Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [46]
“Going to Uncle Eli’s, you can’t go! Going downtown, you can’t go! Going here, you can’t go! Going there, you can’t go!”
Rhonda heard what her brother was chanting, and so did Aunt Nadine. Ray, who had never talked back before, didn’t seem to care whether everyone heard him or not. This was obviously an act of rebellion and totally out of character for Ray. Either he didn’t hear her or he chose not to respond when Aunt Nadine told him to shut up. Ray started stomping up the stairs, chanting loudly. Aunt Nadine called out to him again. Once again, he failed or refused to respond. Furious, Aunt Nadine looked around the kitchen for something to hit him with. She grabbed Baby, the cat.
Aunt Nadine ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs, holding the cat by the hind legs. By the time Ray realized what was happening, Aunt Nadine was swinging the poor cat in his direction. Ray ducked and tried to ward off the blow, but Baby’s protruding front claws connected with Ray’s back. The cat started screeching, Ray was screaming, Aunt Nadine was furious, and Rhonda thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Rhonda had been beaten with a lot of things, for a lot of reasons, but never with a cat! Ray stayed in his room for days, refusing to let Rhonda see him. The cat stayed under the bed for days, refusing even to eat or to curl up at the foot of Rhonda’s bed.
As Ray got older and began to hang out with boys his own age, the distance between him and Rhonda increased, but when he became interested in girls, the distance became incalculable. When Aunt Nadine got sick and had to stop taking care of children, Ray got a part-time job. So, in addition to being silent, he was hardly ever home. When Ray was home, he and his friends hung out in his room, a place Rhonda dared not go for fear of Ray intentionally embarrassing her again. In front of all those cute boys, he’d say, “What do you want, ugly?” or “Take your ugly self on out of here.” His friends found it all very amusing. Rhonda was mortified.
Somehow, without her knowledge, Rhonda had become offensive to the brother she loved so much. With Nett gone and Aunt Nadine sick and sleeping most of the time, Rhonda felt very alone. Sometimes she tried to figure out what had happened to change Ray. Other times, she ate. She’d sneak sandwiches into her room and eat them all alone. The food helped to fill the hole in her heart left by her big brother.
Ray was distant and aloof and, at times, oblivious to everyone and everything in his life that should have been important to him. He confirmed the lesson Rhonda was taught by her father. Men are emotionally, and often physically, unavailable. Ray, through his asthma attacks, taught Rhonda that you must put other people’s interests ahead of your own. When he got older and his asthma attacks began to subside, he taught her how to love people despite their mistreatment of you. The one thing Rhonda wanted was to have a normal, loving relationship with her brother, but Ray taught her that it is painful at best, and impossible under most circumstances, to have what you want. Rhonda learned that people close to you could betray you and that they didn’t care what happens to you. At Kings County Hospital, Rhonda learned that being poor was synonymous with being treated like less than nothing. And Ray taught her that, unlike him, she was neither valued nor beautiful. She was, in fact, ugly.
CHAPTER SIX
What’s the Lesson When You Are Raped as a Child?
Every situation with which we are confronted, whether it be in our body or in our outer affairs—every situation—contains somewhere within it the seed of our good.
Richard Jafolla, in Soul Surgery
I HAD BEEN