Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [29]
“You look just like one of those whores you and your daddy hang out with,” she’d yell. Rhonda thought she looked pretty nice. Grandma would fix Daddy with a mean stare, “Look at her. She looks just like a little floozy.” But Rhonda thought her new clothes looked a lot better than the corduroy overalls Grandma made her wear. Then Daddy and Rhonda would be treated to another chorus of Grandma’s favorite phrase: “Ain’t neither one of you s——t! And you ain’t never gonna be s——t!”
At home, Daddy was completely different from the daddy who hung out at bars and rode around with pretty ladies. Daddy never challenged Grandma. Whatever she did, whatever she said was okay. For Rhonda, the best times she spent with her daddy were on the days when Grandma had to go out and Daddy would stay home and cook and play games. Daddy grew up in the South, not far from Uncle Jimmy’s farm. When he and Grandma moved up to New York City, Grandma went to work, and Daddy spent a lot of time home alone. Daddy was a good cook. He said that he learned how to cook when he was young and Grandma was away so much of the time. He also learned how to wash and iron and take care of himself.
Daddy told Rhonda everything he remembered about his own daddy, which wasn’t much. It seemed that he died when Daddy was only two years old. Folks in the family used to say that Grandma had drowned him for beating her. Others said that he died in a fishing accident, but they never talked about the fact that Grandma’s husband was half black and half white. Daddy used to tell Rhonda all about the army. He said he joined the army when he was nineteen years old to learn more about cooking. Rhonda thought he enlisted to get away from Grandma. When Rhonda was older, Daddy talked about how hard it was to be a black man in a white man’s army. He also told her about spending years in Leavenworth for selling cigarettes on the black market, and how they’d promised him his freedom if he’d go on a dangerous mission. He survived the mission, and after that, they gave him his freedom and a dishonorable discharge.
That’s why Daddy was a numbers runner. In 1950s America, as a black man with a dishonorable discharge from the army, he couldn’t get a job. It was, he said, worse than being a black cat in the midst of the Holiness church. Daddy was bitter about his life. Perhaps because he grew up without a daddy. Perhaps because his mother was so mean. Maybe it was because he got dishonorably discharged from the army. Maybe it was because, although he was a mathematical genius, he couldn’t get work. Maybe it was because his wife had died, or because he had two kids that he couldn’t take care of.
Rhonda was never sure what caused Daddy’s bitterness, because nobody ever explained it to her. She only knew that her daddy wasn’t there to protect her. Her daddy wasn’t there to look out for her. Her daddy knew that his mother abused his daughter, and he never said a word. Her daddy taught her many things about living and loving. He taught her that life was hard and that you must do whatever is necessary to survive. He taught her that it was all right for men to pass through your life, give you a little money, say that they love you, and that you shouldn’t ask for any more.
Rhonda knew that her daddy was bad, just like she was. The only difference was that Daddy never went to church. Sometimes Rhonda would ask him to go. She told him if he went they could pray together and ask God to make them good and saints, like Grandma. Daddy would laugh. “Who in the world told you that Grandma is a saint?”
“That’s what they call her in church. Saint Harris and Sister Harris,” Rhonda would explain to him.
“That doesn’t mean that she is a real saint. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something they say in the church,” Daddy explained.
“But Grandma said that you and