Extended Weekly Snippets From: MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN CHILD

Moving On Up, We Finally Got A Piece Of Nada

Excerpt #5 From: MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN CHILD ebook by author Vie Cine

To read more excerpts from MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN CHILD ebook follow the Vie Cine Self-Published Author Facebook page as well as subscribe to www.vieisme.com for daily blogs and weekly vlogs. At the website there's instructions on how to purchase the complete MEMOIRS OF A FORGOTTEN CHILD ebook.

PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE MY PAGE I APPRECIATE THE SUPPORT!

Moving to Cambridge wasn't anything I expected. For starters, I believed that we were moving to a house, a private house with multiple floors. We in reality moved into another apartment complex. It looked like a projects in the area we moved to in Cambridge. Ironically, Mommy moved us out of Hyde Park to get away from the threat of potential hoodlum influence and into Cambridge where we actually encountered hoodlums. She expected Cambridge to be a high-class metropolitan city that excluded the peons, little did she know she too met the criteria of peons from the standards she set. The contrast between Columbia Terrence and ordinary projects was the way it had been built. The buildings were tall in the color bleak brick brown forming an oval-ish shape with an opening, somewhat like a parabola. The opening had a big black's cement horizontal pole with another pole going vertical kind of like a weird cannon gate hybrid that could only be removed by maintenance workers. In a sense, the barrier was there to barricade anything from coming in like cars, but on the flip side the barricade was there so nothing could get out . . . like the residents who lived there. Its perception created subconscious psychological covert messages. Mommy and I got the message loud and clear. We needed to leave before we even settled in there.

Living with Mommy in Columbia Terrance wasn't that bad in comparison to Hyde Park. It was low-grade, but at least we had a roof over our heads and I had my own room. Mommy hated it! She left a semi-Black population to a predominantly Black population of live characters. She believed she was too good to live there as if all the other people who lived there were beneath her, because of that she had Willie research the qualifications to get into Section 8 Housing. She pursued Section 8 until she landed on the waiting list. When she moved up the list, that's when she would atlas get the idyllic lifestyle she felt she deserved. A lifestyle of easy living surrounded by people she deemed superior or by association made her such. Marie wasn't going to move anywhere else in the meantime. She disconnected herself with the people around her along with judged them. Marie had a loud bark but no bite. She knew who to try and who not to. She ran her mouth unleashing curses contaminated with hurtful venom with the sharpness of a machete to behead the self in self-esteem. Mommy castigated from the phenotype to clothing choices. She assumed the lifestyle and relationship of people based on her baseless criteria. Needless to say she condemned everyone but herself!

Chapter Seven

I was accepted to the Harrington. The Harrington was a kindergarten to eighth grade elementary school. The first day of school Mommy picked out my clothes like she always did. I wore whatever she chose whether I like it or not. I wore a maroon long velvet dress with pearl colored buttons, lace trimmings, and short sleeves. I hated that dress! I also wore white stockings and calves high black combat boots. I looked funny, uncoordinated, although at seven who did I have to impress? No one but I didn't like how I looked. My hair was braided in a tired well overdue for a touch-up style that Mommy plopped a red ribbon on my head. The children were respectful towards me because I was "the new kid." By the end of the week, people would be treating me as if I was a regular. I came into the second grade a few months after the school year started, but I didn't miss much, it was still fall. There was Rodney, a Haitian-American boy who made me laugh and was incredibly flexible and double-jointed. He was flexible as a rubber band, putting his legs around his neck. Then there was Gregory another Haitian-American, who had the skill of laying stink bomb eggs like an evil villain, then laughing about it wickedly. Emanuel, you guessed it! Another Haitian-American kid. He was like Bruh-man from the fifth flo', he was always on some 'can you help a brotha out," bumming off of someone for snacks then proceeding to make empty promises of repayment. They were all cool, but I wouldn't say we were close friends more like close acquaintances.

When Mommy moved, she resigned from her HHA position in Boston making her unemployed. For the first week, she walked with me to the bus stop and waited for the bus. I think she even waived to me as the school bus left. On my way to school, I made two new friends. They lived in the apartment building over to mine. Shaniqua and Toni were "cousins" and their families had pull in all the apartment buildings. If you could see them and I, it would be one of those questions that go, 'which one of these items doesn't fit with the others?' I would be that doesn't fit item. I gained more weight after leaving Hyde Park; I hadn't seen my face in a good eight months. I hated my glasses, so I mistreated them, and they slightly sat on my face crookedly. My mother being Haitian loved to "fiesta bowl" my hair with bogogo, (ball balls), ne (ribbons) and barréttes, (barrettes). My height alluded to maturity that chronologically I wasn't. Also, I started forming developmentally, and I felt awkward than before. The few positive changes were my pigeon-toed shuffle suspended. Months of being aware of my awkward ways led me to change them. I also manage to correct one finger that was slightly irregular. Plus I normalized my breathing by inserting my fingers into my ears, and if I could hear me breathing, I was too loud. These marked quarks needed to be changed because they were so audacious that it brought attention.

As usual I kept to myself observing the dynamics of the classroom. The teachers were all White females in a classroom full of diverse children. The whole second grade was like a hazy blur, I remember events like Valentine's Day when students had to make cards for one another, and I printed on all the red construction paper heart shapes "You're smart." I was relatively new and had nothing meaningful to gush over. One of the teachers saw my simplistic heart shaped cards and criticized it, telling me to write something heartfelt. Remind you, I'm seven, nothing to me at the time was more heartfelt and than "You're smart" since that was a phrase I wasn't going to see or hear anytime soon. To obey the authority these women had over me, I rewrote the cards with more vague sentences but this time only one person had "You're smart."    

PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE MY PAGE I APPRECIATE THE SUPPORT!