Operation Growth: an extraordinary journey of maturity, motherhood, and black girl magic

By Brandi R Richard

Operation Growth is designed to help women on the cusp of greatness, navigate to their personal next level. Through her authentic account of the struggles and triumphs of a single black woman, leader, and mom, Brandi has woven together a hero’s story of how to navigate to your personal next level. You don’t have to see it or know exa

• Language: English
• Publisher: BR Comm
• Release date: Jan 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780998846712

Brandi R Richard

Brandi R. Richard is the author of Operation Growth. Brandi Richard is a mother, innovator, entrepreneur, and advocate. Throughout her life stages, she used adversity to grow and develop into a new iteration of herself. She transitioned from preppy student leader, to young military wife, to hip vegan tree-hugger. From there she grew into a hard-working single mom with vision and purpose for herself and her daughter, showing no fear of the struggle she was facing. Through every challenge she continued to grow, becoming a hard-working entrepreneur with an established career and noted leader, with a brilliant daughter.

Book preview

1. Generational Growth

I’ve got loyalty and royalty inside my DNA.

- Kendrick Lamar

For years, I just knew I was Indian. Like deep down in my spirit there was a fiery woman with high cheek bones and long black silky hair and a tomahawk or a bow and arrow or something. There was a large, oval-shaped picture over the piano of a fierce woman my family called Big Momma. Of course, I never knew her; she was my great, great grandmother, but she had to be an Indian. And I yearned to be the most beautiful representation of her because my nappy hair and general lack of fierceness was not working for me.

In first grade, I went to school with Celia whose hair was longer than mine and blonde. Every time my mother took me to the salon I asked for a press and curl so I could feel my baby-soft hair graze my neck, my shoulder, hell whatever it could reach. Louisiana was one of those places where light-skinned girls were supposed to have some kind of straight hair to be the prettiest. I was light enough, but it never meant a great deal to me. The more important part was removing those kinky beads on the back of my neck after a day of rough-housing on the playground. And although my zip code put me in school with girls like Celia, the cute white boy wasn’t going to look my way without long, blonde silky hair. I just couldn’t compete. No valentines ended up in my decorated shoe box and it must have been due to my plaits and colorful barrettes.

The only boy who really liked me came along in third grade, and ran around the playground after me like a raving idiot. He had kinky hair too and I didn’t like his either. Even worse, he was always hollering about African booty snatchers and trying to grab my butt. The way he grabbed me was painful and the crazed gleam in his eyes when he did it reminded me of a very, scary clown. Running around screaming during recess wasn’t my idea of a good time, so I was thrilled when he got a spanking with the school paddle one day. In southern Louisiana public schools, paddling with a large, lightly varnished natural wood paddle with holes was normal. The paddle held a prominent place of authority on the wall of the principal’s office and you knew it was possible for it to get you if you were bad enough.

Changing schools was a consistent pattern for me, due to the school district’s desire to integrate and my parent’s desire to push me academically. I had become intimately acquainted with the paddle at my all-white-except-forme school and I was not trying to meet the new paddle at the mostly-blackplus-the-gifted-kids school.

The other light-skinned black boys with fewer pronounced naps on their heads didn’t like me as much as they liked the girls with straight hair that reached for or touched their backs. So it went without saying that when my mother wanted me to get a Jheri curl, I was mortified. And the fact that it was as short as an afro, broke my entire heart. My mom would often suggest a teenie, weenie afro, which I now understand may have been all the rage in the 70s, but none of my friends had one. 80s kids were into a lot of hair styles, but afros weren’t on the list.

As my Jheri curl grew longer, I came up with all kinds of ways to make it look straight. If the makers of Jheri curl juice (activator for those who believed in curls) only knew I was using it to slick my hair into banana clips or whatever else looked straight, they may not have approved.

A couple of days before Easter in second grade, I had the perfect solution to my hair challenges.

Mama, I said. Can I have down my back hair?

Down your back hair, what are you talking about?

You know, down my back hair like Celia.

My mom looked at me for a long moment, then just turned away. That was her only response to me.

It wasn’t until years later when someone asked me how long I had been locking my hair that I remembered Celia. I‘d been doing it for so long that for the life of me I couldn’t even remember when I started locking. However, people always want to know, so to this day, I still make up how long it‘s been.

Hey, how long have you been growing your locs? Hey girl, is that really your hair? Hey, you must have been growing your hair for at least five years.

Undeterred by the flat look I’m sure I now immediately deliver, they stare intently, waiting for the answer. They get something like, Um yeah, I don’t remember, or, Let’s see, I started when my daughter was about five, so fifteen years. Regardless of what I say, I’m sure I now feel like Celia must have felt watching her natural hair grow out of her scalp however it did. It’s just my hair dude, don’t you want to talk about something else?

What I will never forget, was the day I realized my hair had grown far past Celia’s without Jheri, relaxer, weave, or any Indian blood from Big Momma. I was in the shower lathering my scalp with the latest recommended natural shampoo from a friend. You know the kind with no chemicals but an amazing coconut fragrance you can’t believe is all natural. As I stepped out of the shower, my wet hair grazed my lower back. I whipped around splashing water all over the bathroom walls to see that the hair growing out of my head had arrived there largely on its own. As I twisted and palm-rolled my hair that day, it dawned on me that I loved this hair so much more than I’d loved Celia’s. Loving the hair that grows out of your head is absolutely everything!

Big Momma may have had Native American features (which we now know must have come from anything but Native Americans), but she married a black minister in a mostly black town. They had three boys with biblical names, Matthew, Nehemiah, and Israelite, and a daughter named Magdalene, who we called Lena. I can imagine she was named after Mary Magdalene in the Bible. Because anyone who would name one of their children Israelite, had to be well acquainted with the word of God. Just so you know, Lena was not the repentant prostitute version of Mary Magdalene, she was the heroine of the faith version. In fact, her financial positioning of our family would make her eligible for venerated sainthood.

Lena had four children, one of which was my grandmother, Dorothy. Dorothy had one daughter and that one daughter had me. I have one daughter, so it looks like this is a new trend in our lineage.

Lena possessed the ability to turn whatever was placed in front of her into an opportunity. She worked in the washroom at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for over forty years. She married multiple times and always ended up with a house or two out of the deal that she, in turn, passed down to us.

Lena’s tenacity confirmed for me that Big Momma had grit although I never met her. Her strength stared at me through her eyes in the picture above my great-grandmother’s piano. But Lena was the one whose grit impacted me directly. My great-grandmother made it possible for my mother to go to college and have opportunities her third grade education and birth in the United States in 1900 didn’t allow.

Once my great-grandmother supposedly cracked open a white woman’s head who talked to her out of turn. I’m not sure if I believe the head cracking part, but I’m quite sure she told her smooth off. Speaking your mind as a black woman in the 1930s took a whole lot of grit.

I called my great grandmother Lena, Mommee. It was rare to see her smile in person or in photos. She smoked a pipe and I regularly fetched her baca box (short for tobacco). Ever so often, I would sneak off with the baca box and practice lighting her pipe so I would be ready when she asked me.

Mommee watched a few regular television shows like General Hospital and the Price is Right which provided great cover for my exploration into the baca box and other mischievous searches. After her shows, she would go outside on the porch for her daily session of people watching. So, I excused myself for the restroom, scooping up the baca box on the way. In the quiet of the back bathroom (you know the one no-one uses unless company visits) I was really smoking her pipe. My stomach would literally drop outside of my body if I heard anything that sounded like an adult coming my way. To this day, the smell of pipe or cigar smoke is still soothing.

When Mommee removed her wig, she would occasionally let me brush her silky white hair. Aha! I knew we had to be Cherokee Indians descending from our glorious Big Momma! But why wasn’t my hair like hers?

When my Mommee lovingly showered me with sloppy, smoky kisses, I knew she loved me. She made me lemon pound cakes from scratch and although I didn’t know it, kept a pearl-handled pistol under the bed. You wanted zero problems from my great grandmother.

One day after the sun went down, I heard the phone ring and my Mom answered. When she hung up the phone and tearfully described the event to my dad, her words and facial expressions conjured up a picture of my Mommee in the middle of North Acadian Thruway in her underwear, small wisps of white hair blowing in the wind. It seemed that Mommee had forgotten where she was and where she intended to go. Panicked neighbors thankfully knew to call us and my parents headed over to see about her.

After this happened a few times, my grandmother Dorothy moved into Mommee’s house to help take care of her mother. We would sometimes bring Mommee to our house to enjoy her company and give my grandmother a rest. We knew a rest was in order when we visited one evening and a fight was brewing in front of the refrigerator over fried pies.

Momma, get out of that refrigerator, yelped Dorothy as she made her way from the dining room table where she was talking to me and my parents and attempted to sandwich herself between the refrigerator’s produce basket and Mommee’s reach.

I had already counted the five pies in the produce bin, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Yes, kids count the sweet, fruity pies available to request. Non-smiling, non-talking, assertive Mommee continued to exert her will toward the bin, determined to make one lemon pie hers.

There are moments in your family that are deeply disturbing and flatout hilarious all at once. This was one of those moments. On the one hand, denying your own mother another fried pie was just all kinds of wrong, no matter how much you were concerned about her health or sugar intake. On the other hand, my grandmother (who I’ll tell you about shortly) and my Mommee were tussling over a ninety-nine cent fried pie.

We moved in to stop them. My parents moved in to stop them; I moved in to be nosy.

Momma, now you know you don’t need any more pie, insisted my grandmother.

Mommee went home with us that night.

She loved visiting on Fridays because we would take her out for fried fish and a little something sweet that she was being denied at home. She would tell us stories and call us by the wrong names; I was my mom and she was her mom, and there were people trying to jail her. We laughed so hard my belly ached and we cried just as hard, wondering if she would ever remember us, as we began to understand exactly what a dementia diagnosis really meant.

Mommee was the matriarch whose sacrifices made us all what we were. Although I didn’t understand her entire contribution to our family in middle school, there were parts that I understood very well. She was respected and had money.

My grandmother on the other hand, needed money and used her mouth to gain respect. I wasn’t sure whether or not she loved me. She was just so mean. She had the same razor wit of her mother, mixed with a tendency to criticize everyone. If you let the screen door slam, or held it open too long, or ran when you should be walking, or cut your eyes wrong, or said one thing when you should have said another, you were apt to get it. We called her Mother Dear.

She pulled switches to beat my tail and complained I was too spoiled. One day after we moved to another city, my mother was talking to my Mother Dear about my by then junior high school behavior. They talked almost everyday and on this day, I could hear them through the holes in my K-Mart special, slimline phone. You know the one with the extra-long cord that lives in your bedroom, but could be snatched up at any time. The holes on top allowed me to hear almost any conversation going on in the house. With my ear pressed to the holes, I heard Mother Dear say, How is Brandi?

Sometimes I really don’t know. She’s on punishment again, said my mother.

My stomach sank lower in my belly with embarrassment. I was on punishment again, but this time I was allowed to keep the phone in my room.

I don’t know why you don’t just send her to boarding school, snapped my grandmother. I heard her winding up for the kill. She needs some structure for all that bad behavior.

Just as my fate was hanging in the balance, my dad called my name from downstairs. I slowly put down the phone and ran off to see what my dad wanted. If I was going to avoid boarding school, I would have to do what I was told for as long I could. I never went to boarding school, but in my mind that overheard conversation, once again, proved my grandmother didn’t like me.

In hindsight, I did my share of dirt (not enough for boarding school, though). My dad described me as a fearless adventurer, and it was probably smart to leave me at home alone as little as possible. When elementary school was out, I would stay with my grandmother and go with her to work at the bowling alley. It was hard to sit still or stay out of trouble for long summer days when I was being watched in the bowling alley, where bowling was the entire point of the experience. Sandwiched between about twenty bowling lanes on either side of the building was the cash register and place to get shoes and balls. On one end of the cash register was the childcare center, juke box, and cleaning room and on the other was the lone place to get food, a well lit stand where my grandmother passed freshly cooked burgers, fries, sodas, and snacks to customers all day. For the most part, I could be anywhere in the middle of the bowling alley as long as I wasn’t bothering anyone. My two safe spaces were the childcare center where my play aunt worked, and the grill area. My favorite place was in front of the jukebox where I was a little out of view of my grandmother when she was working. I didn’t have a steady flow of quarters to put in the jukebox, but I listened to the free music that came on when you got close all day long. Mother Dear allowed me to bowl with the other kids once a week in the junior league. Bowling on days the junior league played was not enough to keep my attention, and dancing to Man Eater or Eye of the Tiger on the jukebox only amused me for so long. I sometimes helped with the kids in the childcare center, but I loved the responsibility of fetching a bottle of cleaner or a mop out of the cleaning closet, even though the smell of chemicals made my head spin.

My grandmother was not the owner, but she held court over the domain of the bowling alley, much like my Mommee held court over the entire family. She could see or hear everything that went on there and I suspect she’s responsible for getting my play aunt her job.

Going to work with Mother Dear taught me how kids (no matter what color) are supposed to act in public. The same raised eye over the rim of the glasses she gave me, she gave all of those kids who thought they could get away with running through the bowling alley. She only spanked me, but I’m quite sure if she could have, she would have spanked those hellions too.

Mother Dear would lean over the tall counter of the food stand and motion for the ring leader of the bad butt children brigade to come close, Hey, hey, hey, come over here. Now you can’t do all that running up in here. You’re going to have to go and sit down, you hear? Do you understand me?

The leader would drop his or her head, say yes ma’am and lead the rest of the children in sitting down. When I bowled with them, I would just sit quietly when they started to act up to ensure I didn’t get the added benefit of a spanking when I got home.

Mother Dear demonstrated that she knew more than I knew about all kids, but especially white ones. Mommee and Mother Dear served as domestics in the homes of white folks in southern Louisiana. Black domestics in the south looked a lot like the movie The Help.

Mommee’s experience as a domestic translated into a job as a laundress at the major hospital in town. Mother Dear’s experience as a domestic provided her a job in the bowling alley that the family she worked for later opened.

My mother had to go with Mother Dear sometimes to help clean the homes of white people. I had no idea when I was going to work with Mother Dear, that I was playing with the kids of the same family whose homes she had cleaned. I’m sure she fed them as well.

So it was no surprise that Mother Dear was the official cook in