Cleaner

I am watching Netflix but I am not chilling. Cleaner starring Samuel Jackson is on my screen and I am thanking God that I dropped my Criminal Justice major at the University of Houston- Downtown.

I had such dreams. Big Dreams. Coming out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses I wanted a life for myself. I wanted to help people. I wanted to make something of myself and I wanted a powerful force behind me. I wanted to be a part of a community who knew the truth.

The truth was very important to me. For me. When I remember myself, I was so very young. I was so very hurt. I had endured years of oppression, suppression, lies, abuse, beatings, and finally numbness. I had never known peace. I had never know safety. I had never known trust.

Still, I was young enough to have hope.

Somehow I needed to believe that I had a chance at a life.

Leasing my first apartment and working as a cashier, I was giddy with freedom. I spent my time working and going to school. In my free time I laid by the pool as long as no one else was there. Years of hiding my scars, scars all over my legs…front and back, up and down. Scars I had all over my legs since my first grade summer. We were at a house somewhere in south Houston, Sunnyside maybe. We were left in the backyard and forgotten. I slept so hard I was eaten by bugs. I slept through the infestation. What was it? Laudanum or some other drug to make us quiet and kept the demon, Hunger Pains, away. The Laudanum was nothing new. My sister and I used the old bottles as baby bottles to feed our dolls. We fed our dolls from empty drug bottles while our own mother never fed us. We fed our dolls from empty drug bottles while our own mother abandoned us all the time in the summertime because there were no teachers to call child protective services. No one called the police. In our Jewish and Black neighborhood my mother was trash and we were her trashy children. We were dying in the heart of Houston, Texas and everyone sneered and looked down on us.

By the time I was 3 years old, my mom’s mother had drowned, my mom’s grandmother died in her sleep, and my mom’s little brother was shot and killed while home on leave from the army. I was being trafficked sexually. I remember being in the bathtub and left for hours with my little sister. The bath water turned ice cold but even as toddlers we both knew not to get out of that tub to look for mamma.

All of our babyhood we were looking for our mamma, we needed our mamma, and she was always missing – she was never there. We were afraid of her, but we needed her. In her place, she fed us drugs.

Once we were dying eggs for Easter and again mamma left the room and never came back. I remember being in the kitchen by myself but again I knew not to go look for mamma… The next memory I have is being at my grandmother’s house searching for the eggs. I was by myself. No other kids were with me hunting eggs and none of my relatives helped me. I don’t know where my siblings were and you guessed it – I didn’t ask or go look for them either. In living with mamma you didn’t ask questions, you didn’t go looking for her or anyone… you took whatever she gave you…

After grandma died, it got worse…there were beatings, concussions, busted eardrums, mumps, tonsillitis, fevers, hunger pains, scars from ironing cords… then bug bites one summer over night as we slept in the backyard like beasts in a pasture. No one helped us. No one came to get us.

I was left with bug bites that swelled, filled with pus and festered. By the time school came around I was sent to the nurse in disgrace. The nurse put at least 75 band-aids all over my legs because of course my mamma sent me to school in a short dress to expose all off my sores. I was proud of my band-aids. Somebody cared for me, for once. I saw my older brother at lunch and he sneered at me and acted like I was a stranger. That crushed me and I ripped off every band-aid. The soars scabbed over and became scars. Scars that I carried from the second grade and into college.

I learned silence. I learned to suffer in silence. I learned to go somewhere else when bullied. I learned to be quiet when abused. I learned to be silent when neglected. I learned to count all of my scars because they were proof. My scars were evidence of the war that I survived. My scars were my proof of who my mother was and who I could never be; a beloved daughter. I learned to be fine with that.

With those scars on my legs I left mamma’s house without saying goodbye. I moved into my own apartment and mamma did not know where. I never allowed her into my apartment. I took the bus to college and enrolled myself into classes, my major; Criminal Justice with a minor in Forensic Psychology. Psychology was easy. Criminal Justice was a breeze. I had one professor, a white man… he was sadistic. He was brutal. He tried to make all of us drop and I did. I dropped the University of Houston completely. I picked up Houston Baptist University with double majors in French and Forensic Accounting. Why? It was safe, quiet, and clean exactly what a child ex opium addict needed right?

I am watching Cleaner on Netflix. It’s nothing like my so called life but on the record I am glad I didn’t go into law enforcement. It’s nothing like you think it is. Didn’t the Houston Police Department know about my mamma and us kids? I bet they did. In fact, I am certain they did. They never protected nor served us.

I am still alive though after all these years. I never used drugs and I never fell in love with anyone especially someone who sold or used drugs.

I don’t have those scars on my legs anymore. I have bad allergies. I sleep like a baby at night. I never see or speak to anyone from my family or my old neighborhood or my old schools.

I don’t get high. I don’t have tattoos. My husband knows nothing about my childhood. For that matter, neither do I… what can an ex opium addict from babyhood really remember or know? The rapes, the beatings, the hopes, the dreams…what can an old addict really know, understand or believe…?

Still, Cleaner on Netflix is a great story, a great movie – I highly recommend it.

Destiny is always cleaner.