Billie

BILLIE

A Memoir by Billie King

Edited by Vivien Kooper

Copyright © 2014 by PRK Publishing

All rights reserved.

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Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

First Printing. 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4951-5896-4

8306 Wilshire Blvd #530

Beverly Hills. Ca 90210

www.bookblueking.com

This book is dedicated to my mother.

I want to thank you for your unconditional love and for allowing me to tell our story. I love you.

Table of Contents

1. Beyond the Closet Door

2. Money Five

3. House of Horror

4. Dizzyland

5. Darkness

6. No Way Out

7. Run, BK, Run

8. Sixteen Melodies

9. Through the Broken Glass

10. The Blackest Rose

11. Just Shy of Skid Row

12. Larceny

13. Before I Let Go

14. I Am Not God

Afterword

About the Author

''Survival: i1natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment.''

Webster's Dictionary

A Note to the Reader

A.ll the events portrayed in this book are factual; however, certain names have been changed to ensure privacy for all concerned.

"This image is of three survivors. All were faced with horrific challenges and circumstances. The one thing that kept them together was love.

I NEVER LET THEM GO."

BEHOLD THE GREAT BIRD CATCHER!

— 1 —

Beyond the Closet Door

I have just discovered Run-DMC, and I am sitting in my half-empty bedroom in front of a boom box, writing down all the lyrics to King of Rock.

I’m the king of rock, there is none higher

Sucker MC’s should call me sire,

To burn my kingdom, you must use fire,

I won’t stop rockin’ till I retire…

Someday I’ll have a girl group just like them. I beg my older sister Nia to perform with me around the house, but she isn’t interested at all. I used to get upset about her not wanting to play band with me, but Mama says that for now, I’m what they call a solo act. I try to dress the part—as much as I am able, anyway—wearing Mama’s old blue sweat jacket with the two white stripes on the side. It’s not Adidas, but it looks like it.

I’m also starting to write my own poems, and maybe I can turn them into song lyrics and put them to music. I have a lot to say. In fact, Mama says I have too much to say. I make up songs in the kitchen while she’s cooking or in the bathroom when she’s getting dressed. She says I have a great talent for coming up with lyrics for songs.

She also says I’m a lot like my father in that way—and in other ways that are less desirable. Bull-headed! she says, just like your father.

I find that funny—and comforting. He’s a big, strong, man with a lot of talent, and I like being compared to him.

During those rare times when my father is not being mean to Mama, he wakes up in the mornings happy. This morning he’s performing solo—walking around the living room singing into his hair comb while wearing nothing but a t-shirt, his boxers, and a pair of boots. As he’s performing, he does spins, sometimes getting down so low to the ground it looks like he’s about to do the splits. But then he returns quickly to a straight position and spins again.

I watch in amazement, hoping I was lucky enough to get even half his talent.

"Precious, precious, precious, precious, precious baby, you’re mine" are the lyrics to a song he sometimes sings to me. The song is by Jackie Moore, a musician he likes, but my father’s version is my favorite. It doesn’t hurt that Precious is also the name my father calls me. He says I was the most precious thing he had ever seen.

Mama grabs two plastic bottles half-filled with uncooked rice and starts to shake them. She’s making music, and it’s beautiful. Mama tells Nia and me to hurry and grab two spoons each from the kitchen drawer. Then she shows us how to play them so they make music.

We are a band! Even Nia is having a great time—but it’s short lived.

My father is putting on his shirt and pants, and I can see that he’s angry. What just happened? What did I miss?

Okay, that’s enough, Mama says. You two go into the room. Nia goes immediately.

Mama? I say.

It’s okay, she says, pushing me toward my room.

More than anything, I hate to leave Mama alone with him. I am afraid he will kill her if I am not there to stop him. So, whenever they fight and tell my sister and me to leave the room, I do everything I can to stay until the very last minute. I am so heavy with fear, it feels like my body has lead in it. When I finally give in and go to my room, I have to drag myself away from Mama. I shut the bedroom door slowly and sit on the edge of the bed.

Nia shakes her head, shrugs her shoulders, and turns on the TV.

With each of Mama’s screams, I’m sure she’s that much closer to dying, only a few feet away from my sister and me. I have knots in my stomach. Oh, God, he’s going to kill her! Somebody, please come help! Can’t anyone hear?

Now Nia and I are hiding in the closet behind a huge wooden door—a door without mercy. Close it too fast and catch your finger, and you can consider that finger dead. We’re huddled together, our knees shaking and knocking against each other’s. Our hands are over our ears, trying to block what sounds like our mother being beaten to death. The sound of hard breathing is muffled in my head from squeezing my ears so tightly.

Suddenly the noise stops and I ask my sister, Is it over?

She is slouched over, as always, with her eyes to the ground. She shrugs.

Slowly I take my hands from my ears, and hear a pop after releasing the tight squeeze on my head. Not wanting to get up from my knees, I crawl past Nia, stretch my hand up high to reach the slat and open the door. I hear nothing. Complete silence.

Leaving my big sister sitting there, hands still over her ears, I walk slowly into the living room. It’s daytime, but the living room is dark. The furniture is turned over, and in the broken glass, I see a reflection of the sun coming through the torn curtain. I walk closer to Mama.

She’s sitting on the floor with her lip busted and a huge bump on her forehead. She hands me the yellow phone handle so I can reattach it to the base that hangs on the side of the kitchen wall. Now I know how she got that huge bump.

God, why did this happen to her? Mama is so sweet and loving, and I can’t imagine why my father would ever want to hurt her.

I always hear him say, That Aries in you is going to get yo’ ass killed!

What Aries? I don’t understand. Is that why they fight? I crawl up next to her, barely able to look into her face. She holds me tight. No tears drop from her eyes. The tears flow from mine instead. I’m sobbing for her.

At six years old, I’m the youngest, but I’m the one who always cares for Mama after Daddy does this to her. Nia may be three years older but she can’t handle it. She still hasn’t walked in to see if Mama is okay. My sister’s fear makes her keep her distance, but mine has the exact opposite effect. I want to stay glued to Mama’s side.

As Mama and I sit silently in the corner, holding each other tight, I am thinking, God made me closer to Mama for a reason.

~ ~ ~

The next day, we’re running to my grandmother’s house to get away from my father. She owns a house on Anzac Street in Compton, as well as the one next door and the one directly across the street. My grandparents moved here from Harlem in New York City, and this is the house where my mother and her two older brothers were raised.

We’re not there more than a week before my father comes to try to talk Mama into going back to him.

As I listen to his words through the floor heater on the other side of the wall, I’m screaming inside my head, Don’t do it, Mama! Don’t do it!

I’m praying Mama won’t give in to my father, not only because of what he’s doing to her, but also because I love it here. Grandma has a big backyard with every fruit tree you can imagine—a lemon tree, an orange tree, a cherry tree, even a grapefruit tree. My grandfather, who I don’t remember because he died when I was two, planted what looks like a Christmas tree on the side of the house. Mama says it’s been growing since she was only six, and I can tell. It’s huge!

From my position against the heater, I can see the Christmas tree through the side window. If I could just bend down a little bit more, I could see all the way to the very top.

Suddenly, Mama is telling us to grab our clothes. What just happened? I wasn’t paying attention.

My father did it—he convinced her to return home with him. And now, we’re in his money-green Cadillac driving home. As we turn off Anzac, I can still see the kids playing in the middle of the street. I sink into the seat.

The ride feels long and strange. The radio is loud, and Mama is surfing for a station like nothing ever happened. My father, with his huge Afro, is looking as big and bold as ever, as though he’s in control of it all. My sister Nia is just sitting there, as usual, saying nothing.

I look at them, thinking, They’re all crazy!

Back at our apartment on Pine Street, Nia and I drop our big paper bags stuffed full of our clothes. Then we head outside to play in the center of the apartment complex. Pine Street is no Anzac, but I still find interesting things to do.

Behold the great bird catcher! I tie a string to the end of a stick and use it to prop up the top of a cardboard box. Then I put bread in the center of the box, hold the other end of the string, and run to hide in the bushes. While the other kids run around, playing ball or something, I’m in a bush, waiting quietly for a bird to take the bait.

My sister never plays with other kids. She’s standing off to the side, watching as I try to do what she thinks is impossible.

A bird lands and takes the bait. Then the moment I’m about to pull the string, a second bird lands. I’ve snared two birds! I look at my sister and see the anticipation on her face. I pull the string and scream, Gotcha!

Nia runs to me with excitement, saying, I can’t believe you caught those birds! That’s amazing!

I’m so happy to see her excited. I love my sister very much, but she’s such a loner, it’s hard to feel close to her sometimes.

She helps me secure the birds in the box and carry them to the house. When we get home, the birds start flying around the house, so fast that we can’t catch them. How did we let them get out?

Mama says she can’t believe I caught what she calls sparrows, those little bitty, brown birds. She’s very angry—cussing and screaming—until we finally shoo the birds out the front door.

Mama orders us to wash our hands, but the hand-washing doesn’t protect me from my second bout of ringworm. The first time, I got ringworm on my scalp, on the back of my head right below the hairline. Mama had to wash my hair with Tide detergent for a week to get rid of it.

I’m always finding dead birds, and playing with them or poking them with a stick. Mama calls me her wilderness girl. I may be afraid of the dark and need to sleep with a night-light, but I’m not frightened of much wildlife. Mama even calls me to kill the spiders and scare away the mice. If I don’t make it as a famous musician with my own band, I will think about being an explorer.

If I’m afraid of anything, it’s a raccoon. Not just because they have those long, sharp, black nails, and the cartoons portray them as robbers and gangsters, but also because they’re unafraid of humans.

Not long before I brought home the sparrows, I was in back of the apartment building when I stumbled upon a couple of raccoons emptying the trash.

I stood there quietly watching as one shuffled through the trash while the other one stood on the lookout below. It’s crazy how they always seem to travel in twos. Another day, I saw two raccoons walking slowly down the street, as if they had not a care in the world. When they got close to me, I thought I could shoo them away. After attempting that a few times, we had a stare down. They won and I walked away.

Exploring is fun. Right next door to our complex is a small motel with a telephone booth in front of it. I like to call the operator and hang up. The manager chases my friends and me out of there, saying we shouldn’t be there in the first place, and we’re making too much noise.

I haven’t seen any of my friends since earlier and I’m bored. So, I’m at the motel, checking to see what’s going on. There’s the same man I saw yesterday, when Nia and I were on our way to school. We were waiting at the bus stop, and I noticed the man at the bus stop across the street. It was a really cold morning and my sister and I were wearing big coats, but he had his pants down. I thought, It’s odd that he’d have his pants down when it’s so cold outside. Isn’t he freezing?

Then he started playing with his private and looking right at us. Nia and I looked at each other with big eyes and said, Oh, my God—look at him! I am old enough to know that his private should be just that—private.

Now it’s the next day and I see the same man in one of the rooms. He’s lying on the bed with his pants off.

He calls to me, Come in!

Me? I walk inside. Curiosity is leading me into his room. I don’t understand what’s happening and I am driven by my desire to solve the mystery.

The man tells me to close the door behind me and I do. Then he says, Come sit on the bed, and I do that too.

He is touching himself the way he did at the bus stop, and he has a strange look on his face. He asks me to come closer to him, so I get up from the bottom edge of the bed to move closer. I keep taking all these chances because I am mesmerized by the puzzle I am trying to piece together.

I have the mind of a detective. I am always hot on the trail of something. Often, that something is my mother. I love following every clue, going deeper and deeper, trying to get to the heart of the matter. She always asks me, How do you always know where to find me?

With this man in the motel room, it feels like I am inching my way along a cliff, getting right up to the edge, just to have a look over the side. Then, suddenly aware of the danger, I turn around and run frantically out the door. I am running back towards my apartment complex.

When I get close to home, I can hear arguing. From a distance, it sounds like Mama. Oh, no! Not again! I fly upstairs so fast, it feels like my feet hit only the first and top steps before I burst through the door. I am wondering what terrible thing is happening now, but it’s just Mama with some friends, talking loudly over music, and having a good time.

Dang! Why do I always have to be feeling so on edge, with my heart beating a mile a minute? I am out of breath and overwrought. Now it’s Mama’s turn to wonder what’s going on. "BK, what the hell is wrong with