Momma kept family photos hung on the wall. Just a small few, took books to hold them all. The mind can’t rewind to a time you used to crawl, but you can see yourself back then.
Family photos. I go over to my mom’s house and see them plastered on the walls. Me in first grade, me in second grade, my junior high school graduation photo, school pictures of my cousins. There are so many photos it’s like a library of books holding them all. All those memories. I’ve gotten so used to seeing them that they’ve become part of the wall. I stopped even noticing them.
Photobooks sat in a closet collecting dust. Once in a while during the holidays when old relatives visited, we’d go through them to reminisce about the old days.The photo albums were all disorganized. You could see somebody tried to instill order. There were labels under each picture, they just weren’t the label for the picture that was there. It would say stuff like Shawn acting foolish with a photo of my sister hot combing her hair.
We had this one picture from Halloween. I don’t even remember what year it was, I had to be no more than 14. My niece was a witch the previous Halloween. In the photo I have on an old school Levi “Button Your Fly” shirt with the hat from my niece’s Halloween costume, dancing. My mother was pretty festive so during the holidays we’d play music and dance. It’s just what we did.
That photo makes me think of my aunt Zezzelle. She was a really vibrant and beautiful person. She had Down Syndrome but her star shined so brightly. When my mother would play music she’d get up and dance. Now, Z was about 4’11” and heavy set. There was this song she used to sing while she danced. She’d go “I dah pu yah” none of us knew what it meant but we’d gather and cheer her on, “Go Zee, Go Zee!” My aunt could get down man, she’d be feeling it!
She had a thing for paper and used to sit and make this noise as she whipped the paper in front of her face, “Snaah, snaah!”. She used to steal our school books and homework in the night. We’d be sleeping and hear her tiny feet pitter pattering through the house. We’d wake up and walk by her room. She’d do this guilty giggle. You’d go looking for your books and when you didn’t find them you knew she had them and you had to act fast because she didn’t just wave the paper. The waving was just part of some type of ritual before she tore it up.
If you tried to take your book back you’d get the shit scratched out of you so we had to call my mother. My mother would bargain with her and exchange new paper for our school book or give her a new bag to keep her paper in.
People that came to visit would get a kick out of her throwing them out. That was her thing, throwing people out of the house. She’d say “Get out my house. Beat you up that wall. mmmMMM!” then laugh, of course, she was kidding. Whenever people came over they would go over to Zee and say “You gone kick me out Zezzelle? You gone kick me out?” She’d just hug them, laugh, and say “Noooo! “
Whenever her birthday came around she knew she’d get a cake. Out of nowhere she’d call me over and ask me if I wanted some. She’d be like “You want some cake Shawnie? You want some cake? Ain’t getting none mmmMM!”
The day after Thanksgiving, in I think 2004, my mother called me. She said when they woke up that morning Zezzelle wasn’t moving. My mom sent my niece over to check and see if she was breathing and she wasn’t. They called the ambulance and when they got there they said she had passed on. Talk about crying like a baby. I cried the whole train ride over to my mom. It just hurt so bad. She passed away and I think that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.
In one of my mom’s photo albums there is this picture of me and my brother at my Junior High School graduation. It always makes me think back to this Nautica hat he had, this blue Nautica hat. I used to fiend to wear that hat and he would never let me borrow it. Whenever he caught me with it, he’d make me take it off. If I tried to sneak out of the house with it on when he wasn’t home, my mother would make me take it off. She didn’t want us fighting and that was surely going to be the result if he caught me wearing it.
I used to cut school so much in Junior High School. There were these two dudes I used to cut school with and we’d just roam the streets looking sad. I mean, thinking back, what the hell was I thinking? It was freezing, I’d be hungry. Adding to it, we used to go by the Ampitheatre at Hunter College High School in East Harlem. They had this store over there that used to make Popcorn and the smell would just permeate the street. So I’m cold, hungry, and smelling warm buttery Popcorn. It was torture.
If my brother caught me cutting it was a fight. We fought a lot and it only made me want to cut school more in retaliation. He just wanted me to do good. Close to the end of the year I was in danger of failing. The Principal, Mrs. Hill, told my mom I was too smart to be failing. She told her I wasn’t like the kids I was hanging out with. Whatever she saw in me, I didn’t see in myself at the time. She set me up with a chair in front of her desk and all my work was brought to her office. Every day I came to school my classroom was her office. It stayed like that for the rest of the year.
My mom had a photo of me hugged up with Mrs. Hill at my Junior High School graduation. There’s also a photo of me and my brother with our arms around each other’s shoulders and our heads knocked together. In that photo , ’m wearing the Nautica hat and he’s pointing to me in the picture with this look in his eyes...You could just see how much it meant to him.
Family photos and the places they take you back to you. The people they make you remember.
My mother had some trouble and ended up having to leave her place. All of her stuff went into storage, including her photos. She couldn’t keep up with the storage bill and they threw everything away. Every photo, every photo album, lost. I never used to think much about those photos. Now I can’t stop thinking about them.
Momma kept family photos hung on the wall. Just a small few, took books to hold them all. The mind can’t rewind to a time you used to crawl, but you can see yourself back then.
