Curl Inside Herself

By Niya Holland Lloyd

After suffering from years of physical abuse, Selena is finally free from the demons of her past, or at least she thinks she is. The single mother of four daughters, her daily struggle includes making a way out of no way and trying to come to terms with what her life has become. Determined not to follow in her mother's troubled footsteps, Dara longs for a life of a different caliber, but can't seem to work past her own issues of identity, her mystery father, and a love that gives her more than she can take. In this soul-stirring piece, mother and daughter attempt to find their way out of the fog-and eventually towards each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 21, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595917570

Niya Holland Lloyd

"I like to write. Writing has helped me out of dark places, made me smile, made my dreams come true. You should try it." ~the author

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Copyright © 2007 by Niya Holland Lloyd

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-47485-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-91757-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1990

2002

August 2002

October 2002

November 2002

December 2002

February 2003

June 2003

October 2003

May 2004

September 2004

1990 

♦

Selena

I felt the side of my face. My cheek was blown up like a balloon. He stopped banging on the door. Kima was still crying, but I could hear him in there, trying to console her. I tried to close my jaw together, but the taste of blood and the pain radiating through my mouth stopped me. I brought my knees to my chest. I couldn’t even cry.

I wiped my nose. The blood had started to crust and dry inside my nostrils. I looked under the bathroom cabinet, and got a washcloth. I cut on the water, and held it under the sink for a full minute. Stephen told me to quit my job when I got pregnant with Kima, but I didn’t. As soon as I stopped breastfeeding, I went back. I knew there was no way I could leave him if I didn’t have my own money. For the past two months I cashed my checks at the liquor store and hid the cash for my eventual escape, convincing myself I was making some progress in my fucked up situation. But when I got home from work today, he was at the door, waiting on me. He caught me with the first punch right when I got inside. The second one came after he dragged me down the hall to our bedroom by my pony-tail. My scalp was still tingling. He yelled at me the whole time, while all my little girls stood there watching.

I put my face near the door; tried to listen past the ringing in my ears. It was quiet. I opened the door slowly, and walked out of the bedroom. The house was empty. My purse was still on the floor, by the door. I touched my hair. Most of it was out of the rubber band I had it pulled back in and my scalp was still tingling, but it was still attached at the root. I picked up my purse.

Wherever they went, he wouldn’t be gone long. I needed to start dinner. I needed to brace myself.

My brother Christopher and I had different fathers. My mother had him right out of high school, and I came some years later. I spent a lot of my early life with my grandparents. My grandmother and grandfather were Guyanese and initially immigrated to New York. My grandfather was a doctor, and they moved to this area in the sixties by reference because the Black people here needed a new primary care physician. My mother was their only child. They were strict, and they had their beliefs about me and Christopher’s illegitimate conception, but they loved me. Growing up, Christopher’s daddy was always around. He was always nice to me. He bought for me and spent time with me as if I was his own. But I always knew he didn’t belong to me like he did to Christopher.

I never tried to concern myself with why my father decided not to take part in my life. My mother never mentioned him to me. Not once. Sometimes she would look at me and hold her mouth tight, like something about me disturbed her. I was closer to my grandmother than we ever were. I can remember running around the backyard with Christopher and hearing her say come nuh gyal, just so she could hold me in her arms. She used to braid my hair at night and tell me about the jumbies, recalling old folk tales she heard growing up as a child. My grandmother gave me the love and attention my mother wouldn’t give. I knew my mother loved me, but I reminded her of a part of her life that was hard for her to deal with, and I believe that partly kept her away, kept us from being as close as a mother and daughter should be.

When sixteen came, my grandparents sold their house, packed up, and moved further south. The area was changing, and many residents like them had long ago sold their property and moved away. Big companies came in and threw up factories in this close-knit town, power changed hands, and there was no place for people like them anymore. Chris lived away and was making good money, so after they left, he asked us to move upstate near him. My mother jumped at the opportunity. She was always above this small town anyway. But I didn’t want to leave. It was the end of my junior year in high school. I wasn’t trying to hear moving and leaving the place I always knew behind. I wasn’t trying to start over. My mother and I compromised, and the agreement was I could stay with my mother’s best friend Rena and her daughter Lark, who was a good friend of mine, and finish up high school here. Afterwards, I could move up there with her and Chris, and decide on college. I got a part-time job at the textile mill. Lark worked there part-time as well, and took courses at the city college. She was three years older than me. They hired students, and it was easy money. My mother would never let me work before, so after Rena suggested it, I got on board, glad to have more spending money. I was happy. Living with them and being around Lark was like getting the sister I never had. Everything was going along according to plan. Then I met David. Dara came about a year later. She is my oldest daughter.

David was the supervisor over our shift. Everybody liked to work under him because he was laid-back, and it was easier to get production done without a bitch-ass boss breathing down your back. The story with him was he attended two prominent universities, got a couple of degrees, but wasn’t ready to go out and be the lawyer he was educated to be. His father, who owned the mill, gave him the job as something to do until he found himself, whatever the fuck that means. I would catch him watching me, staring at me. We would talk sometimes, and he was nice, but initially, I wasn’t into White. Whites and Blacks made it around here without any known controversy, but I personally never dealt with White people anymore than I had to. I went to school, associated as needed, and kept it moving. I wasn’t really into anyone at that point. Rena trusted me more than she trusted Lark, and I was usually allowed to go out with Lark and hang out with the older people in her social circle. A few of her male friends from the city made attempts to whisper in my ear and stick their tongue in my mouth when I went partying with her, but I never let anyone go all the way. David was my first.

One day Lark was out sick from work, and I went in anyway. Afterwards I was asking around for a ride home, and David volunteered to drop me off. He started dropping me off even when Lark was working. We would hang out in the city, go see movies, and eat at places where he convinced me no one would look at us in question more than once. He consistently forked over money to spend time with me. David paid extra attention to me, and I didn’t want to give that up, so after a while, I gave him what he wanted, what he had only sampled with patient fingers and a warm tongue. The more we slept together, the less careful we were. Lark would cover for me all the time. She didn’t mind it; even though she was afraid her mother would find out about it and hurt us both.

Rena knew before I did. She was a nurse, like my mother, and she worked the same shift at the hospital that we did at the mill. One night, when we got home, she was already there, sitting at the kitchen table. She told me to sit down; told Lark to keep stepping and she’d deal with her later.

So what are you going to do? She tapped her feet on the floor. I just looked at her. I really didn’t get what she was talking about, at first.

Do about what? I held my coat; tired and not able to shake the run-down feeling that followed me everywhere lately.

You’re pregnant. She touched the side of her face with her hand. So is it somebody from the mill? She didn’t even wait for me to answer. Your Mama is going to kill the both of us.

My mother hardly calls to check on me. I hadn’t decided how to deal with her telling me I was pregnant. How is she going to kill me about something?

Look, I know when people are pregnant. She narrowed her eyes at me. I can see it all in your face. Everybody in this house is on the same cycle, and you haven’t had a period at all this month, have you? Rena was damn near hysterical. So who is the father?

I took out some pots and pans, and looked over at the phone on the wall. The day I met my husband, I was hanging out at Amelia’s, who was my age, my next-door neighbor, and had three kids to my one. She used to like to drink, party, do everything but be a good mother to her children. Her house stayed dirty, and her kids went around looking just as raggedy as they could be. Knowing all of that, I would still spend time over there. I was not in a good place then. This was a little after David left me. When it got around that I was pregnant and who I was pregnant by, I lost my job at the mill. Abortion was out of the question; David told me he looked forward to being a father, and I wanted to be a mother. I got tired of people staring at me and whispering out loud about me at school, so I dropped out three months before graduation. My mother even refused to talk to me early-on during my pregnancy. Everyone wanted me to be ashamed, but my baby became the first thing I could entirely claim. Having her made it real that someone needed me, and I could never be ashamed of that. I gave birth to my daughter with her grandmother at my side, in tears, and her father in the hospital waiting room, enduring hateful stares by everyone from Rena to my older brother. But that didn’t deter him. David continued to come around even after Dara was born. He’d show up at Rena’s door consistently to see us, despite Rena’s warnings for him to leave it alone. I eventually left Rena and Lark because Rena didn’t agree with me seeing David, and since he was not welcome at her home, I went through Social Services and got a place of my own.

Then David got cold feet. Dara was three, and I was beginning to think his interaction with us would never end. He told me he had a job upstate weeks prior, but we never discussed it again until a week before he was due to leave, and even then I hoped it would go away. Of course, it didn’t. He came by the morning before he left. He held and kissed Dara; promised he would keep in touch, send money, but I never heard from him again. My mother and Chris wanted me to come live with them again, but I refused. I didn’t want their pity. Now David was gone, so I was stuck with an empty apartment and a crushed self-esteem. I didn’t want to deal with the reality of my life, so I just got lost in Amelia’s.

She got some good hair, Selena. Amelia was fingering one of Dara’s slick braids. The television and the radio were blasting at the same time. I learned back on her couch and watched her kids as they played around on the floor with some second-hand toys. And these eyes. She look more white than black, I swear.

Don’t pick at my baby. I grinned, and looked down at her three boys, all much in need of a haircut. Amelia grunted.

I wish I had me a girl instead of these nappy-headed boys. She got up, stretching her tall, lanky figure. Her sons did not flinch at the sound of her words. Right then, somebody knocked on her screen door. She groaned, and walked over slowly to answer it, even though I knew she was always ready for some company. In walked this man, who looked at least fifteen years older than us. He was dressed in tan pants and a green shirt; some kind of work uniform. He looked right at me.

Stephen, I told you, I ain’t seen Rick in about four days now. Amelia’s face twisted up, indicating how displeased she was to see him. And he ain’t gonna come around here, knowing he owe you money.

He stepped all the way into the living area, still looking at me. When he comes by, tell him I didn’t give him a gift. I provided him with a loan. He hit his hand flat against the side of his pants. I haven’t seen her here before.

Amelia rolled her eyes. This is Selena. She lives in the apartment over from me.

I slammed a pot down on the stove. I could still taste salt in my mouth from where he punched me. I couldn’t think of anything to cook. My face throbbed, and I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Amelia was supposed to come by and watch the girls for me this morning, and put Dara and Tory on the school bus because I had to be in to work early, right after Stephen left. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t show up, knowing my kids would be home alone. One thing Amelia did know was I was trying to leave him and I needed her help so I could work. I went to set my teeth together again, and for the first time I wondered if he knocked my jaw out of place.

I cleaned and seasoned a chicken to roast, put rice on to boil, and was rinsing some greens when they came through the door. Everyone minus Dara had an ice cream cone in their hand and a pasted smile on their face.

Mama! Rhonda and Tory ran and hugged my legs. I tried unsuccessfully to keep the swollen side of my face from them as I accepted their kisses and hugs. Dara just stood back, and looked at me. Stephen closed the door; locked eyes with me. Kima was in his arms, asleep.

What happened to your hair? His voice was hard. He touched it. I stopped myself from moving away from his hand. Like he didn’t remember trying to knock my brains out an hour ago.

It came out of the ponytail I had it in, I said softly. I was shaking a little bit. I turned back to the kitchen sink, hoping he’d take the hint and move on. He did. I could feel Dara’s eyes fixed on my back. I swallowed.

Where’s your ice cream cone?

I didn’t want one. Her voice was soft. When can I go see grandma?

That threw me off. Dara hadn’t been to see my mother in months, even though she was always welcome. We’ll see. Go get out your homework.

That night I took a shower and got on my side of the bed before he was through drinking his traditional six-pack of Coors Light. He was watching the eleven o’clock news. I put some ice on my face and kept a decent six feet away from him all evening, but now, it was bedtime, and I couldn’t get but so far away from him. Sex always came after an incident like today.

Within fifteen minutes he had pushed the back of my nightgown up and was moving behind me, grabbing at my breasts, telling me he was sorry. Sorry for all the drinking, about all he’s done so far and please don’t leave him because he can’t live without me and the girls. We’re his life. Six minutes later, he grunted and rolled over, and I suddenly wished for my mother. I wanted her to come save me, because I was starting to feel like I was dying.

Two days after I first met Stephen he was knocking on my door. I was in the middle of giving Dara a bath. I wrapped my toddler up with a towel and went to the door. It was nine o’clock in the morning.

I was looking for Amelia. He was a few inches taller than I was. He was actually a handsome man. A little gray sprinkled his