Chapter Two: Born Into the Silence
I entered this world in the early 1970s.
My mother was only sixteen years old.
Just two years earlier, she had buried her own mother taken by violence. And now, still carrying a grief no teenager should ever have to bear, she found herself giving birth to a child.
Me.
She was still a child herself… yet suddenly responsible for another life.
There were no proud grandparents waiting outside the hospital room, no joyful hands reaching to hold their first grandchild. My grandmother was gone. And though my grandfather was somewhere out in the world, his absence spoke louder than his presence ever could.
And the boy who got my mother pregnant?
He showed up once.
He brought a vase of flowers… and one hundred dollars.
One hundred dollars.
As if that small gesture could erase responsibility. As if it could somehow make up for the life he helped create.
What was my sixteen-year-old mother supposed to do with that?
Buy diapers?
Buy hope?
Buy stability?
He handed her the money and just like that, he was gone.
There was no child support.
He never held me in his arms.
His name never appeared on my birth certificate.
Looking back, it feels like a painful pattern woven deep into my family’s history. My mother carried no father’s name on her birth certificate either. And neither did others before her.
Generations of children entering the world with unanswered questions about the men who helped create them.
People call that a cycle.
Some might even call it a generational curse.
I carried my mother’s last name. For many years, that was the only name I knew.
Sometimes I wonder why my mother didn’t fight harder to make him take responsibility.
Was it pride?
Fear?
Exhaustion?
Or maybe she simply didn’t have the strength left to fight another battle after everything she had already lost.
After all… she knew what it felt like to grow up without a father.
And somehow, the story repeated itself.
To the man who fathered me, my mother had only been a moment.
And when that moment passed…
so did he.
So the only family I truly knew were the ones who stayed.
My mother.
My great-grandmother.
And a village of relatives who stepped in wherever they could.
There were no fancy baby supplies waiting for me. No stroller. No diaper bag packed and ready by the door.
Life was simpler than that.
And harder.
My mother was still a teenager a high school dropout with no steady job and no financial support. Eventually, she had no choice but to turn to welfare just to survive. My great-grandmother, already grieving the loss of her youngest daughter, now found herself helping raise her daughter’s child.
History… repeating itself again.
A mother raising a daughter.
Then raising the daughter’s daughter.
I assume we lived with my great-grandmother for a time, until my mother was able to find a place of her own. Many of those early details remain unclear, like distant echoes from a life I was too young to remember.
I don’t remember my first word.
But sometimes I wonder…
what if it had been “Daddy”?
Who taught me to crawl?
Who watched me take my first steps?
Who cheered when I stood up after falling?
I was probably around nine or twelve months old when I began walking. My mother told me she had bought me a pair of little “jeepers” shoes soft, meant for toddlers learning to walk.
But every time I tried to take a step…
I fell.
Again.
And again.
Until my great-grandmother finally spoke up.
“That child ain’t gonna walk in those shoes,” she said. “You better get her some hard-bottom shoes.”
A friend pointed my mother in the right direction. And when she finally brought home the right pair, everything changed.
Those shoes gave me balance.
They gave me confidence.
And they made sure everyone knew exactly where I was.
They had little bells on them.
Every step I took echoed through the house.
My great-grandmother could hear me coming long before she saw me.
And trust me…
I gave her plenty of reasons to listen.
I was curious about everything especially her kitchen. I loved pulling out pots and pans, banging on them like they were instruments in my own personal band.
I was having the time of my life.
She was not.
“Get that child!” she would yell. “She’s tearing up my pots and pans!”
Eventually, she found a solution. Those thick red rubber bands from bundles of collard greens? She stretched them tight across the cabinet handles.
No more opening doors.
No more kitchen concerts.
Problem solved.
Or at least… for a little while.
Two years later, my mother became pregnant again.
But this time, the story ended before it could begin.
The baby was stillborn.
Another loss.
Another quiet grief added to a life already filled with them.
Instead of daycare, family members helped care for me until I was old enough to start pre-kindergarten. Before I could attend school, there were clinic visits immunization shots, checkups, and the things every child must go through.
I still remember pieces of it.
The sharp smell of antiseptic.
The cold metal at the dentist’s office.
The fear of needles.
Dental visits didn’t happen often. And when they did, it was usually because something was already wrong. I had so many cavities as a child that the dentist filled several of my teeth with silver.
They looked like tiny pieces of aluminum foil when I smiled.
At the time, my mother trusted what she was told.
She was young.
Still learning.
Still trying to figure it all out.
And truthfully… we were all just trying to make it.
Childhood illnesses came and went.
I remember having the mumps.
The measles.
My cheeks swelled so badly, my face barely looked like my own.
But my great-grandmother believed in home remedies.
Strong ones.
She had my mother wrap my face in cloth soaked with sardine juice or some mixture just as powerful.
The cloth stretched from under my chin, over my head, tied tight into a bow.
And the smell?
It could have reached heaven itself.
But somehow… it worked.
Between home remedies and doctor visits, I recovered.
And life kept moving.
As for my father…
he remained nothing more than a shadow.
I never asked about him.
And my mother never spoke his name.
I would watch other children holding hands with both parents at school events, laughing, playing, living a life that felt distant from my own.
But in my world, fatherlessness was normal.
So normal…
I didn’t question it.
Not then.
But as I grew older, something inside me began to shift.
Questions started to rise.
Who was he?
Where was he?
Did he ever think about me?
For years, I buried those questions, convincing myself the answers didn’t matter.
Until one day…
something happened that forced the truth to the surface.
And when I finally learned the truth about my father…
it didn’t just answer my questions.
It changed everything
I thought I knew
about myself.