Through Hateful Eyes

By Tonya Michelle Nelson

I find myself still asking the question, what is my purpose in life? It remains unanswered. Although sometimes when I come up with new ideas about changing the trajectory of my life, it becomes my purpose for the moment. Then reality hits, and I'm back to asking the familiar question, what is my purpose in life?

My mother was not the motherly type; she never hugged, kiss, or told my siblings and I that she loved us until July 2011, the year and month of her death. Unfortunately, being that it was decades later in our lives, it felt foreign to us. The verbal abuse and neglect that we endured overpowered those words that she spoke on her deathbed.

My father whom we lost on March 2010 played a role in how dysfunctional our family lives were. He fathered twelve-plus children, never really paid child support, but always told us that he loved us. My firstborn, whom I lost by murder at age sixteen in 2005, still haunts my thoughts. I was told that each year it gets easier. I'm still waiting. Throughout my trials and tribulations, I was able to accomplish obtaining my masters, bachelors, associates degrees and raising my youngest alone. I am a survivor, and yet the question remains, what is my purpose in life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781637840818

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Through Hateful Eyes

Tonya Michelle Nelson

ISBN 978-1-63784-080-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-081-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Tonya Michelle Nelson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Grandma's Seeds

Mama Doesn't Believe in God

Daddy Was So Damn Smooth

Plantation Niggah

Motherless Child

I Am Michelle

The Strange Car

Where's My Baby!

Why Would You Not Want Free Cable?

I Prayed, Hang on, William

Patrick, You Are My Shining Star

Crabs in the Barrel

The Motto: Him and Them

About the Author

For my sons, William Lee and Patrick Maurice

Getting it out in the open is my true therapy.

Preface

When I think about when I was last happy or when I felt true happiness, I think about my high school years. This always brings me back to my original question, have I ever been truly happy in my adult years? The answer is no. My answer is not because I had to pay my own bills or take care of myself without the help of my mother. Shit, to be real, I was fending for myself during my childhood. I mean, my mother cooked and cleaned and provided what she called the bare necessities for my brother, sister, and me. By that she meant a roof over our heads, food, and clothing. I get it, she was doing it all on her own, and from the way she treated us, it was not by choice. You see, my daddy was what they called back in the day a rolling stone. Shit, he was tall, dark, and fine as hell. He didn't have a chance out there, and the disrespectful-ass females did not care that he had a wife and children. He would not turn them down either, so my mother didn't have a chance of a fairy-tale ending with him. My half-siblings and my mother's children were all on the same steps. Shit, stairsteps my ass.

In total, my daddy had twelve kids, and they were popping up like jiffy popcorn, and the excitement of having more siblings quickly wore off. Somehow, through the dysfunction of my family, I still managed to find happiness in my teenage years. I had school, Withrow High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Yes, this was my family, my real family. High school was how I was able to escape the verbally abusive, non-nurturing, loveless household where I was guaranteed the bare necessities of life. Then at age seventeen, that's when the shit really hit the fan; my life was fucked! My mother kicked me out, which was normal for her.

She kicked both me and my sister out on a regular basis. I started living with a dude, my so-called dope-dealing boyfriend, his father, younger brother, sister, and hateful-ass mother. I became pregnant and had my firstborn, my son William, on September 5, 1988, Labor Day, at The Christ Hospital. My newborn made me eligible for government benefits. I was living in the Laurel Homes Projects in Downtown Cincinnati, getting food stamps and a welfare check.

My friends were also living in those projects.

We were neighbors, and it was like our lives were designed to go in that direction of poverty. This is my life.

Chapter 1

Grandma's Seeds

My mother, Patricia, married my father, James, at a very young age. In fact, I was told that both my grandmothers had to sign a document giving them permission to marry. Although their marriage was short-lived, they manage to have three kids—my sister, Chanelle, me, and my brother, Robert.

As the story goes, their relationship, my mother and father, was a recipe for disaster at the very beginning of their courtship and shortly thereafter their marriage. My mother and her siblings loved to go skating. One night, my mother, her sister, and their skating buddies were walking home from the skating rink, and there was a person sitting on a stoop wearing a black cape and a big hat that covered his face. My aunt walked past him first, their skating buddies, and then my mother. As she walked by, the masked man spoke to my mother, and she obliged him. As she was walking by the masked man, he jumped up, grabbed her, and attempted to run off with her. She starting screaming, and her sister ran after them. She tackled the masked man, slamming him to the ground to save her sister, my mother. When the masked man hat fell off, it was my father.

Now, my aunt was built like Diana Ross and was just as pretty as Diana Ross, but she carried a mean-ass punch, and no one fucked with her. She mopped the floor with my daddy, leaving him with a bloody nose, blackened eye, and a limp.

After that incident, my daddy would visit my mother with nothing but respect. In fact, on one occasion and to show my grandmother that he had nothing but good intentions for my mother, he gifted my grandmother with a colored television set. Of course, he won my grandmother over, and she loved him.

He would bring my mother a Frisch's big-boy burgers from his job every night, and all was forgiven. Shortly thereafter, a friend of my mother's stopped by to visit, and as they sat down to watch TV, her friend said, Pat, that look just like the TV that was stolen from my house. My mother said, For real? She said, Yes." She then called her mother and asked her to come over to my grandmother's house to confirm that the television set was in fact theirs, and indeed, it was.

In spite of my daddy's shenanigans, they still married, and immediately thereafter, Daddy was drafted in Vietnam but went AWOL. During this time, my sister was two, and my mother was pregnant with me. One night, the military police knocked on my mother's door. She answered.

They asked her if she knew the whereabouts of her husband. My mother answered, No. Before the military police walked out the door, my sister pulled on the pant leg of one of the officers and asked, You lookin' fo my dad-dee? Of course, it wasn't that plain and simple of a question coming from a two-year-old but good enough for the military police to understand what she was asking. One military police said, Yes, little girl. Do you know where he is? She nodded her head up and down and pointed to the sink in the kitchen and said, He unda da sink. They walked over to the kitchen sink, opened the bottom cabinet, and pulled my daddy from under the sink like he was rag doll. He was then sent to jail. I was born in 1968, but my mother and father divorced before I entered into the world. In 1969, they had a third child, my brother. Ass backward?

My mother moved back into my grandmother's house and her younger siblings in Downtown Cincinnati on Clark Street. My mother and her siblings had lots of house parties.

I remember one party they had. Mind you, I was barely walking, but for some strange reason, I can still see this night as if it was yesterday. The music was loud; there was a lot of dancing and laughing. I was in my uncle Anthony's room on the bed, drinking my milk from my bottle and wearing only a pamper.

I crawled down from the bed and into the living room and started moving to the music. I was spotted by someone, and they pointed me out to my uncle. He quickly picked me up and took me back in his room then gave me my bottle. The rest of that night remains a mystery.

My grandmother's father and mother were entrepreneurs. My great-granddaddy sold blocks of ice and took in boarders. He would ride on his horse with a block of ice on his head, chopping pieces of the block of ice to sell. He had a boarder who would come to the house drunk and would disrespect my great-granddaddy by flirting with my great-grandmother.

One night, the boarder came in the house and started flirting as usual with my great-grandmother. Instead of my great-granddaddy saying the usual spill, Now, Mister, you drunk, go to your room and sleep, this time, my great granddaddy said, Now, Mister, I'm tired of you disrespecting me in my home. The next time you say something to my wife, I'mma shoot you in between the eyes. Now go in your room and go to sleep. Well, Mister came to the house and disregarded the promise that my great-granddaddy made the night before.

He started yet again flirting with my great-grandmother. My great-granddaddy got up, went to get his gun, and shot a hole in the middle of Mister's hat. Mister apologized and went into his room to retire for the night.

After that, Mister would walk in the door, tip his hat to both my great-grandparents, and head straight to his room without a word. My great-grandmother was a bootlegger. She would have both my grandmother and her sister, Aunt Marie, deliver the moonshine to her customers.

On more than one occasions, when my grandmother and grand-aunt would be on their way to drop off the moonshine, my grand-aunt Marie would sip from the bottles and would get extremely drunk. Grandma would have to sneak her into the house and into bed without their parents seeing them. We believe because Grandma always covered up her sister's drunkenness by always making sure their parents never seen Aunt Marie drunk. Grandma was nicknamed cat woman by her sisters and cousins. It's rumored in the family that my grandmother's oldest sister is actually her mother. She was about thirty years older than my grandmother.

It was also rumored in the family that my grandmother was adopted, and we actually don't know who our blood relatives really are. My grandmother never liked discussing our family history. When we would ask her questions about our family tree, she would sit quietly looking at TV. Sometimes, she would say Shut up, I'm watching TV! as if she was really into what she was viewing.

Grandma Hester stood five feet two, with light complexion, big hands, and had no hair. She wore a wig and colored in her eyebrows. She never used profanity, but if she didn't like you, you knew it. She would pretend that you were not in her presence. She was very good in ignoring you, but when you left out, she would talk bad about you. Grandma worked part time as a cleaning lady for the Central Trust building in Downtown Cincinnati. She was a single mother of five children.

Her parents took care of her children until they passed on. My mother and her siblings called my grandmother by her first name and called their grandparents, Daddy and Mama. Grandma married my mother's father, but my mother did not get the opportunity to develop a relationship with her father. At age two, my mother's father was murdered after he won a pot of money gambling in an alley. He was stabbed to death at age twenty-seven.

At the time of his death, my grandma was pregnant with my aunt, her third child. Later to follow were my uncle Anthony and my youngest aunt. Grandma had five children by four different men. My mother had an older brother, Uncle Charles. He looked extremely different from the rest of her siblings.

Uncle Charles had green eyes, bright-red hair, and light-brown freckles all over his face. He was a very quiet man and would always be smiling. Uncle Charles served four tours in Vietnam, obtained his bachelor's degree while serving in the military, lived in the Philippines, and had two daughters living with his first wife in Cincinnati, Ohio. He would come to visit the family during the Christmas holidays. We all would be very excited to see him, and his presence made the holidays that much more special. It was like a very special treat. His visit made my grandmother smile from ear to ear, and she would sit next to him with no room for anyone else. After twenty years in the military, he became a teacher in the Philippines and live as a civilian there for some years. He then met a young Filipino pregnant girl and fell in love with her. They married, and she wanted to move to the United States.

Although my uncle Charles had no intentions on moving back to the US, he did because that was what his young Filipino wife wanted. They moved to Arizona where my uncle had their house built, but he was not happy, and this was according to my mother, which ended up being true.

My uncle, his wife, and his stepdaughter would come to visit us often, and when we first met his wife, Tracey, she was shy, timid, quiet, and she smiled a lot. After a few more visits, she became comfortable with our family and spoke a little more. My uncle would call my mother a lot to discuss how unhappy he was with his new wife, new life in the US, and regretted the fact of moving back here. My mother would get off the phone with him upset that her brother was not doing well. She would shake her head and say that her brother spoke of things to her that was very disturbing but would never tell us what was said. One day, my mother checked the mailbox, and in the envelop was a letter and a very beautiful Glamour Shot photo of his wife, Tracey. Let's just say she came out of her shell quickly and enjoyed her new life in the US.

One fateful night, around 3:00 a.m., my grandma received a knock at her door. It was the police. They reluctantly delivered the very sad and unwanted news that her firstborn, my uncle Charles, committed suicide.

Later that day, the family met at my grandma's house, and we learned that my uncle Charles had a very extravagant knife collection. He collected knives from all over the world and had a cherry oak wall unit in his living room with all sorts of beautifully crafted knives. The story goes, on that fateful night, my uncle Charles's wife came in late after enjoying herself at a local night club. My uncle and her seven-year-old daughter were at the house. He was waiting up for her as he always would do. This night would be the last time. After arguing about him always being left at home with her daughter so she can hit the streets until the morning, they started fighting. My uncle towered over his wife and could easily overpower her. He began stabbing her over and over again severing one of her breasts, leaving her for dead in the closet. He then stabbed himself in the neck. The police found him sitting on the couch with a knife stuck in his throat. Tracey lived.

My mother's sister, the third child of my grandmother, shared the same father with my mother. She stood about 5 feet 7, 110 pounds wet, with a model figure. She was very beautiful. This was the fighter of my grandmother's children.

I always believe and still do believe that she never really cared for me. I believe it was because out of all my mother's children, I was looked at by the family as being my mother's favorite. Not fucking true! Anyway, my aunt was shot in the stomach at a party that she and my younger uncle attended. It was said that she jumped in front of my uncle so that he would not get shot. The man who shot at them was my cousin's father. My cousin is my oldest aunt's only child and was married to a man named Sunny. He was a hateful man, and my grandmother loathe him. The very sight of him made my grandmother's face look disgusted every time he came around. The fucked-up part is that my grandmother had to move in with my aunt and her husband after my grandmother's long-time significant other, Judd, had a heart attack and died in front of her. Sunny knew that my grandmother slept on the couch and would tum in at 10:00 p.m. like clockwork. So he would deliberately stay his ass in the living room watching TV and sitting on the couch just to fucking irritate her. Because he disrespected my grandmother, I couldn't stand his ass either.

My aunt and Sunny were constantly at each other's throat, arguing, yelling, and screaming continuously. Now that my grandmother was witnessing it up close and personal, she despised him even more. Grandma didn't cuss but would call you a niggah in a heartbeat. She used to call my sister's husband a sawed-off niggah.

Whenever my sister and her now ex-husband would come to visit her, she would say, Here comes Chanelle and that sawed-off niggah. Shit was too funny.

Well, my aunt and Sunny finally divorced, and my grandmother was ecstatic! She started humming around the house and shit. Sunny would occasionally stop by to aggravate my aunt. Grandma would be looking out the window, and when she would see him coming, she would say, Here comes that ugly ass niggah. When he would knock at the door, my grandma would not budge from her seat. My aunt would open it with aggravation written all over her face. After about five or ten minutes of his visits, they would start arguing. Months later, Sunny got hit by a car and was confined to a wheelchair. Did you think that stopped his ass from stopping by my aunt's house?

Hell naw! I mean, damn, leave her alone! One afternoon, we were outside playing, and Sunny comes wheeling himself by, somehow made it up the steps of the apartment complex. He started yelling for my aunt to come outside to talk with him. She yelled down, No! He wouldn't stop yelling.

My grandma then opened up the kitchen window and said, "Why don't you gone and get somewhere and stop bothering her, you damn fool!" I was like, whoa, Grandma!

All the kids outside playing starting laughing and pointing at Sunny. But he still continued yelling up to my aunt's window. Finally, she came downstairs and grabbed Sunny's wheelchair handles. She then took off running with the wheelchair with him in it. She was running really fast and screaming with anger. The onlookers stopped playing and was looking as if they were watching a suspenseful movie. When my aunt got to the steps of the apartment complex, she let the wheelchair go, and Sunny along with his wheelchair went airborne. The wheelchair landed on him upside down. The wheels were still spinning.

After about ten seconds of disbelief, all the kids and everyone else who witnessed this busted out laughing and rolling on the ground. Sunny never returned, and my aunt changed her surname back to her maiden name.

My aunt was a trooper. One cold winter night, she walked up to the skating rink to get my cousin. His shoes were stolen, and she carried this sixteen-year-old on her back to their home so that he wouldn't have to walk barefoot home in the snow. How fucking embarrassing was that shit? I haven't spoken to her in almost ten years, and I don't plan on ever speaking to her. I haven't forgiven her yet.

My mother's younger brother, Uncle Anthony, was an all American. He stood about 5'10", dark brown, with a smile that would light up the room. He was very muscular with a big head to match.

Uncle Anthony was a straight-A student from kindergarten to senior year in high school. Nothing below an A. Grandma kept all her kids' reports cards. Uncle Anthony was popular, could sing, but turned down the opportunity to be in the singing group that was new and up-and-coming, the Deele. This was what I was told. He was also a great swimmer, and academics came easy for him, especially math.

I would call my uncle to help me with a math problem, and he would solve it for me over the phone. Immediately following high school, he received a full-ride scholarship to attend Miami University, but that was short-lived as well as his time in the military. My mother used to say that Black men are afraid of success, and Anthony is one of them. My mother's boyfriend at the time turned my uncle onto drugs, and years later, we would see my uncle pacing back and forth on Montgomery Road, which was up the street from where he and his wife lived. He wore a sign that read, Stop! They are using electronics on me. This broke my heart; he was my favorite uncle. I remember years ago my uncle used to call me in the house to dance for him and his company. He couldn't believe how good of a dancer I was, and he was just tickled by it.

He would always ask me to show him the latest dances: the Scorpio, the freak, the spank, the prep, you name it. I always enjoyed performing for him. One time, when my uncle was pacing on the street wearing his sign, the paddy wagon came by, grabbed him, and threw him in the back of the wagon. After they released him, he continued to pace with his sign, and no one bothered him again. My mother even said, Leave him alone, he's not bothering anybody. But I knew she was just as heartbroken over this as we all were.

We lived in the Fay Apartments three doors down from my uncle and his family. At that time, my mother's boyfriend, Tommy, looked and dressed like a pimp. He was short, wore polyester bell-bottoms, platform shoes, tight sweaters, and a conk. He would start out his sentences by saying, Like dig, like listen. He used to roll dice with us for money and babysat us while my mother was working her second job. Mind you, we were elementary schoolkids, and this clown-ass niggah used to take our ice cream money.

He even had iancl weed plant that he sat in my brother's bedroom window. This motherfucker used to beat the shit out of my mother on a regular basis. We would be sleeping and would break the glass window of our kitchen door and bust in. Tommy would then run upstairs and into my mother's room, beat her senseless, then leave. My brother would run into my sister and my room and sleep under our bed.

This shit went on for a long time. One time, Tommy came over in the afternoon and started beating my mother. My sister who was eleven or twelve at the time jumped on his back, and he threw my sister against the wall. I ran out the house to my uncle's house crying and begging him to help my mama. Anthony and I ran back to my house to stop Tommy from beating my mama. We never heard from Tommy again. After the ordeal was over, mother's face was bloody and swollen. She could barely talk, and her eye was closed shut. When I close my eyes even today, I can still see her bruised face. I hated that bitch for what he done to my mama.

My mother's younger