Miss Jessie's

by Miko Branch

  DANCE TIME

  Even though there was no money to speak of, we never felt poor because our parents always found a way to make us think that we were rich and unique by enriching our lives with things like exposure to art, culture, and different ways of thinking. We always had music in our lives courtesy of our father. Those soulfully creative album covers of the Ohio Players, the Isley Brothers, and Barry White remain committed to our memories, evoking a time of innocence and joy. One image in particular, of a stunning bald woman with a perfect body and an expression of pure ecstasy, stands out. Another featured a Glamazon pouring honey all over herself. Looking back, I realize those images were racy, and that Titi and I had no idea what they were trying to evoke. We simply added these sexy women to our growing mental file of style icons.

  Daddy always played music in the mornings, at night, and on weekends. Stevie Wonder; Donny Hathaway; Earth, Wind & Fire; and Marvin Gaye were some of his favorites. The full album would flow on our record player from front to back, and he made sure we could “catch the beat” when he held impromptu dance contests in our backyard.

  OUR OWN

  As much as we struggled, our father, a determined, proud, and hardworking man, was adamant that we get by on our own. It was always about making do with what we had. I even remember my father turning on all four stove burners and the oven to heat the house when we couldn’t afford to turn up the thermostat.

  Welfare was never an option. We were not allowed to get free breakfast and lunch at the public school on the corner, while all the other kids on the block could. We used to watch with envy as they drank the orange juice and ate the Frosted Flakes. Sometimes they even got pancakes. “Daddy, why can’t we eat free food, too?” Titi ventured to ask. “Everybody else does.”

  “Don’t set yourself up to have a welfare mentality,” he snapped. “And don’t worry about what everybody else is doing. I know one thing—you won’t eat it. Getting something for nothing ain’t shit.”

  DO THE RIGHT THING

  Beyond the “no free meal” rule, our father never let us forget that you don’t take what’s not yours. We learned this lesson well when we were seven and eight years old and started hanging around Jeanette, a pretty Puerto Rican teenager who used to babysit us, give us baths, play games, and tell us stories about the boys she thought were cute. One day, for the first time, we decided to play hooky with Jeanette, ending up in a dime store on Liberty Avenue, where we stole makeup, hair accessories, and colorful plastic jewelry. It seemed like a fun day out until our father somehow discovered what we’d done.

  “How was school today?” he asked us, playing dumb.

  “It was good,” we lied.

  Before we could get the words out, the blows started coming at top speed. We got the ass-beating of our lives. His big hands alone were enough to inflict plenty of pain, but this time he took out belts, a wooden stick, and anything nearby to beat the shit out of us. Our father could hit hard, and his blows stung, and his words hurt even more. “I can’t stand liars and thieves!” he screamed.

  We cried as our mother stood off to the side, staying out of it. The next day he made an announcement: “Get all that shit together, because both of you are going down to Liberty Avenue to return every single thing you took.”

  He marched us into each store and made us tell the shop owner what we had done and how sorry we were. Jeanette faded to black from our lives; we were not allowed to even look at her from that day on.

  JUST THE TWO OF US

  As our distinctive little personalities were developing, we saw less and less of our mother. By the time we were six and seven, she was always either working or going to school. She started missing family holidays and staying away from us as she cultivated an all-consuming interest in Buddhism.

  Her absence meant Daddy was the constant in our lives. He was our protector who took us to and from school. But he was also the oppressive alpha male who stuck to his role as authority figure, so we couldn’t exactly talk or be too familiar with him. He had this unspoken rule that we could not get too mushy and affectionate by kissing or hugging him too much; we were also never allowed to sit on his lap. Years later we found out he never wanted any confusion about inappropriate behavior with his two daughters, since he knew he would be spending a lot of time with Titi and me. But this left us heavily codependent. For companionship and emotional support, we had only each other. “Two peas in a pod,” our mother used to call us. And yet we could not have been more different.

  Titi was the outgoing tomboy who was curious about the world and incredibly book-smart. Titi’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Alexander, and first-grade teacher, Mrs. Selterman, constantly praised Titi for her incredible smarts and efforts at school. “I remember watching Titi do her homework in elementary school,” Mommy shared with me years later. “I was amazed at how she had such clarity about her work assignments and, consequently, was able to organize and complete it with such swiftness.”

  I was always in awe of how quick Titi was able to make friends, easily engaging in conversations. Even as a child, she had a kind of innocent poise, asking questions and getting straight to the point without any inhibitions, in total contrast with my own shy and cautious demeanor. Always the center of attention, Titi had warmth and wit that made her incredibly popular among the other kids on 127th Street. Even though she was only a year older, she was very much the big sister, and I looked up to her. She often fought other kids for me, even the older boys who tried to bully me.

  Maybe I was a target because I was seen as the docile girly girl who loved everything pink, held tea parties, and lived to make everything around me as pretty as could be. Happy in my own little bubble, I didn’t try to fit in. I managed to make a few friends, becoming the go-to girl for hair if I was free to do whatever I wanted. One time a classmate allowed me to snip off her entire ponytail with a pair of paper scissors, leaving nothing but a short stub of hair sticking out from her elastic rubberband. I thought nothing of it until her mother came to the school the next day, furious about the little girl’s new “do” and pointing at me across the room as the vice principal tried to calm her down. “Why did you cut my baby’s hair like that?” she screamed at me.

  I did not understand her fury and stood there, scared, with my mouth open. “I thought it was okay because she said I could cut it,” I explained with tears in my eyes. The mother needed to be escorted out of the school because she was yelling so much and the two male gym teachers were sure she was going to hurt me bad. This particular lesson stayed with me for a lifetime: I always make sure to double-check how much is okay to cut before I start trimming.

  I had more freedom with my sister’s hair. Titi was always my willing guinea pig. As long as I had my sister, my dolls, my tea set, and a few items for hair and makeup to make everyone look pretty, I stayed out of trouble. Mostly, I was content to sit on the sidelines, looking out on the world from a safe distance—a state my mother called “inwardly attentive.” Like Miss Jessie, I preferred the indoors. Daydreaming, playing with my mother’s makeup, looking at magazines, and silently observing everything around me were more my speed.

  It’s all too easy to get pigeonholed when you are young. The truth about my sister and me was more complex; it always is. We weren’t all one way or the other. Our whole lives, we took turns at being feisty and outgoing, introverted and gentle. We each had a little of Daddy, Mommy, and Miss Jessie’s character, albeit with a dash more of some ingredients than others. And yet we always seemed to be the perfect complement, the ying to the other’s yang, and an overwhelmingly positive force in each other’s lives.

  LATCHKEY KIDS

  We also had each other’s backs. If you messed with one of us, you messed with both of us. It had to be that way. We were latchkey kids who spent hours alone together, so the fact that we adored each other was a blessing.

  Typically, we were left alone from three o’clock until dark, and to pass the time we would watch TV, even it was agains
t our father’s rules. As usual, he would find out, touching the TV when he came home to see if it was hot. He was strict with us because that was how he’d been raised by Miss Jessie. He never wanted us to feel like we could get too out of hand in his absence.

  Not that he always played the heavy. He was the hands-on parent who did the occasional check-in on our homework, but he also made time to come up and make his presence be known at our schools. It wasn’t unusual for our father to sit in the back of the class and observe. He was at every parent-teacher conference. He was also the parent who sits at the front desk in the halls—the first adult you see when you walk into a school. He always looked sharp, doing his volunteer school duty in a suit and tie.

  Around the house, he always talked about how important his presence was, and, looking back, I see that he was right. By his actions, our father was demonstrating to everyone in our school and neighborhood that we had someone strong to look out for us. He made sure that no one—be they adults or other kids—would bother us. Never one to use soft or kind words, he showed his love through his protectiveness.

  Not that his presence was consistent. When he had a deal to do, he’d be gone for hours. On weekends and evenings, when he had to handle his business, he’d leave us in his old tan Chevy, unattended for a couple of hours at a time. He never left the radio on, much less the air conditioner, though we at least knew to crack the window just enough to let air in. That alone time drew Titi and me even closer together. We talked about the future and the things we dreamed of accomplishing when we grew up. Both of us wanted to be businesswomen, although neither was sure what that entailed. We used to stare at the passersby and, based on how they were dressed and how their hair was done, try to imagine what they did for a living. Some of my fondest memories with my sister go back to those hours we spent watching people in the street from the backseat of our car, killing time, singing, playing pitty-pat, and laughing. A lot. We lived to entertain and please each other.

  That backseat was almost like our very own after-school program, and Titi was my teacher and storyteller. She was intellectually curious, always reading and looking stuff up at the library. We had a set of encyclopedias at home, and she read just about every volume. On those long waits, she’d share whatever she’d learned in those books. I loved hearing Titi tell me all about Greek mythology: Pandora’s box, Venus and Aphrodite.

  THE SMART ONE

  Titi’s book smarts won high praise from Daddy. He always let it be known how proud he was of her. Her nickname was TCB, which stood not only for Titi Cree Branch but for “Taking Care of Business.”

  I also could not have been prouder of Titi. In fact, I was in awe of her. But her good standing with our father sometimes led to some hurtful comparisons. Because I was just an average student, he’d often say to me, “You can’t get over by being pretty.” That was his constant fear for us. He was deathly worried that I would rely on my looks and end up dependent on some man. He would highlight all the bad things that happened to girls who thought they were cute; sometimes his words bordered on cruelty. His constant criticism backfired in some ways, crushing my confidence by typecasting me as “the dumb one.” It didn’t exactly inspire me to do better in school.

  Somewhat paradoxically, Daddy also drilled into our heads that we were “special, extraordinary, beautiful, and great.” The word he loved to use was “exceptional.” He talked about the importance of being free in our minds and always making decisions that would put us in a position of choice. He wanted us to develop minds of our own, and if he thought we were being followers in any way, he would make it difficult for us to be all right with that concept on the next go-round.

  Education was extremely important to our father, who wore many hats, including schoolteacher. He eventually earned his master’s degree in education, so academic excellence was high on his list of requirements for his daughters.

  In the environment we grew up in, there were obstacles. Kids in Jamaica, Queens, could be rough at times, and there was no avoiding the occasional physical battle in school. One day in third grade, I came home to say, “Daddy, I got into another fight today.”

  “Miko, what happened? Who hit first?”

  “She hit me first, and then I hit her back. The teacher had to break it up.”

  I needed to know how to fight in our neighborhood. I never went looking for trouble, but I stood my ground and learned to fight back when I had to.

  This feisty streak surprised my father. He was trying to figure out if his daughter was a punching bag, a troublemaker or a stand-up girl. Not wanting us to have to fight our way through school, he quickly enrolled us in a program that bused us to an academically better elementary school in Whitestone, Queens—a predominantly white neighborhood with mostly Italian and Jewish kids. Titi was automatically put into the SP (advanced) class; somewhat surprisingly, I made it to SP class after a few months at school. Daddy was thrilled.

  It was a big change from the school up the block. For starters, Whitestone was about an hour and a half away, and my sister and I had to walk thirty blocks, about a mile and a half, just to get to the bus stop. We loved the new school experience, especially Titi. She made friends with mostly Asian and white students who wanted to excel academically. We also had a group of friends from our ’hood, as we rode the school bus from Jamaica, Queens, to Whitestone. Even I did well at first, winning spelling bees and making A’s, although I was always much more studious of human nature and soon immersed myself in the social aspect of school, getting to know the other girls from Whitestone and learning their ways.

  Observe the people around you. It will help you better understand human nature and, in turn, your customer.

  Our new school provided a whole new cultural awakening. We heard unfamiliar terms and names like Guido, Guidette, and JAP (Jewish-American princess). I also made friends with girls who had names like Bethe Lacher, Margaret Randazzo, and Patty Comparetto. Whitestone was where I was introduced to Hello Kitty and Titi and I tasted our first Gummi Bears. I also got wise to the underhanded way girls tore each other down. In my experience in the mostly black neighborhoods like South Ozone Park, if girls didn’t like you, they’d be direct about it. First there would be a verbal argument, then a minute to put Vaseline on faces for scratch protection, then an actual physical fight. Everything seemed to be pretty much over once the fight took place, with nothing left to guess about. But the mean girls at the white school would cut you dead in an altogether different fashion. It wasn’t physical, and in many ways that was worse. Their beat-downs took the form of a silent treatment, followed by the spreading of a nasty rumor that would leave you completely iced out of the social circle. It was not unusual to be left alone at the lunch table if it was your turn to be “it.” Isolation at its best.

  I was especially fascinated by the different traits and characteristics of the various girl groups. If the subject of human nature had been on our school curriculum, no doubt I would have scored an A+. It gave me plenty of reference points later on in life, when I was doing hair, dealing with dozens of different women on a daily basis. That knowledge would prove critical later on, when Miss Jessie’s started interacting with thousands of women via the Internet, to introduce them to new possibilities with their hair. We quickly found out that in order to connect and reach these women, we needed to understand that it was less about hair and more about the psychology of different groups of women and their life experiences.

  Be open to different experiences and receptive to the ideas of others.

  CHILD LABOR

  School was only a small part of our education. When we weren’t in class, our father put us to work in his new business, renovating and selling properties. Some of our earliest memories revolve around helping our dad.

  “Titi, Miko, I need you to get in here and get this house straight so I can sell it,” he’d tell us. Anxious to keep his overhead low, he kept the work in the family, having us spackle walls, paint, clean, and scrub floors, leav
ing us for hours to make these houses and apartments spotless while he went off to negotiate his next deal. It taught us a work ethic. We were eight and nine at the time, but it was another one of his life lessons. Our role as cheap labor went on for years.

  Daddy was a good provider. Although he expected us to do our part, he carried most of the load. Our earliest memories are of him running between two or three jobs at a time. Daddy brought home anything and everything he could while out in the streets trying to make ends meet. At one point, he and an old man named Mr. James even rode down south to get a load of watermelons to sell out of Mr. James’s truck on street corners in the neighborhood.

  Daddy’s drive to do better for himself, for all of us, was unrelenting. He was a young man coming up in the Civil Rights era, and he desperately wanted his daughters to have the kind of freedom and privileges that his generation had fought so hard for. That’s why he was always drumming into us the importance of education, financial independence, work ethic, and grit.

  Experience and education are the best teachers, even if the education is not formal.