My Story Pt1

I have been cheating you. I promised I would open up about experiences in the hopes of helping another. Instead I gave you poetry. I have so many boylike tendancies...

I try. I do. I sit and think where to start and what story to tell but they all sound like complaining to me. Or maybe that's what someone said when I was little. Most of the way I perceive situations I learned before I was twelve. I grew up in a family of characters so full of novels me and my sisters rarely watched tv. I only knew two of my sisters then, Charmell who is nine years older than me and Crystal who is two years younger. We all have different mothers who all hate my father and each other for various reasons. My Grandma, who could wilt roses with a look if you called her that, was the only we saw each other. She was not related to me by blood. She was actually my father's adoptive aunt. She collected many things but her favorite was children.

She couldn't have any of her own. They all died either during her pregnancy or at birth, so I forgive her for her steely resolve and bitter trespasses. She adopted my father from his alcoholic parents when he was small. My grandfather loved her enough to know that he was willing to sacrafice his morals for her, so he shut up and never got in her way. He was a large dark-skinned man with a broad nose and arms like cannons. I can count the number of times he smiled at her on one hand.

I have so many theories as to how he could love her like I would die for and never want to hold a conversation with her. Sometimes I think his heart broke too many times with the death of his own seed and her continuing to grow colder. Sometimes I think she was his ideal woman but not what he needed mentally. She was stunning. A yellowish red skin tone, tall, and thick like 1939. Her cheek bones sat high like they were holding court on her face judging all ugly women mercilessly. Her hair was silky and black layed perfectly around her shoulders. Full lips and catlike eyes finished a face that looked at me with the most mercy because I was quiet and already broken as a child.

This was my constant. Grandpa, who we called Puda, working silently in his body shop or around the house, only speaking to me out of the whole family and Grandma, who insisted on being MamaDean, ruthlessly ruling but sparing kindness for me.

I will let you in more...I promise...maybe...