I Was a Virgin When I Married Him but He Caused Me to Be Treated like a Prostitute: My Journey to Becoming Vickie Vicksay It Took 43 Years

By Vicksay Baby Moten-Richardson

My name is Vicksay Baby Moten-Richardson; I am the last of fourteen children. I realize now why I am so different in so many ways, not in a bragging way but in a way that God has laid it on my heart to share my life in this book. Not too many people are named Baby. It was not until I was eighteen and graduating from high school when I revealed that my middle name was Baby. When the principal of the school called my name and I walked up to get my diploma, it took over ten minutes to stop the class of 1974 from laughing. What a wonderful memory that was.

For many years, I felt like I was a nobody, even though forty-two years ago I bought a new home when I was twenty-two years old with my sister, and she still lives there to this day. I was voted most likely to succeed. I completed high school in three years instead of four. I was number fifty-six in a class of 560, grade-wise. I would have ranked higher, but because I was graduating a year earlier, it caused my ranking to be calculated differently from the students who had attended high school for four years.

I received three four-year scholarships to the University of Arizona. I completed a twenty-four-month computerized accounting program in eighteen months while raising four extremely sickly and one very difficult foster child and while running a full-time day care from my home. I took twenty-four classes in those eighteen months and received twenty-three As and one B. Of course, I give God the glory because He is the only one who gives us strength. I was a straight-A student.

Since I was in first grade, I have always assisted children with learning disabilities. However, the one thing that I am proudest of was that I married a virgin. Inside I was this sad and disappointed little girl that I thought no one would love or care for. And one more thing that I am proud of is that with the only two men I have been intimate with in my whole sixty-four years of life, I took my wedding vows first. But that same person whom I just told about filed bankruptcy several times, moved over fifty times, and lost over fifteen cars and over forty jobs, all because of pride, disobedience to God, and letting people speak negativity into my life. It is very difficult to share your weakness with the world and those whom you love and know. But it is more liberating to know that my story is going to help many people, especially women, not to make the mistakes I have made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662439735

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I Was a Virgin When I Married Him but He Caused Me to Be Treated like a Prostitute

My Journey to Becoming Vickie Vicksay It Took 43 Years

Vicksay Baby Moten-Richardson

Copyright © 2021 Vicksay Baby Moten-Richardson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-3972-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3973-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Every Time You Fall, Get Back Up And Keep Fighting

The Age Of Birth To Five Years Old

Mount Olive

February 7, 1981—Here Comes The Stupid Bride

Hello, 2009

Just Let Me Be A Follower Of Christ

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY HUSBAND, MY MOTHER, MY SISTERS, AND MY FRIEND MERVIE LOUISE GOSSETT (PEACHES), WHO ENDED HER JOURNEY HERE ON EARTH (September 12, 2020). Rest in heaven, my friend.

This book is dedicated to all those men and women who have endured hell on earth like I have but kept standing. Stay strong and look to hills, from whence cometh your help. Your help comes from the Lord (Psalms 121:1–2).

My name is Vicksay Baby Moten-Richardson; I am the last of fourteen children. I realize now why I am so different in so many ways, not in a bragging way but in a way that God has laid it on my heart to share my life in this book. Not too many people are named Baby. It was not until I was eighteen and graduating from high school when I revealed that my middle name was Baby. When the principal of the school called my name and I walked up to get my diploma, it took over ten minutes to stop the class of 1974 from laughing. What a wonderful memory that was.

Not too many people are named after a dog, so when I was fifteen, just to be funny, I got a dog and named it after my mother. Her name was Arlishie, and I named my dog Ishie. She got a good laugh out of that one. My enemies might say I acted like a dog, but God knows my heart and I tried hard not to act like a dog, at least the bad parts of a dog, because dogs can be very loving, caring, and loyal. Not too many people have the blessed number five in the month, day, and year; they were born 5/25/56 (wow). The number 5 in the Bible is a symbol of God’s goodness and God’s grace. Google says it is also one of the most widely mentioned words in the Bible. It is also a number that symbolizes God’s kindness and favor to humankind. The number 25 is the day I was born; is 5 times 5 makes grace upon grace. Trust me, after you read this book, you will see that God’s grace is the reason I am able to write this book today. Last but not least, not too many people are a double 7 (the fourteenth child), God’s number twice.

My mother was the opt-o-mom before the opt-o-mom. I must always add that we all have the same mother and father. My mother was a God-fearing woman, and she raised me to be a God-fearing woman. I do not think I even come close to her dedication to God. It was her teaching, and an example of a virtuous woman is why I wanted to be sure I pleased her in every way possible. I wanted her to be proud of me, and most of all, I wanted God to be pleased with my life. Not only had I read in the Word of God that sex before marriage was fornication and that fornication was a sin, but my mother, thank God for her, drilled it in my head, and that is why I made sure that on February 7, 1981, I walked down the aisle with my head held high and truly honoring what a white dress used to mean.

I now take pride in who I am. I did not always feel good about myself. I grew up in a family that made fun of everything that was not right about your body. If you had ugly toes, they were made fun of. If you had bad breath, that was made fun of. BBQ is what they called me, Boil Breath Queen. They said my breath smelled like boiled eggs. If you were a humpback, that was made fun of. If you wore corrective shoes, that was made fun of. Even though I laughed and sometimes cried, little did they know I was overly sensitive and grew up with many, many complexes. As I look back in hindsight, I now realize that is why I made a lot of stupid decisions in life. Low self-esteem has contributed to a lot of the difficulties I have had to face.

Since my childhood, I have learned to overlook comments that were made about me, because GOD made us in His image, and He made us the way He wanted us to be, and no one should ever choose a body part of another individual and make them feel bad about who they are.

For many years, I felt like I was a nobody, even though forty-two years ago, I bought a new home when I was twenty-two years old with my sister, and she still lives there to this day. I was voted most likely to succeed. I completed high school in three years instead of four. I was number fifty-six in a class of 560, grade-wise. I would have ranked higher, but because I was graduating a year earlier, it caused my ranking to be calculated differently from the students who had attended high school for four years. I received three four-year scholarships to the University of Arizona, completed a twenty-four-month computerized accounting program in eighteen months while raising four extremely sickly and one very difficult foster child and while running a full-time day care from my home. I took twenty-four classes in those eighteen months and received twenty-three As and one B. Of course, I give God the glory because He is the only one who gives us strength. I was a straight-A student. Since I was in first grade, I have always assisted children with learning disabilities. However, the one thing that I am proudest of was that I married a virgin. Inside I was this sad and disappointed little girl that I thought no one would love or care for. And one more thing that I am proud of is that the only two men I have been intimate with in my whole sixty-four years of life. I was married to them first. So I thought, keep reading.

I had fooled people for years. While I directed the choir at church and while I taught Sunday school and led the purity class, I always felt inferior to my middle sister. I felt dumb and insignificant compared to her. I must admit I was a little mischievous and often got in trouble at school, but every teacher I had that my middle sister had first would always say, "Are you sure you are Darlene Moten’s sister you are nothing alike.

Little did they know at home, Darlene would make cookies with my mother’s flour, sugar, salt, and so on and then charge us twenty-five cents a cookie. Of course, I had no money and I really, really wanted a cookie, so I would steal one, and then my mother would get me. Darlene would wear my clothes, and then if I wore something of her, she scratched me and made me take it off. One time when we lived on Water Street, I went in the backyard to hang clothes without shoes on. A bunch of weed stickers got in my feet, and I could not walk. I was trapped in the backyard. I called out for Darlene to help me, and she said, No, you should have worn some shoes out there. I told her, Screw you then, and when I struggled in the house, my mother met me with a plunger and beat me for saying Screw you then. She was the mean one.

People at the church even loved her. Each year my already low self-esteem would get lower and lower when they picked her to be the purity class leader at church. I wanted to be the purity class leader so bad, I eventually just had to volunteer to be picked. It was rumored because of my truthful mouth, people at church did not like me. As a result, I grew up resenting her, but deep down within, I longed for the praise and the approval she got from everyone. However, now I realize I would rather be who I am wherever I am than to be liked by people because they don’t know the real me. It took me years, but now I take pride in being who I am, wherever I go.

I guess this is where I first started hating phony people. My mother taught me that God sees us wherever we are, and I am so glad at a young age, I figured out that you cannot fool God. By no means am I saying Darlene was phony. She has never been a phony person in her life. To be honest with you, as I look back, I really do not think she was even aware of how sweet she was at church. She was just being herself and not purposely trying to fool anyone. Anybody who is reading this now and tries to make a big deal out of it can kiss my grits. Darlene and I have laughed about this and talked about this since we were young adults. Do not let the DEVIL make you read more into this than what is being said. This took place over forty-five years ago. This little part of my early years is necessary to tell because it leads to who and what I have become today.

Stay with me as I tell my story. You will see later that Darlene and I became not only sisters but best friends. She is my rock, and God knows I would not have made it without her. I love her dearly.

I am going to begin this book by telling you why I am writing this book. Then I am going to take you through each stage of my life. The middle stage is where I will tell you about. I was a virgin when I married, but he treated me like a prostitute. The stage after that, I will share with you my marriage of twenty-nine years and what I had encountered, endured, and learned in the first forty-three years of my life. I am sure when you are finished, you too will agree that there is a God who sits high and looks low, like my mother used to say. It is hard to believe that one person could go through so much and endure so much from the time they were born until now. Only God can help you through the things I have been through. So continue to read and be blessed. Continue to read and learn what to do and not to do with your life. Continue to read and learn about God’s goodness and God’s grace.

My husband is a very private person, so I have to be incredibly careful about how I write this book. I fear God more than anyone in this world. I know God wants me to write this book. It is not to make anyone look bad or feel bad. It is to tell couples all over this world, especially ones in the church, that what God has put together, let no man put asunder (Matthew 19:6). It was prophesied into my life when I was fifteen that I was going to be world-renowned. Since then, it has been prophesied to me three more times that I was going to be world-renowned. That same prophet that told me I was going to be world-renowned when I was fifteen also told my mother on the same night that she was going to lose one more child. My mother had already lost seven children. My sister and I thought it was one of us, so we gave up our little sinful ways of listening to secular music, and I guess that was it because we were CHURCH GIRLS, but it was my brother Bobby, who passed away. So I know this prophet is from God, who told me I was going to be world-renowned, and it is through my books.

That same prophet who told my mother about losing one more child and prophesied to me about my life of fame also told another church member that night that their mother was going to pass away, and a few weeks later, she passed away. I am determined to finish this book so that God can use me and get the glory out of my life. A lot of the people who have hurt me are dead today. So if you know you have hurt someone or did someone wrong, do not let the sun go down on your wrath (Ephesians 4:26). Humble yourself and ask them to forgive you. You should not leave this world knowing you did not ask a person to forgive you. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you hear of their death, and you know this person did you wrong before their death but did not have enough God in them to ask forgiveness. Thank God I forgave each and every one of them because I refuse to stay in bondage.

Every Time You Fall, Get Back Up And Keep Fighting

While in my hospital bed, when I was dying from cancer, and I will get into that later, I had a dream about being on The Oprah Winfrey Show. At that time, she only had The Oprah Winfrey Show on regular TV, and a few years later, she purchased her own TV network. I just recently went to see her in Los Angeles and was able to witness her falling. It was so bizarre how she fell. However, she may not know it until she reads this book and I am on her show that it symbolized our life. Her last show aired on May 25, 2011, my fifty-fifth birthday, no coincidence. The number 5 is usually considered to be a symbol of goodness and the grace of God.

Oprah told us at that workshop how when she was seven and had to sleep outside at night on the porch because of the color of her skin, she went on to say that she prayed to Jesus, and He watched over her each night. She also told how she became pregnant when she was young. Of all the tours she had conducted, this would be the one she fell. I immediately knew what was going on because that is how my life has been too. Every time Oprah has fallen in life, she has gotten right back up until she stayed up.

Someone ran to help her, but she did not need their assistance because the same Jesus who watched over her on that porch at seven years old was the same Jesus that helped her up that day. I said all that to say this: it was no coincidence that I was there to see her fall. It was all in the plan of God. Every time I have fallen, and God knows it has been many times, Jesus was there to help me back up. We may not see Him physically, but He is right there spiritually.

Oprah got back up like she was fifteen years old and not in her sixties. I saw that day why God wanted me there. I had tried to get the money back from my bank for my ticket for almost four months. The bank returned the funds and then took them back out again. I presented reason after reason why I was not going to be able to attend on February 29, 2020. I had lost my ticket, and the email address where they sent my tickets had been lost. But God wanted me there to get that text message number she gave out. How awesome is that a woman of her stature answers text messages from people like me. I have enclosed a copy of the correspondence from the bank as proof of me trying to get out of going. God wanted me there to witness her fall and how well she got back up. God wanted me there to hear her favorite scripture and to hear her testimony.

That was just the start of how God is going to connect us, for this reason. I cannot let the devil stop me from completing this book. As you will read, you will see it has been many years that have gone by, and I am just completing this book. I let depression, poverty, people, health, and stress stop me. My heart goes out to those who have been affected by coronavirus and who have lost love ones; however, with the kids out of school, I have no excuse not to get this book done. Homeschooling four kids is not easy, but with the help of God, I am going to finish this book so that God’s divine will can be performed in my life, and I can bless someone else who reads my story. This is the email I sent to my bank.

Reimbursement of Vivid Seats Tickets for Oprah Winfrey

Vicksay Richardson

Dec 11

2019, 3:04 PM

To: [e-mail]

My name is Vicksay Richardson my member number is, For the past six weeks, I have been working with Ernesto at the Menifee Branch. I provided him with documentation concerning tickets I purchased to see Oprah Winfrey in February of 2020. Right after I purchased my tickets, I heard on the news several people were turned away from a concert in Los Angeles due to Ticketmaster not honoring tickets purchased through Vivid Seats for a Ticketmaster Event. I immediately contacted School’s First to issue a credit and file a dispute. I was given a conditional credit for $10.07 for the insurance and $161.14 for the ticket. After you researched the investigation, you discovered I had purchased insurance and as a result, the conditional credits were reversed 10/25/2019. I contacted the insurance company in pursuit of getting a refund. I was told by Betsy @10:46 a.m. the only way to get a refund would be the original ticket, the original method it was paid for and a validate excuse for not attending. I had two of the requirements but the first one the original tickets were never sent to my email address. When I contacted vivid seats via their website, there is no other way to contact them this is the response I got, please see attachments #1 consisting of 5 pages. I tried more than ten times to contact them via email, so that I could get my original ticket, and this was the response I got each time and finally, they stopped responding altogether. I have also enclosed proof that they do have my email address see attachments 2,3, 4, and 5. Attachments 2 and 3 are inviting me to attend the Oprah Winfrey event in Los Angeles how ironic is that???

Finally, attachment number 6 shows even with insurance, they have no intention of refunding any money. I had given this information to Ernesto but someway somehow it was misplaced. I am asking you to please refund the money back to me. I am unable to use the insurance because I never received my original ticket and now, they are saying I do not exist. END OF EMAIL SENT TO MY BANK TRYING TO GET A REFUND.

So you see, when God has a purpose and a plan for your life, he knows exactly how it is to come to pass. Here is my story, and here is my life. Be blessed and learn what not to do with your life.

The Age Of Birth To Five Years Old

May 25, 1956–1961

When I was four years old, my mother asked Aunt Hattie Mae to come from Detroit and see her baby. Aunt Hattie Mae often told me (she had such a good memory) that when she got to Tucson, she met a grown woman, not a four-year-old. At four years old, I would babysit the saint’s babies while they sang in the church choir. I told my brothers and sisters what to do, especially Peter.

When I was six months old, my daddy had a major stroke from being hit in the head by two white men and was hospitalized in Phoenix for eight years. I did not know him, and when we went to visit him, I only called him Daddy because my brothers and sisters called him Daddy. I later found out my mother had shared some things with my sister concerning him. It turns out that he had more problems than we knew about. As a result, some of the things that have transpired in our family was a direct result of his strange ways. For years I wondered where some of the dysfunction came from in my family, like wife-beating and child molestation. My mother was one of the smartest women I know. She and her siblings were so close and loving. I knew it did not come from the Harris side.

My sister and I would often talk about how whenever my mother’s siblings’ children get together, like at a family reunion, it is one of my mother’s children who seemed to have a problem. My mother was wise, and I am sure if her marriage had not been arranged, she would have chosen a better person for a husband. It hurts me to my heart to see children suffer because a person just wanted to have sex (not my mother,) and a child does not know their other parent. As a result, that child has to grow up feeling left out and being raised in a single-parent home.

Because my daddy was hospitalized when I was six months old and died when I was eight years old, I always longed for a father figure in my life. I would watch my friends who had fathers, and deep down within, I would be sad because I did not have a father. So I can imagine what a child goes through when their absent parent is still alive but not active in their life. A woman carries that baby and builds a certain bond. I did a report in college about a single-family home, and way back in the seventies, children were highly affected by single-family homes. So, ladies, before you bring a child into this world, PLEASE EVALUATE THE MAN. I made a terrible mistake, and that is why I am here to help whoever I can. PRAISE GOD I did not have children with him. Keep reading; it is the title of this book.

When a woman just has sex with any man and conceives, when the child turns twelve and thirteen, we want to know what is wrong with the child. Well, you had him/her by a drug addict and a molester. You had them by a woman beater and a homeless person, so what do you expect the child to turn out to be? Women, please start making better choices when it comes to the men you sleep with because it affects the child. I know my life was inadvertently affected by the person chosen for my mother to marry, and as a result, I have suffered.

Molestation

1960

I held this in for years, and in my forties, I shared with my sister that one of our very close family members had sexually molested me. It first started when I was four, and the last time it took place, I was fifteen. She, too, told me the person had done the same thing to her. What was funny, they treated us like we were the perpetrator. It was so hard for so many years to watch other people and family members think this person was so great and fantastic, while especially me, I was put down. The day I was hospitalized, he was pretending to play with me while he had his hands in my pants. I collapsed, and the next thing I knew, I was on my way to the hospital. I think he became so afraid that he stopped messing with me until I was fifteen.

At the age of fifteen, he tried to feel my breast, and with the look I gave him, he knew that I knew it was not an accident and that he was touching me inappropriately. One of the worse incidents that took place was in the bathroom when we lived on La Paz in the Projects. He took his private part out and placed it in my vagina. It did not penetrate, or I was too young to know what penetration was. I never told my mother because I think back then, molestation was not as talked about as it is now, and I just went around for the next thirty-some-odd years very, very leery of this person and watching and wondering who else they may have bothered.

I got up enough nerve to ask my niece a few years ago, and she too fell prey to his evil ways. What a shame. Did that change my life? Yes, it did. Did it affect some of the choices I made in life? Yes, it did. Did it make me learn not to trust? Yes, it did. What was funny, after my father died, my mother would say she was never going to remarry because she did not trust a stepfather around her girls. Little did she know, we were already sleeping with the enemy in so many words.

This person was and still is the strangest person I have ever met in my life. I have never been asked by this person for forgiveness, but I forgive him because I refuse to stay in bondage over what someone else has done to me. I often tell my husband how it hurts when someone knows they have done me wrong but do not have enough God in their heart to ask me for forgiveness. I am not reaping what I sow because I will ask a fly to forgive me.

Thank God for my mother. She drilled it in me about not letting the sun go down on your wrath (Ephesians 4:26). She taught me, and I have lived by that. Thank you, Jesus. Even if you are right, ask for forgiveness. My mother would always say, if the person dies, at least the last thing they will remember about you is that you asked them to forgive you. How I wish some people who have hurt me so deeply were raised by my mother. I have watched over sixteen people die who hurt me and never asked me to forgive them. It makes you wonder about their souls. My pastor’s wife in San Bernardino would always ask me, Why do you apologize to people when you know you are right? I told her it was instilled in me from a child.

A Beating Of A Lifetime

1960

In a few paragraphs, I am going to tell you a lot more about the projects where I lived until I was twelve years old. This took place in the project, but it was just before I went into the hospital. I was still four years old, almost five, and my mother’s brother Uncle Clyde came to visit with a male friend. Uncle Clyde was fresh out of prison. My mother yelled, Where is Vickie? and I said, Here I am in the car with Uncle Clyde’s friend. I had made the terrible mistake of drinking out of the man’s cup. It is still a blur to me, how fast she got me out of the car, but before I realized, I had been lifted out of the car by force. I was going around and around in circles as my mother beat the stew out of me. She had me by one hand as she swung and beat my butt with the other. Boy, how I wished it were after being hospitalized when the doctors had told my mother she could not spank me. Now that I think about it, it might have been that beating that put me in the hospital. LOL. No, I thank God for every lick she gave me. It made me who I am today. When she got through with me, for years, I did not want to even look at a man. And you could not pay me to get in a car with a man. This beating is probably why I married a virgin. LOL.

Hospitalization

1961

At the age of five, after I collapsed while being molested by a family member again, I was rushed to the hospital. I was hospitalized for four months and eight days. It was discovered that I had a heart murmur and rheumatic fever. When they told my mother they were going to have to keep, me she began to cry. She told the doctor that she had lost her eighteen-year-old son in the same hospital with the exact same thing (Elrey). I thought to myself, Am I going to die? If I recall correctly, I asked my mother if I was going to die, and she said, No, baby. She began to cry, and that is when I comforted her and said, Mama, I am going to be okay. I had such a strong mother. I get my strength from her. I was little, but I felt this peace inside of me, and I touched my mother’s shoulder again and told her do not cry and that I was going to be okay. At this point, she had already lost six children.

The next few months were rough. The first month I was in the hospital, I had to be put in a cubicle. No one could come into my room but my mother, and she had to wear a mask and be covered with a gown. Because of my family history, my chances of living were not good. I was only able to speak to my brothers and sisters through the window. It is so funny how when you are that little, you really do not know how dysfunctional your family really is. At that time, I did not know I was being molested and loved my family dearly. I cried because I could not touch them.

We were poor and living in the projects. The only hospital you could go to was the county hospital. A month later, I was taken out of the cubicle, and I was put in a large room with seven other minors.

I watched two children die in that hospital. One had been hit by a car, and the other one had heart and breathing problems. I guess my sleeping disorder took place at a young age because I could not sleep or eat in that hospital. I pretended to be asleep when they covered the eight-year-old up who had been hit by a car. He was right across from my bed. I prayed for him, but God had other plans. I heard the nurses when they said he is dead. I pretended to be asleep as they took him away. Every time Brother Shelby came to visit me, I asked him to pray for the little baby who was next to me, who had to be in a bubble. After Brother Shelby prayed for that baby, they took him out of the bubble, and I asked if I could hold him. He was later discharged and went home. At the age of five, I learned that prayer changes things. Then a few weeks later, after the first child had died, very early in the morning, that same sound of nurses rushing in, and a scary feeling of death entered the room again, and the young man who had some type of breathing problem and heart trouble was pronounced dead as well. It was a little more difficult to see him because we were on the same side of the room. His bed was the first bed, and I was the last bed, but I heard the nurses say he was dead. So here I was, only five years old, and I had witnessed two children die in the same room with me. I was terrified of hospitals for years. I could hardly go and visit someone in the hospital without getting sick to my stomach.

It was touch and go with me in the hospital. I hated the hospital food because my mama was such a good cook. I get a lot of my cooking skills from her. I refused to eat their food, and as a result, I was losing a lot of weight. However, the doctors could not understand why I was losing weight because every time the nurses picked up my food tray, there was no food on it. Little did they know I was giving it away. So they fooled me one day, and the doctor himself decided to look in the window after they fed me and saw I was giving my food away. So they told me, If you do not eat your food, we are going to have to feed you through your nose.

I was only five years old. I am like, Yeah right, you are going to stuff a sandwich through my nose.

The nurses and the doctors laughed and said, No, we’re going to put a tube down your nose and feed you liquids.

Why would anybody tell a five-year-old THAT? It almost scared the living daylights out of me, and I called their bluff. It was a thick red tube. I can still see it fifty-nine years later like it was yesterday. They prepped me and started the tube up my nose.

I screamed, Okay, you win, and I started eating my food even though it was awful.

September 1961

When my mother was given the opportunity to take me home on the weekends, she started taking me around to the saint’s house at Mount Olive Church of God in Christ. I guess when you are a mouth, your mouth starts young. She was so happy that I was going to live that she could not wait until I came home permanently to take me to the saint’s house who had been praying for me. The first weekend I was allowed to come home, she took me to a lady’s house that lived in the project with us. Lord help me, my mouth said, Your toes were black when I went in the hospital, and they are still black now. Needless to say, my mama was so embarrassed, she would have turned red if she was any lighter. So she took me to the next saint’s house, and I told this one, You were fat when I went in the hospital and you still fat. My mother was mortified. The next weekend she thought she would try it again, so she took me to one more saint’s house, and I told her, You had gold around your teeth when I went in the hospital, and you still have gold around your teeth now.

My mother very politely put her hand over my mouth and said, This is the end of your visits to the saint’s house.

WHY? I SAID. LOL.

For the whole four months and eight days I was in the hospital, I had to have some type of needle in my arm or hip. If they were not drawing blood, they were giving me some type of shot in my hip. I felt like a human pin pad. You know, the ones your mother used to stick her pins in. The millennials do not much about that.

This is where my excessive cleanliness came in at. Every day, twice a day, you got a bath, so when I came home from the hospital, I insisted that I get a bath twice a day. I remember one time my mama purchased a little tiny white tub so she could put it by her bed and put water in. My brain just thought it needed to sit in water. It did not matter what time we came home from church. I insisted that I get my second bath. I bathed so much that I washed the natural oils from my body, and to this very day, I deal with overly dry skin.

In the hospital, we got graham crackers and orange juice every night before we went to sleep. Now that I think about it, that is probably how I was staying alive because for the first month after coming out of the cubicle, I refused eat. So when I came home from the hospital, my mama had to give me graham crackers and orange juice every night for like a year. I see why my siblings said she spoiled me. I did not see it until I was in my forties that she really did spoil me. When you think about it, I was her fourteenth child, she had already lost several children, and now her last child was still alive, and it seemed like she was going to be okay. So you spoil them, I guess. I thought about it one day, and she did order my clothes from a company called Spiegel. She purchased my siblings’ clothes at the secondhand store. She would wash their clothes and starch and iron them, and they looked brand-new. My mouth again would wait until one of my siblings said, Oh, thank you, Mama, and I would say, You just think that is new? Mama got that at Value Village. Shame on me.

Because of being in the hospital, I was not able to start first grade on time. When I was released from the hospital, I didn’t get good news. The doctors told my mother I would not live past the age of fourteen. What a coincidence the number of the child born to her. I am her fourteenth child. They told her if I got a sore throat, I had to be rushed to the hospital. They told her I would never be able to run track or do anything like a normal child would be able to do. BUT GOD! Stay with me.

The next few years were tough for me. I was taken to the hospital all the time, but because of the prayers of a righteousness mother, and the saints at Mt. Olive Church, I stand here today a living testimony of God’s healing power.

I ran track and won several first-place ribbons. I played every sport there was from hockey to soccer and was very good. I did gymnastics, and if my mother was into sports and if I had thought she would have supported me, I was good enough to go to the Olympics in track and field. I won first place softball throw awards. But back then, everything was a sin. So our parents did not pursue that type of extra-curricular activities. Did I hold that against her? NEVER. The type of person I was, if fame and fortune had hit me, then I probably would have forgotten about God.

To this day, I LOVE sports. I was the basketball and softball captain of my teams.

Six To Eleven Years Old

1962

Due to hospitalization, I was seven years old when I started first grade and a year behind. I do not know what happened, but the doctor had told my mother that he was going to send a tutor for me in the hospital, but that never took place. I loved school so much, and I loved helping the teacher. One day in first grade, I had to use the restroom, and I did not want to stop helping the teacher, and before I knew it, I stood in front of the whole class and wet on myself. My middle sister was still in the same school, and they called her to walk me home. As we walked through the courts of the projects, one of the neighbors yelled, School is out already? and my middle sister said, "NO, SHE PEED ON HERSELF." I had nightmares about that for weeks. Now I try and be sympathetic with children who wet on themselves. I try hard not to embarrass them. I knew what devastation that had on my life.

The Crippled Children’s Clinic

1963

I was a year behind because of being in the hospital. I later caught up. I’ll tell you about that when I go into my high school years. These next few years were not good years either. I had to go to the hospital all the time. I went to a place called the Crippled Children’s Clinic on Broadway in Tucson, Arizona. I had to go there twice a month for several years. Thank God we have come a long way. It was actually belittling to be called the Crippled Children’s Clinic. When I went there each month, it was to get a checkup and a month’s supply of penicillin. Every month once again, I had to witness sick children. I guess this is when God put love down in my heart for children who were sick or needing special attention. For a long time, when I entered the room, I would get sick and throw up. I was well in my thirties before I could stand to even look at a person in a wheelchair without getting sick. I guess this is why I have had a lot of understanding about the trauma foster children receive at a young age. What we face in our youth certainly affects us later in life, especially the first five years of our life.

At the Crippled Children’s Clinic, my regular doctor whom I had seen for many months and I felt extremely comfortable with was out this day. I still remember his name, but I am not going to say it. He was replaced by a substitute doctor on this checkup. I can still describe him to a tee. He was about six feet tall, was about two hundred and forty-five pounds, and was bald. (With God as my witness, at sixty-four years old, I can still see it like it was yesterday.) He was examining me, and during the exam, he stuck his finger in my vagina. I said, Doctor——never does that, and he stopped and took his finger out of my vagina. I told my mother, bless her sweet soul, that the doctor touched me funny, and I did not like him. Once again, she said nothing, but later, he did it to the wrong child, and it was reported. I told my mother, See, I told you he was touching me wrong. I should have started the Me Too movement then, but I was only seven and black. Who was going to believe me? Because my mother grew up during segregated times in Texas, she had a fear of people (especially white people).

I was a high-risk factor guess all of my life. Even with the coronavirus, I am a high-risk factor. Infection had to be kept out of my system, or I would die. Point blank I would die. I was young and stupid and pretended to take my medication. I did not know the seriousness of the matter. See, kids, this is why you cannot fool me now; I did the same thing at your age. Because of my ignorance and stubbornness, at one bimonthly checkup, my blood work was not showing enough antibodies in my blood to fight off disease. I had no other choice than to tell my doctor I was pretending to take my medication, and I was throwing them away. Once again, my behavior mortified my mother. She was so shocked, but I had advantage because the doctor had told her I could not be spanked. Boy, did I take advantage of that. Later, I will share with you why this did not last long (her not spanking me).

So after my mother got over her embarrassment, she asked the doctor what can we do about the lack of antibodies in her blood. He replied, We can give her a shot once a month. I had been going to this clinic for years. By this time, I was eleven, almost twelve years old. I said, I can handle that no problem. All those shots I got in the hospital. NO PROBLEM. The first few months of getting the shot, the doctor suggested was great. Times have changed. My mother did not even have to go in with me. She stayed in the car, and all I had to do was go in the clinic, get the shot, and leave.

All the nurses the months before would prep me and take their time to give me the shot. This day, this witch of a nurse was having a bad day. She did not prep me. She just said, Stand here, and took that long needle and injected it into my hip bone. I came out walking cripple and crying. I said, Mama, she hurt me. I can barely walk. Sweet little Arlishie just drove off. I said, Mama, you need to go and tell her something. I guess this is why I will stop and tell the head person of any organization when something happens to one of my children or me. I felt so unloved that day. I could not walk for three days and had to stay at home from school. To this very day, at sixty-four years old, the place where she stuck that needle in my bone still hurts from time to time. LIKE THE OLD FOLKS SAY WHEN THE WEATHER CHANGES.

Because I was such a special case and had lived, the doctors used me as a teaching model. That was fine before I started getting a chest. And now I had to lay there with my newly growing boobs in front of strangers who were studying to be doctors and nurses. Once again, I told my mother, being the mouth I was, Why do I have to let them look at me? I do not want anyone looking at my chest.

She just smiled and said, You will be okay. I have to add this about my mother one time when she took me for my checkup. I have no idea what made me tell her this, but as we were leaving the clinic, I told my mother O’Reilly’s is having a sale. O’Reilly’s was a Chevrolet car dealer.

My mother asked me, Which way O’Reilly’s?

I said it, To the right.

She turned out the parking lot and went up the road on Broadway and came home with a brand-new 1974 Chevrolet Impala. I was like, Mama, are you serious? She said it was her retirement car. She kept that car for years, and when it was ten years old, it only had ten thousand miles on it. Now back to my story.

I got so tired of being rushed to the emergency room for a sore throat. I got strep throat all the time. This time I was smart enough to take the pills because after that shot in the hip, I refused to get another shot. I was under the strict care of a physician for the next ten years.

My Mouth Continues

1967

Like I mentioned before, my mother had to take me back and forth to the county hospital all the time in between the bimonthly clinic visits. When you were poor and could not pay a doctor, you were not treated genuinely nice. We would be piled in the waiting room like sardines, mostly blacks and Hispanics. We would wait for hours at a time. No one was even being called. After what seemed like a six-hour wait for a child, I was finally called. When I got back there where the doctors were, I said loudly to all the doctors and nurses, No wonder nobody is being called, you all are back here drinking coffee and talking. This how I know God wants me to be an advocate for people. People do not scare me when it comes to telling the truth. WHATEVER I SAID