Yesterday, I Cried Read online

  Nett also liked to do fun things like play war with aluminum foil spitballs and play tic-tac-toe on brown paper bags. She was the first person to take Rhonda anywhere fun. They’d go to the zoo or the botanical gardens. And, oh my God, did they ever go to the movies. A movie outing with Lynnette meant popcorn, soda, and a trip to the Horn & Hardart Automat. Nett was the first person to tell Rhonda that she was beautiful and who made Rhonda feel beautiful. “You know what, Ronnie,” Nett would tell her, “one day you’re going to be somebody.” Nett was an angel, the first angel that Rhonda ever knew.

  In the secret, most private place in her heart, Rhonda would pray that the day would come when she and Daddy and Ray and Nett could all live together. Grandma always said, “Be careful what you ask for ’cause you just might get it.” And when the day finally came, the circumstances surrounding the move were far less joyous than Rhonda had expected.

  Rhonda was five, and it was time for her to start to school. Grandma had had to take a full-time job cleaning and cooking, because Daddy’s numbers-running business was slowing down. Rhonda hadn’t seen the lady in the white dress in her dreams in a very long time. Nett volunteered to take Rhonda downtown to the big department store to shop for nice, and expensive, school clothes. Grandma left the house first, leaving Rhonda and her brother with the stern reminder that they were never to open the door for anyone. After Daddy left, Rhonda and Ray watched Mighty Mouse cartoons until they went off, indicating it was lunchtime and time for Nett to arrive. Rhonda could hardly wait.

  Nett showed up, as promised, and let herself in with her key. Hugs and kisses, hugs and kisses. Nett was always good for hugs and kisses, though on this day, Rhonda didn’t seem quite as eager to be hugged. “Come on,” Nett told them, “let me bathe you so we can go shopping.” Ray stripped in a matter of seconds. Rhonda lied and said that she had already had a bath. “Come on, now,” Nett gently persisted. “You’ve got to take a bath and change your shirt. It looks dirty, and you smell kind of funny.” Rhonda backed away. “Okay, we’ll let Ray take his bath first, and then you’ll take yours.”

  When Ray was done, Nett took Rhonda into the bathroom and ran her bath. “Take your clothes off, Ronnie,” Nett said. When Rhonda hesitated, she added, “Hurry up, and I’ll put bubbles in the water.” Rhonda reluctantly took off her shoes, her socks, her overalls, and panties, then got into the bathtub and stood there with her undershirt still on. “You can’t take a bath with your undershirt on.” Nett smiled. “Come here and let me take it off.” Instead, Rhonda sat down in the tub. Nett reached for her and stood her back up. She pulled Rhonda’s undershirt over her head, and what she saw made her scream. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” All of the skin on Rhonda’s back had come off with the shirt. “What happened to you?” Nett asked, her eyes mirroring the terror she felt in her heart.

  “The dog did it,” Rhonda said, her eyes were lowered to the bubbles in the tub.

  “What dog?!” Nett asked. “What dog did this to you, Ronnie?”

  “The dog downstairs in the backyard.”

  Nett carefully, gingerly, took Rhonda out of the tub. “Oh my God,” she said over and over again to herself. Nett didn’t want to wrap Rhonda in a towel, her back was so raw. “Oh, my poor baby,” she said, “who did this to my poor baby?” And Nett began to cry.

  Ray stood in the bathroom doorway and spoke up in support of Rhonda’s story. “There’s two of them, you know. One brown one and one black one. The black one barks all the time,” Ray added.

  “Just shut up about the damn dogs,” Nett said. “I know didn’t no dog do this to her back!” Now everybody was in a panic. Nett, Rhonda, and Ray.

  “Tell me what happened to you, Ronnie,” Lynnette spat out. Rhonda and Ray were wide-eyed and dumbfounded. Nett’s voice sounded like Grandma’s. The silence in the bathroom was heavy with fear. Rhonda was afraid to tell. Ray was afraid she would tell. Nett tried another tactic. “Tell me what happened, sweetie; tell Nett what happened to her baby, to her poor little baby.” After a few minutes more of cajoling, Rhonda took a deep breath, lowered her little chin to her chest, and told Nett the truth.

  “I opened the door for the man, and Grandma beat me with the ironing cord.”

  “What man? What cord?”

  “Grandma always beats her with the ironing cord because she’s bad,” Ray said. Rhonda didn’t know if Ray was trying to help, or trying to get her in trouble with Nett. But Nett’s voice remained soothing, which let Rhonda know she could tell her everything. “When the insurance man came to bring Grandma mail, I opened the door so I could get the mail for Grandma.” Rhonda had begun to cry.

  “Don’t cry, sweetie. It’s all right. You opened the door for Mr. Cummings?” Rhonda couldn’t speak, so she shook her head.

  “Did you lock the door after he left?” Nett took another glance at Rhonda’s back and closed her eyes.

  “Yeah.” Rhonda was gasping. “I did and I told Grandma I did, but she beat me anyway.”

  “Ooooo!” Ray thought it was about time he added another two cents. “Grandma told you that you better not tell anybody.”

  Nett shot him a quick shut-your-mouth glance, saying to him, “It’s okay. You are supposed to tell when somebody hurts you.” Then, to Rhonda, “It’s okay that you opened the door, because you knew Mr. Cummings. But I want you to promise me that you won’t ever do it again, okay?” Rhonda agreed.

  It was two weeks since Grandma and the ironing cord had inflicted the damage on her back. The wounds had never been properly tended to, and Rhonda’s back had become grossly infected. Nett was horrified as she wept for this frightened child with an infection that covered 75 percent of her back. Rhonda didn’t get to go to kindergarten. Instead, she spent the next few weeks in the hospital. Nett came to visit her every day. Daddy came twice.

  Nett told Daddy everything, which is what motivated him to do something that he had been putting off. He took Rhonda and her brother out of his mother’s house. He packed up his kids and their belongings, and he and Nett stood facing a raging Grandma, who stood in front of the door, using her body to block their exit. She was screaming, begging, crying that Daddy not take Ray away. Daddy looked at her with disgust and said, “Ma, shut up and move.” It was a glorious day that was etched in Rhonda’s memory forever. Somebody had found the strength and the courage to tell mean, old Grandma to shut her mouth!

  Dreams really do come true, and for the first time in her life, Rhonda was living a dream. She and Ray and Daddy and Nett were all living together like a real family. They had moved to a new apartment. It wasn’t a big apartment, but it was a nice apartment. At Grandma’s house, Ray always slept with Grandma, and Rhonda always slept by herself. Now there was enough space for Rhonda and Ray to share a room, complete with twin beds and crisp, new flower-patterned sheets to sleep on. Rhonda was comfortable, and for the first time in her young life, she felt safe.

  Even though dreams may come true, there’s no guarantee that they will last. Rhonda’s family dream began to disintegrate the day the police kicked in their door.

  In the community in which Rhonda grew up, every family fell on hard times sooner or later. Some father lost his job. Some mother got sick. Some family’s car broke down when the rent was due. Hard times were nothing new to a working-class community. Back then, you learned to deal with it by helping the family out any way you could. But when hard times turned into tragedy, things got frightening for everyone. That’s what happened to Rhonda the day her daddy got arrested.

  It was one thing to have a daddy in jail. It was quite another thing to have your daddy arrested right in front of you, and in full view of everyone on the block. A few of the kids in the neighborhood had daddies, uncles, cousins, or older brothers who had been in jail or were in jail. People were okay about that. You didn’t get a “rep” or stigmatized if someone in your family was in jail or had been to jail. But Rhonda’s case was different. Her father got arrested right in front of everyone!

  Nett
was in the bathroom. Rhonda and Ray were watching television. Daddy and Mr. Johnny were sitting at the kitchen table, working on the morning’s numbers pick up. They all heard the knock at the door. Daddy got up to get it. He half whispered and half hissed the s word as he ran back into the kitchen. The next knock was much louder.

  “Get the door!” Nett hollered from the bathroom. Daddy and Mr. Johnny were frantically gathering the numbers slips from the table. The knocking became banging. Nett was coming up the hallway, mumbling to herself, when she collided with Mr. Johnny. At that very moment, the door to the apartment came crashing in. Daddy and Mr. Johnny were both trying to run up the hallway and away from the police officers who had crawled through the wreckage of the front door.

  By the time Rhonda and Ray got to the kitchen, several white officers were rummaging through the garbage, the cabinets, and the refrigerator. Others were jumping over Nett, who was trying to get up off the floor. White men in the kitchen! They were big! They were white! They had guns, and they were tearing up the kitchen. It didn’t matter that they were policemen. The only other white man who had ever been in the kitchen was the landlord. He came when the rent was late.

  In a matter of minutes, things really got crazy. One of the policemen was holding Nett by her hair. In the struggle, either she slipped, or he slammed her into the wall. Two policemen were holding on to Mr. Johnny, who was halfway out the second-floor bathroom window. Rhonda was holding on and trying to bite the ankle of the policeman who had hurt Nett. Somebody swooped her up from behind, took her out of the apartment, and deposited her in the hallway, where Ray already stood.

  Miss Brooks, their neighbor across the hall, took the children into her apartment. They could hear knocking and banging on the wall coming from their apartment. They could also hear Nett screaming and crying, “Please! Wait! Don’t take him!” Miss Brooks made tea for the two terrorized children and gave them cookies. She patted them on their heads, hugged them, and ran back and forth to her front door to look out the peephole. On one of her trips back from the peephole, after what seemed like hours since they’d first sat down, Miss Brooks was accompanied into the kitchen by Nett.

  Thanking Miss Brooks and hugging Rhonda and Ray, who clung to her for dear life, Nett tried to explain what had happened. Daddy and Mr. Johnny had been carted off to jail. She needed to pay some money so that they could come home. It was a mess. So embarrassing. For the time being, she said, she was taking the children home. It was a disaster. Broken wood and metal everywhere. Food all over the kitchen floor. Furniture piled up against the wall. Daddy would probably be in jail for a day or two, and they had no front door. The neighbors who had seen or heard about he episode were standing outside the apartment doorway. One by one, they began to come in and help Nett and the children clean up the mess. The superintendent, Mr. Ralph, found another door somewhere and was down on the floor, trying to screw on the hinges. Somebody they hardly knew stepped over him, carrying a plateful of sandwiches. It seemed that no matter how horrible a situation may be, people show you how much they love you with food! In a relatively short time, the house was back to normal.

  When all of the neighbors were gone, Nett sat down, lit a cigarette, and counted the money they had shoved into her hand or stuck in her pocket.

  “What’s going to happen to Daddy?” Ray asked.

  “He’ll be okay,” Nett told us, “and so will we.” That’s when they heard another knock at the door. The memory was too fresh; the association was traumatic. All three of them nearly jumped out of their skins. “Shhhh!” Nett cautioned. They were all frozen to their seats. Slowly, Nett got up and whispered to Rhonda and Ray to go hide in the bathroom. Ray immediately got up and turned to run. Rhonda refused to leave Nett’s side. The knocking had become a persistent tapping. Nett pushed both children down the hallway and into the bathroom and slammed the door. Rhonda heard the apartment door open and close, muffled voices, then nothing. Her legs were trembling. When they heard footsteps coming down the hall, both children jumped into the bathtub. Before the bathroom door opened all the way, they heard Nett’s voice reassuring them that it was okay to come out now. It was only Mr. Rootman, one of Daddy’s “business partners.” He had bags of potato chips and candy for the children and a huge wad of money for Nett. Mr. Rootman owned a candy store on the other side of town. The word, Mr. Rootman told Nett, was out on the street. Grandma had told on Daddy. It made no sense, and it made all the sense in the world.

  Nett was cursing, calling Grandma all sorts of names. Nett hardly ever cursed. She said it gave you wrinkles. Nett was battered and shaken and didn’t want to leave the children alone, so it was decided that Mr. Rootman should be the one to bail Daddy and Mr. Johnny out of jail. Rhonda and Ray were so engrossed in their goodies, they barely said good-bye when Mr. Rootman left. After a soothing hot bath, they all went to bed. The next morning, Rhonda peeked into Nett’s bedroom. She was excited and relieved to see that Daddy had come home from jail.

  Bad times were when the rent is late and there is very little food. Rhonda, her brother, and Nett knew how to deal with bad times. But over time, bad times grew into progressively worse times. It was then that something had to be done. Daddy was more like a visitor than a resident in the house. He was writing and collecting his numbers at Mr. Rootman’s store, which meant he only passed through home when he needed something to wear. Nett worked a lot of overtime, which meant she got home late almost every night. By the time she did get home, both children were too tired to care when she asked them about their day, too tired to care that they were hungry.

  Rhonda and her brother had become latchkey kids. Worst of all, they were hungry latchkey kids, with far too much time on their hands. They started talking to people out the window, watching too much television, and ignoring their schoolwork. When Ray brought a letter home from school about his bad behavior, Nett knew that someone needed to be there to make sure they ate properly and did their homework. Grandma was available and delighted that she had found a way and an excuse to run Nett’s household.

  Grandma’s meanness had become seasoned with age. With no one around to watch, Grandma was in rare form. If Rhonda’s homework wasn’t done fast enough, she got rapped on the side of her head. If she didn’t get all the soap off the dishes, she got backhanded across the face. If Rhonda ate too fast, or asked for seconds, Grandma would scream at her. Ray, however, got to eat all the Oreo cookies he wanted, whenever he wanted, at whatever speed he wanted. By the time Grandma had been in the house for three weeks, Rhonda’s nerves were frayed, her hair was falling out again, and Nett started getting sick. Somehow, Nett figured out that Grandma was the reason behind Rhonda’s balding head and her own upset stomach. Knowing what the impact would be on her family, she refused overtime and started coming home on time. It was a signal to Grandma that she was no longer needed or welcome. “I’d rather starve to death than have that old bat in my house,” Nett told the children. It was her way of explaining their steady diet of potato soup.

  Even during the worst of times, Friday night was the best night of the week. Nett got paid from her day job on Fridays, and that meant treats, treats, and more treats. It was a weekly celebration that both of the children looked forward to enjoying. Nett, as usual, would go out of her way to make Rhonda and Ray feel special for being good during the week. Sometimes she even thanked them for keeping the house clean and for not getting into trouble. She would bring home Rhonda’s favorite treat, coffee ice cream. Ray liked butter pecan, even though he always picked the nuts out. Nett brought herself Oreo cookies, which she would dunk in milk until the bottom of the cup was filled with crumbs. The three of them would pile up on the sofa and watch television until they all fell asleep and somebody’s foot ended up in somebody’s mouth. Friday nights were good nights. Nights when Rhonda could hope that, in a little while, everything would be just fine.

  Nett always let Rhonda play dress-up and try out her makeup. But on Halloween, Nett would make up Rhonda’s face
and let her wear something really pretty. By the time Nett finished with the eyeliner and lipstick, Rhonda felt beautiful. And falling off Nett’s high heels was big fun. Rhonda and her brother would romp throughout the apartment building, collecting candy and other goodies. When they returned, they would divide everything equally between them, packing some things away in plastic bags for later in the week. One Halloween, just before the children went to bed, a real ghost appeared. Daddy came home for his weekly visit.

  Daddy took one look at these children whom he had not seen in a week, and for whom he had barely provided all their lives, and asked his wife if she had lost her mind. “What the hell is wrong with her face? What did you do to her?” Daddy demanded of Nett.

  “It’s just a little makeup. They went trick-or-treating in the building.” Nett shot Rhonda and her brother a get-to-bed glance, but neither child moved.

  Daddy was ranting and raving about being sick and tired of Nett trying to influence his children against him, when Nett jumped up from the chair and snarled at him, “You know what you can do for me, don’t you?” With that she snatched both children by their arms and stomped down the hallway.

  While Nett removed the makeup, she told Rhonda that she really did look pretty and that she was glad they’d had a good time. She put Rhonda to bed, but Rhonda was too excited by the day’s events to sleep. She remembered Nett putting the lipstick case on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. Intrigued by the golden wand that magically put color on your lips and made you pretty, Rhonda crept into the bathroom to retrieve it. Back in the bed, with the magic color wand, she realized she had no mirror, so she made another bathroom run to get Nett’s two-sided mirror that was kept on a hook next to the medicine cabinet. An eight-year-old, standing in the dark on a toilet seat, trying to reach something that is too high up, is an accident waiting to happen. In this case, it was Rhonda knocking the bottle of Listerine to the floor. The big bottle crashed to the tiles and shattered into a thousand pieces. The crash made the already angry Daddy angrier.