I know very little about my family history. I don't think that I want to know more because what I do know is less than positive, and I can only imagine that it gets worse. I know that my mother's grandmother was burned to death when a potbellied stove exploded. My grandmother was then sent to live with her aunt (a family trend). Her aunt's husband prostituted her to his friends that worked on the railroad with him. He eventually sold her to a man three times her age; she was fourteen at the time. My grandmother ran away from her husband on several occassions, but she returned, often with her belly swollen with the child of another man. The last time she left, she was gone too long--forever. Her husband could not convince her to come back to him with threats or blows to the head as he had always done in the past, so he finally released her from the hell she endured on earth. He hunted her, trapped her in an alley, and then released her. I imagine that there had to be a light at the end of the dark alley that he chased her trough. The six bullets that ripped through the flesh and bone of her back probably emitted or evoked some kind of light. My mother was only two when this happened. She says that she doesn't remember any of it. It's all a dark, impenetrable memeory for my mother, but I wonder if the other children, who watched and listened to their mother's release, remember a light.
I have seen the yellowed newspaper clipping that reported the murder of my grandmother. My mother is located in the bottom, left corner. She just blends in with all of her brothers. She looks like a little boy with her short disheveled afro. She is surrounded by all of her brothers and sisters for what would be one of the last times. She and four of her brothers are sent to live with her aunt, Gwen, and her aunt's husband, Fred.
Fred is a bastard and a half. Luckily, he has no children with my aunt. My aunt Gwen only has one child from a previous marriage. My mother lives with my aunt until she marries my father. My aunt ends up alone. Fred is dead. The four boys, my mother, and Gwen's daughter resent her, but I like her. She's extremely book smart. She baby sits me while my mother packs meat in a frigid hell at Oscar Mayer. Grandma Gwen and I watch game shows, and she knows everything. I am impressed. Her home is emaculate, but her heart is disorderly, chaotic. I frequently, and reluctantly, drink sugarfree kool-aide (sugarfree a la Grandma Gwen because there was no sugar substitute included in the mix and the back of the package specifically stated to add sugar) from a plastic tumbler that must be carefully placed on a coaster. I am never given glasses because I am clumsy. I must rush my cup to the kitchen as soon as I am finished. This is the routine that I experience with my great aunt, who serves as my surrogate grandmother, until 1983 when my immediate family leaves Iowa for Colorado. In 1996, the only grandmother I ever really knew is cremated. I do not attend the funeral. My mother does not attend. My sister comes close to attending her own funeral.