Now, this is where the meat of the story really begins.

What They Looked Like

Going back into my earliest memories, I may not be able to give a full description of everyone, but I shall do the best with what I have retained. Firstly, Donna my mother was short. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t thin. She was what we Trinidadians call a “thicky” with her gut swollen with child and her butt cocked all the way behind her she looked like a human duck. At times, she seemed to be dragging that big behind around.

Her skin was smooth and clean from blemishes, her complexion looked like fine gold. Her hair was full of volume, curly and past her shoulders to the center of her back, it was red and it looked like copper. My mother was very beautiful, which brings me to understand why she birthed all the different races of children that she did. I guess, all those men just had to have a piece of her pie.

Nichole and Jerome didn’t even look as they belonged to her. Their complexion was as dark chocolate and their body structure was more athletic. Both their hair was as black as night and pin straight, no curls, no waves, just straight. The reason for this, was because their father was of East Indian descent and our mother was what we call a ” cocopiel” which means ‘many mixtures of race’. But the foundation of that mix is Spanish.

Nichole’s Big Secret

Some of you that grew up in the eighties may have known about washing clothes in a machine. On the other hand, there are some of us who knows about washing by hand on what is known as a jocken board. One day mummy sent Nichole and Jerome to wash their clothes and she instructed Nichole to take and teach me. She said that I had enough sense and it was time I started to learn how to take care of myself.

Nichole took me by the hand to the back door of the house, sat me down on the step, grabbed a bucket, filled it with rain water from the barrel. She then explained while taking a very small amount of soap powder in her hand, ” wen yuh usin’ rain wata yuh cyah use plenty soap, cause wen yuh ha to rinse de close yuh go ha to use too much wata.” To all that may not understand what was said because of the poor dialect I used, I shall translate.

When you’re using rain water, you can’t use a lot of soap, because when you have to rinse the clothes you will have to use too much water. She then submerged her hand with the soap into the water and swirled it around to mix in the soap. Then she placed her clothes and mine into the soap water, picked up an article of clothing and with both her hands started rubbing a section of the cloth while instructing me to do the same with me clothing.

When she made the rubbing motion her hands made a distinct sound, ( chucoo, chucoo, chooc) which was so fascinating to me that I tried to make the same sounds with my hands. I didn’t get it with the first or second attempt, but on the third try my sister was smiling from ear to ear. Nichole loved having me around. I think it’s because I have always been a lot more mature than my age and best of all I could talk and have conversations with her.

Obviously, I couldn’t wash my clothes clean so Nichole would take them and wash them over for me. Our mother never linked with any man that had loads of money, so whenever I used and filled a disposable diaper, mummy would remove all the insides of the diaper, wash and keep the plastic on the outside, so that when she pinned that white cloth diaper to my bottom, she would place the plastic over the diaper to minimize on leaks and spills.

” Crys, ah have a secret to tell yuh, but yuh have to promise not tell nobody.” Nichole said to me as she looked around to be sure that the coast was clear. ” Promise” she said in a whisper, so I did as she said. ” I promise Nitole.” ” Wen ah was four, mammy man friend hold meh down and rape meh, and wen ah tell mammy she beat meh and tell meh ah lyin’, ah never tell nobody else but you and if mammy know ah tell yuh she go beat meh more bad dis time.”

Mummy was not really the sharpest tool in the shed and every time we did something wrong or she believed we were lying, we would get a really bad beating. With Nichole being the oldest of us, she would get it the worse. And, I kept my promise till now. I can remember many occasions where my sister took my beating by taking the blame for my wrong.

“Who Doh Hear Does Feel”

I was a bit older, mummy made the baby she was pregnant with, and he ( Johnathan ) was in diapers now, I was not. Johnathan looked a lot like mummy, his complexion had more of a mocha finish and his hair was red and curly as mummy ‘s. He was just a few months old and was put down to nap, on the bed we all slept on without a diaper.

Johnathan loved sleeping with his head on the bed and his butt in the air. While Nichole, Jerome and I was playing in the bedroom, I looked around at Johnathan just in time to see him excreting in his sleep which looked kind of soft serve ice cream. Upon seeing this, I alerted my siblings and we were all grossed out by the sight.

We all laughed so hard that I almost peed myself. Later that day after mummy finished cooking, we all sat out in the yard to have our lunch. We didn’t know anything about a dinning table, but we knew about sitting and having our meals together as a family. The dish that day, was curry chicken, dhal and rice. Mummy was a lot like an Indian woman, she cooked like one and she ate like one.

Every time mummy had he meals she would have a ripened, yellow Congo Pepper on the side of her plate and with every spoon full she took a bite off the pepper. The man she lived with was a different one and she was pregnant once again.

The man asked mummy to fetch him a glass of juice so she set he plate down and before proceeding to get what the man asked of her, mummy turned, looked at me and said, “Crystal doh touch that.” As, I said earlier, ” who doh hear does feel.” To no surprise “I” didn’t listen, ventured over to mummy’s plate and picked up the pepper.

The element of surprise is a mischievous child’s wore nightmare. It’s only natural, I was caught in the act by mummy, who screamed out my name and dropped the pepper immediately. Being that young and more or less an egg, I was startled and began to cry.

This is where the fun part starts. Automatically, as every child does, when they begin to cry they rub their eyes and that’s where I felt the burn. I swung my head from side to side and screamed like a banshee. Mummy laughed and said those infamous words ” who doh hear does feel.” Jerome laughed along with her and Nichole almost spilling all of her food to the ground, trying to get to my aid.

She tried washing my eyes out with water, but it burned even more and I wailed even harder. I felt as though the burning would never stop. Two minutes had passed and my screams now sounded like an agonizing screech.

When mummy thought I had enough pain she told Nichole to loosen her long platt and use the loose hair to take away the burn by rubbing her hair repeatedly over the affected eye. Wow that was one ride I never wanted to get back on in life. I learned a valuable lesson that day that I would never forget.

With “Lester Crowe” For A Bit

Mummy and her man grew tired of me because I cried for my daddy a lot seeing that he had cared for since I was an infant. She now decided to pawn me off on my grandfather, on my father’s side. Lester Crowe. My mother told him that she couldn’t find my father and he was not even coming to drop money for her to care for me.

Without another thought, Lester accepted me into his home which was easy for him to do on such short notice because he was a bachelor. My grandfather lived in a small two bedroom house, on a school compound in Barataria which he was the watch man of.

The short time I spent at grandfather’s, he taught me how to bathe myself. When he made tea for and it was still too hot for to handle, he would cool it by throwing the tea from one cup to another. He gave me ripe sour sup straight off the tree for first thing in the morning after I brushed my teeth.

After that he would prepare a peanut butter sandwich with boiled chocolate tea. During the day as a snack I would be given a piece of caramel so big that it took me what seemed like hours to finish it. Or I got a peice of rainbow colored candy that also took some time to consume.

Now while all this was great when the night Cam and it was time me to sleep my grandfather would put me to sleep and here’s how. He would first lay on his back placing me on his belly with my legs opened. Then he started rocking me upward and downward till I fell asleep, he would place me on the bed next to him.

There was always something odd about him rocking me to sleep. Every time he did rock me to sleep, I used to feel his erected penis bouncing against my little vagina through my panties. The first few times it had happened I always tried to get up but he would gently place his hand on my head and ease it back to his chest. Till I just stopped trying to move.

At one point one of my uncles came to stay with us so he slept in the next room, but when Lester had his female guest for the night I would sleep to the bottom of the bunk bed and my uncle slept on the top.

The first night I was made to sleep there my uncle left his top bunk, placed his hand over my mouth and woke me up. ” I wanna play a game.” He whispered while motioning me to be quiet by placing his fore finger over his lips. It was intriguing, as it would be to any child at that age. You say game they hear play.

A promise was made to me by him, that if I stayed quiet and played the game right he would but me a doll. By this time I was fully awake and ready to play the game, but what baffled me was the fact that he was bone naked when he came on top of me. The room was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

Now, his whole weight was on me and could hardly breathe, while he pulled me panties to the side and tried to place his erected penis into my tiny Virgina. The pain was so intense that I screamed out. Before scrambling back up to the upper bunk, he said softly to me, ” remember de dolly.”

Not long after, we could hear Lester’s foot steps coming down the long hall into the back room where we slept. I cried uncontrollably. The pain was that bad. With sleep in his voice asked me why I was crying and almost instantaneously I answered and said, ” I had a nightmare papa.” Somehow I don’t think I didn’t tell because of the doll. I think it more because my uncle built a relationship with me.

He used to sit and watch cartoons with me, he taught me how whistle and he gave me my first pull off a cigarette. So I thought he was my cool uncle and I didn’t want my ‘cool’ uncle to get into trouble. The one that plays with me and teaches me cool stuff. How could I? But little did I know, he was grooming me up.

In Daddy’s Arms Again

Lester had gotten hold of Earl my father and he just appeared in the door way. I froze and looked the man over and just for few seconds my memory wanted to fail me, then it was like a light went off in my head letting me know that I knew this person.

All the doubt just faded away and yeld, “DADDY!” Running and leaping into his arms with tears in my eyes. I wrapped my little arms around my daddy’s neck like I didn’t want to let go and he hugged me as a father would after he had found his long-lost child.

Daddy was here to take me back home and I was so overwhelmingly extatic. Our moment of greeting was over and daddy placed me back on my feet and instructed me to go pack all my stuff to go. I ran off as fast as I could to the back bedroom and just stuffed everything into my knapsack and hurried back to where he left daddy standing.

To my surprise and dismay, daddy wasn’t where I left him. Thinking now, that I had been left behind, I started screaming to the top of my voice, crying and calling for my daddy. It seemed like mere seconds when daddy came running back to me askin, ” what happened?”

Tears in my eyes and now out of breath from screaming, the words came out short. ” I…. thought…leave….me.” Enraged by the antics I just pulled, daddy began to stutter at me, which was quite a norm when ever he got angry with me. ” So, so, so, so, so you have to get on so?”

While we were traveling, daddy explained that I would have to go stay with my grandma for a while, because he had no one to take care of me and that I would also get the opportunity to go to school. Hearing that I was finally getting to go to school was the best news I had heard that day.

From the time I could talk daddy started teaching me how to speak properly, read, and spell, so when he mentioned school, which he had been telling me about since he started his teachings. The excitement just got overwhelming. Till this day I still love to learn.

Graduation, Grandma and Shera

I remember going to kindergarten or elementary school. The part of kindergarten I recall most vividly was my graduation. All my classmates and I were made to stand side by side and sing a song.

After the day was through we all packed into the school bus and went to our respective homes. I was probably the third or second to last to get off the bus. There was a wooden bridge ( over a very big drain ) connecting the road to my grandma’s yard.

I really loved a cartoon named HEMAN so I named the little brown dog at my grandmother’s home. Shera loved me as much as I loved her. She seemed to be just waiting for the minute she saw exit that but and before I could get over the bridge Shera was right up on me wiggling, whining for me to pet her and licking every part of me she could reach.

Grandma would always have to come grab me before Shera toppled my little body over the side of the bridge, down into the big deep drain, where I probably would’ve broken my tiny fragile neck.

This day, being my last day of school I had no homework. Grandma gave me a light snack and sent me in front of the TV where my three favorite cartoons where about to start.

• Heman
• Captain Planet
• Garbage Patch Kids

Miracles Can Happen

So we spoke about my mother and siblings’ appearances. We chatted on what an imperfect, harden and mischievous child I was. I told you about Lester and my young uncle that was too hot for themselves. Venturing into my reunion with my father, graduation and the most senseless cartoons that peaked my interest.

To understand where I am today, you must know how far I’ve come from. Comprehending the workings of my mind, take seeing my experiences from my eyes. Even though I have looked demons in the eye and been in the grasp of devils, Jesus has never left my side or given up on me.

I need people to know and understand that God always has your back, no matter what you do, how far you go or even the height in which you’ve fallen from. Jesus has never left you since the day you were born and He never will.

Your mother, father and world may forsake you, but Jahovah and Jesus is never changing. You can always feel confident that you always have a friend in Him.

I just want to also remind you all about my new found family at Wealthy Affiliate who has accepted, welcomed and made me feel a lot more Love than I have ever felt.

Wealthy Affiliate has given me something not even the congregation of any church ever could. If you or anyone you know needs to build your own business, learn how to earn a bit of extra cash or just need a community to feel like you belong some where and you’re worth something more than you’ve been told? Well, Wealthy Affiliate is the place for you.

If you want to talk, need advise, want to leave a comment or just want to say Hi, feel free to leave all your concerns in the comments section below. Remember, I believe that just as I have escaped my mental terrors, so can you. Always know that Jesus loves and believes in you and so do I. Now it’s your turn to start believing in yourself.