Black Child in West Virginia

By Shanika Keiffer

This is the real-life story of a beautiful black woman from West Virginia who was torn from her home at a young age, isolated from society, and raised in the worst way possible.

In this story, you will follow this woman throughout her entire life from being a young girl growing up with her family to being abused and alone, surrounded by strangers in a strange new world.

This book is a real story from the first-person perspective of being institutionalized. The people making money

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640968097

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Black Child in West Virginia

Shanika Keiffer

Copyright © 2019 Shanika Keiffer

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-1-64096-808-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64096-809-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

To all six of my children and my second husband

Chapter 1

My mother, Joan Christian, was fifteen when she had me. I can remember when all of my grandmother’s children lived in the same household. My grandmother and grandfather were still married. My uncles were in one room; my mom and aunts were in another. I pretty much slept with whoever, mostly with my grandmother, downstairs on the couch. I remember how fluffy, soft, and warm she felt to me when I snuggled up beside her.

There was a time where my dad—when he bought me my very first rabbit, I was still crawling at the time. It was like spring when my uncles were cutting the grass with a push mower. I remember him yelling toward the inside of the apartment for someone to come out and get me before I get my fingers cut off. We had this neighbor who was a female. I do not remember how I got upstairs in her bedroom apartment, but I do remember her picking me up in the air, playing with me. I remember having a diaper on at that time, and that I needed to be changed.

My aunt Cynthia came into the apartment up the stairs, and saw this girl playing with me, and she said to her, What are you doing up here with your nasty ass? Within the same apartment complex called South Park in Kanawha City of West Virginia.

We moved fifteen doors down on the left side of the apartment complex because my grandfather, Cleo Christian, had raped my grandmother’s oldest daughter, Mary, from a previous marriage and got pregnant with a daughter named Tonya. My uncle Cleo, Cornelis, and my aunt Mary had moved on to their own apartments.

At South Park housing complex, it was a three-bedroom apartment. Upstairs on the far left was my grandparents’ bedroom, Barbra Gean Christian and Cleo Christian. The middle bedroom was for my uncles, Supremo and Wayne. The third bedroom was my aunt Brenda and Cynthia’s room. I slept in the same bed with Cynthia and Brenda. My aunt Caroline slept downstairs on the couch, and sometimes my cousin Daneil would stay with us. My cousin Daneil is also a child of my aunt Mary, who is the oldest out of ten kids.

One night, my cousin Daneil and I was in the kitchen. I was about four years old at that time. We decided to get into the cocoa powder that’s presugared that you could easily make chocolate milk with.

One day during the winter, there was a blizzard. We had about three foot of snow. Daniel and I wanted to go outside to play, but all of the adults said no because we did not have any coats to put on nor shoes. Brenda told Daniel to jump out the window, and she would wrap me up in a blanket as if she was taking out the trash. Daniel and I were outside, playing with no shoes or coat on. But when my aunt Caroline came in from work, she began to whip us with a belt for playing outside in the snow without having anything to wear.

Later that summer, sometimes at the community center, which is centered in the apartment complex, the community center would have free lunches for the children who lived in that community. Most of the time, they would have baloney sandwiches, chocolate milk, white milk in a carton, apple juice, and orange juices in mini side cups with the silver peel back lids that you would get in school, sometimes peanut butter sandwiches as well. We were then sent home with a block of sharp thick cheddar cheese, which was one of the richest cheeses in America that’s also known as welfare cheese to take back home to our parents.

I remember one day, I was at the community center, and I was surrounded by two girls and one boy. One of the girls had asked me to put a mud pie in my mouth, which was made out of dirt and water. So I squat down to the ground like any other four-year-old child would and began to make my mud pie.

As I was done, the second girl on the right of me had picked up the mud pie. As she placed the mud pie in her hand, she held it up in front of me and said, Now eat it.

I looked at the boy on my left and the two girls. And without even thinking, as kids normally do not do, I said okay.

Then I put the mud pie in my mouth. Of course, these kids ran around the community, saying that I ate mud. I then ran home.

Later that evening, Daniel and I were in