Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

by Lezley McSpadden

  I exploded in a rage, punching the air, swinging in all directions like I was fighting him to the finish, then all of a sudden I was overcome with exhaustion. I fell to my knees, weak, drenched in sweat, and cried out, “Why, God?”

  My tears erupted like a volcano. My baby boy was gone, stolen from me, lying dead under a sheet, surrounded by police, in the hot summer sun.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TWELVE-YEAR-OLD DREAM AND THE LITTLE RED SUITCASE

  My whole name is Lezley Lynette Bingo McSpadden. Don’t ask me where they got that Bingo part from. Family and friends from around the way call me Nette Pooh. Auntie Bobbie, my mama’s younger sister, said she came up with that name. Mama’s big brother, Uncle Cleo, said he gave it to me. Uncle Cleo even put a little extra on it, calling me Netty Pooh. My daddy and everybody on his side just call me Nette, from my middle name.

  It’s funny, I never felt like I was a favorite to nobody, but I guess you gotta be pretty special to have a nickname. That’s why I’m always making up nicknames to call kids. I want them to know how special they are. When I was a little girl, the person who made me feel special the most was my daddy. I wasn’t around him that much, but when I did see him, he was my whole world, and in my mind I was his.

  I remember when I hit puberty, I made up what I called the Twelve-Year-Old Dream. I would hear my favorite love song or watch a music video or see a movie and put together every character I had seen to create an image of the man of my dreams that I’d have when I grew up. I imagined looking for him at school, at my job, in the mall, or at the park. But one day I’d find him and we’d live happily ever after.

  I had that dream, but it never involved me having a baby at sixteen.

  • • • •

  My mama met a guy I called Mister at a birthday party her sister, my aunt Evelyn, had. In the short time he started coming around, he never showed my mama much respect and acted like he didn’t even like Brittanie and me too much.

  When she got with Mister, it made me wish things had worked out better for her and my daddy. Maybe they could’ve got married, but all they did was just spend a bunch of years going back and forth, on again, off again, in their relationship. It was like that as far back as I can remember. When I was a baby, up until I was probably preschool age, Mama and me even lived with Daddy and his mama, my granny, in the Clinton-Peabody housing projects, also known simply as the Peabody, in the Darst-Webbe area of the South Side of St. Louis.

  My daddy was way different than Mister, though. He was one of them easygoing dudes. He wasn’t a bad man. He just wasn’t any good to my mama because Daddy’s downfall was women, lots of them.

  One time, when I was a toddler, Daddy actually took me around one of his ladies. I was little, but I could talk good and I was smart. The lady leaned in to me and smiled real big.

  “Aww, look at how pretty she is!” she said, pinching my cheeks.

  “Nette, this is Miss Rose,” Daddy said.

  Maybe at that point he kissed her or touched her in some kind of way. Whatever it was, I knew that he was doing what he was doing like he did to my mama.

  “Baby, you can call me ‘Mama,’ ” Miss Rose said, pinching my cheeks again. I pulled away behind my daddy’s leg.

  When we got back to where we lived on Rucker Lane, Mama had one of them nigga-I-know-you-been-up-to-no-good looks on her face.

  “Nette Pooh, where y’all been?” she said, pulling me close.

  “Over to my mama’s house,” I said innocently.

  Next thing I knew Daddy had snatched me up and dragged my little ass into another room. He whipped out a wire hanger and began whuppin’ me. My cries got louder and louder each time that wire landed on my skin. When he finished he went and sat down in a chair that faced me. I was delirious from crying so hard, and my eyelids were heavy like somebody had put little weights on them. I let out a few sighs in between the sniffles and went on to sleep. When I woke up my daddy was still sitting in the same chair looking at me.

  “Go back in there with yo’ mama, Nette Pooh,” he said in a low voice.

  I got up slowly and my little feet tiptoed away. Every few steps I’d turn and look back at him, trying to understand what had just happened. Daddy never whupped me again after that.

  Not long after, Mama and me moved from there. Mama would still take me down to visit him every now and then, though.

  When I was about six, I remember how geeked up I’d be the whole drive just thinking about seeing my daddy. As we drove down Highway 70 East, leaving North St. Louis, we’d pass the gigantic cylinder-shaped towers of the Pillsbury factory. The smell of fresh-baked dough hung in the air like a thick pastry cloud, making my stomach instantly start to growl.

  As the car coasted farther down the highway, there was the smell of old, dirty water coming from the Mississippi River. I perked up because that meant we were getting closer. We zoomed through downtown St. Louis, passing the gigantic Gateway Arch, high-rise buildings, and Busch Stadium, and all the Cardinals baseball billboards and banners.

  North City, where we lived, is a whole different-looking part of St. Louis. It is not only a mostly black area, but over there we got churches practically on every corner, and you can almost guarantee it’s going to be a barbecue joint or barber or beauty shop next door, or a corner Chinese joint.

  The South Side, or South City, was known more for having mostly white people, but it was a weird mixture of poor white trash and a few white people with some money sprinkled in. They got neighborhoods called Dogtown where the Irish at; the Hill, where you got the Italians; and then the Germans in Germantown. I guess where I grew up you could divide it up like, “OK, here the block where the Crips be at, and here the block where the Bloods be at.” My point is we were all just black.

  Once we hit the bridge into South City, I could barely contain myself. I knew we were getting close because the blocks of old, boarded-up brick buildings were fading behind us. My heart was beating faster and faster. My face was starting to hurt from my smile being so big. As we pulled up, the high-rise project apartments stood like giant hood guards, overshadowing the lower-level complex, which was made up of redbrick two- and four-family flats. My granny and daddy lived in a two-family.

  As Mama pulled up, I could see Daddy in the doorway of their house; his smile matched mine. He looked like a cool, hood comic-book superhero, standing tall and lean, with a full mustache that made him look important. Daddy’s Kangol hat was cocked a little to the side. Mama had barely stopped the car before I jumped out, my two pigtails flopping on top of my head. I threw my little arms around his legs. Daddy scooped me up in his strong arms, swung me around, and I laughed until I was dizzy.

  Seemed like the drive over took longer than the visit, and then it was time to say good-bye.

  “No, I wanna stay here,” I begged, tears streaming as Mama pried my arms off Daddy’s leg.

  Maybe we had just come over for that hug, or for my daddy to give my mama a little bit of money. It didn’t matter. It was the fact that I got to see him. I was a daddy’s girl. I never wanted to leave him, because I didn’t know when I was going to see him again. Those visits started to stretch out to weeks and months and, eventually, years in between. For the first few years, when I saw him I would go right back into feeling like I was his princess again. But as I got older, that feeling of excitement started to fade.

  When I was seven, I asked for Daddy’s phone number. I still remember slowly punching out the numbers on the telephone pad. I wanted to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. It was the number to my auntie’s house, my daddy’s sister, who lived in the projects too. Daddy was living with her by that time. The phone just rang and rang. No answer. I was determined, though. I called every day until somebody answered one day.

  “Daddy! It’s Nette Pooh! Where you been, Daddy? I wanna see you.”

  “Hey, baby!” Daddy sounded so excited to hear my voice. “Oh, I just been workin’, Nette Pooh. Look, I’mma come get you for the
weekend. OK?”

  Friday after school I burst through the front door after Mama picked me up from the bus stop, and run right to my room. My mama had bought me a little red suitcase, and across the front of it read: GOING TO GRANDMA’S. I packed everything I could think of into that suitcase. Then I sat on the couch and waited. I looked for him and looked for him some more, but still no Daddy.

  “Nette Pooh, don’t get your hopes up too high,” Mama said flatly.

  “Naw, Mama, he said he was comin’,” I said, taking another look out the blinds.

  Daddy never came.

  “Fuck it! C’mon, Nette Pooh! Get in the car!”

  Mama was fed up with Daddy’s lies and seeing me hurt. So we jumped in her car and made that long drive to Peabody.

  For as long as I can remember, all Mama’s cars were a little piece of a car. She never could afford a new car. They ran good enough to get back and forth to work, but they’d be old. But it was what her money could buy. She’d get them from somebody she worked with or who knew somebody who was selling a car. She even had an old Chevy Chevette one time that every time we stopped, we had to put a quart of oil in it. But Mama would say, “Hey, it’s gonna get me around, it’s mine, and I ain’t gotta depend on nobody.”

  I smelled bread, then old, nasty water, then I saw the projects up ahead.

  “Nette Pooh, you crazy ’bout that muthafucka, and he don’t give a damn about you,” Mama said with a blank expression, her eyes glued to the road.

  “Well, I don’t care, Mama. I’mma keep tryin’.” My mouth was twisted and I was gripping the handle of my little red suitcase.

  That time we didn’t even find my daddy. I guess he had forgot he was supposed to get me and was out somewhere. When I finally got him on the phone again, he couldn’t give me a good explanation.

  By the time I was twelve years old, I was tired of him lying to me. Anger was shooting through my body as I pressed each number on the keypad. All I could think about was how he never took me to school or met me at the bus stop or came to see me in a play or sat me down and told me about boys. Nothing! He didn’t even just call to say hi. I didn’t even give him a chance to say hello before I lit into him.

  “Why you be lying to me? You ain’t never here for me! I hate you!” I shouted recklessly. I didn’t care. I slammed the phone down. The tears poured down my face and I closed my eyes tight, wishing I had one of them corny daddies on television who wore a colorful sweater, smoked a pipe, and sat in a big easy chair reading his newspaper. He’d be waiting for me to run in and jump on his lap. Then he’d kiss me on my forehead and call me his princess. But that was just a dumb dream.

  My mama never made a lot of money working in food service, but cooking for people is what she loved to do. She worked her own schedule cooking food for a small senior citizen center. She even worked catering at a few other hotels. The only other place she cooked for a long period of time was the Hilton Hotel, where she wore those black-and-white checkered pants and the white jacket. It was tight financially with her being a single mother. My brother, Bernard, who is five years older than me, stayed mostly with my mama’s mother, who I called Granny, and my mama’s older sister, Aunt Bobbie, but that was cool because she had a son, my cousin Chevelle, and him and Bernard were around the same age. Bernard eventually left to go to college and then got a place of his own. My sister, Brittanie, is four years younger than me, and Mama kept us with her.

  Now no matter how tight the money was, we had clean clothes on our backs, food in our stomachs, and a nice roof over our heads. Mama’s always been a woman who worked hard and had her own. That’s why I never understood why she got hooked up with Mister. He moved in with us and he didn’t even bring a couch, or a TV, or a chair, not even a plate or fork, no nothin’. He walked around our house like he was some kind of king.

  Mama always liked having company over. She’d cook up a pot of neck bones and beans or spaghetti, and friends and family would come over for good food and a good time. She wasn’t really the type to show a lot of emotion, but when she was happy, you knew it. One night she was wearing a wide, toothy smile, and a few of her girlfriends were over for game night. Mama was busy working the room, making sure everybody had a beer or ice in their glass.

  I usually ignored Mister, but that night it was hard because he seemed to get agitated just because Mama was enjoying herself.

  I liked seeing Mama in a good mood and looking good. Mama had a little thickness to her, but she was tall and shapely, and that night she was fresh from the beauty shop with her hair curled up, and that made her slanty eyes that were deep-set in her slim face stand out.

  Bernard, Brittanie, and me got them same eyes, too, even though we each got different daddies. That goes to show how strong Mama’s genes are.

  I tiptoed out of our room to fix Brittanie and me a plate of snacks. I was moving fast because Mama and about four of her girlfriends were sitting around the dining room table, and we were always taught that grown-folk time is grown-folk time. Mama took a sip from her beer and a long drag off her cigarette, then picked a card from the deck and spun the wheel on the board game.

  “What would your dream man be like?” Mama laughed, reading the question out loud. Her friends all busted out laughing and I giggled to myself, but Mister jerked his head back and gave her a menacing look.

  A few hours later the party was over and Mama had already cleaned up and was walking back in the front door from dropping off one of her girlfriends. I was in my bed and Brittanie was sound asleep in her bed across from me. Mama’s shadow slid into her room, then I heard Mister’s booming voice.

  “Aw, what, you got anotha man?” he demanded.

  Whop! Crash!

  I heard the loud, dull sound of a body being hit by a heavy fist, followed by glass smashing on the floor. I ran out of our room and into the hallway. Mama was hunched over on the floor still clutching her purse. Mister was standing like a giant above her. I didn’t wait for Mama to get up and fight him back.

  “I’mma call the police!” I shouted, running into the kitchen, grabbing the phone off the wall. My chest was heaving and I was out of breath.

  “Li’l girl, you ain’t calling nobody,” Mister said, snatching the receiver out of my hands.

  I sat in my bed, holding my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth. I heard Mama’s bedroom door slam. My daddy may have been a lot of things, but I never saw him lay hands on my mama. The tears welled up in my eyes, but I refused to cry. I made up my mind right then and there that I wasn’t ever going to let a man treat me like Mister had done my mama.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GRANDMA’S HANDS

  Mama told us that Mister went to jail. I didn’t ask why because I didn’t care. I was just glad he was gone and the house was peaceful. Things seemed like they were looking up for us as a family, too, because Mama had found a cute little three-bedroom house to rent over on Emma Street in the Walnut Park area of North St. Louis, and now we’d be living closer to my grandmother, Mama’s mama. I called her Granny too, just like my other grandmother, but I saw her way more often.

  I sat on the brick steps of our new front porch, with my back against the iron rails, itching to walk around the neighborhood. Our house was near the corner of Emma and Mimika, and I could see houses on both streets. Each one was different. Some were all wood with wooden steps leading up to houses that looked like shacks down in the Deep South or something. Then some houses were all brick and two stories, like ours; some had balconies, and others were just one level. Most of the houses were separated by a narrow gangway leading from the front to the backyard.

  It was only a matter of minutes before I felt the weight of two sets of eyeballs checking me out.

  “Hey, you just moved over here?” the short, dark-skinned one with two gleaming gold teeth in the front of her mouth asked as she approached. I could tell she was sizing me up. “Well, what’s your name?”

  “Everybody calls me Nette,” I said conf
idently.

  “Well, I’m Stacey and this is my sister, Casey. So how old are you? You must go to Clark Middle, huh?” Casey kept firing questions but I couldn’t stop focusing on the gold teeth. I was wishing I had just one of them, but I bet not even think about asking Mama to get me no gold.

  Stacey was older than me. Turns out six years older. She had short hair, and it was in a fly cut. It looked like she had just got her hair done, the way each bump of a curl went from small to large, from the middle of the back of her head to the top of it. Casey, who looked around my age, had long hair, was a shade lighter and tall.

  “Well, we just checkin’ to see who movin’ in. If you need somethin’ just let us know. We two doors down.” Stacey had done all the talking. Casey just agreed. Then they went on back to their house.

  I made up my mind from jump that living on Emma was going to be the bomb. I was only thirteen, but I could already see myself kicking it with them.

  • • • •

  When Mister got out of jail he came straight to Emma Street. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the front door. Hell naw! I almost dropped my schoolbooks on the floor when I saw that fool sitting on the couch. I marched straight to Mama’s bedroom.

  “Mama, what he doin’ in there?” I demanded.

  “I told him he had to ask y’all if he could come back, Nette Pooh,” Mama said softly. Suddenly I didn’t even recognize my own mama. Mama wasn’t supposed to be no weak woman.

  “What? Well, that’s a no for me. Why would you want him back?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest. Usually, grown people quick to check you when you be making a comment about something you see them doing but now for the first time, Mama was putting me in an adult position.

  Then, just like that, Mama switched the tables on me again. “Look, don’t be fuckin’ questionin’ me, Nette Pooh! And let me tell you somethin’: What happen in this house stay in this house. Don’t be out tellin’ ya granny and ya cousins about nothin’!”