Like Water Off Your Back

By Tianka R. Sheard Mitchell

About the Book

Everybody has a story. This is mine and …yours. This is herstory (you know, like history) – an experience in urban drama that strikes a chord with anyone who has faced adversity and won out over seemingly insurmountable odds. This story begins long ago but quickly brings us to the present. Enjoy this fast paced, gritty drama based on my real-life story. Watch the infamous California gangs organize and meet their leaders, my uncles. Run through the chaotic streets of LA during the 1992 riots or flash a friend at “Freak Nic” in Hotlanta. Enjoy the Historically Black College/ University experience in “da kuntry” (believe me it is like no other) and lose yourself (sometimes you get in too deep) …then find yourself. Between these covers lies an adventure anyone can appreciate. How would you judge me? How do you judge yourself?

About the Author

The author Tianka R. Sheard Mitchell lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is originally from Compton, California where she spent her formative years until relocating to Arkansas to attend Philander Smith College in 1994. Mitchell graduated Philander, Cum Laude, with her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. She works as a Middle School teacher. She has earned her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and is currently pursuing her Doctorate’s degree in the same field. Both degrees are from Arkansas State University, Jonesboro. Her twin daughters are both practicing Registered Nurses earning their degrees at Bethune Cookman University in Daytona, Beach Florida. She has a young son in elementary school with her husband of fifteen years. Mitchell dedicates her success to her “Boos”. She says without them, she would only have been what she was. They gave her the motivation to become much more. This book is as much their triumph as hers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RoseDog Books
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798885275989

Book preview

Chapter 1

Arkansas in the Fall

Tianka Mitchell

December 29, 2003

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You ever been to Arkansas?  Yeah,  Ar- kan -saw…Down South…in the fall?  Your are probably saying where the hell is Arkansas and no I never been there.  Well, Little Rock Arkansas in the fall is like a mirror . It’s a time when you reflect on things past and things to come.  Summer‘s heat is still intense but you notice the flowers and trees that show no adverse affects to the muggy heat.  The breeze will play over you at midday, if your lucky, and at sundown the temperature drops to the mid eighties and you bless the night for bringing some relief , thinking slyly to yourself soon winter‘s coming and Apollo‘s fiery chariot will have no choice but to cool.  Reminds you a bit of life ….or at least it reminds me of my life, right at this moment.  Intense, wrought with adversity that has its place too,  and then sundown, a bit of relief  coupled with the promise of the inevitable…change.   On one of these hot, semi blustery days in the fall of  1997, I was 23 year’s old, and found myself sitting on a stage with some of the most prominent people of the region and the times.  Next to me was the well known activist and frontrunner in the desegregation of  Central High School  in 1947, Daisy Bates.  She was very old now and wheel chair bound.  I busied myself keeping her comfortable and holding an umbrella up to shield her from the suns glare.  Now don’t think I was a mere helper on this stage, I did these things out of a profound respect for her and her accomplishments and old age -which eventually claims all of us lucky enough to attain it and  the desire to provide respite for others who have lived the struggle.  I was also, a guest and a speaker at this historic commemoration. On my left , after Daisy Bates was a well known pastor and on my right was one of the first and very well known Arkansas black female news reporters, I think her name was Pamela…something or other.  I can’t remember just yet….I smoke too much weed, it really does fuck with your memory.  Maybe I’ll do a little more research and find her name before I complete this story. Well back to the guest list and seating arrangement, in the row in front of me the two chairs on the left were reserved for Myer L. Titus and his wife, President and Mrs. President of Philander Smith College, host site for the event and my soon to be Alma Mater.

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And the two chairs directly in front of me were reserved for William Jefferson Clinton and Hilary Rodham Clinton.  Yeah you got it now, the native Arkie that became one of the youngest presidents of the free world, and his wife, formidable politician who (in my opinion) held his presidency together with guts and commitment and later became Senator of the Great State of New York. And to my far left across the stage were the famed Little Rock Nine.  The actual nine students who took the hateful glares, taunts, dangers, and screams from the white community in 1947 to become  the first students to be integrated into a previously  all white high school even though they had to be protected by armed national guard troops.  Talk about a role call, there were TV and radio personalities and aspiring politicians, like Tracy Steele, who headed the Martin Luther King Commission and later became a senator for Arkansas.  What a day……….now you’re probably saying well who the hell are you? Why are you up there? What did you do? And why have I never heard of you?  Great questions. And I’m not sure really how I got there….takes a lot of explaining.  Which I am going to attempt to do in this story.  But know that on that day sitting on that stage with all those great and driven people, I felt great. I felt driven.  And I knew I had just as much right to a place on that stage even though no one knew my struggle, my trials, my victories and accomplishments, but they were there….just the same.

Chapter 2

The Ancestors

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Around 1871, as near as we could figure it, my grandmother’s grandmother was born. I am beginning with her because we are a maternal family.  Maybe because of the times or society and maybe its just us, but the men don’t or haven’t stuck in there for the long haul.  She was a Princess, not in Portugal, England or Rome but in a society just as complex, ancient and revered.  She was the daughter of the chief of a tribe of Blackfoot Native Americans. They were being relocated during the time of the Trail of Tears and the massive Indian relocation.  I don’t know much about her, but I do know,  it was with her that my lineage derived, as far as we could figure it.  My grandmother, Mama Phil told me the story.

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They found him bare foot in the snow, passed out, freezing and near dead.  The tribe took him in and nursed him back to health.  When the time came in spring, the planting season, he helped them with agricultural knowledge he had gained as a slave on the plantation.  It was never explained whether he was an escaped or free slave, only that he left the plantation he was on and walked west until winter and the Blackfoot found him.  It was never explained why his knowledge was needed or valuable, maybe the Blackfoot were a  hunting and gathering community.  In any case, he was grateful to them for saving his life and  they were appreciative of his goodness.  So much so, that the chief gave his daughter as a wife to my great great grandfather. My grandmother can’t remember all of her names but she remembers that he, (great- great grandfather) gave her the first name, Georgiana and the last name Clark.  Makes me wonder was he originally from Georgia or was that someone he loved in the past..a mother, a lover, a daughter? Don’t know, but that’s the name he gave her.  Her other names were, Sugarplum Running Water and a few others I can’t think of this second.  Together they moved to Hammond, Louisiana, raised the six of their 12 children and sharecropped the land owned by the white man, Mr. Bernard,  who also owned the sawmill. The other children were separated from the family.  There was Aint Poochie (Livinia Clark) and  Madeline Clark.  Mama Phil called her Aint Mattie.  There was also Mrs. Matilda (one of the six that was separated from the family), who was taken in by a white family and passed for white in her adult years.  Mama Phil can recall going to the back door with Granma (Georgiana) and Miss Matilda handing Granma coins wrapped in a white handkerchief with lace on the edges.  There was Uncle Brian ( Clark) who left home one night fearing for his life because he had been accused of killing a white man.  It never was discussed whether he did or not.  They never heard from him again.  There was Uncle Buddy, Uncle Dick and Uncle Jesse ( who was an uncle by marriage to Aint Poochie) who used to sit by the stove in the winter and read Mama Phil stories from a large book of fables.  It wasn’t until Mama Phil was grown that she realized Uncle Jesse couldn’t read. One of those remaining six children grew up to be my great grandmother, Lillian Clark-Shepard.  

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Mama Phil doesn’t remember why Lillian had the name Shepard too.  But she distinctly remembered it.  We don’t know if Granma married again or what.  Lillian married late for the time period for she was well  into her early twenties.  I don’t know why but I can remember Mama Phil telling me that Lillian was a big breasted beauty, with long slick hair and what a dancer! She said folks always talked about how her mother could dance. So maybe she had so many admirers it took her time to choose the one she wanted.  She married a man named Freddie Oliver Love. The union produced only one child, a daughter named Philomine Love,  who affectionately became known to us as Mama Phil , our beloved family matriarch.

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Lillian moved to San Francisco, California with her husband to find work and a sense of freedom and self worth I suspect was in short supply in the rural south during those times, leaving young Philomine behind in Hammond with granma, Georgiana.  Mama Phil  told me many stories about her times in Hammond.  About Uncle Jesse who read stories to her in the evenings by the stove until she was old enough to learn he couldn’t read.  And about Uncle Bryant who killed a white man and ran away in the night and was never heard from again.  She told scary stories about nights when all the children had to run out to the train tracks to escape flooding and about haints that had chased her home at night.  And even when she was scolded and called a black nigger by young and old whites in the community for some real or imagined transgression. She was a dark child in the south and naturally left there with sense of insecurity about  her complexion. But she did leave and she was strong.  Lillian returned to Hammond and spirited 12 year old Philomine away from Hammond to the bustling city by the bay, San Francisco, California.

Lillian worked for the Scott’s of  San Francisco for years.  She was their housekeeper and cook. The Scott’s were a wealthy white family who made their fortune selling thinly sliced and dried mulch for cleaning asses, commonly known as toilet paper.  The Scott’s adored Lilly and often brought her along to attend special family occasions.  They even flew her to New York to attend one of their daughters' weddings.  For year’s Lily would occasionally receive photos and postcards from  the family. One evening when Lily was caring for old Mrs. Scott she was asked what she want out of life.  What did she wish for?  Lily must have thought for a moment before answering and then answered simply, a nice house for my family with a white gate around it.   She worked faithfully for years through two generations of Scott’s reaching  maturity.  Mrs. Scott promised Lillian she would have it, but when she passed on Lilly was given a small severance pay and let go.  She never got the house she wished for.

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At age 18, Philomine graduated high school, met and married Antonio Lawrence Boyce.  She said she never loved him but he was bi-racial and very light skinned.  She always said with a smile,  I married him because I wanted to have pretty children.  Not dark ones like me.  In this way she felt she was looking out for her progeny even before they were conceived.  So you can see she was an intelligent and thoughtful woman even though she still remained scarred from experiences shared with the other colored people of her generation.  Her union proved to be more fruitful then her mother‘s had been.  She delivered three healthy sons about a year apart,  Antonio Boyce II, Rae Boyce, and Fredrick Boyce. When she became pregnant, two year’s after her last son‘s birth, bearing  my mother, Antionette, her philandering husband left the family stating he was not raising any girls.  Pretty flimsy excuse for leaving a young wife and mother with  three sons the oldest one being 5 and a newborn baby girl.  But he left.  I know she was terrified and alone, but Philomine was strong and determined.  She had to support herself and the children and she set forth doing just that.  

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She moved her family further north to the Nickerson Gardens government housing projects in Watts, California- Los Angeles County.  She delivered one more daughter, Ladonna, her love child by a man she did love.  She supported herself by doing some low level nursing before finally landing a job at Hughes Aircraft  building airport parts where she retired  23 years later.  In the Projects, my uncles became ghetto famous.  They were a bad lot, full of the fierce anger of the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s.  The founded the infamous Bounty Hunter gang.  They were Bloods in the turf and later drug war between the rival gangs Bloods and Crips.  Tony, Rae and Fred Boyce.  

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Real names of real gangster’s who knew and loved the streets and everything that came with them.  Philomine ruled with an iron fist and an open heart.  She loved her children and would stand by them no matter what.  She told them so, but she reminded them - Never lie to me, and I will always believe you.  Those people out there don’t care about you but I love you and I will fight for you.  I am always on your side, but DON’T lie to me.  She told me sometimes she regretted having said that because sometimes she didn’t want to know the truth but they told her anyway.  Just as she had asked. When they where young and had set fire to a man’s tire shop, or older when they asked her to hide a gun They gave her the truth and they’re confidence.  When they  skipped school or had been brought home by some juvenile authorities, she disciplined them the only way she knew how.  Philomine beat her children with whatever she could get her hands on in her frantic efforts to get them on the right track.  She busted heads and drove to the hospital to get them stitched up. She was brutally physical until it became apparent, they were nearly men and would make their own way.  

She doted on her daughters, especially my mother,  Net.   Antionette was born with some medical conditions.  She had severe Asthma which caused her to be hospitalized often.  And of course all the daily regiments of medications , humidifiers and home remedy’s to keep her functional.  She also developed a strange rash all over her body that would cause her feet to crack and bleed.  She said she didn’t walk , but would crawl around on her knees much of the time.  She told me she used to look like a monster and young children would cry and run at the sight of her.  The doctors never could identify what the rash was, how she contracted it or how to treat it.  My mother was ashamed, oppressed by her condition and hindered by the asthma. Philomine’s youngest child was definitely a mama’s girl and a little bit more free because she was last in a long line of  challenging children.  I am sure by the time Philomine got to her requests the answer was probably yes just because no was so much more work.

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By Philomines’ middle adult years she had become a partier, a drinker , and a fighter.  She and her friend Lucielle would go out to clubs and party the night away.  They hosted regular card parties where the children were shooed into the rooms and the adults drank Budweiser, smoked cigarettes, told outrageous lies and played cards all night long.  Some of my favorite stories come from these times, like when Philomine and Lucille dressed alike and had on their good wigs and went to the county building to get some extra food stamps.  The food stamp worker made a snide comment about their wigs and how nice they looked so she decided they didn’t need any stamps. Well, Mama Phil would say, I must not have agreed with her cuz I reached across that desk and grabbed her butt and commenced to woopin’ her ass! Then she remarks proudly, almost as an afterthought, That’s why they started getting those armed security guards at the county building. She had a slew of stories, mostly about fightin’.  Like that time she beat that lady with a bat and didn’t realize she had went crazy ‘till she started peeing on the woman.  That’s when her mind came back and the police took her promptly to jail.  Or the time she caught Arthor,Donna’s daddy with another woman and wooped him with a hammer until he passed out.  So you can see violence wasn’t thought of as a bad thing that needed to be controlled but more like something commonplace and necessary to getting one’s point across and making change.  It was also essential to controlling one’s environment and being seen as strong and capable.

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My mother got pregnant with me when she was 16 and had me when she was 17. I had always taken for granted that I was my mother’s first pregnancy, but that was not the truth.  My mother was pregnant when she was 15 and forced into a back door abortion by her mother because she was so young a promising.  I guess it was apparent the second time to my grandmother that Net would make her own way.  This may not seem relevant to you but it was very relevant to me because just as that proverb goes the sons are destined to repeat the sins of the father, I was fated to repeat some of my mother’s mistakes.  I had no idea how closely  our sins would match.  And so I was born to a teenage mother who had grown out of asthma and the unsightly rash when she reached puberty and into an attractive, smart, stubborn, young woman with no commonsense, self esteem or direction.  I inherited my mother’s poor health and asthma.   My father was a 21 year old pimp who had little time for me and even less tolerance for her.  At least that’s what my mother told me.  She said she used to ride the bus up and down Imperial Highway looking for him, praying for a glimpse and crying if she saw him.  

My mother, I mentioned earlier, was smart.  In school she made high marks, learned a lot and rarely got into trouble.  In this way she stood out among Philomine’s children.  And maybe that’s why Philomine thought she was promising and Donna grew up a little jealous.  While Mama Phil and Donna took up the slack watching me, my mother graduated High School  and was offered a 10 year all expense paid scholarship to study and become a doctor at the University of California at Los Angeles.  Beginning a string of unexplainable bad choices, she rejected the scholarship and instead began seeing a local guy that eventually became my first in a long line of stepfathers.  A couple years later she had my