Mama Bear

by Shirley Smith

  That week Mama was on a binge and didn’t come home, I lost count of how many nights she was gone, maybe a week. Every morning the sofa was still folded up and the bathroom door was unlocked and open. I lost track of the number of times it got dark, the number of times I prayed, and the number of times I asked Mama Jessie for food for me and Tokunbo, but I do remember that I had missed a lot of school and that made me mad. Being pissed off must have been some kind of motivation, because one morning I put Tokunbo back on my hip, walked to Mama Jessie’s, and called PopaAuntie, my mother’s oldest sister, Kim.

  Her number was scribbled on the wall next to our phone mount. The phone didn’t work and was one of Tokunbo’s toys. I have always been good with remembering numbers. I chanted the number all the way down to Mama Jessie’s with Tokunbo saying back all kinds of numbers that almost confused me, “973–373 . . .” I rehearsed what I would say. “PopaAuntie can you come get me and Tokunbo? I don’t know where Mama and Darryl are.”

  I had to keep it stepping down the hall with Tokunbo on my hip while keeping PopaAuntie’s number in my head. I was also trying to rehearse what to say and how much to say. I was already stuck in the woman-dilemma of when to speak and when to stay quiet. I didn’t want PopaAuntie to think anything bad about her favorite sister. I imagined her saying “Lord!” in her soft-toned way and shaking her head the way she did in church, but I was also thinking maybe she wouldn’t believe me, or think I was exaggerating.

  I told PopaAuntie just the bare minimum. “Can you come and get us? Mama and Darryl aren’t home.” She sent her daughter Lynette, my oldest cousin, who was seventeen years old at the time but grown by the standard of the women in our family. I didn’t know to tell Lynette that Mama had been gone for days. So she didn’t know any better than to hang on to me for the weekend and bring me back to the apartment Sunday night, where I was glad to find Mama sleeping like the whole thing never happened. After that binge, even the abnormal in my life didn’t have a rhythm to it.

  Word on the streets travels faster than the Word in the church. Well slightly faster, because both will make your head spin. I guess word got around on the street that Mama was using, because Tokunbo’s father, who Mama had done wrong over her addiction, came and picked up his son.

  It was just me and Mama then, and we did a lot of walking to chase her high, because we didn’t even have money for the bus and I wasn’t going anywhere without her, so I walked. It didn’t matter how far away home was, sometimes we were right in the neighborhood, other times we might be as far away as Newark and would have to walk the three miles through the nighttime streets, under the highway, just walking like we were in an urban migration or something. My LA Gears were already raggedy, and we did so much walking, I about wore them down to nothing.

  It was a long time, maybe four years, that I was either following Mama to whatever drug house or I was just left behind at home. Those four years are a blur. I call them the gap.

  At some point I went with Mama to live at her twin sister Aunt Anita’s house. I don’t remember us moving there. Mama was still using. I do remember that they were always having family gatherings and all of my cousins would be in the basement. I know that some days I went to school, some days I didn’t. Sometimes Erics, the man who I thought was my father, spent time with me, sometimes he didn’t. I know I used to ask him to take me to a few spots on Grove Street to look for Mama because sometimes Mama wouldn’t be at Aunt Anita’s, so I figured she must be somewhere back in the old neighborhood. We would wait around and nothing.

  One day when I was around eleven years old, I was with Erics in Irvington Center, and doing my thing, or rather I was being the object that some adult was just dragging around. I stood in the store, no voice, just present, staring at the bulletproof glass, looking behind the counter at all of the patterns of red and green and white that the cigarette packages made stacked on the shelf. I heard a familiar voice. “Shirley?”

  Lynette told me she didn’t see me; she recognized my father and figured the dirty child with her hair all messed up and pale blotches on her face must have been me. “Shirley? Is that you?” I barely recognized her. She said she was just stopping in a store to get a Snapple on a hot-ass day, and there I was looking so rundown and bad. My hair was in nappy ponytails, but it didn’t matter because the hair band wasn’t holding it together; the matted tangle of my hair held things in place.

  She started coming to pick me up once a week, which was the most consistency I had for a long time. She fixed me up the best she could each weekend and took me to our family church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in North Newark. As far as the rest of the family knew, she was just bringing her little cousin to church on Sunday, nobody knew all of what my eyes were seeing every day.

  One time when she came to get me, she said, “Something ain’t right Shirley. I can’t take you back over there.” Meaning she couldn’t take me back to the dark feeling that lingered in my Aunt Anita’s house. She didn’t know what was happening over there, and I was just used to being drug around, so I didn’t know to open my mouth and say something.

  The adults knew all of the craziness that was happening in their lives with hustling for money, hustling for drugs, hustling to get up next to God every Sunday. All I had was my perspective, which was, Go with Daddy. Go with Lynette. Go with Mama. That’s what any child has to go through, no say over where they going or who with. But I was also tired all the time and scared most of the time. It was like Lynette’s intuition said to take me home with her. I didn’t have a voice but was glad that the right person was making me follow them the right way.

  She was twenty-one by then, had a daughter, my four-year-old cousin Kimberly, and still lived with her mother, my PopaAuntie. She was everybody’s rock in our family. PopaAuntie’s house was where anybody came if things were hard.

  On the day I was born, August 8, 1984, my mom was living with PopaAuntie and began having severe contractions. My aunts tell the story that Mama was having so much pain in her stomach and back, and was like, “Kim take me to the hospital!” My aunt Kim drove over superbumpy potholes of the streets of Newark doing the best she could to keep my head from banging against my mother’s bony pelvis. Mama was complaining, “Can you stop driving crazy?”

  When they got to the hospital, the nurses gave PopaAuntie scrubs. She was in a panic like a nervous father. “I’m not going in there.” PopaAuntie is not a fan of hospitals, but she was not leaving my mother’s side. I was carried to full term and birthed at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, weighing in at six pounds and five ounces.

  When PopaAuntie was telling my great-aunt Frances the story back then about being forced to stay in the delivery room, Aunt Frances replied, “Go head popa auntie” and the nickname stuck. I call her PopaAuntie and she calls me Pop. She still has the outfit and the scrub cap today; I don’t know what she did with her shoes, though. PopaAuntie told me when I came out I was having a bowel movement. They had to make sure the stool didn’t come up in my lungs and it didn’t; I crapped on PopaAuntie’s right shoe, marking her ass mine.

  The first night was very routine. Lynette was like, “Shirley, lay out your clothes on the radiator. Go on in there with Kimberly and y’all both get a bath.” I fell right in line, because that’s how it was at PopaAutie’s house. There were my cousins Billy and Michael who slept in one room, PopaAuntie had her room, and me and Lynette and my cousin Kimberly shared the queen-size bed in Lynette’s room. You know that feeling when you scootch in the middle of people you love, and you are just cozy all in it? It was like that. Everything that I didn’t know was supposed to be the life of a twelve-year-old was suddenly in my life.

  In the morning, me and Kimberly got to the kitchen and sat down to eat our cereal. Lynette clapped her hands. “Rock and roll, rock and roll y’all, five minutes. Let’s go.” She walked around the kitchen with her peppy attitude. I wasn’t used to that type of organization, but it made me feel like I was a part of their family. She was rushing aro
und the kitchen in her lab coat with her round butt shaping it out in the back the way a Black woman can. She was in a good mood, and smelled good too, like detergent and baby powder and soap. Finally, the smell of the crack pipe was gone.

  I washed our dishes and we were out of the house. Lynette took Kimberly to the YMCA for preschool. Then Lynette was off to work coding at a doctor’s office. She always had jobs like that and has always been organized. I walked the five and a half blocks to school in Irvington to Myrtle Avenue’s Middle School. I felt clean and organized, same old clothes but they were clean. The streets over in Irvington were clean too. I didn’t have to walk past the smell of piss and crack fiends.

  One girl came out on her stoop. “Hey, walk with us.” Just like that. I was with a bunch of seventh graders walking to school. It was just friendly and pure. “What y’all watch on TV last night?” Not that unsafe feeling of watching your back that was starting to happen on the way to my school in East Orange.

  For the rest of that week, I was just excited. One of my new homies walked up to the door one morning and was like, “Hey Shirley you ready?” The next morning, I stopped at my new friend Erica’s house. “Girl you ready?” The group of kids met up every morning as we walked. It was like I was waking up, like my mind was working again, like whatever stupor I was in was lifted and I was a kid again.

  I didn’t realize that I was still looking a little raggedy for a middle schooler, and didn’t really care. I was just happy, until one day, Lynette was like, “Girl, you still be wearing wrinkled-ass clothes like back in the day. I have to teach you how to iron.” The two of us cracked up, and I could hear my mother’s voice too. She was always part of making the family joke of Shirley don’t like to iron. We would go to the laundromat and when we came home, I would not be trying to iron. I would just take the clothes that looked like a balled-up potato-chip bag and put them on. My mother, on the other hand, loved to iron. Her pants would have such tight creases in them that you could put them in the dryer and they would still hold the crease from the previous ironing.

  My laugh died down, remembering Mama. Lynette said, “You know I’m just messing with you the way we do. Let’s go buy you some new clothes,” and that set me right back in a good mood. At the end of my first month with her, she took her check and took me shopping for clothes at Shoppers World in Elizabeth. I got Reeboks and Reebok Classics. This was back when Toys R Us had Kids R Us. You could walk into one store and get a middle schooler’s whole outfit in one place. I never had the experience of shopping for school clothes and my eyes were wide open. It was like eating at a buffet when you ain’t seen nothing but an empty refrigerator for weeks.

  At night I prayed for God to look over Mama and prayed for her to forgive me for leaving her out there. Kids are kids, though. I was swept up by a member of my family, another mother. I was along for the ride in the batch of family kids. When I look back on it, I’m sure I missed my mother terribly. I even remember still looking for her in the streets and asking to go back to find her, but my growing up moved forward and I lost track of her.

  Every morning, I was excited to wake up for school, because I loved school and looked as fresh in my outfit as my little crew. My favorite teacher was Mrs. Zadlock, a white lady who wore that same outdated eighties hairdo as PopaAuntie, short in the front but long in the back. She was my homeroom teacher. She was so nice, had a soft voice that was always understanding. I took to her immediately, which really helped me settle in. I was a taskmaster getting my homework done to get that positive praise. Then I joined the school choir and cheerleading. I had such a positive attitude and just wanted to be friends with everybody.

  Me and my girls would always be like, “I’ll see you at lunch,” “You want me to go over your house or you over mine?” God was putting friendships in my life at the time that just seemed like the fun-loving good time of being young, but it was the start of friendships with girls who grew into the women in my life. It was a time in my life that solidified my ability to make community and friends, especially when shit is hitting the fan.

  6

  Creating Community Through Social Media

  I’m always talking about things going from sugar to shit, but having my cousin Lynette pull me up out of a bad place and becoming a teenager who could make the best of any situation is when I learned to flip things from shit to sugar. I learned to find family and community wherever I was, especially if I was in a bad place or if I couldn’t get to my usual people. That’s what I leaned on in those days in the NICU, where every day is a roller coaster and you think you are alone without community. I put my skills in place and, with my cousin Danica’s help, I used my writing to reach beyond the walls of the hospital.

  For the first few months after Dakota’s birth, the NICU became a second home for me, JR, and Demi. I got to know Dakota’s nurses personally as they all rooted for the youngest infant to ever take on that preemie battle in Cleveland Clinic’s NICU. I also formed some deep bonds with other families who came and went from the NICU. We would share in each other’s journeys and offer each other support that only families of preterm babies can offer. It was so strange to be there for so long that I became a kind of constant, like it was a daily job and families would get to know me and go home with their babies after a while and, sadly, some of them would not. I would have community for some days, but then I was alone in this thing again. How can I stay grounded? How can I connect with these other families out there?

  I took community to a whole new level with those questions. I had been writing in my journal a lot and my cousin Danica said to me one day, “Shirley, you should start a blog. The jewels of wisdom you drop on these NICU families walks out the door when they take their babies home. A lot of folks could be getting your words.” She was right, and I also needed something to ground myself in this experience, something to push the experience out beyond myself. I knew God didn’t give me and my family this struggle for no reason, and the idea of blogging would give me purpose.

  Danica had the technical know-how. She set up my blog My Kota Bear (https://www.mykotabear.com/blog) and there I was, every day, writing in my journal as a blog not only for the families to benefit, but as a place to put each of the moments that needed to be witnessed.

  My very first entry:

  I did not see this day coming and when it did it hit like a ton of bricks. So many questions and emotions going on in my head at one time, I went from one extreme to another in the blink of an eye. One tear quickly turned into millions and at that point all I could do is pray. Who am I to question God? Nobody! So I didn’t. However, that did not mean that I wasn’t angry, hurt, confused, and disappointed with myself and the curveball that life just threw me.

  Everything happened so fast that it is still taking some time to fully understand and swallow this huge pill. I am still processing the birth of Dakota and I’m sure I will do so for a while because there are so many questions that I have. I kept telling myself “It’s my fault”; I felt the urgent need to blame someone so I chose ME!

  My brain is going and going just like the Energizer bunny, so much that I cannot rest or sleep. We went from celebrating the holidays with family and friends to a sudden life change overnight. Our lives have been switched to a minute-by-minute situation and we must learn how to adjust our clocks for the days, weeks, and months ahead.

  For all of the families who have been through this journey before us we thank you in advance for leading us and helping us get through this critical time. For the families who are going through this journey right now we are one with you. We stand, touch, and agree that your child will be healed beyond human comprehension. Last but not least, for the families that will have the misfortune of living in and going through this journey, I can only hope and pray that a small piece of our story can help you in the time of need as you learn how to live minute by minute.

  We would like to wish our God-sent daughter Dakota Smith a happy birthday. May God keep you and bless y
ou in all the days of your life.

  From my heart to yours.

  The preemie and NICU experience is a world inside of and outside of the larger world. Folks need community in that experience that is like none other. My social media started blowing up with families who just needed that connection, needed to know they weren’t alone as I shared the good days and the hellish days. And it gave us a boost to keep going as a family when we received tweets from Cavalier fans who spoke of ways Dakota’s journey and our faith in God gave them the strength to carry on in the face of all kinds of life-or-death circumstances.

  It was the beginning of February and I started feeling like there was light at the end of the tunnel. I woke up a little more chipper. Afra’s breast milk was one of the big shifts. I could see the miracle happen where they had said in the NICU there would be mostly bad days. My cousin’s help with the blog was a big shift, and JR and I standing together in our decision to post pictures of our experience was a big shift. It put us out there. Folks were seeing our pains and joys inside the nooks and crannies, but it was making a difference. We had taken the gifts given to us by Afra and Danica and were giving back that life to other families just by sharing our truth. I had spent a lot of days sitting in the NICU wondering what God’s purpose for me in this situation was. What was the purpose of me having these hardships in my life? To be honest, I had always struggled with my purpose, but blogging was leading me back to the way I had always dealt with struggles: writing. I prayed that my blog and social media writings would somehow create a support system for others. It was doing just that and more. I had a following that I felt so connected to, it was unreal, and when I blogged, my readers requested more; they were always hungry to read more. That is when I thought to myself, Maybe my purpose is to be an author.