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Aunt Nadine, the shortest and smallest one in the group, usually started the fight. She would insult someone’s husband, or call someone a nasty name. Before long, someone else would jump in to defend the offended party, and a free-for-all would start. Wigs flying. Bottles crashing. Rhonda thought it was funny, but sad, too. If it hadn’t happened every weekend, she might have thought it was exciting. It was Rhonda’s second lesson in domestic violence. She thought it was just the way things were and felt powerless to do anything about it.

Little girls learn a lot from the women they grow up around, whether they are related or not. Older women are like midwives who assist in the birth of a young woman’s consciousness. It’s not just what they do, it’s who they are, and how they demonstrate who they are, that provides young women with “womanhood training.” Young women and girls learn about themselves and what it means to be a woman by watching the older women in their lives. They watch how and what they cook. They watch how and what they use to clean. They watch what they wear and how they carry themselves, how they treat themselves and each other.

Whether they realize it or not, whether they intend to or not, older women, the “womanhood midwives,” teach younger women what to expect from life. Some things are taught overtly, but the most important lessons are taught covertly. The words and actions of older women teach whether to expect life to be peaceful or stressful, hard or easy, honorable or dishonorable. Only a woman can teach another woman what it really means to be a woman.

The principal midwives in Rhonda’s life—Grandma, Nett, and Nadine—had such a hard time learning, they had no idea they were also teaching.

Uncle Leroy was Aunt Nadine’s husband. He was a thin, quiet man, a functional weekend alcoholic, and he was deeply involved with another woman. Uncle Leroy went to work at 5:30 A.M. every weekday morning and returned home at 5:30 P.M. on the dot. He would mumble a greeting when he came in, take a bath, eat his dinner, and go to bed. Once Uncle Leroy went to bed, everyone had to be quiet and creep around the house to avoid waking him up.

But on Friday nights, Uncle Leroy never came directly home. And on Saturdays, Uncle Leroy would show up after the basement partying was already in full swing. Rhonda knew why and so did Aunt Nadine. Uncle Leroy had another woman on the side. He knew that Aunt Nadine had a habit of driving by the other woman’s house when he wasn’t home on time. If she saw Uncle Leroy’s car parked outside, she’d return home and start calling his girlfriend until the woman kicked him out and made him go home. Usually, he’d get off with just that smug look that Rhonda saw on Aunt Nadine’s face when he came in, dragging his tail between his legs. Occasionally, if someone at the Saturday night party made a snide remark about his absence in front of Aunt Nadine, Uncle Leroy would wind up with a dented hood or a broken windshield on his new Lincoln.

Adults who talk about and in front of children as if they didn’t exist were not the problem. Uncle Leroy getting drunk every single Friday night wasn’t the problem, either. What happened when Rhonda was left at home with drunk Uncle Leroy while Aunt Nadine went to play bid whisk was a problem, one that was impossible to understand, accept, or live with.

CHAPTER FIVE

What’s the Lesson When You Are Poor, Ugly, and Feeling Bad?

Like all your brothers and sisters, you suffer from a basic sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. You feel you have made terrible mistakes which will sooner or later be punished by humans in authority or by some abstract spiritual authority like God, or karmic law.

Paul Ferrini, in Love Without Conditions

BROTHERS AND SISTERS are expected to love one another. It is also expected that when life gets hard, siblings will hold onto each other and support one another through the rough times. Rhonda loved her brother, Ray. He was two years older than she was, and he was her hero. It was doubtful,