What Lies Beneath!: The Story Behind Shalise

By Shalise S Davern

Growing up in the rough streets of south central Los Angeles, California was not easy for Shalise. She had plans to escape at any means necessary. Shalise grew up quickly as the oldest of seven children with no father and a drug-addicted mother. Her great, great grandmother was left to fulfill the role of both parents. Shalise's main focus was to get her life together. At a very young age, she promised herself that she would always be independent and damned if she would ask for help. She was determined that if she ever became a mother, she would be the best parent to her children. As she grew older, she was distracted from her dreams. This is her story of coming back and making those promises come true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682132401

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Copyright © 2015 Shalise S. Davern

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2015

ISBN 978-1-68213-239-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68213-240-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The Struggles

Making a Statement

The Unexpected

Stepparents

The Return

For Better or Worse

Live and Learn

Cheating

The Change

Eye Opener

Conflict

The Second I Do

chapter 1

The Struggles

Beginning on June 6, 1981, a couple in Los Angeles, California, by the names of May Francis Smith and Leslie Eugene Davern, had gotten married on a nice summer afternoon by the bride’s grandmother who was a minister. The couple had got a little apartment on 39th in Los Angeles, California, and began to start their lives together after being married for some time and enjoying life for what it was worth. It was time for them to jump out the fast life and enter the slow life and have a child, but if you ask me, I didn’t think the couple was really ready to have a child as much as they thought they were. Here’s why! His wife discovered that she was pregnant months later, which was great news, but she also found out that her husband had gotten into some trouble with the law because he was involved in some heavy illegal drug activity that he knew he did not have no business being involved in the first place. His troubles caught up with him, and he did his time for his crime months following. On Thursday, August 25, 1983, it was supposed to be a new start for the two because God blessed them with their first and only child together, but it wasn’t. They welcome her into the world with kisses and lots of love. They named her Shalise S. Davern. But the happiness was short-lived. Shortly after the baby was born, her parents separated for whatever reason, but from my understanding, she always was a happy baby; and when she grew up, she wanted to be a supermodel or an actor, but life does not always turn out the way that we picture it to be. Technically, I never got the real true story about her infant and toddler years besides remembering that she was shoved on to an old-school model floor heater on her fifth birthday and had to be rushed to the hospital and be treated for second-degree burns. But the story must go on because the pages started turning in the baby’s life, some for the better, some for the worse.

Her mother placed a restraining order against her father, restraining him from having any type of contact with his daughter and leaving her mother to become a single parent—temporarily raising the baby on her own. By the way, I am Shalise, and I’m about to give you my life’s story.

Years later, my mother had six more children. I’m the oldest out of five girls and two boys. All of my mother’s children were by different men—scary when you think about it, isn’t it? My mother had many talents, she could sing, dance, and skate her butt off, but she allowed a lot of negativity and negative people get in her way of fulfilling her dreams. One of the most dangerous things that got in her way was trying drugs. I guess it’s true what they say, all it takes is one hit, and then you’re hooked because that is exactly what happened with my mother. See? A lot of people say that drugs is an addiction, but I see it as a disease and a sickness. I had an aunt, uncle, and a couple of cousins that was on drugs as well, but when it’s your own mother, it hit home the most. Well at least for me it did. I felt like a Girl Scout on a scavenger hunt that lost her compass in the woods when it came to my mother. See, it’s crazy how life works, but it is what it is. We all have to deal with it at some point and time in our lives. That’s why it’s called life, shockingly.

I learned later on in life that my dad was the reason that my mother started using drugs. He used my mother as his guinea pig. How is it that you can sit there and use your wife, the mother of your child, as a taste tester for drugs? Also, one of my mother’s weaknesses were men—quite obviously it was. Hell, all of my mother’s children has their own dad. Unfortunately for my mother, in using drugs, she lost herself in this crazy world. She also lost all seven of her children to family members and a close friend of the family. Out of all my mother’s children, her oldest three children had it the worse growing up in our little childhood life before our grandmother and great-great-grandmother a.k.a. BIG MAMA came to the rescue. My mother was living from house to house at times with me and my two younger siblings. My mother got tired of dragging us around with her from house to house, so she called my grandmother to ask her if we can come stay with her for a while. Of course she said yes, but my mother still couldn’t get enough of the streets of Los Angeles, California. My grandmother did the best she could to help my mother out with us even though she lived in the projects. She did not allow that to define who we were going to become in life. She always tried to the best of her ability to make us the happiest children on the block. I remember when she used to take me and my sisters shopping on the first of every month, and I used to always ride on the battery pack of her electric wheelchair. We used to have so much fun until one sunny morning, on April 29, 1992, I was woken up by a loud explosion sound. I remember looking out the bedroom window seeing flames and people yelling, screaming fuck the police. And that’s when I learned my first curse word.

I didn’t understand what was going on at the time. I just ran down the stairs, calling to my grandmother, Granny, Granny, it’s a fire across the street at the liquor store. She said, I know, baby, there’s a riot going on because of the Rodney King case. I guess the people of South Central Los Angeles didn’t find it fair that only two of the police officers that brutally beat that man was found not guilty. The people figured all four of officers should have been arrested. Meaning that we can’t go for ride on granny wheelchair for a while because my job is to keep you and your sisters safe. I still didn’t understand. Being a child, I just want to go for a ride. When everything was over and it was safe to go back outside, I finally got my last ride on my granny’s electric wheelchair.

My mother got involved with another man that lived directly next door to my grandmother’s house. The next morning, my mother got up and went to her new boyfriend’s house, but shortly after being there, my mother got into