Candace: ?

By Candace Brown Bey

What do you see when you look at me?
Do you see a daughter? A sister? A cousin? A friend?
A mother? A granddaughter? An aunt? A niece? Or
do you see a murderer? A liar? As crazy ? A whore?
A cheater? A bitch? Robber? A hustler? Dumb? A
victim or a survivor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465331908

Candace Brown Bey

Candace Bey was born and raised in Pitt sburgh, Pennsylvania to two proud parents of Alan and Sandra Bey. She lived in California for a short while. She discovered her fl air for writi ng aft er serving a four month sentence at a State Mental Hospital aft er being release in January 2009. Candace went on a to self publish her fi rst novel Candace ? She is currently working on a second novel. She is living in Pitt sburgh with her seven beauti ful children.

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Copyright © 2010 by Candace Brown Bey.

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DEDICATION

I want to dedicate this book first to Allah. To the Imam, my beloved parents, my beloved beautiful children Shaquallah, Edward, Maquallah, Phylicia, Myanna, Ahmid and Dre’Aunnah and to my husband. To all the people who believed in me and never quit on me Clarence and Nikeisha Lowry, Renee Lowry. The women who are my sisters but not through blood Naomi, Karen, Dorothy (Dee), Shahntayla, my niece Summer, Shamar, Ms. Anita, Shelby, Ms. Murphy, Tamona, Cheryl. To my nephew Jay and his family, I’m proud of you. To Denny and my boy Allan, Brother B.C.El, Brother M.H.El, Lisa Turner, Ms. Amy Vallejos of Xlibris, and Ms Pway for typing the first part of my book. Finally to all the people that have ever had adversity in there life always keep your head up and never look back. Your future is in front of you and not behind you. Always keep your faith in God and pray about the problem and you can be successful.

Prologue

I do understand now why you were placed in my life intimating Angel to ruffle my feathers. While in a place here at a state mental hospital where I now reside due to me having a nervous break down. Since being here I had came in with bottled feelings and I was so use to not expressing myself to certain people, because people would use it against me. Those same people opened up all of my feelings. In Gods plans for me I have to be ruffled at times to keep me balance. Allowing myself to feel and then deal with all my trials and tribulations through out my life. I truly see now my purpose in life, but first here in this mental state hospital is where I feel and truly face my lower self the devil within me allowing my heart to then set purity in. So I say to you my lower self God Allah is all you do not have control over my life anymore. I can see God Allah around me everyday in a place like this. He has spoken to me in so many different ways with kind words through his Angel’s here on earth like hey kiddo, keep your head strong do not let anybody stop you or get into your box, you don’t know who your five positive people can be in your life or a good morning that can lift your sprits when your feeling blue in a place like this. That is truly God talking to you through his Angel’s here on earth, God also keeps you ruffled by sending the intimating Angel to bring you closer with your spirituality or on your toes so to speak by having a much intimating Angel still you would have to be able to recognize what it truly is. So now I can stand strong and tall placing my feet at an 45 degree angle hold up my hands and head up with my fingers from right to left with two on the right and five on the left surrounding my 7 children to join me in my prayer so I thank you the intimating Angel. Now I can strive to be a connoisseur for God. I am back to all my intimating Angels I know who I am without questions here I stand I am Candace.

I remember when I was five years old living with my family in Wilkinsburg, PA. It was me, my brother (who’s eight years older), my mother, and my father in our apartment on Mill Street. I also have a sister who was the oldest and lived with my great aunt Agnes who I call my grandmother. My mother was married once before to my sister and brother’s father at a young age, but it ended in divorce. Several years later, she met my father through her first cousin Pam who was dating my father’s friend. Dick was going on a date with Pam and asked if my father wanted to hang out with them and he agreed. Pam asked my mother to go with her on her date. She agreed to meet my father, and they became good friends. They got married and I was born eight years later. The only happy memories I can remember are when we were all together on Mill Street.

It was a nice time I was five; my brother, mother, father and even my sister were there. We played hide and go seek all of us, my father was it and the rest of us went to hide. He found my mother first but instead of him catching her regularly he used an egg. He smashed her with an egg that turned into an egg fight between us. We all had so much fun until Agnes came to the apartment and knocked on the door. My mother got upset while opening the door, my brother went into the room, and I remember just standing In the middle of the living room wondering what’s wrong with everybody.

My father said he would be in the kitchen cleaning up the mess we made. Agnes came in and started yelling at my mother, cursing her telling her she should have had my sister who at the time was 15 years old been ready to go. My mother in a sad face said yes, Mom I know. My great aunt then said why you have that lousy SOB. In your house, meaning my father. She didn’t like my father due to our religion, which is Moorish American Muslim. I never have seen both of my parents so weak it was like my mother became someone else. My mother was a small woman in height but she was strong and could fight really well. She could even knock out men. She was dark olive with long thick hair and was the oldest of her siblings. When my mother came up my family was very secretive. What I’m doing by writing this story is breaking the cycle of secretary. My own mother was lied to by her own family about who was her biological mother. Was her mother my great aunt Agnes, who at the time was 15 years old or was it Agnes’s oldest sister Brula Mae? Here is the story. My mother was conceived out of wed lock. My mother was given to Brula Mae and Agnes’s parents at birth. She spent all of her adult life trying to find out who her real parents were. Because of the many lies that she was told it left her confused. She could not connect with her family because she was unsure of were she belonged, and how she came to be. My aunt Brula Mae was supposed to marry soon and she said she was a virgin, so she put off the wedding until she had my mother and then gave her to my great grandparents who is her mother and father to raise. While she ran off with the man whom she was supposed to wed before she got pregnant here is where Agnes comes into play. Agnes at the time is only 14 years old living at home with mama and papa, they came from a family of six children, two boys and four girls, and Agnes was the youngest. Brula Mae was Married and left my mother to be raised by her parents, and then Agnes says she took care of my mother and raised her but then she got Married and said she was a virgin when she wed as well, but as I got older, I later found out It was all a lie because Agnes claims that she was a virgin when she got Married and on her honeymoon is where she lost her virginity which is a lie, because she also has a daughter that is not my grandfather’s child and she claims that she was only with him. He knows the truth but he even went along with this lie. This tore my mother’s mind to pieces she wanted her mother’s love. So, that’s why I call Agnes grandma and my brother calls her aunt, and the same thing occurred to my oldest sister. Agnes has a history of destroying families.

What Agnes wants Agnes gets? She didn’t like my father after he became a Muslim. She would say things to my mother like he worshipped the devil, how could you be with someone like that A’isha, A’isha is my mother’s name. See at that time being different was taboo in Agnes’s case she had to control everything and if she couldn’t she will be upset and everybody in our family was upset as well from all the lies she would have told on you. My father didn’t play by her rules. So he was the black sheep so to speak. Agnes had 4 children and she and my grandfather adopted two children from a children’s Shelter a boy and a girl when they were teenagers. There was a lot of abuse living with Agnes and her family. Sexual and mental as well as verbal abuse. The way my family treats each other was very painful for my mother and father’s relationship. Being treated due to her skin complexion so dark and my family so light they could to pass for Europeans. Agnes and her siblings were very light, they would put you in the mind of Mrs. Lena Horn or Mrs. Mariah Carey.

Here’s my story, like I said earlier, I was five when Agnes came to get my sister and take her home with her because my sister lived with her and she came to visit on the weekends. So after Agnes got done yelling at my mother she jumped into her car with my sister and drove off. My mother was so sad I remember thinking I will never leave my mommy like my sister did.

My brother and I listen while my mom and dad talked in their bedroom I remember saying to my brother that I was so scared of Agnes and that I never want to go with her nowhere without our mother, and my brother said, you better start praying!" A week later Agnes returns with my uncle Grant, her son, he is the baby boy but he is a very large man, and he can fight really good as well he even knows martial arts. He would always be very loud when he comes into a room saying very nasty things to people even Agnes. The only person he wouldn’t bother is my mom and his own father. Grant was scared of my mom. They would have to jump her in a fight to even get the best of her. When he showed up with Agnes to our apartment I knew it was trouble. Agnes tells my mother that Grant seen my father with my mother’s best friend Ginny at a bar kissing each other. My mother told my brother to take me outside to play while she gets to the bottom of this with my father and her best friend. My brother grabbed my arm tightly and pulled me out the door. I was scared screaming I want my daddy! I remember seeing Ginny walking towards my house saying to me and my brother, go to her house, she only lived up the street from us. Her mother and two sisters lived there with her none of her siblings had children not even Ginny. When my brother and I would go over to their house they spoiled us. So my brother thought it would be a good Idea so he wouldn’t have to get stuck with watching me while at Ginny’s house. We ate very good cookies and pies that her mother made while Ginny went to our house to confront my uncle about saying that about her and my father kissing because Ginny says that she would never do that to my mother, she loves her and us. Ginny’s mother was like a mom to my mom, the phone rings at Ginny’s mother’s house, it was the next door neighbor calling to contact Ginny’s mother about the police being there at my house because of a fight that broke out and the police was taking my mother to the jail while Ginny’s mother hung up the phone, she yelled to my brother to come downstairs and sit with me in the living room while she goes to see what occurred with our parents. She tells us to stay here at her house but my brother did not listen. He follows after her so I followed after him to our apartment. When I seen all the lights from the police cars I was scared. I remember just thinking something bad had occurred to my mommy. I ran up to the door and saw my father laying face up with his eyes closed. It looked like he was dead; I screamed out mommy you killed my daddy. She did not kill my dad she just knocked him out said my brother, she had to sit in the back of the police car until the police straightened out what took place there. When my father came to he gave his version of the story while Ginny told hers. While Agnes and her son Grant was nowhere to be found when the police arrived and my mother sat in the car sobbing and pleading to Ginny’s mother to look after us while she went to jail for assaulting my father and Ginny. Ginny and her mother told us to get some clothes to wear and pack it up to bring to their house and locked up our apartment.

My father went to his mother’s house and we went with Ginny and her mother. My mom got out a couple of days later and came and got us, but things wasn’t the same because my father was not there with us, Mother stopped speaking to so to speak him and Ginny for a while only to work and crying every night. I would ask her if I could sleep with her so that I could someway protect her. She said yes, so every night I would sleep with her until she stopped crying. I was also afraid of the dark too and did not want to sleep by myself. My mother buried herself into her work, she started a second job at the laundry mat, so that meant that my 13 year old brother had to look after me and do my hair for school that always looked a mess because he didn’t know how to, plus we wasn’t allowed over Ginny’s anymore so they could do my hair. It became frustrating for my brother so he would take it out on my saying things like I wish you was never born because he wanted to go with his friends and didn’t want to bring me along. Meanwhile my father was living the good life so to speak. He decided to go to California to visit his elder brother Rosco. My father’s family is very light olive people as well and have light brown green and hazel eyes. Like Agnes he has six siblings. With my father being the 5th to the youngest and the only one in his family out of his sibling to only have one child while the rest had 2, 6, 7, 10, 12 and 5 children. My father and my uncles Roscoe and Roland all had the same father, they came in the order of this. Roscoe he was very light with green eyes. He Married and had 7 children to his first wife, one was killed several years later. Then comes my father, my father’s baby brother and the youngest child, my uncle Roland was married as well and had 5 children with his wife and also cheated and had five more, the three other aunts and uncles are much older, to where my uncles and father grew up with their nieces and nephews. All of my father’s family was and is still talented from playing sports to writing music. Music is a big part of my father’s family. Roscoe, my father and Roland played the Congo’s and bongo. They traveled all around the world.

My uncle Roscoe settled in California, leaving his wife and children here in Pittsburgh. So like I said my father went out to visit since he and my mother were on the outs trying to impress my uncle Roscoe that he wasn’t heart broken by taking a known woman off the streets. He knew that had the same name as my mother, A’isha went with him on his trip to California. While there trying to drink my mother out of his mind while lying out in the hot sun on the beach, and had a stroke. He was hospitalized for a while before anyone back home found out his friend that he brought with him left and went with someone else. My father and his brother, Roscoe partied all the money up so that meant that my father was stuck, he called his mother and she could not help bring him home so she asked both of her daughters could they assist my father, they said that they couldn’t at the time so she then asked my two uncles if they could spare some money for my father’s return and they as well as the rest said no. So my father’s mother called my mother who he had left to send for him, my mother agreed. She was working two jobs at the time and felt sorry for my father for having the stroke and being paralyzed on his left side having to wear a metal brace so