple just to let the air out.

It wouldn’t have been any funnier if I’d pretended I was Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson, saying his

Ana Gasteyer as Celine Dion, SNL, April 6, 2002. Source: http://snl.jt.org

words, “Sometimes I underestimate the magnitude of me.” Or, really, Ana Gasteyer (of SNL fame) playing Celine Dion and calling herself the “greatest singer in the world.” I wanted so badly to see myself and to be seen by others as special that I forgot about the work it had taken to move my reading and writing skills up seven grade levels in a little more than two and a half years.

It was a great day, sunny and low-eighties with cumulus clouds and low humidity. But knowing what life at 616, Mount Vernon and Humanities had in store for me over the next eight years, I should’ve smelled the ozone in the air. I should’ve looked more closely at my sky, to see the flocks of seagulls flying away from the shoreline. I should’ve sensed — and did, on a very low-frequency — the hurricane gaining strength in my life. I chose to ignore it, hoping that I could fake my way through it while resting on my laurels.

To think that it would’ve been another nine years before I felt like I could take on the world again. If someone had told me in June ’81 that I’d have to wait until my junior year at Pitt to have a straight-A semester, I would’ve grabbed a gun and shot myself through the heart with a Colt .45. And I would’ve made sure that the bullet I used had a hollow tip. If I’d known that I’d have to wait a full decade to be comfortable with myself as myself in all of my goofy-ness again, I probably would’ve cried on the spot.

All I can hope these days is that I can help my son strike a balance between being cool and being cool with himself, especially once he approaches his teenage years. I don’t want him spending a decade trying to figure himself out all by himself.

A One-Year Sooner “What If?”

18 Saturday Jun 2011

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Through The Wormhole, Star Trek DS9 Style, June 18, 2011. Donald Earl Collins

Today’s twenty-four years since I graduated from Mount Vernon High School in Mount Vernon, New York as part of the Class of ’87. I’ve talked about the events immediately before and after that milestone. I’ve spent a bit of time on the day of the ceremony itself, and will again when I hit the quarter-century anniversary mark next year. Today, though, I want to hypothesize about what would’ve happened if I had decided to graduate one year earlier. I can’t help it. I’m a historian and intellectual, and not just a scholar who cares about research, so I often speculate in order to find answers that are a little outside of the box.

Because of Humanities and AP, many of the best of the best and brightest had or nearly had enough credits to graduate by the end of our junior year, in June ’86. A dozen or more members of the projected Class of ’87 actually took the option of graduating without a senior year. I could’ve myself. I was a quarter-credit short of graduation, and could’ve gone to summer school to take PE or health class to graduate no later than August ’86.

Back To The Future Photo Clip, May 7, 2009. Source: http://gilka.co.uk

What would’ve happened or not happened isn’t all that easy to figure out with any degree of certainty. But I can make a few educated guesses based on the kind of person I was twenty-five years ago. I hadn’t made any definitive decisions about what college to go to because my plans by April ’86 were for the fall of ’87, and not sooner. I had taken the AP US History exam that May, and all but knew that I’d earned a “5” and six college credits because of my score. The thought of graduating early had crossed my mind in the weeks after the exam.

The reality of life at 616, meanwhile, would’ve been harder to manage. With me out of school in ’86 instead of ’87, I suddenly would’ve found myself with more time on my hands for resentment and anger than I had before. Especially once my Technisort job came to an end at the beginning of August of that year. Sure, I would’ve filled my afternoons with watching or listening to Mets games from August to the World Series win on October 27th, and my fall/winter Sundays with Giants games as they marched to their first Super Bowl. But in between, I would’ve been looking for work, or would’ve found part-time work.

I know for sure that I would’ve spent even more time watching over my younger siblings, washing clothes, running to the grocery store, cooking meals, and so many other things that I ended up doing during my summers at home from my studies at the University of Pittsburgh. That would’ve made me resentful, given the lack of emotional support I had from my Mom.

I would’ve had to endure more weekend searches for my alcoholic father Jimme in order to have enough money to get away from 616 while waiting to start college in ’87. I probably would’ve seen a bit more of my idiot (ex) stepfather between September and November ’86 and March through May ’87, not an easy task considering I sometimes imagined myself stabbing him in the neck.

Or would I? If I know anything about space, time and history, if you change one decision, no matter how small, you change almost everything that comes afterward, even if some events on the surface look the same. I would’ve thought about taking some college courses at Westchester Community College, Pace University, perhaps even Fordham or one of the CUNY schools, like Hunter College. I still would’ve explored applying for schools outside of the NYC area, including the University of Pittsburgh. A couple of extra months at home would’ve made me more weary of being at 616 and in Mount Vernon than I actually was at the beginning of my senior year at MVHS.

Still, there was so much I would’ve missed learning my senior year. About the pitfalls of liking a girl whose only goal in life besides pleasing her parents was in pulling away from them by being cool (read Crush #2 and cruel, actually). All of the friendships and relationships that failed to endure the year. The difference between a great teacher like the late Harold Meltzer and someone in need of a career change like an Estelle Abel or a David Wolf. And that taking three AP courses in one year with teachers of varying abilities and with senioritis in full bloom was a terrible idea.

Those lessons wouldn’t have been learned for at least a year, and made my transition to college harder. Without those bitter lessons, I probably wouldn’t be a historian and a writer. For all I know, I probably would’ve ended up a bartender making the best daiquiris in Westchester County.

Beyond The Asexual Me

14 Tuesday Jun 2011

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Janet Jackson & Justin Timberlake, one second from revealing more than concealing, Super Bowl 2004. Source: http://www.eurweb.com

The art of the personal essay or larger memoir is the balance between revealing and concealing. You don’t want to reveal too much, but just enough to tell a good and compelling story. You also don’t want to hide too much, because concealing degrades the honesty of the work. For me, though, today’s post reveals a bit more than I’m comfortable with, even though it may not reveal enough for some of you.

This time twenty years ago, even as much as I’d become a more open person and young man in most respects, I still struggled with my heterosexual identity. I’d dated off and on as an undergrad at Pitt and had a few sexual encounters. But I really wasn’t comfortable with any woman within three years of my age. They were often confused about men, themselves, and life in general. I had enough confusion in my life already from my Mount Vernon, New York years without spending time with another confused twenty-two-year-old whose goal in life was to be a professional student.

The personification of “another confused twenty-two-year-old” was my sometimes friend, sometimes more in “Another E” (see my post “The Power of Another E” from April ’09). By the time June ’91 rolled around, she’d bitterly disappointed me — again. E had stood me up for a date to see Godfather III, had stopped returning my phone calls, and somehow managed to duck me for lunch for more than two weeks. I was angry, more with myself than her, about how turned around I felt about this sudden loss of contact.

I wanted to move on, to get over the pedestal-building, damsel-in-distress paradigm that had been my relationship with girls and women since the days of Crush #1 (and the need to save my mother from my ex-stepfather) from so many years before. So I deliberately sought advice, deciding for once that I could live with the shame and embarrassment of liking a female who may have liked me well enough, but also enjoyed the thought of taking advantage of me.

A Black guy I worked with at the PAARC project at Western Psych was my key counsel. We’d become good acquaintances over the previous couple of months while he complained about his doctoral courses and I complained about the flat-butt Whites in charge of the project. On the first Saturday in June, he invited me and a couple of his closer friends over to his place on the North Side for barbecue and basketball. He killed me on the court, not telling me until he won 21-12 that he’d played as a starter on Grambling’s basketball team.

Later we talked about my troubles with E, in between the ribs and the beer on his over-leathery couch. After

Woman on a pedestal, with a man on his knees, in this case, me from '82 to '91, June 14, 2011. Source: http://elephantjournal.com

two minutes of hearing me pine and opine, he said, “She’s trifling, dude. Just ignore her and move on.” I said, “I’m not sure I can,” thinking, I don’t want to play games here. Then my friend explained that I needed to see E exactly the way I saw myself, as a flawed human being with human needs. That if she really liked me like she said, then she’d eventually give me a call or try to contact me. If not, then get out there in the world and find someone else to hook up with.

I left, reluctant about the man’s advice, but determined to do something besides feeling lonely all summer. For nearly a year, I’d lived in the East Liberty neighborhood, about a block away from a hole-in-the-wall bar that’s now a CVS on Penn Avenue. I’d thought about going in before, but that second Saturday in June ’91, I finally did, by myself, with no plans other than to observe the wild life. I witnessed two fights, at least two women too drunk to stand up, and a bartender that mixed drinks about as well as a seven-year-old making Kool-Aid.

Then I met her. An older woman — at least by my twenty-one-year-old standards — who was in much better shape than anyone I’d been in undergrad with. She started a conversation with me, and I engaged, something I usually avoided. After about fifteen minutes, our small talk that suddenly became very direct. We left, for my place.

It turned out that she was thirty-four, had been married once, and had two kids between ten and fifteen years old. She also had experience (no, not just that kind of experience) that taught me quite a bit in those months before my first year of grad school at Pitt. I learned that I liked older women — if by older, women between twenty-four and fifty — and that I was much more of a butt man than I was a breast man.

But I learned something much more valuable than developing a mental tape measurer. I learned that I could be intimate, really intimate with another person, with a woman, about who I was and wanted to be, without putting them on a pedestal and making them untouchable, heavenly beings. I learned that a sexual encounter could be both awkward and fun at the same time. I learned to see myself as a man, not just a young man or a man-child, but as a man and only a man, in no small part because of that encounter and that summer.

Black Male Id-entity & the F-Bomb

26 Thursday May 2011

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Gay Rights Month isn’t for another six days, as it’s still May. But in light of Joakim Noah’s unfortunate anti-gay slur outburst, “Fuck you, faggot!,” it makes sense to start this year’s conversation a week early.

This is more than about the NBA, gay athletes in the closet or what professional athletes should and shouldn’t say to fans and to each other. The behind-the-curtain issue here could just as well be about Black male identity (whether heterosexual or gay) and how Black males express themselves to each other and to the rest of the world.

My first memories playing with a group of Black males in Mount Vernon, New York are all negative. When I was six in ’76, a group of preteens on the neighborhood playground near Nathan Hale Elementary on South 6th Avenue tried to force me into sucking one of their dicks, practically sticking it in my face to do so. I got away before being truly scarred for life. After we moved to 616 East Lincoln Avenue in April ’77, our first time playing outside was spent running away from the other kids, who greeted us by throwing rocks at us and calling me and my brother Darren “faggots.” (see my June 1, 2009 post, “In the Closet, On the Down Low” for more).

When I was nine, I played basketball on a court near 616 for the first time with a group of kids from my building. After throwing up an awkward brick and an air ball, I got five minutes of “You terrible!,” “You need to sit down!,” “You’re never gonna be an athlete!,” “You need to get back to reading them books of yours!,” and “You shoot like a faggot!”

Even though I eventually learned how to dribble with both hands, shoot a j, make layups, block shots, and on rare occasions, dunk a basketball, I’ve been leery being around other Black males on the basketball court. One would think after playing pickup with former Pitt basketball players while in grad school that I’d completely forgotten what happened to me back in the spring of ’79. But I hadn’t, at least on an unconscious level. I often watched what I said, I mean, down to every single word. Not to mention how I walked, where my arms were, and how I held my head. Still, I sometimes felt inadequate on the court, whether I went 8-for-9 or 2-for-7, blocked a shot, stole a ball, or got knocked down guarding someone six-foot-six and 260 pounds.

But I figured out something in those years of playing pickup at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon and other places in Pittsburgh and DC over the years. That blending in doesn’t matter. Fools — even ones with momentary lapses in judgment like Joakim Noah — will be fools because on the playground or court, it makes them cool in the minds of their peers.

Yes, this isn’t just a Black male issue. Sean Miller, currently coach of the University of Arizona men’s basketball team — not to mention an all-time Pitt basketball great — once played a prank on me our freshmen year. He called me up in my Lothrop Hall dorm room late one night, offered me a blow job, and called me a “faggot” in the process.  So being called a “faggot” or saying that something or someone is “gay” is part of our culture on and off the basketball court, for Black and White males to be sure.

But unlike Michael Wilbon, I can’t excuse it because it’s commonplace and therefore it may be difficult for some young men to immediately stop themselves from saying “faggot.” Nor can I rationalize this like Touré (a.k.a. TouréX on Twitter) attempted to do in a Twitter exchange with me a couple of days ago. He compared the use of “faggot” to “nigga,” with the idea that both words have more than one meaning and that the meaning can sometimes be positive, depending on context.

I can see the argument for “nigga,” even though I don’t like it when younger men use it to affirm each other and especially me. But “faggot” meaning “less than a man?” Or “stupid” or “dumb?” So is Noah or Kobe more of a man for telling someone else they’re not a man? Even in context, this isn’t positive — it’s potentially soul-destroying, and not just for someone being called a faggot.

Of the preteens and young boys who called me “faggot” growing up, at least three have served hard time. Is there a direct connection? Of course not. Still, it seems that a culture steeped in the requirement of being cool, finding quick and easy success and putting down others while doing so lends itself well to a crash-and-burn mentality that so many of us have about our lives.

Balkis Makeda’s 2nd Coming

23 Monday May 2011

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Queen of Sheba traveling to Solomon: A fresco in Ethiopia, Date Unknown. Source: http://www.expedition360.com/journal/archives/2007/05/. In public domain.

Yesterday, my youngest brother Eri turned twenty-seven (Happy Birthday again, bro!). He was the fourth baby my mother gave birth to in a five-year span. I’d been pissed before about all that had happened with us regarding my mother, my stupid (ex)-stepfather, our poverty and being on welfare, and the whole Hebrew-Israelite thing. But now, along with Eri’s birth, came with it an elderly trespasser at 616, courtesy of the fifty-four-inch waist — and waste — of an idiot Maurice.

You see, my stupid stepfather invited his Hebrew-Israelite matriarch “Balkis Makeda” to stay with us. The woman claimed to be a reincarnated Balkis Makeda (Queen of Sheba and wife of King Solomon of the ancient Israelites), and was the catalyst in Maurice’s Hebrew-Israelite conversion during his separation from Mom between October ’80 and April ’81.

Because of Maurice — um, excuse me, Judah ben Israel — and our fearless leader “Balkis Makeda,” we followed a number of un-Torah-like practices. This included the requirement that we all were to believe that she was the reincarnation of the Queen of Sheba, living among us in the twentieth century as an average person and showing us the way to Yahweh and ultimate truth.

Bar of Ivory Soap, December 28, 2009. Source: Erin Gifford, http://couponcravings.com/2009/12/cvs-free-ivory-soap.html.

We stopped using Ivory Soap at home because our leader had a dream once about rats gnawing on a bar of it. Baby Maurice couldn’t use a soap that’s 99.44 percent pure because of Makeda’s dream, and we switched to Zest. (The real reason, I think, was because the soap was white — like Whites ethnically — and considered the opposite of pure by many in the Hebrew-Israelite community).We weren’t allowed to use the word “Hello” when greeting someone in person or when answering the telephone. Maurice explained that “Hello’s got the word Hell in it, you know, Hell-low!” We’d somehow be committing someone to eternal damnation with a universal English greeting.

Now in her seventies and in declining health, the geezer was moved in before Mom could seriously object. What a situation! Six kids, including me, plus Mom, Maurice, and an old woman living together in a 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. We now needed to behave like good little Hebrew-Israelites with this woman in our house, so as to not embarrass my stepfather. Yeah, right!

One of the other rules of our absurdly orthodox practice was that Mom couldn’t cook or do any familial tasks for the next three months. She was “unclean” because she’d just given birth to Eri. This might’ve made sense in the deserts of ancient Canaan, with no antibiotics and drugs to deal with unclean issues of blood and other bodily fluids. It didn’t now. Plus I didn’t remember Mom not cooking for three months after Yiscoc and Sarai were born. This was suck-up time, plain and simple.

Maurice made what was an abyss of bad even worse by cooking dinner for three days. Three straight nights of over-boiled and under-ripened cabbage drenched in its own juices and seasoned to high heaven with red and black pepper. My stepfather could’ve been the founder of a new weight-loss diet. Mom, of course, asked me to take over her cooking duties, which I did for the next six weeks (see my “Top Cook” post from May ’09).

The woman couldn’t stand us, and especially couldn’t stand me. She probably sensed how much I couldn’t

A child in the Black Hebrews community, in Dimona, Israel, September 5, 2005. Source: Dror Eiger, http://flickr.com/photos/95465714@N00/41252116. In public domain, as file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

stand her and her idiotic notions of Judaism, even with the context of being a Hebrew-Israelite. All I knew was that when I cut through all of the words and nuggets of truth, ritual and superstition, that “Makeda” was full of crap, and had fostered the conversion of my stupid stepfather, the only person I knew who was even more full of crap than her. I was already a Christian in the closet by then. Now I faced the prospect of revealing my spiritual conversion in the middle of such a grand mess. But I knew I had little other choice.

Within weeks of “coming out” to Mom, Maurice and my classmates at Mount Vernon High School (see my post “Kufi Emancipation Day” from September ’09 for more), the older woman moved out, under pressure from Mom. Both, ironically, were under pressure from me, as I threatened to move out myself. She died in Section 8 housing on Mount Vernon’s South Side in February ’85. I dare say that she wasn’t the reincarnated Makeda. For the only one who could’ve learned a lesson from a lifetime of poverty and cult-like rituals would’ve been her, not us.