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The Boy With Stripes
by Rev. Eddie Wiggins PREFACE In all the horror, God kept me. Through all the tribulations, Jesus was at my side. After reading the scribbled notes of this story, my Pastor told me that God's hand was always upon me, even as a small child, shielding me and protecting my life, even though I did not know Him. I barely knew of Him, yet He kept me. Yes, I suffered greatly; but Jesus kept me alive. Through it all, Jesus kept my mind, body, spirit, and soul. As I went through it all, I was totally unaware. I was totally unaware of His presence, but He kept me for a day and a time that is now. I give God all the Glory, all the Praise, and all the Honor. I thank God that He made it possible for you to read this book. I pray that you will go past the horror to see the Mighty and Loving God we serve. I couldn't at that time, but I do now. Always here, Rev. Eddie Yashewa is Lord Ministries TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: My First Memory Chapter 2: I Lived to See My Fifth Birthday Chapter 3: My Dad and the Church Chapter 4: My Baby Sister Chapter 5: Still Alive at Ten Chapter 6: The Sheriff, the Turners, and Little Red Chapter 7: She Tried to Kill Me with a Chair ...Chapter 8: Runaway Rabbit Chapter 9: Dear Daddy Chapter 10: Young Doctor Wiggins Chapter 11: Tricked and Lied To Chapter 12: Where Are We GoingReally? Chapter 13: I'm not Crazy! Chapter 14: The Nightmare Begins Chapter 15: A Light in a Very, Very Dark Place Chapter 16: The Gang Chapter 17: Getting Tough Chapter 18: An Angel in a Dark Place Chapter 19: Mitzi Chapter 20: Darrell Goes Home for a Visit Chapter 21: I'm Going Home? Chapter 22: Welcome to Boys Town Chapter 23: Meet Brother Matthew Chapter 24: Welcome to Cottage A Chapter 25: Dinner with the King Chapter 26: Catching Rattlesnakes Chapter 27: Drinking Pool Water Chapter 28: The Ghost of Sister Kelly Chapter 29: Sammy the Molester Chapter 30: Going Home Chapter 31: Making Friends at Lutheran High Chapter 32: Graduating Lutheran High Chapter 33: Nearing the Edge Chapter 34: Is this the End? CHAPTER 1: MY FIRST MEMORY I was born into this world on April 30, 1955 in Riverside, California. At least that's what I was told by my adoptive parents. My adoptive dad, who I will refer to as Dad, told me that there was an adoption agency on the corner of Arlington Avenue and Adams Boulevard. I believe he called it the West Adams Adoption Agency, but I could be mistaken. He told me that I was adopted at the age of two; so that means that, in 1957, they brought me home. My first memory was of being knocked over in my high chair for refusing to eat a banana. I've noticed that babies sometimes throw food, so perhaps I threw the banana down, or just refused to eat it. Whatever I did caused my adoptive mom, who I will refer to as Mom, to hit me so hard that my high chair toppled over and fell with me in it. I can remember how slowly it started to topple, and I remember feeling the tray tight against me, holding me in so I couldn't escape. I really got hurt when I hit the floor, but she left me crying on the floor as she screamed at me before leaving the room. A great memory to start this life, eh? I remember that we lived in an apartment on Adams Boulevard. It had an incredibly large front yard with lots of grass and a path on the side of the building, with cement stairs which led to the back. I remember playing on the grass and running up and down this path. This is where they startedthe beatings Mom would give me. It seemed that everything I did was wrong and, in return, I was punished with a beating. She would hit me with her hands or with a belt. Let's not forget, I was only two years oldtoo young to know what was going on, and too young to hate. I didn't like her at all. In fact, I feared her. Then we moved to a huge house on a hill. The house was so big that it scared me. I remember Mom telling someone it was 1957. The area was Windsor Hills, right behind Baldwin Hills. I remember Mom saying that, when she went to look at the house, the realtor slammed the door in her face and said, "No coloreds!" My mom didn't take to that sort of treatment. She was an educated woman: a teacher and student counselor. (I always wondered why I was treated so badly by a woman who was trained to help children!) Mom was dark-skinned, but my dad was a light-skinned black man who was adopted, like me, but by a white family. This was in Omaha, Nebraska, where his dad was a doctor, and so was his dad's brother. My dad became a famous surgeon after studying under Dr. Charles Drew. Today you can see my dad in an American Red Cross ad for famous black Americans. He is standing next to Dr. Charles Drew during an examination of a patient, with other residents and medical staff. Charles Richard Drew (1904-50) was an African-American physician in Washington, D.C. A surgeon and a professor at Howard University, he developed a means of preserving blood plasma for transfusion. During World War II he headed the program that sent blood to Great Britain and was the director of the first American Red Cross Blood Bank. I loved my dad because I felt protected when he was around. When he was home, I didn't get beaten by Mom. Anyway, back to the open house at 4154 Olympiad Drive. After the realtor said, "No coloreds" and slammed the door in my mom's face, she returned to the open house, but with a lawyer, and she bought that house! It was a huge house that sometimes creaked at night. There were so many rooms that it scared me. Mom asked me, "Do you like it?" I told her, "No! It's too big and too scary!" She said, "Well, this is where rich people live, and this will be our home, so get used to it." When I took my first bath in that big ol' house, even though the water was warm, the air was so cold, it gave me goose pimples. As I was bathing, the drips from the faucet were echoing so loud, that it frightened me. Almost immediately after moving in, the beatings really started on a regular basis, every day. It seemed I would always say or do something wrong and get punished for it with a beating. And then I started getting beaten with a razor strop a three-foot long strap of leather, three to four inches wide, that is usually attached to the side of a barber's chair to sharpen single-edged razors. When used to strike the tender skin of a child, it leaves behind a wide red welt just about ready to bleed. A second strike in that same area might cause blood to squirt out and splash the ceiling and walls. Mom told me that, if I showed my cut up, scabby, back to anyone or told anyone, especially my dad, about these beatings, she would kill me I believed her because of the things she said to me and the way she was beating me. Even if I obeyed her, II knew that one day she would kill me anyway. Some of the more lovely things she'd say to me were, "I hate you, and wish you were dead!" "We never should have adopted you!" "I wish we could take you back to that adoption agency, you bastard!" "I wish you would go somewhere and die." "You are sick! Something's wrong with you. No wonder your parents didn't want you!" By the age of four or five, I had been taught how to hate. Passionately. With feeling. With imagination. With murder in my heart. In 1959, when I was four, Mom and Dad had their first natural child. They never hit him or talked down to him. He was their perfect child: everything they wanted in a child; everything that I wasn'tthat was my little brother Herbert. CHAPTER 2: I LIVED TO SEE MY FIFTH BIRTHDAY When I was five, I went to the Mary Clay Preschool. The store next door had boxes of fruit outside on tables. When Mom dropped me off, I always asked her if we could go there, but she always said no. One day, I left the school and went next door to the store and grabbed an orange, then went back to school. I knew nothing about money or buying things, so I had no idea that I had just "stolen" that orange. A man from the store came to the school and started yelling at me, so one of the teachers called my mom. She picked me up, put me in the car, beat me something terrible, and I never went back to that school. This incident started the "go upstairs, take your clothes off, get wet in the tub, stand there, and wait for me." She had found a new love! Whipping the snot out of me wet. It really stung, and the blood would squirt a lot farther. Keep in mind that I was only five years old. I wasn't allowed out of the backyard. I had no friends. I wasn't allowed to have any TV, radio, or have anyone to talk toor to tell. Standing there dripping wet, cold, frightened, scared of even my own shadow while waiting for that razor strop, I felt so all alone, so unwanted, and so full of hate; but I didn't dare show it. The pain was overwhelming, and blood would spray with each swing of that razor strop. I'd scream, hoping it would soon stop, but it never stopped soon enough for me. Ten, twenty, or sometimes thirty swings later she would finally stop, leaving me a welted, bloody mess. I cried every night. And I prayed. Since we went to the nearby Episcopal Church on Sundays, I'd heard of God, and every night I prayed that he would kill Mom. "If there is a God," I'd say, "please kill her before she kills me!" At six or seven years of age, it's so hard to comprehend death. What would become of me? I wanted so much to love and be loved. I was so afraid of dying, but every night, I would think about what it would be like to be dead, and scare myself even more. When I was allowed to watch TV, I'd watch family shows like the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family and wonder to myself, "Can this be real? What's wrong with my family? How come we don't act like this?" Deep inside, I felt a yearning to love, and God knew how much I wanted to be loved. My beloved best friend was Mitzi, our standard poodle. She was a big tall poodle and seemed to tower over me. Whenever I got a beating and was thrown into the backyard, Mitzi always comforted me. She licked my face until my tears were gone. We played all day together sometimes. The best part was that she didn't hate me. Instead, she showed me so much loveas if I were her puppy. She showed me more love in an afternoon, than my mom did her entire life. A white family lived next door with a little girl named Dee-Dee who wasn't allowed to play with me. I often saw Dee-Dee at her bedroom window, looking down at me in our yard. One day she asked me, "Are you black or white?" and I answered, "What's that?" She said, "You know, what are you?" but I had no idea what she was talking about. "Go ask your mom," she said. My mom was in the kitchen when I approached her and, although hesitant, asked her, "Mom, am I black or white?" and she threw a fit. "Where did you get that from?" she demanded, so I told her, "Dee-Dee asked me, and I want to know. Dee-Dee told me she was white and that you are black, so what am I?" My mom slapped me dizzy and told me to get back outside in the backyard and not to talk to Dee-Dee. Of course Dee-Dee was in her window and saw me crying. She asked me, "Well, what are you?" I wiped my tears and told her that I still didn't know and I didn't care to find out either because it hurts too much to ask. CHAPTER 3: MY DAD AND THE CHURCH My dad was usually gone during the week. His morning hours were spent performing surgeries on people and he wouldn't get home until after dark. Except for Saturdays and Sundays, Wednesdays were my favorite days since he worked only half a day and we would go grocery shopping in the afternoons. I loved it when he was home because Mom would never beat me when he was around. Saturdays he would take me to the YMCA with my brother. Sundays we would go to church and then go out to eat. I didn't like our church, but my dad was a deacon there. I really loved hearing him read the Word of God. He was awesome: so eloquent and learned and he never mispronounced a word. So many words that I could never even begin to pronounce flowed like honey from his lips. Except for the communion, this was my favorite part of the service. I was so proud of my dad and the way he could speak the Word of God. To me, our church was scary, with the choir singing like ghosts and that organ playing music like out of a horror movie. No one was allowed to clap or talk or even move except the altar boys and our priest. A big man who used to sit behind me and sing had the deepest voice that I had ever heard. I learned that his name is Dr. Ed Jordan. He told me not too long ago that I was the little boy who couldn't sit still in church. I told him I still can't. I had every part of the service memorized, except the sermon and the Word my dad would read, so I was bored beyond belief. I hid the money my dad gave me to put in the offering, and I bought candy from a vending machine outside the room where Sunday school was held after church. Once at Sunday school, during a reading of the Book of Revelation, I asked so many questions that the Sunday school teacher told me to ask Father Quimby for the answers, so I did. He said, "No one can really understand Revelation, so why don't you read something else?" That broke my heart. I thought, "Well, if he's our leader and even he doesn't know, then how will I ever find out what will ever become of me?" I was about eight or nine and didn't have a Bible of my own. My dad's Bible was too big and I couldn't understand what I was reading in his King James Version. For all I understood, it could have been written in Chinese. Dad liked things quiet, so we couldn't really ever talk just to talk, or for me to ask my questions; and asking Mom was too painful. Besides, my hate for her had grown out of control. I would cry myself to sleep at night, plotting and planning for her murder. I felt alone, hated, afraid, beaten down, different from everyone else, and unloved. If anyone touched me, I would jump because of my back. I even hated my own name. My mom started using flashcards for English and math and, if I gave the wrong answer, she would beat me with that razor strop. The beatings came every day except Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. On Saturdays, if my dad didn't take me to the YMCA or keep me with him, I would get beaten, so I would beg and cry for him to take me with him. Most of the time he would give in and take me along, but he still didn't know why I was so emphatic about being with him. CHAPTER 4: MY BABY SISTER When I was eight, Mom and Dad brought home their second natural child, my sweet little sister Susie Adele Wiggins. She was so precious, so sweet, and so beautiful that I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. On the day they brought Susie home from the hospital, Mom called my brother and me downstairs to announce, "This is your new baby sister." We looked at her in amazement and I reached out to touch her. My mom said to me, "You aren't to speak to her, don't even look at her, and if you ever touch her, I will kill you, do you understand?" "Yes," I said, and went back up to my room. Wow! To be shot down before you even left the runway! Mom had just torn away my dreams of having a little sister on whom I could pour all this love that was in me. My mother was just pure evil through and through. I thought, "I wish my brother and sister and I could just go somewhere with my dad and never come back." I think every boy with a younger sister wants to protect her, love her, take her places, show her things, and beat up other boys who say anything against her. I wanted to teach my little sister how to ride bicycles in the hills around our house, how to fly kites, how to build models, and how to play electric football. I wanted to share my life with her and be there for her. My mom would deny me even this? I felt like such an outcast. Worthless, and not good enough. I really hated Mom for that, and even worse, I hated myself more. She loved my brother and sister, yet hated me so much. I hated me, too! I was always saying something wrong and always did the wrong things, but anything and everything they did was perfect in my mother's eyes. As we grew up, they barely spoke to me because she told them I was terrible, and warned them not to be like me. I used to make believe I was someone else. I wanted so badly to be someone Mom would love instead of hate. Someone she would hold and hug. During my entire childhood, I never got a hug or kiss, a compliment, or an "I'm proud of you." With all of this, you might think that I wanted to die, but quite the opposite: I wanted to live. I wanted to love. And I wanted to be loved. One afternoon in the backyard in the shade of the peach tree, I was playing with some plastic cowboys and Indians. (Of course, my Indians always won.) Mom brought Susie outside in a carrier, put her in the shade under the tree with me, and told me, "Watch her, but don't touch her." I was elated that Mom trusted me to watch my little sister and, boy, did I watch her. All of a sudden, a leaf fell from the tree and landed on her naked tummy. She giggled and laughed, which I thought was so cute. I laughed, too, and picked up the leaf off her tummy, being careful not to touch her. I dropped it on her tummy again, and she giggled and laughed. Again and again we did this, and laughed together, and then all of a sudden, Mom came storming out of the house screaming, "Get away from her! What are you doing to her!" I tried to explain that the tree had dropped the leaf.... She grabbed a switch from the tree and smacked me all over my body, cursing me and calling me names, before taking Susie inside. There I lay in the backyard, crying and bleeding and hurt and really getting better at hating her and plotting her murder. After that, I planned every day to kill her really, really good. The perfect murder, that was what I was planning. I would kill her and no one would know it was me; and then we could have a great, loving, beautiful family without her. CHAPTER 5: STILL ALIVE AT TEN I was ten in 1965 when Mom was watching the Watts Riots on TV. I hid in the hallway behind her, watching in disbelief as people were beaten and shot. Crowds of people were screaming, "Burn, baby, burn!" She turned around and saw me standing there, and told me to go outside with my brother. We were running around a tree screaming, "Burn, baby, burn!" when my mother came outside. She told me I was a militant and that I would end up dead or in prison. She then beat me with a broom handle in front of my brother. I decided that day that I wanted to be a Black Panther when I grew up so I could stop the oppression in black neighborhoods. I wanted to feed the hungry and ensure justice for all. I wanted to be a militant hero who my mother would really hate. She hated me now, for no good reason. Let's make sure we give her a really good reason. I would be the best militant ever. To spite her of course! I finally got the nerve to ask my dad's secretary if I was white or black. She explained to me all the different races and colors, racism, prejudice, and hatred, and told me that I looked mixed. She said, "You are probably half black, and half white. You could also have some Mexican or American Indian in you." I told her about some of the feelings I already had regarding hate and prejudice, that people should just be what they are and not hate others because they are different. When she told me about Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael, I said that they were my heroes. Even after she disagreed with me, explaining that they hated white men as much as white men hated blacks, I still secretly made them my childhood heroes. To me, being a child with a limited vision of my future, they were heroic! They took a stand for a people when no one else would. They were willing to die for what they believed: that the black man was being brutalized by the police; and that their neighborhoods and schools and employment opportunities were sub-standard. They wanted true equal rights. My intention was to run away one day to join them. I guess Mom was right on that one. I did have the desire to be a militant, a desire fueled by my raging fire of hatred toward her. What she didn't know was that, after becoming a Black Panther, she would be my first victim. One day at school on the playground, the coach was choosing basketball teams. In those days, you were either "skins" or "shirts." Skins had to remove their shirts and play bare-skinned. Shirts left their shirts on. I always had to be shirts, of course, because of the bloody stripes on my back. This day, however, the coach picked me to play on the skins team. I pleaded with him to let me play with my shirt on. He asked, "You always play with the shirts! What's the matter? Are you ashamed of your body? Do you think you are too skinny?" I refused to take off my shirt. I'm sure he felt disobedience and defiance from me, and he led me away from the other children. As we walked away, he led me by placing his hand on my back, and I cringed in pain and jumped away. When we got behind the bungalows, he asked to see my back. My heart raced. I knew I shouldn't show him, but I wanted him to understand why I couldn't ever show my back to anyone. I removed my shirt with tears in my eyes and, when he saw my bloody, scars-on-top-of-scars back, he shouted, "My God! Who did this to you?!" I was crying, my face wet with tears. I told him I fell. I looked at his face to see if he believed me. He started crying and fell to his knees and, with tears streaming down his face, asked if my dad had done this to me. I shook my head no as he held me by my arms and looked through his tears into my crying eyes. I told him my dad had never hit me. He wiped the tears from his left cheek and asked me, "Did your mom do this to you? Who did this terrible thing?" I had never seen a grown man cry before, and part of me wanted to trust him. But most of me wanted to walk away before something happened that would let Mom know that I had told someone what she had been doing to me. I told him through sobs and tears, "No, it wasn't my mom," I lied, but I could no longer look him in his pleading, crying eyes. He shook me by my arms and told me that no child should have to go through this, and that he would have to report this. He explained that he would have to take pictures, and I would have to go to the hospital. He also said that he would have to notify the police. My little heart broke and I really started crying. I slipped and said, "She will kill me if you tell anyone!" He said, "She!?! You mean your mother did this to you? Why did she do this? What did you do?" I told him what she would say and do to me, and that sometimes I would say and do things that she didn't like. He asked me to share with him some of those things that would cause her to beat me as she had, so I did. He told me that those were things that all children did, and that was no excuse. He told me that she was verbally and physically abusing me, and that there were laws against what she was doing to me. I told him that he didn't understand. "She told me if I ever tell on her or show anyone my back that she would kill me, and I believe her!" Then I added, "Do you want her to kill me?" "Well, it looks like she's trying to kill you anyway," he replied. I begged and pleaded with him not to tell anyone, and I made him promise. He finally gave in. After he held me for a while, we dried our tears and went back to the playground. From that day on, I was always shirts. Going to sleep that night, I thought, "Coach is a nice man. I'm sorry I made him cry." I also remembered him saying, "My God! Who did this to you?" I thought, "He knows God, too?" Everybody else but me seemed to know God. Where is God really? I thought I had heard that God sees everything. I wondered if God was watching over me. Could He really see what was happening to me? Why didn't He do anything? Does He hear the cries of a child? Do you have to be a certain age before God will help? If so, it appeared that I wasn't going to make it to that age if Mom had anything to do with it. I had heard one Sunday at church that God was the defender of the weak. I could sure use some defending, Lord. Can you hear me? God? Are you there? Sleep was always painful, I had to sleep on my stomach. I would awaken in pain if I accidentally rolled over during the night, which would cause my wounds to bleed and my pajama top to eventually stick to the wounds. Peeling off my top the next morning would also peel off the scabs, causing even more pain. I really hated being a kid. People would say how good life is, but this thing called life wasn't getting along too well with mea very rocky start, indeed. I wondered, "If life is supposed to be so good, but feels this bad, then I surely don't want to die!" CHAPTER 6: THE SHERIFF, THE TURNERS, AND LITTLE RED It wasn't unusual to find me riding my bike in front of the house, my bike with a football in the basket in front. A black sheriff's deputy would park up the street, watching the stop sign, and I would pull up beside him. Sometimes he would get out of his patrol car and play catch with me. He was such a nice man who always had a smile and something nice to say. A couple of times, he pulled me over on my bike to ask me if we could play catch. A few times, he turned on the lights on top of his cruiser for me. He called them his "bubble gum machine." Boy, I loved to see those lights come on! I'd always ask him to hit the siren, but he almost never did. He always seemed to be around when I ran through his stop signs, always the four-way stops because I just knew the cross traffic would stop. He hated that, and would chase me down, then really get on my case. "You have to stop running those stop signs! One of these days, somebody's gonna hit you! Do you hear me? I don't want to have to scrape you up off the pavement! Are you listening to me? I know your dad, and I will take you home to tell him. Don't you run my stop signs anymore, you little squirt! Now get outta here!" He would pretend to be mad at me, but I could see right through him. I think I ran the stop signs mostly just to make his day. He was probably bored beyond belief in our neighborhood anyway. Nothing ever happened. I promised myself that if Mom ever got close to killing me, I would go to him; but I hadn't told him what was happening to me. I didn't know if he could, or would, be able to help me. I wasn't willing to take the chance that he couldn't. Just a couple of blocks away from our house, was where Little Red lived. Little Red and I went to Windsor Hills Elementary School together. He was a quiet kid who pretty much stayed to himself. We played some, and he got curious about the red stains showing on the back of my shirt. I told him it was paint. He didn't look like he believed me, but I never showed him. We liked to play baseball and kickball on the playground together. He was fun to play with, but I avoided him some because he was smarter than the average bear and, given some time, would have figured out my back situation. One day, he just stopped coming by and he no longer attended Windsor Hills Elementary. Boy, did I ever miss him! Kickball was never the same. Little Red broke his arm a couple of times and was one of my dad's patients. My dad fixed him like new. Little Red's daddy was the singer Ray Charles, so I guess Little Red was really Little Ray, but everyone called him Little Red. Don't ask me why. Probably his red hair, and many red freckles. My dad would often listen to Ray Charles records in his den. He liked Ray Charles and so did I. There were a lot of songs that Ray Charles sang that had that country feeling in them. Ray Charles was about the only black artist you could listen to and hear some good ol' country music. I liked the fact that my dad and I had Ray Charles in common. A lot of stars and entertainers lived in my neighborhood. I went to school with most of their children. I did not know them all personally, but I guess they sure knew me. Or felt the effects of my being there amongst them. I remember the house that Barry Gordy lived in. He may have lost a few sprinkler heads on his front lawn as I screamed by on my bike chasing imaginary bad guys. I was a super hero on my bike you know. Somebody had to keep our neighborhood safe besides my sheriff friend. Nancy Wilson had a wonderful circle driveway that I attempted to leave skid marks from my tires on, but she told me to get out of her driveway with my bike so I left her driveway alone. I left plenty of skid marks in front of Ray Charles' house though. He lived on a fantastic hill and I would chicken out of racing down his hill on my bike if I saw any cars coming. I'm quite sure that a lot of the professionals and stars in my neighborhood would go running to their windows as they heard my screams as I chased my imaginary bad guys. Many of them, I'm sure had the displeasure of slamming on their brakes, and spilling their groceries, to avoid hitting me and my bike as I ran the stop signs. Ron Glass lived on my street, just a few houses down and I left a lot of blood on the sidewalk in front of his home. Skinned knees and elbows, as I tried to set the land speed record on my bike. Someone from the music group, The 5th Dimension, lived so close to me; I wondered if they could hear my screams as my mother brutalized me. I'm sure that all of these celebrities that had dogs were a little disappointed at their behavior, when I would ride by. These fine, expensive, well trained, full pedigree, dogs would come unglued as I screamed by their homes and would bark and give chase to catch me on my bike. The Turners had a huge, Great Dane called "Onyx," and when he got loose, he would chase any child with legs. He especially loved to chase me on my bike and I would be so excited to give him a good run for his long legs. I always worried about what he would do to me if he ever caught me. He never did. I was too scared and peddled like my life depended on it. It would be the talk of the street amongst the children when Onyx got out. We all loved it!! About seven or eight houses up the street lived Ike and Tina Turner. They have four boys about my age and younger. Ike Jr. was my age, then came Craig, Michael, and little Ronnie. We would play together whenever I was allowed outside. Christmas was awesome at the Turner housefour bikes, four electric guitars, four of everything so that there was always enough for us to get into. They had the most awesome fish tank that was built into a wall so it could be seen from two rooms. It was huge with lots of fish. I've never seen anything like it. The boys were raised mostly by their maid, more so than I was. Only a couple of hours a day for me; but it could be days or weeks for them. I was too young to know what Ike Sr. and Tina were doing when they were on the road, but we kids had a lot of fun while they were gone. I went there to play with the boys one day, and Mrs. Turner opened the door. She said the boys were gone. "Are you the little boy from down the street?" she asked. I said yes and she invited me in. That's when I saw her eye. It was really hurt because it was black and bloody. I started to cry and said to her, "Someone hurt you!" Then she started to cry and asked me why I was crying. I pulled up my shirt and showed her my bloody back and said, "Someone just hurt me, too." We hugged each other and she took me to the piano bench and sat me down. She sat beside me and asked me if I liked music. I shrugged my shoulders and just kept crying as she sang us a song. I don't remember what song she played, but it was beautiful and soothing to the soul. I have never forgotten that day. I always wonder if she remembers me. Why do people have to hurt other people? She was a nice lady, and I knew she didn't deserve what had happened to her. After she finished playing, we just sat there in silence. Finally, she got up and said, "You'd better be going." I left and never saw her again. CHAPTER 7: SHE TRIED TO KILL ME WITH A CHAIR Around my 11th birthday (and I never had birthday parties), I was expelled from Audubon Junior High and John Muir for fighting. Being light skinned at an all-black school, kids always wanted to beat me up. They called me a white boy and said things like "Kill the white boy" or "We're gonna get you, whitey!" I would tell them I'm not white, but that wouldn't do any good so, every day, I had at least one fight, some days two or three. Getting expelled, truthfully, probably saved my life, or theirs. Being hated by my mother was one thing. Now being hated by my own people, my own race, now this was really something else. I used to wonder if there was a sign on my back of some kind or a bulls-eye target located on my forehead, that read: hate me, kill me, beat me up, I enjoy it. I was called, half-breed, high yellow, a wannabe, an Uncle Tom, an Oreo, a white boy, all sorts of horrible names. And it was mostly black people that called me these names. White people would call me half-breed, mutt, and other such horrible names also. So let me see if I got this thing right. I'm too dark to be white, so they hate me. I'm too light to be black, so they hate me also. My mother really hates me. So where do I fit in? It seems that everybody hated me for some reason or another. Hey!! I did not fill out an application before I got to earth!! I did not get to choose what color I wanted to be! I did not get to choose my height, my weight, or how fast I can run. If we were all made by God, in His image, why do you hate me? I didn't even ask to be born, and was really starting to question why. You know, if I was not fighting these black kids, I was running. If it were only one, or two, or even three kids, they would have a fight on their hands. This was why I was sent to the Principal's office every day I showed up for school. Oh yeah! I also knew when to run! But even running, I had a few tricks up my sleeves. Most mornings, I would have to hide behind the bungalows until the first bell, to avoid a fight. One particular morning, I was spotted by a group, as I got out of my mother's car. It was "on" immediately. I was a fast little guy, and as they chased, their line of warriors started to thin as I outran them. The fastest kid chasing me, I slowed down for, and turned around on him, and bloodied his nose. Then I noticed, the rest of them were not too excited anymore to catch me. Day after day, fight after fight, I really started to learn to hate them back. By the time they were done with me, I hated black people more than white people! Wow! What am I saying? My own people? Yeah! They hated me first!! A few days later, I was playing in the driveway when Mom pulled up in her '57 Chevy Bel-Airthe one with tail fins with chrome tips on them. As she pulled in, one of the tips fell to the ground with a clang. I just stood there. She got out of her car and screamed, "What was that??!!" I pointed and said, "It fell off as you pulled in the driveway." She looked at it there on the ground and said, "What have you done to my car? Pick it up and put it back, right now!!" So I picked it up and tried to put it back on the car, but it didn't stay. Much to my dismay, it fell to the ground again with a resounding clang. As it hit the ground, my heart just stopped, and I knew I was about to breathe my last breath. She loved this car way, way more than she even liked me. I was a goner for sure. She stomped her foot and asked me what I had done to her car. I tried to explain that I had done nothing but stand there and watched her pull into the driveway when the piece just fell off. She told me I had two choices: If I continued to say that I had done nothing to her car, she would beat me for fifteen minutes with the razor strop; but, if I admitted that I had broken her car, she would beat me for only five. Either way, I knew that this would be the worst beating of my life. I also knew from the look in her eyes that she would probably kill me this very day. I started crying and again told her that it wasn't my fault and that it had just fallen off, and that I was nowhere near the car when it fell off. She knew I was nowhere near the car, and the car was moving when the piece came off, but she insisted that I had broken her car. Believe me, if I could just look at something and it would be destroyed, I sure wouldn't have been looking at the tail end of her car! If looks could kill. She screamed for me to go in the house to my room and take off all my clothes and wait until she got there. This was the first time I ever hit my knees and prayed. I said, "If there really is a God, you have got to kill her before she kills me. Would you please hit her with a lightning bolt or something?" I really didn't know God and doubted that He knew me. Where was He really? How far was heaven from where I was about to have the snot beat out of me? Does He feel the same way about me as Mom does? Does He really love me? I thought "He was supposed to protect us from harm. Could He not see what was happening in my life? Aren't children included in the promises? God! Can you hear me?" I could hear her coming up the stairs. I looked to where I thought Heaven should be and said, "Now would be a good time, Lord! Please!! Here she comes! Save me!!" As I waited, I knew in my heart I had done nothing wrong. I didn't know how long fifteen minutes was, but it sounded a lot longer than five minutes. That was when she walked in and screamed, "I hate you! You little bastard!! Now tell me! What did you do to my car?!" I said, "Nothing! I didn't do anything to your car!" She beat me everywhere with that razor stroplegs, arms, buttocks, back, sides, and even hit me in the face. The louder I screamed, the more she got into it. She was swinging that strop with everything she had. There was no restraint. She was giving this all she could. After what seemed like forever, the razor strop suddenly flew from her hand and went somewhere in the room where she couldn't find it. Nothing like that had ever happened before! In her rage, she grabbed the oak chair in front of my desk and hit me in the back with it, sending me crashing to the floor. She hit me with everything she had and I knew she was not going to stop this time. I could see it in her eyes. She was enjoying this too much. When I hit the floor, all I saw was her ankle. I immediately grabbed it with all my strength, yanked it, and down she went like a fallen tree. With that, I grabbed up my discarded clothes and shoes and ran down the stairs, buck naked, out the front door to hide in the neighbor's bushes while I got dressed. I was crying and bleeding with every part of my body hurt and stinging. As I dressed as quickly as I could, my heart raced as if it were about to explode in my little chest. I had just sealed my fate. If she caught me, I'd be one dead kid! Suddenly, she ran out of the house with that razor strop, screaming at the top of her lungs! She wasn't screaming any words, just a blood curdling scream. I stopped moving. I even held my breath as I became one with that bush. I still had to put on my shirt and shoes, but I didn't dare move or even breathe. My arms, back, and legs were bleeding and stinging like crazy, but I held my breath and gritted my teeth in pain. I watched as some blood was dripping silently down my arm, across my wrist, along my hand and then down one finger and began to drip, one drop at a time, plop, plop, plop, onto the leaves and dirt on the ground. She looked up and down the street, then got into her car and drove really slow right past the bush where I hid. As she made a right at the corner, I finally took a deep breath, then quickly put on my shirt and shoes. My heart kept racing in my chest as I tried to think about what I was going to do next. Which way should I run? Where could I go? No mistake here, or she would catch me. I'm a Reverend here in the San Fernando Vally, Los Angeles, California. I'm on fire for the Lord. My goal is to get you into Heaven. I work with children behind bars as well as in the streets. Tell all your friends to buy my new book, "The Boy with Stripes"by Rev. Eddie http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Stripes-Rev-Eddie-Wiggins/dp/1603832912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292223501&sr=8-1 Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |