Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

When you are born in Hell you don't realize it is Hell because you know nothing else for comparison so how do you escape when you don't believe there is anything to escape from?

      **For Nix, my biggest supporter**

Chapter ONE:

What is your earliest memory? Do you even know off the top of your head? Is it a good memory? I can tell you mine.
I was three years old. I was playing jump rope with my cousins in the front yard of my Granny's house. Granny is my dad's mom, she worked a LOT. She had six kids that she raised on her own because my Paw Paw only came around when he wanted to make babies. Life was hard for her, they struggled so bad that once she lost her mind and sat all the kids down at the table and told them to smell the neighbors cooking because she could not afford to feed them. Most of that side of the family still live the street life of prison or drug addiction, a rare few were able to break that chain. It wasn't Granny's fault. She tried her best with what she had. Her mind came back but she was very withdrawn. I was not showered with hugs or kisses or I love you statements from Granny. She worked and even as her children became adults she struggled to support them which is why I was in the yard that day playing with most of my cousins who lived there at Granny's house. I was visiting with my dad that weekend and boy did I love it there. Us kids were ignored and able to do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't bother the adults. As I am laughing and playing my Ganny pulls up. Ganny is different from Granny. Ganny is my mom's mom. She worked hard for her four kids too but she also had a little help. She was that loving grandmother who every time you see her you walk away with a big red lip print on your cheek and I would be told "I love you Kandis Marie." So many times a day and would be told stories about my mom and how much of "A little stinker" she was.
Now its VERY odd that Ganny would be coming to Granny's house. She doesn't like my dad's family. She is a very proud woman and hold's people to certain standards that my dad's family did not fit into. Also she has my Aunt Dee Dee's brother in law with her. So wierd. Aunt Dee Dee is mom's sister, you'll hear all about her later.
Ganny looks distressed. Even at three years old I know something is wrong. Ganny says its time for me to leave and I begin to cry. It's a day early and I want to stay and play jump rope. Ganny says it doesn't matter, I have to leave. The car ride is wierd, something does not feel right even in my little child mind. I've always been able to pick up on people's emotions and Ganny's were all over the place. She takes me to Winn Dixie and says she wants to buy me a toy. Well, okay! I'm not going to turn down presents right? I pick out some little plastic high heels that are only a little bit too big for me and make me feel like a grown up, I also get a treat. I'm starting to think that leaving with Ganny is a good thing but then we leave the store and we have to have a talk...
My mommy has been in an accident says Ganny. She has a really bad bo-bo and I'll have to go and stay with Aunt Dee Dee until the doctor's can make her all better. "What about Keith Ganny? Where is Keith going to stay?" I started to cry because my mommy was hurt and where would my baby brother go? What was going to happen to us if mommy was hurt and couldn't take care of us? Well my little baby brother is going to have to go stay with his nanny until Mommy can get better and we can visit anytime we want to. So I have to go home so we can get packed up and fly to Aunt Dee Dee's house. To get from New Orleans to California we have to take a plane. How exciting! Looking out of the window's of the plane while we are so high in the air is so awesome! Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Andy are so nice to me too, this won't be so bad just until mommy get's better.

So that is my very first memory.
My mother Angelle which is french for Angel got involved with a biker named Duck. She jumped on the back of his Harley and went bike riding with her best friend and some of his friend's. They were driving over the Huey P. Long bridge which in 1988 was still a very narrow bridge and it was cleaned by sand blasting the metal. Back then they didn't cover it up as they did the sand blasting and a lot of the sand settled onto the bridge itself making it slippery and dangerous. Duck's bike slipped in the sand and my mother flew off the back of the bike and landed face down. The bike her best friend was on the back of could not stop and rolled straight over her from tailbone to head. My mother died three times that day. The bones in her back were shattered. It was very touch and go at first but she pulled through. She made it. When they finally stabilized her it was said that she would be a paraplegic for the rest of her life. She had to have two twenty four inch steel rods placed in her back on either side of her spine. She said when she was in that hospital room it was like she was in another world. She would hallucinate that my brother and I were playing on the floor next to her bed and she was correcting us for being too loud when we were miles away. My mom is the reason the bridges had to change the way they did up keep. She is why they have to cover the bridges before sand blasting them. Every lawyer in the city who heard about her accident showed up at that hospital begging for her to pick them to represent her. Of course Duck stayed by her side the whole time. He knew he hit a gold mine. You can bet you'll hear about him later too, I'll let you make your own assumptions. 
My mom was in for a long and hard road of recovery. Her best friend (Jill) who ran her over obviously felt terrible and she helped my mom so much in her recovery. My mom had to be put into the bathtub, she couldn't walk much less bath herself. She had to have a special back brace made for her because she was such a tiny little thing. Five foot four, one hundred and five pounds. She was beautiful. Luckily the accident only scarred her back, a tiny little scar on her chin and the nerves in her teeth were damaged but they did not fall out. She had beautiful bright blue cat eyes, shiny blonde hair, she was a dancer her whole life so her body was perfect and this accident only took away her grace but she LIVED! Her recovery process was longer then a three year old could manage without her mommy. It took three years for her to recover and the whole time I had to live light years away because she could not do for herself much less her children. I can remember standing on my tippy toes in the bathroom looking into the mirror with tears running down my face saying, "Mommy? Daddy? Can you hear me? I love you. I want to be with you. I want to come home." I did not see my dad that whole time and once my mom was able to come for a visit right towards the end. She came with Duck. I didn't like him because he made mommy fall and get a bo-bo but they took me to Toys-R-Us and he bought me a pretty barbie doll so I didn't put up a big fuss. I was just glad I got to see my mommy.

Chapter 2: Living With Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Andy...

We didn't live in California long. Uncle Andy worked in the plants and we traveled a lot. I got to see so many places. I even went to Canada and got to see Bugs Bunny speaking in French. I didn't like it because I couldn't tell when to laugh. We ended up in Boston. I started a preschool there and we lived in a nice big two story house. I had my own room but I didn't like it. When I lived with my mom she held me while I slept but in my own room it was dark and lonely. There was a clown picture on my wall that made me hate to get out of the bed. They had parties with thier friends and I was loved. I didn't like preschool because one of the girls there bullied me but I understood that Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Andy had to work so I had to go to school. I was very smart for my age. Aunt Dee Dee was very strict about my schooling. I had a vast collection of books and I had to read one every night but I loved to do it. I loved to make Aunt Dee Dee proud of me. I was only allowed to have desert if I spelled a new word every night to earn it. If I couldn't spell the word I had to try again the next night. Obviously I didn't like that either. If I got into trouble one of them would hold me down while the other one spanked me on the butt with a belt. Personally I do not agree with that. I was a good, smart, responsible little kid at that age. I did not do anything to deserve that but that was the worst thing I dealt with when I lived with them, other then that I was doted on. I had the cutest clothes, the best toys, lots of video tapes of me walking around singing and happy with my Minnie Mouse stuffed animal. I had to have that Minnie Mouse. At age five my mom was more able to handle me and she was starting to ask about taking me back but after all that time my Aunt Dee Dee was not ready to give me up. So she compromise. Her and Uncle Andy both found jobs in New Orleans and we packed up and moved back home. That first night home we went to my Ganny's house. I was in the kitchen, I turned around and there was my mom standing there in her black leather jacket with tassles hanging down, with her arms wide open and a huge smile on her face. Running to my mom and having her hold me was the best feeling in my little five year old life.
She smelled like leather and whiskey. That was her smell. It smelled like home.
She held me so tight for so long and I felt so loved, so safe.
I didn't move in with my mom right away. Aunt Dee Dee got a house and I lived there for another year. I started a Christian school for kindergarten and got to see mom on the weekends. I'm sure I got to see my dad too but I don't remember. I love my dad but the bond between a mother and daughter is unbreakable. She loved me with every inch of her soul. I was her baby girl. Keith still lived with his nanny. He was too little for my mom to take care of. She still could't pick anything up and she could barely walk upright at this point but she was fighting.
It wasn't until my Aunt Dee Dee started needing my mom to help her with me by picking me up from school and watching me while she worked that they realized it was time for me to move back with mom. I wasn't so little anymore where she had to physically do anything for me and I was not a high maintenance child so that summer after kindergarten I moved in with mom and Duck in his ratty trailer. 

Chapter 3: Life With Duck

For first grade I was put into a public school and moved from a big nice house to a ratty little trailer but hey, at least I had my mommy back. I was pretty content. Duck was super nice and got me presents. He took me riding on his big motor bike. I was scared at first but mom said it was ok so I jumped on and we rode around and I thought I was such a bad ass. We went to huge biker parties with so many of his biker friends. There would be bikes parked in every part of the yard and some of them had kids my age so I was never bored. I was starting to think that Duck wasn't such a bad guy but then the partying started to get out of hand. My mom was always in pain so she would drink a LOT and so would Duck. I didn't know it at the time but there was a lot of drugs going around too. They were always high as well. Naturally fighting began. It went from arguments to screaming matches until finally it got physical. Duck started to beat on my mom quite regularly. Again my mom was a tiny little thing in a big back brace who couldnt even stand up straight. Don't get me wrong, she was a firecracker and could hold her own but Duck was a very big, strong man. I watched him grab her by her hair and throw her over the railing of our porch then run down the stairs pick her up and toss her over the fence. I was a tiny little runt, all I could do was scream and cry and beg him to stop but he never would. Every time my mom would grab us some clothes and we would go to Ganny's or Aunt Dee Dee's and she would say it was over and she was never going back but every time he would show up with flowers and a million excuses about how much he loved her and it was only because he was drunk and it would never happen again. I hated him. He even did it at the big biker parties in front of all his friends, he didn't care and they wouldn't help her because he was crazy. I would run for the phone to call 911 and someone would yank the phone out of my hand probably because the house was full of drugs and wanted criminals. You don't know these things as a child but looking back what else could it be?
Once my mom was getting beat pretty badly at home and I was screaming at him telling him I would kill him (yes, at six years old) and he grabbed a jewelry box my mom had just bought me and told me he would smash it into pieces if I didn't shut up right that second. He told me to sit in the corner and watch what my mom was making him do to her. Once my Uncle Andy had to pick her up from the side of the road where he left her after smashing the bike helmet into her face and making her get off the bike. Uncle Andy had to bring her to the hospital and hold her hand while she got stiches by her eye. My mom was in her early twenties during this time. I don't fault her for trying to make it work. Duck was a mechanic who made good money and took care of a disabled woman who couldn't work and her daughter but my mom started to drink heavily and take xanax to deal. She became mean. At some point after all this started Keith came home. He was three. He didn't know us. He called his nanny mom and my mom resented that. As soon as she found that out she demanded that Keith come home. He was very shy and quiet and I'm guessing he was scared shitless. My brother and I do not discuss these days very much. Duck was beating on my mom regularly so mom was drinking and doing drugs being mean to me and all I knew now in my life was violence so I took it out on Keith. I was very hateful to him. I didn't allow him to touch or even so much as look at anything that belonged to me and if he did I would best on him. It pains me to say this happened often. Duck hit mom, mom hit me, I hit Keith and I have no idea how Keith dealt with it. He tried to lash out at me a few times but I was bigger than him and I was comsumed with anger so I overtook him so easily. I wanted out of there. I didn't want to go back to Aunt Dee Dee's because they were too strict. I had gotten a taste of the dangerous life and I just couldn't go back to a normal way of living. It happens so fast how your brain can rewire itself. Mine anyway. That would not be the last time either.
So I decided I wanted to live with my dad. Of course my mom wouldn't let me. She  my dad. He had a new girlfriend named MaryAnn who was so nice to me. He brought me to my Grannys to play with all my cousins. He bought me McDonalds and he took me places and we had fun. I got to escape from the violence for a little while. My dad was the coolest dad. So funny, he was so goofy. He always made every one laugh so hard. He was really good looking and had a cool truck with a really loud radio and let me listen to my music on it. Everyone loved my daddy but he had his demons too. He would tell me he was coming to pick me up sometimes and I would sit by the window all night and cry because he never showed up and he stopped answering the phone. My mom said he never ever gave her money to help take care of me and even when he did pick me up he usually dropped me off at my Grannys house and took off until it was time to bring me home. He was a drunk with a drug problem too and I just had nowhere to escape. Things were so bad at home. So many times I picked up a butcher knife and threatened to kill Duck. When I was seven I ran at him with all I had, I had every intention of stabbing him and was hoping he would die so he wouldn't beat up my mom anymore. What seven year old has those thoughts? Things even became violent when I would go with dad. He moved in with MaryAnn and they started fighting a lot too. Once she stabbed him in front of my cousin and I, he told her she was going to jail so she cut her hand open and started to sling blood around the house and was saying, "No mother fucker your going to jail because you stabbed me." In a sing-song voice while skipping around the house. She called the cops and my dad ran and left my cousin and I there with her because he had attachments and didn't want to go to jail. The cops came, she told them in a very normal voice like nothing was wrong that they got into an argument and she leaned against the counter and accidentally cut herself. The cops were looking at all the blood, then looking at my cousin and I and we just shrugged. They looked around the house for my dad and then just left. MaryAnn started cleaning the blood and humming to herself like she was Snow White talking to the animals and so my cousin and I walked right out the house and into the woods. We made a song to sing loud to try and let my dad know the cops were gone. This was perfectly normal to us. We were laughing and playing and calling out to him until finally he dropped down out of a tree and we walked back to the house. Fight over, we were sitting at the table eating dinner a couple hours later.
Dad and MaryAnn ending up having a son so I had another little brother. He was born with Downs Syndrome and he had three holes in his heart, he had surgery to fix the holes in his heart but he died later that night when he was three months old. I wasn't allowed at the funeral and I didn't see my dad for a little while after that. During that time my mom announced she was pregnant. 
Doctors told her to have an abortion. They told her that because of her back she would not be able to carry a baby, she could become paralyzed or she could even die. Every OBGYN she saw refused to treat her, she was too high risk and they all told her the same thing. To have an abortion. She refused and finally found one doctor who would see her. I was scared. I had a little baby brother who just died, my dad was off God knows where and my mom could die but she wanted to do it anyway.
The case my mom had against the railroad company becuase of the bridge accident was expected to go on for years but her lawyer assured her she would get a million dollars. He was so sure that when she wanted a new house he bought it for her. She decided to put the house in Ducks name. Imagine that.
We moved into a three bedroom home. My mom carried my little brother Dannie full term against all odds and was perfectly fine. Duck didnt beat her so bad while she was pregnant so that was good. We got a big motor home and went on long trips and stayed nights on the beach, we stayed nights in state parks. We had a boat that we went riding in to camps and we played in the bayou. I started to have weekends with my dad again and even those fights were toned down a bit. Life was good for a little while. Then the beatings started to get bad again. My mom stabbed Duck in the arm but the cops didn't do her anything because they were at our house every weekend and they saw what he did to her. They knew he deserved it. My mom was that type of mom who always had the house sparkling clean, she always had three meals a day cooked, she took us to every baseball practice and game, got us custom helmets and bats, I did cheerleading and she used her dance experience to help us with our tournaments, I was in gymnastics, we did whatever we wanted to on that note. She was also a sloppy drunk. She sipped on Jack and Coke all day long and popped xanax and by the end of the day she was gone. We had to walk on eggshells so we didn't piss her off. A lot of times I was taking care of my baby brother because she was too gone to do it. One night after coming home from my Dads I walked into the back door and every light in the house was off and Dannie was screaming like crazy. It was that type of scream where you know it had to be going on for quite a while. He was gasping for air and could hardly breath by the time I ran in the room and pulled him out of his crib. I turned on some lights and I was yelling for my mom but she didn't answer. I didn't see her anywhere. It was the middle of the night and Dannie was all alone for God knows how long? It was a very scary, eerie feeling. I ran to the neighbors across the street. We went back to the house with his bright flashlight and found my mom lying on the couch not moving or responding. I hadn't seen her when I looked because it was dark and she was so tiny. The neighbor shook her really hard and she finally sat up and said she was fine. The neighbor just left. My mom was so messed up. I got in so much trouble for getting the neighbor involved. So many people could have stepped in, called someone to help us but nobody ever did. Things were bad. Honestly I don't remember a lot that happened but at some point my mom kicked Duck out. He went back to the trailer and let us stay in the house. My mom started dating a man named Jimmy pretty much immediately. 

Chapter 4: Our short time with Jimmy.

Jimmy was a single dad with five kids and clearly my mom wanted to be around him for the excitement of sex and drugs because for the whole few months they were together they were constantly locked in the room together and hardly ever came out. His oldest son was in prison so I never met him, his next two children were older so even though I met them they were hardly ever around. That left Brandy and Travis. I first met Brandy and immediately hit it off with her even though we were complete opposites. I was that good, sweet, innocent girl who follwed all the rules, got ALL the awards in school and wore big poofy, lace dresses and hair bows. Brandy was a tom boy who dressed rugged, was wild and broke any rules she could get away with breaking. I thought she was awesome. Then one night after a couple weeks Travis finally came home from wherever he was at. Brandy told me he was a few years older then us and I would like him because he was cool. I remember that night so vividly. That was the night I decided boys were not all that bad. It was night time, he walked out of the house and the porch light was shining on his blonde hair. He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. He got in the car and it didn't take him too long to start picking on me about my dresses and goody two shoes ways but I didn't mind because he wasn't being mean and this beautiful boy was speaking to ME! Brandy, Travis, Keith and I became thick as theives that summer. We did EVERYTHING together. Our parents would lock themselves in Jimmys room and we had free reign over the neighborhood. We would steal cigarettes from my mom and go to the abandoned house next door and smoke and throw rocks at the windows. It made me feel so cool. It wasn't too long after that first night that Brandy and I were sitting in her sisters room listening to music and she told me Travis wanted to go out with me. It felt like my stomach dropped right to the floor. It couldn't be true. I was awkward and ugly and he was beautiful and older. Why would he want to go out with me? I didn't believe her so she walked out and came back from his room with a note he had written saying he wanted to go out with me and I'm sure my smile almost broke my face. Of course I said yes. Sometimes we would go swimming by thier rich uncles house and we would play spin the bottle which if you think about it was sort of counter productive since I wasn't going to make out with Keith or Brandy and everyone else felt the same obviously so we just kept spinning the bottle until it landed in the right place. Keith and Brandy were making out like crazy but every time it was my turn I would chicken out. There was nothing more in the world I wanted besides kissing him and having him hold me like I saw grown ups do in movies but I was too scared I was going to do it wrong and then be mortified so instead I mortified myself by getting right up into his face and then backing away and laughing awkwardly. It was horrible. I came so close so many times but all I could manage to not be a dork about was hold his hand. Brandy and Keith made out constantly and Im pretty sure it went further than that. My stupid little brother had more courage than I did. It was torture. Besides my complete awkward dorkiness it was pretty great. Clearly looking back it was completely wrong, Im so glad I was a chicken and the other things we did was so dangerous. I was nine years old I didn't need to be making out, smoking cigarettes, destroying property, exploring dangerous places, I tried hitting a weed roach one time that I stole from my mom and hid under my bed to smoke, we would burn wax in my closet like ink pens and stuff like that but at that time I was one of the cool kids and it felt great. Duck ended up finding out about Jimmy and kicked my mom out of her own house because it was in his name. We moved in with Aunt Dee Dee and that ended our short time with Jimmy. I was devastated. I tried keeping up with Travis on the phone and we did talk on and off for years later but our summer fling was over. With that Summer loving, having a blast. That summer loving happened so fast. I met a boy cute as can be. Then it was over.

*** To Be Continued ***