Chapter 5: Queen of the Night

I’ve always considered myself a Black Queen – that’s just always been part of my upbringing. I had working class parents, a younger brother, lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, went to a private school, and was afforded things that many of my friends never had. My father was ex-Navy and worked at a pharmaceutical warehouse. He became an assistant pastor when I was in middle school and then began preaching while was in high school. My mother, an RN, worked in the research department at the same company. She had two college degrees, one in nursing and one she earned later in Business Administration. We were a close knit, bible-belt family until my parents began drifting apart. They didn’t get divorced until I graduated high school. I saw it coming, but I’m grateful for them holding out that long for my sake.

My parents sent me to a private school that was 99% white (I was the 1%). I was there from third grade until I graduated from high school. I spent my entire adolescence and early adulthood being teased in my ‘hood for being “proper”. Why? Because I used proper English? Or was it because I didn’t talk “black”. I suffered an identity crisis at an early age and at the hands of my own peers. It got the point where I didn’t even want to play outside anymore. My little brother had all of the neighborhood kids intimidated by me because he always spoke of his big sister whom they never saw. If he got mad at them, he would tell them that he would go get his sister and they would run home!

Books and television were my best friends. I loved fairy tales and greek mythology. I fantasized that I was the princesses and the goddesses that I read about (go figure). My favorite shows were (and still are) crime dramas. I was a member of the Philip Michael Thomas fan club from Miami Vice and idolized Billy Dee Williams from his older movies to Star Wars. My parents didn’t think I was peeking at the drive in theatre, but I remember Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, all of the Sidney Poitier’s movies and the Bill Cosby comedies. But there were mainly pin-up photos of Don Johnson, Tom Selleck, John Stamos and Chuck Norris adorning my bedroom walls. I spent my money from allowance and my job at the pizza shop to buy Tiger Beat Magazines.

I listened to classic rock and roll in addition to listening to R & B and classic soul on my dad’s record player (yes I said record player!). Growing up, I flipped radio stations from rock and roll, to soul, to hard rock and then to gospel. I remember writing down the words to Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” and my dad finding them and getting grounded for it. I was also constantly grounded for watching television shows like Three’s Company, Bewitched, and Dynasty because my dad found them “immoral”. Being the daughter of a preacher, limited my access to many of my “worldly” obsessions which happened to be the mass media.

I also remember listening in disbelief to my parents telling me horror stories of growing up with segregation in the ‘60s. I saw photos of my “white” maternal great grandmother and saw the various shades of color within my own family. I listened to my mother tell me how insulted she was when I was born and everyone commented on my father’s side of how “light” I was. I remember my mother telling me she went to a movie theater and had to go through the back door and sit all the way up in the balcony because they weren’t allowed to use the front door. Meanwhile her cousins who looked white could get away with sitting on the main floor. There were also stories of my paternal grandfather narrowly escaping lynchings and my grandmother who was a nurse being able to care for whites but not ride the same bus home with them.