BLUE Butterfly

By Dr. Rosella Collins-Puoch

This riveting recollection of her life in a small town, and growing up in a poverty-stricken, dysfunctional family, is the story of Dr. Rosella Collins-Puoch. She experienced childhood abuse - emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual - that could have resulted in a lifetime of unresolved, destructive, mental illness, and drug addiction. Co

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hope Village
• Release date: Dec 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798985432312

Book preview

A picture containing text, sign Description automatically generated

A Memoir

Dr. Rosella Collins-Puoch

Copyright © 2021 by Dr. Rosella Collins-Puoch

All Rights Reserved.

Paperback: ISBN 979-8-9854323-0-5

Ebook:  ISBN 979-8-9854323-1-2

Published by Dr. Rosella Collins-Puoch

Hope Village, LLC

6043 Hudson Road, Suite 372

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.hopevillagemcc.com

No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To the phenomenal love of my life, David

To my beloved children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren

To the rest of my family

To my angels (aka friends)

My life has been enriched with all of you in it.

Thanks for being kind, loving, and patient with me.

I pray you always strive to be and do better.

Aim to leave the world a better place than you found it.

I love every one of you forevermore!

The stories in this memoir reflect the author's recollection of events. Some names, locations, and identifying characteristics are changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. The re-created dialogue is from memory.

Exodus 28:31 Make the robe of the ephod (Jesus’s Garment) entirely of blue cloth.

New International Version

Matthew 9:21 Thinking to herself, If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.

New Living Translation Version

A picture containing dark, plant, insect Description automatically generated

BLUE BUTTERFLIES

… are often considered a sign of life, regarded as a symbol of love and rebirth. As butterflies go from their larva to pupa state, they become almost non-living. But then they come out of their pupa state into energetic adults as butterflies. This process symbolizes rebirth. For the same reason, resurrection is another meaning associated with butterflies due to their metamorphosis. butterflyinsight.com

Prologue

W

ith my head planted in my mother’s chest, hugging her, and weeping so hard that I could hardly see, I desperately needed to feel the comfort of her embrace. She stood there, stoic. Her arms never raised to hug me. She whispered in my ear, You go and make a life for you and your children.

My six-year-old daughter stared at me with a blank look on her face. My three-year-old son clung to my legs and cried out, Mama, mama, mama. The thought of looking at him was excruciating. My mother leaned over and detached his tiny hands from my legs. As I walked out the door, carrying my raggedy suitcase that contained all the belongings I owned in the world, I felt emotionally overwrought.

I wiped the tears from my face as I walked down the street toward the bus stop. Wanting to look back, but realizing the cost, I kept my focus in front of me. With each step, the sound of my son’s cries faded in the distance.

Although I felt broken and afraid, I mustered the strength and courage to stay the course. As I boarded the Greyhound bus, bleeding profusely, silently I prayed, please help me God!

And please forgive me!

When I was a little girl, a tall wooden fence surrounded my family's home. In our front yard was a large mango tree, in our backyard a chicken coop and a banana tree. A canal separated our backyard from the elementary school I attended. A sugar cane patch faced the front of the school.

The tall wooden fence kept strangers out and my family's secrets concealed. No one told me we had secrets; I just knew it. It was obvious from the sadness on my mother's face when she sang from the depth of her soul, "Can’t no grave hold my body down, oh can’t no grave hold my body down," as she looked out the window with watery eyes. An aura of sadness permeated the atmosphere in our house.

At the age of six, I started experiencing emotional and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse that left me severely traumatized. I once ran away only to be brought back home. For years after my first attempt to escape my abusers failed, fleeting thought of trying again passed through my mind. But I could never sustain the idea long enough to act. I thought, where would I go?

Living trapped in a cocoon—a dysfunctional family system of neglect and abuse—was my fate, and no one seemed to be concerned about my plight. I felt unloved, afraid, ashamed, and alone. My very existence attracted more abusers, more trauma, like I was a magnet.

As I grew older, I began to understand who and what influenced my mother's strange, detached ways. The meaning of the song she sang during moments of distress became crystal clear. The complexity of her way of being—a system of secrecy, power, and control—alleviated her feelings of hurt, fear, and shame. But it tainted my worldview and clouded my judgment.

When I grew up, I no longer felt helpless, hopeless, or unworthy of love. More importantly, I discovered that amid my pain and suffering, whether wittingly or unwittingly, my mother had passed on to me a blueprint for survival. But I had to first find my voice! And, if I wanted to live, I had to courageously use my voice to fight for my life.

Through prayer and faith, I became wise and discovered that God loves me. He gave me free will to choose life or death. And I realized that it was my choice to act on the thoughts in my mind that encouraged me to either hate or forgive. So, rather than allowing unforgiveness — due to past traumatic experiences—to shape the condition of my heart, I chose to allow God to help me heal so that I could live. I became a butterfly, a BLUE Butterfly!

I

WALLOWING IN MY FAMILY’S COCOON

1

My Family and Our Way of Being

M

y mother (Ma) was born in 1922 in Alabama. She completed three years of education. My daddy (Mister) was born in 1926 in Georgia. He completed two years of education. Ma and Mister both migrated to Florida, where they met and married.

Ma birthed eleven children. Connie was born in 1934, followed by Lee in 1936 and Sterling in 1938. Patricia came six years later in 1944, followed every two years by Susan, Nettie, Oscar, and Veronica. I came along in 1956, then Paula in 1959 and finally Betty in 1963.

I grew up with my parents and all my siblings, except Connie and Susan.

Connie was Ma's firstborn. One of my sisters told me Connie was conceived from a rape when Ma was twelve years old. Her father and his mother raised Connie in Alabama.

Susan moved away when I was four years old.

I never met my grandparents. The only member of Ma's family I met was her brother, Uncle Bubba. Ma told us she had a younger brother, who was killed by the KKK because he was hardheaded as hell.

My daddy had five brothers and five sisters, but I only met two of his sisters, Auntie Mabel and Auntie Tit. Periodically, they stopped by to say hi to us. During visits, Auntie Mabel smiled at me while holding my chin and looking into my eyes. I smiled back, and I felt special.

My family lived in a small Florida town, a population of fewer than 1500 people. A major highway separated Whites and African Americans. Whites lived uptown; African- Americans lived downtown.

When I was a little girl, all encounters between Whites and African Americans were business or law related. Whites sold life insurance policies to African Americans, employed them to work on their farms, to clean their houses and yards, and to clean and organize their stores. White police officers frequently came into our community to arrest African American men, women, and children for breaking their laws.

If an African American child was big and strong enough to work, they were allowed to work. Whites were not concerned about African American children getting an education. There was no child protection. African American parents could punish their children in any way they chose to.

My siblings and I attended school sporadically. None of us graduated high school. I completed sixth grade.

When Patricia was nineteen and Nettie was fifteen, they worked in the fields to help Ma pay bills. Every Friday, Nettie cried and muttered under her breath, Can't keep none of my paychecks … that's just wrong. At age twelve, Veronica cooked and babysat eight-year-old me, five-year-old Paula, and one-year-old Betty, as well as Nettie’s son Peter, also just a year old.

Lee wandered the streets, drank a lot, and brought home different women when he came for a visit. Sterling was married and lived in an apartment a few miles from us. Oscar went in and out of a reformatory school for boys.

We celebrated no birthdays. We had no outings. We were not allowed to play with other children at our house or their house—no play dates.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, we ate good food—chicken and dressing, greens, sweet potatoes, various types of cakes and pies, et cetera. For Christmas, we received a brown bag filled with different fruits and mixed nuts in the shell. No presents. No Christmas tree.

We were allowed to go to school, church, the store, and the post office. On occasion, Ma took me to the secondhand store with her to shop for our clothes. Ma never seemed to pay for her purchase in full. Peering at Ma from behind dark sunglasses, the store owner—with a protruding jaw filled with tobacco and deep brown teeth—always said, Your balance is $…..

Ma smiled and responded, Yessir, thank you, sir. She never questioned the accuracy of the so-called balance.

All our clothes were bought from that secondhand store, except for our underwear. Ma could sew and knit, and she made our underwear from empty twenty-five-pound flour sacks. They were colorful, and the material was solid and functional.

Ma worked five days a week, eight hours a day, crawling up and down a long, wet field. She dragged one wooden box after another, stuffing them with celery seedlings until the boxes were full. Her job title was plant puller.

I witnessed Ma performing this slave-like labor when I was around eight years old, because I kept begging her to take me to work with her. It was a hellish experience! I am not sure how much she earned, but I know she struggled to feed us and pay bills.

Monday through Thursday after work, Ma sat in the same spot on our living room couch. She removed her clothes from her upper body and pulled her work pants down to her ankles. She washed her upper and lower body using a rag, soap, and a basin full of water. She ate a quick meal and fell asleep. She did not move from the couch until the following morning, when it was time to go to work again.

After work on Fridays, Ma walked to her bedroom with her head held down, holding her Bible close to her chest. She slept in her bedroom, leaving a dent in the shape of her bottom on the couch. Saturday mornings, Ma emerged from her bedroom with bags under her swollen, red eyes. She strolled toward the living room to sit in her spot on the couch and started her day by yelling at us for minor infractions.

My sisters expressed their feelings of embarrassment among themselves. The whole neighborhood can hear her yelling at us, I could hear one of them whisper.

Ma sat on the couch and tapped her right heel on the floor for long periods on Sundays. Sometimes tears formed and sat suspended in her eyes. Then she would fall asleep and lay her head back on the arm of the couch, with her mouth wide open. Her tears rolled down, dried up, and turned into white lines that looked painted on the sides of her face. When Ma awakened, she sang her feeling distressed song—my interpretation.

Can’t no grave hold my body down, 

oh, can’t no grave hold my body down. 

When I hear that trumpet sound Imma get up

out of the ground. Can’t no grave hold my body down.

We could hear her voice from anywhere inside or outside of our house.  After singing for a while, Ma sat silently, eyes dancing around and around in her head. I desperately wanted to understand why she cried and sang her song.

I asked, Why are you crying and singing? 

Sometimes Ma stared intently at me, as if she was transmitting her answer—none of your business—telepathically. Other times, she replied, Bastard, stop asking me so many devilish questions, and rolled her eyes. 

Out of curiosity one day, I looked up the word bastard in the dictionary. I learned that it meant either an unpleasant or despicable person or a person born of parents not married to each other. Based on this definition I reasoned, Ma and daddy are married, so she must think we are either unpleasant or despicable. But I kept my mouth shut.

Ma never played with us. She never hugged or kissed us. For disobeying Ma’s rules, she recited her favorite mantras before meting out her punishment:

My mama gave my brother and me away when I was six years old. She told my auntie, take these little crumb crushers. I have to go out and fan the funk. My auntie was a mean woman. I never met my daddy; I only saw his back when he was walking out the gate. Go out there and bring me a switch off that tree. I’mma tear you’re a** up now so the White man won’t kill you later.

We had a large mango tree in our yard that kept Ma supplied with solid switches. If the switch lost its power before Ma finished her punishment, she used an extension cord. After our punishment, the raised welts oozing blood from all over our body were evidence that Ma had honestly torn our a** up.

After receiving one of Ma's beatings, my sister Veronica muttered under her breath, B**** I hate yo a**. But she continued to sneak out the window at night to meet her boyfriend and continued to smoke. She was audacious and being punished was not an effective deterrent.

Ma taught us some life lessons by reciting her brand of parables. She used two favorites:

A man was walking down the road one day. He saw a bag, and he kicked it. A skull rolled out the bag. He asked the skull, how did you get here? The skull said to the man, tongue brought me here, and tongue will bring you here. Learn how to keep your mouth shut, bastard.

and

You be careful how you treat people when you are going down that road ’cause you may have to pass by them on your way back down that road.

I laughed hysterically at Ma’s parables.

With a curious look on her face, she would say, What's so funny, gal? You need to stop all that laughing; a man thinks you are easy when you show him your teeth.

When I was ten years old, feeling sorry for Ma and wanting to help her pay bills, I went to the secondhand store and charged—without question from the store owner—a maid’s uniform and shoes to Ma’s account. I asked the store owner if he knew of anybody looking for a maid to do housework. He referred me to Mrs. Davis.

"Come on in, gal. My name is Mrs. Davis," she said.

Mrs. Davis was a very tanned, tall, thin blonde, White woman. She chain-smoked cigarettes in one hand and took intermittent sips of liquid from a small glass with her other hand. The smell of her breath reminded me of how Daddy smelled when he came home for a visit.

She took me on a tour of her large, well-decorated house and explained, I like this cleaned like … Mr. Davis likes his bed made up military style … My son likes his bed made up like this … I will pay you Friday for the week. Not a word about how much my pay would be.

I was wide-eyed and eager to make money to help Ma, and too afraid to ask questions. Nodding my head in agreement, I said, Yes, ma’am.

For one week, I skipped school to clean Mrs. Davis’s house. I thought about all the money I would make all week long, and I imagined how pleased Ma would be when I gave her the money. I felt happy and excited inside. I worked hard to please Mrs. Davis, trusting that she would pay me well.

When Friday evening came, I was ready to collect Ma’s money. I walked into the living room where Mrs. Davis was sitting with her legs crossed, yapping away on the phone. She was blowing cigarette smoke in the air and sipping on her drink.

I stood there for a while waiting for her to notice me, until finally Mrs. Davis said to the person on the phone, Hold on one minute.

She said, Yes, gal, what is it?

I responded, It’s Friday, and I am ready to leave.

Oh, your pay.

Yes, ma’am.

She said, Bring me my bag over there.

She took the bag from my hand, tilted it to the side, and scooped up