The Suburban Bitch

By Miss Billie Wong Tiller

Don't be deceived by the title of this book. The Suburban Bitch doesn't detail the delights and woes of suburban living. On the contrary, this book relives the experiences of a young black woman raised and bred in the ghettoes of Detroit. The reader becomes aware of the suffering and self-sacrifice the young woman struggles with throughout her life. Growing up in a family of sixteen that struggles through hunger, poverty, and despair, a young girl yearns for the all-American dream even as she constantly experiences violence, instability, and hatred growing up and in her first marriage. No matter her obstacles, she strives on patiently, and with determination and perseverance, she finds the meaning of unconditional love. Receiving only violence in her first marriage, fate runs her into the arms of another man, and though she still has the ring on her finger from the first marriage, she weds again. Suddenly, she has the life she has always dreamed of—a life of love. Two husbands, two families, two homes, and only one woman. One strong, beautiful black woman. To all of you ladies that have been riding the train called the bullshit train much too long, we must put a stop to all these liars in our lives. Put us first. Now don't get me wrong, if he is over twenty-two years old, he's already gently used. He has six outside kids. Later he wants to tell you those children came as a result of good loving from friendly fire. Most men are full of bullshit—NO EXCEPTIONS. The man I love, will love me, and when he hears my cry, he will pity every groan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645846321

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The Suburban Bitch

Miss Billie Wong Tiller

Copyright © 2020 Miss Billie Wong Tiller

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64584-631-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64584-632-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Behavior of an Unloved Wife

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my sister, Mrs. Warree Village Carter and to my husband, Youngblood Hawk, who loves me when I am right and loves me when I am wrong. Through my storms of life, he has always been by my side.

And to my children and family who love me no matter what.

The book cover and the do-over of makeup and hairdo, with air brushing, were done by the world-renowned Mr. Clifton Perry of Detroit, Michigan.

Also, Miss Billie Wong Tiller outside billboards and magazine ads were done by Mr. Clifton. His pictures make anyone look timeless and beautiful.

Rosa Worth of Washington, MI editor of The Suburban Bitch, by Billie Wong Tiller.

Books will be offered for sale with:

Apple—Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Google—e-book

Digital distribution print

Author/web page publicity

Press release distribution

Outside billboard

Behavior of an Unloved Wife

To me, a bad marriage is like a fifty cent woman married to a quarter man. You hate him too much to stay, and love him too much to go, and he is too big of a jackass to know when he had the very best.

It is a bad feeling when you learn that his outside women have their own keys to his car—and guess what—he disrespects you so much when his side of the family has any kind of family affair that SHE comes and brings her dish and not you. Mrs. Big Bootie comes on all holidays, picnics, vacation trips, birthdays, and most of us wives have to take a number and make a schedule to see the man.

He is something to look at—his teeth are pearly white, he has a full head of long silver fox hair and a close-cut, shaped beard and mustache, like a Viking Hercules. He is college-educated, stands like a gladiator. He has the look of a ram—small, clear, slanted Mongolian-looking eyes and a smile that can break a woman’s heart. And when he puts on his Brooks Brothers suit and that black derby hat, $400 shirt and tie, $1,500 shoes, 14k gold money and tie clip, he is always kind to everyone he meets, and when he steps into a room the men stand up.

As for me, he is the answer to and old gal’s prayers, and when I ask him why he is so ho-ish, he looks at me and says somebody must spread love and joy in this old dark world, and he is just trying to help out by doing his part. And besides, Billie, It’s a poor rat that don’t have but one hole.

Now, this may be a shock to most of you husbands to learn that we have always known we were not the only one, we just did not want to be the last one. A man has to know that his family treats your wife the same way you treat her. If she ain’t nothing to you—guess what—she ain’t nothing to your family. And try not to forget you are not the only one who lives in your home that prays at night. We do, too. We ask God for a young man that doesn’t sleep all night, had good benefits, and we want him young enough to bring us out medication.

Happy Hunting,

Miss Billi Wong Tiller

I

Born: Memphis, Tennessee.

Parents: Mandy (mother) and Bunk (father) Wong. Both married each other without first divorcing former mates.

Mother: From low-class-education family.

Father: From no-class-education family.

Grandmother: Thought that my father was too ignorant to be married to her daughter. Feeling as she did, she detested and rejected all children from this marriage. I favored my father’s side of the family with protruding teeth and large eyes, so darling Granny hated the sight of me. She would frequently call me out by name and slap me upside the head. I did all the heavy housework and always was the last called to eat and had the privilege of dining on leftovers, which was pot-liquor from the beans and crust from the cornbread that the little kids didn’t eat.

I tried to tell my mother how my grandmother treated me, but she would tell me to go somewhere and shut up.

As time passed, my grandmother moved in with us on a permanent basis.

In the early forties and fifties, our neighborhood was known as black-bottom, where the low-class whites and blacks lived. We were all on welfare trying to live from day to day.

I started Duffield School in 1946. I was very sickly, and consequently, I missed many days of school. I saw so many hungry days that often I would get up to go to school and get lost on the way there. I have a brother named Walter-Baby, and had it not been for him, I wouldn’t have found my way home many nights.

There were sixteen of us, and we slept four abreast. My father resented my grandmother’s presence in our home and flatly refused to work for a living.

There were days when we were so hungry that we would steal the dog’s food from the house next door. It seemed like my mother had a new baby every year. There were so many of us that it was like rats running out of the walls.

Walter-Baby and I were among the older of the kids, so we decided to go to work to help feed ourselves. We sold papers, shoveled snow, hauled coal, and even took in laundry and washed cars. We ran errands for people in the neighborhood for five cents.

One day, while Walter-Baby and I were counting what we had taken in from errands that day, the man from next door called me over to his house and asked me to run an errand. I rushed and put on my coat and ran over to his house. When I went in, he had ice cream and candy for me and asked me to sit on his lap to eat it.

I had known this man all my life, and he was a dear friend of our family. Walter-Baby and I had run many errands for him.

All at once, I could feel something slippery going between my legs; I was too afraid to move. When I did decide to jump, he caught me and threatened me with a butcher knife. He said if I screamed, he would kill me. He made me back up to the refrigerator where he got some lard and rubbed it on his penis. He made me stoop over and double into a ball, and he put his penis through my rectum. As I started to scream, he put his hand over my mouth. I bit him and screamed. He put the butcher knife to my throat. After it was over, he made me dress, gave me 9¢, and said if I told it, no one would believe me, and he would kill my folks.

I went home sick enough to die. I crawled into my bunk bed and began to cry so hard that I ran a fever. My mother asked what was wrong. I told her I was sick. She felt my forehead and went and told my grandmother I was sick. She told her that if I would get my black ass up and do some housework, she felt I would get better. I was so afraid; I wouldn’t even tell Walter-Baby. I knew I could trust him to silence, but he would be crazy enough to try to kill the man. The next couple of days, I was too sick to get out of bed.

My father hadn’t been home in three days. So my mother was too worried over him and his women to take me to the doctor.

I began bleeding from the rectum and came down with the piles. Still too afraid to reveal the startling thing that had happened to me, I began to take care of myself. Walter-Baby would trim a bar of soap, wet it, and push the piles up by inserting the soap into my rectum. From then on my whole life changed. I hated my grandmother, loathed my father, and thought my mother was the most stupid woman in the world. The man next door finally left home from fear that I would tell. We also moved.

Then Walter-Baby and I started to attend Campbell School. I was already in special education. When we got to the new school, they put Walter-Baby in special education also. I couldn’t understand that, because I always thought he had so much sense.

Then I found out he was so goddamned dumb; he didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. The tables had turned, and I had to start leading him around. He was easily influenced into trouble. By this time, I had another brother and three more sisters. No father to be seen, and no food to be eaten. Times were extremely hard on Willis Street because of the family getting larger and the welfare cracking down on fatherless newborn babies. By this time, my grandmother had become an invalid, and along with the housework, I had to wait on her too. Times were so hard, I used to have to cut socks in two for socks for my little sisters and brothers. If one wore the top of a sock, the other wore the bottom. We never had a refrigerator and we lived in filth, dirt, roaches, and rats. We all became ill from a fungus and my youngest brother, Clyde, got polio. My brother Esther came down with scarlet fever. When the city physician came out and diagnosed the two diseases, he sent nurses to our schools to pick us up.

We were picked up in a dog-catcher’s truck, and treated like we had bubonic plague. We had to go to Receiving Hospital, where all of us were hospitalized. We were so full of urine, dried stools, and body dirt they gave each of us three baths before being assigned rooms. We stayed over two months for observation and malnutrition. We got so used to three meals a day and being clean that none of us wanted to go home. While there, the welfare had caught up with my father and cut off my mother’s check. She called Arkansas and had her brother come and get her mother. My kind father expressed his sadness in her case and tripped around the corner to his common-law wife’s house and his three kids, leaving my poor mother to try and find a place for us to go. Depressed, bewildered, and despondent, she walked downtown, which was five miles to NBD where she met a white woman named Mrs. Milligan. She was the secretary to Mr. Fisher, president of NBD. My mother’s nose was running, she had a baby diaper on her head, and was wearing tennis shoes and picking at her teeth. She told Mrs. Milligan about all of her troubles. Mrs. Milligan called the welfare office, spoke to one of the head women, and got my mother’s check released. She recognized my mother’s intelligence and asked her if she would like to be a nurse. My mother said she would, but she had no money. Mrs. Milligan asked her if she would go if she paid the fee.

As soon as my mother had her next baby, she went to Goldbird School. We still had to move off Willis Street, because my father had stolen so many checks we could not catch up on our house note. Times were still hard, but things did lighten up.

When my father found out we had moved, he left his woman and moved in with us. My mother was the only one happy to see him.

When I thought about all of the hungry days and cold nights we suffered because of his new family, I hated the sight of him.

By this time I was fourteen, and Walter-Baby was thirteen, and he had started making his famous debuts at the reformatory. The late part of 1952 or early ’53 we moved to 15750 Fairfield. My mother was then off welfare and had started to work two jobs so that she could halfway take care of us.

By this time, Walter was into big time. He had dropped out of school and started stealing so he could have money.

Although my mother was working two jobs, she was living out of her class. She got a new car, furniture, and was trying to buy this house that we lived in.

And my father was still not working. When we would ask why my father didn’t work, she would say that he was sick, and the doctor said that he wasn’t able to work. She always said that his back was bad, and he was unable to hold a job. My sister got a job at the bank because mother couldn’t pay her bills.

The bank let her work there so she could pay off my mother’s debt. I was still unable to get a job, so I had to babysit for my mother’s children and cook, wash, iron, and keep house for her. She would give me ten dollars every six months.

I wanted to die so many times, and I would have taken my life, but I was too poor to buy a razor blade. I had no clothes but the pants Walter stole and gave to me.

Walter had a boyfriend, Leroy. He and Walter did everything together. But Leroy was a lot smarter; he never went to Jackson or did any time. When he and Walter would steal clothes. Leroy would look out for me and would get a pair of pants and shirt to fit me. I would see him so often until he started to act like I was one of the boys. Times were so hard in our house we had no soap to wash our faces.

I remember the last day of school. Walter-Baby sold pop bottles and beer bottles to buy me some cutout shoes and stole me a dress to wear on the last day. I got up that next day and pressed my hair with lard, and I took the pink tablecloth off the dining room table and wrapped it around my waist under my dress for a slip. When I got to school, my teacher took one look at me and fell down laughing at me. And then all of the children in my class started laughing. I put my head up in the air and walked over to my seat.

In a few minutes the room quieted down and the teacher came over to my desk, looked down at me, and said, You know that you will not walk across the stage in that funny-looking get-up, now don’t you?

Then after a few minutes, he said, Billie, I think that it would be best for all concerned if you would not go out of the classroom, or better still, go home.

I got up and pressed down the back of my dress with my hand.

My eyes filled with tears. My head up high, I walked sideways through the class over to the door. When I got out in the hall, I ran down the hall and out the door onto the street.

Once I was outside, I ran down the street. My cutout shoes fell apart. My pink tablecloth came apart and fell off as I was running. I looked down and I could see right through my dress and I