Good Night Mamma

To all the angels of the night and the dreamers of the day, I salute your survival instincts.
I wish for you peace, love, a full stomach and a warm place to belong!

Contents
1 As told by Daniel
2 As told by Jessica
3 As told by Paulie
4 As told by Miss Ginger
5 As told by me
6 Epilogue

Foreword
The people in this book are fictionally true or truly fictional, take your pick. Down south, we do things different. We use paper plates and napkins, cheap razors, and lighters and all of this we just toss in the garbage when we have used them up. They are not needed any more or their purpose has been served. Disposable is what we call it, and when a child down south has a certain kind of family, they, too, can find themselves disposable if they don’t fit the family mold, or come across as different.

This book is about some of those disposable children that have grown up to become angels of the night or dreamers of the day. The ones tossed out like a soggy paper plate after a summer barbecue, to fend for themselves the best way they can. To maybe find a grandparent to take them in or some relative down the line that may not have quite the same mold as their family. And then, yes, some are not so lucky and wind up on the streets, roaming the dumpsters, the flop houses, checking all the ashtrays, bumming money for food. And then there are the ones that think they can make it the easy way by lowering their morals to find a kind stranger of their dreams to take them in and love them, but only to find someone that will take them in and use them.

These are our angels of the night and our dreamers of the day. These are the ones we should heap love on their issues and hug their pain away. Get them assistance and off the streets or a place for counseling and guidance to help them find a new journey to take. A journey where they can respect themselves, like themselves, and even one day, love themselves again.

Disposable people are all around us. They try to blend in, to hide so not to bring attention to themselves. You haven’t seen them? Then you haven’t looked. They are the sad eyed roamers walking, the eyes are cast down as to not look at anyone but are constantly panning the field of vision for a person that looks like a possible hand out. A giver of food or money. Some really try and help, while others just turn their heads because they don’t want to be an enabler.

These are our sons, our daughters, our children of the south that didn’t cut the mustard…

Preface
I am a writer. I am a fixer. I am seeing more and more angels and dreamers. I am a talker and a storyteller.

Following are interviews and stories I have learned from my angels and dreamers, the ones that would talk to me. Some trust me to tell their stories with care. Some tell me to be as harsh as life has been harsh to them. Some have unbelievable tales while most just broke my heart. I have cried many times trying to understand life. The unfairness of it and how it dishes out the punishment to the ones that are not molded correctly or just doesn’t fit the family.

As told by Daniel
My name is Daniel and I am thirty years old, be thirty one next month. I’ve been on the streets since I was kicked out of my family’s home five years ago. You see, it all started back in high school when I was outed by some friends cause I like this boy. Now, I liked girls as well as boys, but at this time in my life, there was this boy. I had feelings and urges that felt different from when I was with a girl. He and I became friends in more ways than one. But life had a way of kicking me in the head. Looking back and trying to justify it now, maybe it was a punishment from God because I was sinning and I knew better cause I was church raised.

My family and me, well, we were at the church every time the door was unlocked. My daddy said being at church made us stronger in the eyes of God. See, down south, daddies ruled the house and mine, well he ruled with the “because I said so” rule. All of us kids, and I know my Mamma was not blind to the fact, knew that my daddy was not the perfect man he claimed to be at church. As we would approach church, he became more righteous the closer we got. I never understood why he thought he had to be perfect in the church. Wasn’t that where you went cause you were not perfect? Well, it was to me anyway. So being the perfect family was important to him and when he found out my secret, well, that perfect family image was shattered.

It was during class that my friend and I were caught by a teacher that was patrolling the school property. We were escorted through the halls of school as the bell for class change rang out and students poured from each classroom into the hall and there we were, being escorted to the principal’s office so everyone knew something was up. Later, after a stern talking to by the principal, our parents were called and we were sent home for three days.

Now Jesus stayed dead for three days and he arose triumphantly, but it was a little different when I returned to school. For one, my friend was swept away to a different school, cause I guess I was a bad influence or something. The other thing was, everybody knew my secret. Not sure if that statement was just in my head, but in my mind all eyes were on me and judging. My life both at home and at school changed with one experimental escapade which made me rethink lots of things. Was I being punished because I was attracted to girls and boys? Was I now an outcast to my friends and my family? Was I the reason my daddy could not face going back to church the next Sunday? Was I the reason that voices lowered when I walked by? This was a lot for a teenager to handle with no one to talk to or ask for advise. So I got angry.

My anger started out at just myself because I could not handle the changes bombarding my mind. I was not prepared so I got more angry and aimed it at others since I could not bottle up the anger inside anymore. I started lashing out at school, then my brothers and sisters, then my mother. But never my daddy. I had no reason to lash out at him because I knew he had secrets of his own that he was dealing with. Did this make me love him less? Can’t say directly, but maybe I just never knew if I really loved him at all. I mean he was my daddy and all, but he did not show me love like my mamma did.

Well, things were changing at home and school was about to end. I held it together and finished school which was a smart thing on my part, I guess, but at home things were getting violent. I had started running with some people trying to be cool and fit in wherever I could to feel normal again. But the people I was running with introduced me to things that would help ease my mental pain. Weed and alcohol was an easy start. And that was easy to hide as I would slip into the house late at night. Or so I thought until one night my mamma was waiting up for me. She was crying and asked me where I had been and what had I been doing. I lashed out. Just hanging with friends. Have you been drinking? Maybe a beer or two. Are you on anything? No mamma, I know better than that. Go to bed, we’ll talk tomorrow.

But I couldn’t do that. I knew she didn’t believe me plus I was afraid she would tell my daddy and I knew how that would work out. So I packed as much of my things as I could get in a backpack and a duffel bag, got the grocery money off the top of the fridge and I started walking. I called my friends and they picked me up about a mile from my house.

This was the start of my ending. I bounced from house to house, couch to couch and slowly, my friends were leaving me behind because I was not contributing anymore and I was not the fun guy at the parties where we smoked weed and passed out on alcohol. I had no job and no money and was finally put out of the last house that would take me in. My friends, became my strangers and my family was no more, because my daddy said I left. He said when I left, I cut all ties with them and he forbid any of his kids or my mamma to have contact with me.

After a couple of weeks of being out in the world alone, being hungry and cold and sleeping wherever I felt safe, I called my mamma and asked her could I come home. She started to cry and told me that if she let that happen that my daddy would probably call the police and tell them that I stole money out of the house. He also told my mamma that he would beat her if he found out that she had talked to me.

That was the last time I talked to my mamma.

I started hitching out of town and that’s how I ended up here at the Salvation Army. You know when I was all up in church, I learned that Jesus said, I was hungry and you fed me. I was naked and you clothed me I was homeless and you took me in. Well, I prayed to Jesus to keep the bad people of this world away from me. To not ever get so hungry that I did things or allowed things to happen to me that I would feel less of a person and so far I have held up my part of the bargain.

The Salvation Army came through for me. I am thirty yeas old and have a job with them. I am sober but an alcoholic because I always will be one. I am clean from drugs and heck, I can even pass a drug screen now! They came through for me even when I thought I was just using them to get some food and a place to sleep. They showed me I was worth something, that I mattered even if it was only to me.

I still haven’t seen or heard from my family, but that’s OK cause now I have learned that I get to choose my own family. One that loves me warts and all.

So I bet when you asked what was my story you didn’t think you would get all of that huh? But I got a story to tell and maybe it will help somebody else that may be on the same road as me…or was…cause you see, I ain’t that person anymore.

As told by Jessica
What’s my story? You want to know what is my story? What makes you think I got one? You just roll up in here thinking because I may be looking a little dirty or maybe my makeup might be a little smeared means I got a story? Hell, mister, maybe my water got turned off and I ain’t had time for a shower or maybe I’m just tired of all of the bullshit that I have to put up with, and then you have the nerve to ask me whats my story? Just who the hell are you anyway?

OK, just sit your ass down and I’ll tell you my story. And if I get to be too much for you, just calm your ass down or don’t get all misty eyed cause my story, well, it ain’t no movie out of Hollywood or it ain’t gonna be pretty like a Hallmark movie.

I was twelve year old when my mother’s brother came to live with us. He had no job and I don’t know what all he was messed up in but all I do know is that he could not keep his hands off of me. He would come in my room in the night while the house was asleep and start rubbing on me. I did not know what he was doing but when I told him to stop and he didn’t, I told him I was gonna tell my mother. Well, it stopped for a while until one afternoon I came home from school and nobody was home but him. He had this look on his face like he was up to something. I figured it was not anything good so I went to my room, thinking he would leave me alone since somebody could come home at any time. But no, he comes in my room and tries to kiss me. Me! A twelve year old girl whose tits had not even started to come in, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. He was drunk and the smell of whatever he had been drinking was making me sick. He grabbed my face and shoved his tongue into my mouth and I gagged and vomited all over myself, but he didn’t seem to mind cause he done it anyway as I cried and screamed.

I guess I blacked out cause when I woke, I was hurting down there. I got up and went in the kitchen where my mother and him was. He looked at me and when my mother left the room, he grabbed my arm and said he would kill me if I told anyone.
I had thought that maybe he was done with me now. But that night… he was drunk again…and I cried again.

I told my mother the next morning what had happened and she told me to stop telling lies to get attention. She looked nervous as she told me. I could not believe she didn’t believe me. But later that night, when all was asleep, my bedroom door opened and I was immediately afraid it was my uncle, drunk again. But no, it was my mother. She was crying as she came in and shut the door and sat at the foot of my bed. She started to tell me of a girl that she knew that had stories to tell. She said that girl had a father that would come in her room at night. It started out as just a little rubbing, then he got bolder until he got up the nerve to do what he intended to do all along. I looked in her eyes as she talked. I could tell my mother probably was that girl.

I asked her what did that girl do and my mother, instead of standing up to protect me, she said that girl stayed there and until her father passed, she just took it and clinched her eyes tight and did the best she could.

I asked my mother if she believed me then, and she never answered. All she said was if I was going to make it stop that the best thing I could do was to leave cause if this got out, the family scandal would kill her and her family would be the shame of the town. Then my mother did something that still puzzles me. She hugged me and kissed my forehead. She said I love you. Then as she was leaving my room and closing my door, she looked at me and told me bye….

So I got my suitcase and tossed in what clothes and stuff I thought I could manage and I left in the middle of the night. I went to the bus station and got me a ticket to Birmingham. I had family there I was told and I hoped I could find some to take me in.

And now ten years later, I am here, doing the best I can to stay alive. Yes, I might live on the streets, but I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink. Now I ain’t saying I ain’t done other things to survive cause that would be a lie. Maybe I been lucky to get where I am today cause I ain’t got no education or smarts, but I got the kind of smarts that matter. I know when they be good people talking to me and I know when to leave some people alone. Sometimes I find me a man out here that just needs some companionship and I use him for protection cause a single girl roaming around will get killed. Me and Benny, we been together about two years. We ain’t got nothing but we got each other. Benny, he gets some work when he can. He don’t do drugs but he does drink a little when he can get it but he knows not to come around when he’s been drinking cause I don’t like it. It reminds me of my uncle.

So you ask me about my story…. I sit here, telling you all of this shit that has happened to me and how I got to the place I am today and I think to myself, am I better off having left my home and family or would I have been better off staying and not knowing what might happen one night when I had had enough of my uncle. Hell, I might have had some mixed up babies by now, who the hell knows. But I guess I made the best decision I could at the time. Hell, Mister, I don’t wish my tale on nobody and all of us out here that don’t fit anywhere, well, we get by. And one day…one day, we gonna get what we all were told when we was little… we’re gonna be loved and cared for like our mother’s told us when we was kids.
And mothers don’t lie to their kids….

As told by Paulie
OK, I’ll talk to you if you’ll let me bum a cigarette. And you got anything to drink on you? No, well maybe you can go and get me something? Maybe after I talk to you? I can do lots of things for you if you want, but you gotta get me some smokes and some liqueur.

They call me Paulie, but my real name is Paulson Anthony Wellington III if you must know and yes I am a son of “those” Wellingtons. And with a name like that you can sure bet I was picked on on school and bullied for a lot of reasons. One, because my family was rich and they wanted me to go to a public school because they thought it would toughen me up. Second, I was bullied because I was short and my weight was more than my height would allow on paper and yes, I am saying I was over weight. And third, and this was probably the main reason I was picked on and bullied is because I am queer. Yep, queer as a three dollar bill, my daddy used to say. And he would not say it with pride like people say today. Back in the sixties when I was a teenager, us prissy boys, being light in the loafers, a little swishy , you know all the phrases, hell, you probably have said some yourself, didn’t have it easy.

It was hard being a teenage queer. I had to hide my emotions, and hide anything that might let people know the real me. And beings I was a Wellington, well that did not sit well with my daddy. He was not having a sissy boy so he let me get beat up. My black eyes were a badge of masculinity to him when we were in public.

It was my senior year and my urges were out of control. But that was the year I found out that the new kid that had transferred to my school and was on the baseball team, well, lets say he caught my eye. We became friends real fast. He didn’t seem to mind that people talked about me. After school we would head to my house where my daddy would swell with pride that I had a friend that played sports and maybe some of that sporty stuff would rub off on me. How wrong he was.

Something did rub off on me, but it wasn’t sporty. I learned real fast the reason this new kid was in a new school was because he got kicked out of his last school for “unbecoming behavior” they said. I also learned that the unbecoming behavior was him being queer. I was in heaven! There was two of us! I had a boyfriend, but only in my mind because back then you didn’t say you had a boyfriend. Hell, even I was not that stupid.

My senior year was turning out to be pretty good. That is until he and I got caught in the locker room doing what boyfriends do, well, maybe not in public, but we got caught by the coach, and was marched through the halls to the principal’s office still putting our clothes back on.

The whole school knew, our family knew, hell the whole damn town knew about the two queers that got caught at school… having “unbecoming behavior” I will just say. My daddy had a spell with his heart, I was locked in my room and told I would not be going back to school. I thought my life was over. There was no way I could see my friend, we were not allowed to talk on the phone and I heard he was not allowed to leave his house either. I had done just what my daddy had said I would do. I had shamed our family. Our rich, pious in the community and in church family name was ruined. I was the blemish on their perfect lives. I guess I really did feel bad, but being a teenage in love, I just thought all would blow over and things would get back to normal. But I was wrong….

Two days later, my mamma brought me some food to my bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed where I sat. She had a look on her face that I didn’t know how to decipher.
She told me that she had gotten a phone call from my friends mother. Seems he could not stand the pressure again for his unbecoming behavior. His mother had been to his room and found him with a belt around his neck hanging from the ceiling. Seems he had taken the light fixture down, and from the ceiling beam he made a noose. And well, you can make up the rest however you want to for your story or whatever it is that you are writing.

Needless to say, I was heartbroken. I am guessing the best thing I did was to leave town. I am sure my family thought good riddance since I had dragged the family name through the mud. You know the Wellingtons and their queer son. And now, all these years have gone by, I am sure I have been forgotten.

But Me? I keep up with them. I heard tell that there are at least five queer kids running around with Wellington blood in their veins. So who got the last laugh? I could go back home I guess, but I think it best not to. You see, in the eighties I got into a lot of situations I’ll call it, and got that disease that queers get. Our punishment from God for being sinful I was told. Going back home would not be a good thing, and besides, home is where the heart is and my heart died that day with his belt around his neck.

So my friend, that is my story. Now what do you want me to do for those smokes and that liquor? You name it, I’ll do it. There is not a thing I haven’t done in all of these years, but I am sure an old man like me can at least make you fell good.

Well, OK, maybe next time, but if you’re ever around here again I got some other people you might want to talk to. We all got stories son, we all got stories.

*****************

Wait, you came back. These are for me no strings attached? A carton of smokes and some liquor? And I don’t have to…. thank you son, thank you. If our paths cross again one day, could you do me just one thing? Could you just give me a little wave, like you know me? It would mean the world to me to think I had someone that cared about me……

As told by Miss Ginger
Honey please, I gots a story that will curl your hair better than a Toni Home Perm! All of this you see before you was not all as fabulous as you see it now. Gurl, I was born up in north Alabama in a little town called Florence and my name back then was Gary. See, little Gary was a little different from his brother and sisters and there was nine of us, all fighting and scratching for our mamma’s attention. All of us had nappy hair and ugly as sin cause we all had a different daddy. Mamma was the rolling stone in our neighborhood and wherever she laid her hat we got a new baby in da house.

All my brothers and sisters knew we had to depend on welfare or get out and get a job to survive. But we also knew that if we stayed there, we would have to give all our working money to our mamma cause that’s the kind of house she ran.

I learned when I was about seven that I like the boys. When my brothers would be out playing in the streets, I would be a watching them basketball shorts to see if I could see any wiggle and you know they were shirtless…. just every boys dream, well, those little boys like me anyway. My brothers never seemed to mind that I was always there, watching, cause they knew at least I was staying out of trouble.

My trouble didn’t start until I met Miss Dee that lived on the next block over from my house. Now Miss Dee was what you would call a colorful soul. She had people in and out of her house at all times of the day and night. Seems I was walking down the street one summer afternoon and Miss Dee was sitting on her porch and she hollard at me. I went over to see what she wanted and we started talking. And we talked and talked and talked because I guess nobody have ever taken the time to just sit and talk to me like I was somebody that was important. I talked and Miss Dee, she listened. She got quite for a minute and looked me straight in the eyes and asked me how long had I known I was liking boys. Miss Dee was the first person to ever ask me that. I planned to keep that all bottled up inside me but Miss Dee, she said child, you is like a hot soda pop and someday you gonna bust all over the place if you keep yourself all bottled up. I reckon Miss Dee was right cause lord knows over the next few months, this caterpillar blossomed into the butterfly you see now!

I took off Gary and put on Ginger and I been Miss Ginger ever since. I sashayed down the streets of Florence back then and gurl, I sashay the streets of Birmingham now and I will continue to sashay until I die.

My family don’t care enough about me to even wonder where I am, well, all except my mamma does send me a Christmas card every year to my post office box I keep in case I win the publishers clearing house or something. But me, I just walk the streets and do my best Donna Summer Bad Girls thang and hope I get enough to eat and pay my part of the rent. See, me and some more girls have this tiny apartment we share cause we are our own little family. We be pretty tight and maybe that’s because we picked each other to be family instead of being with them that don’t really want us.

So let me get on out of here. Gurl, I got money to earn and since you ain’t gonna pay me for talking, I gotta fly. But Mister, if you ever get up to Florence Alabama….tell Miss Dee that Miss Ginger is still snappin…

(note-as she snapped her fingers, she caught my eye and with a slight tear in one corner of her eye, she flipped her head around and walked off, like she was thinking about Miss Dee and how someone had listened to her.)

As told by me
I was five, my sister had received a bride doll from my aunt and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen! I wanted to play with it. I wanted to brush it’s hair. But my daddy said boys don’t play with dolls, so I got some scissors and cut the bride dolls hair off along with its fingers. I have no clue as to why I cut the fingers, all I knew is I wanted to make it ugly because when it was beautiful I wanted it. Now I had made it ugly so it was not a temptation. It was now not beautiful.

I was seven and I was watching a Tarzan movie on television. I felt hot and tingly as he ran through the jungle with Jane. I did not know why. But he was beautiful. His hair was beautiful. He was almost naked and he was beautiful.

I was a teenager and I was praying to God daily to make me not have the urges that I knew would send me to hell because I was told that in church. It was not beautiful.

I was in my twenties and discovered theater. I lost my virginity to a girl in a play. It was beautiful! I also lost my virginity to a boy in a play. It was also beautiful! Theater became my life because I could be someone else for two hours and not have to deal with the me that only me knows. For ten years, I chased the dream of being an actor so I could be…beautiful.

I was thirty and decided the theater was not going to fulfill my dreams of normality. I was taught that society wanted me to be a man and get married and have kids and a job and be happy. So I found a girl and got married and made my parents happy. We had two wonderful kids and they are beautiful. I have four wonderful grand kids and they are beautiful.

I am sixty and I traded in a wife for a husband and he is beautiful. My kids and grand kids love him which is beautiful.

I am sixty but I don’t have to walk the streets or hustle to eat or have a warm place to sleep, but there are many that do. They are the outcasts, the unwanted, the overlooked, the different, the shameful, they are our children of the south that no one wants… but me. I want them all to feel love, to have a full stomach, to be able to pull the covers up over themselves at night, but most of all, I want them to feel safe and a part of this thing we call the human race…which is beautiful!

Epilogue
Please remember most all of the people interviewed in the previous chapters are purely mental people from my mind. Bits and pieces are from real people or from watching people walk the streets and living under bridges and thinking that each has a story, a tale, if you will, that lead them to where they are at this moment. But being from the south myself, and seeing how we dispose of real people because they have issues that we or our family do not want to endure, we toss them in institutions, or hospitals or just out in the street. Like tissues, we blow our nose then toss in the trash. But for what all it’s worth, each story seemed to have a central character that was mentioned…the mamma, the mother. And maybe it’s because the mamma is the one that is able to show love the most. Daddies are not to show love in the south…or so we were taught, but that is changing.

The next time you are out riding around in your fancy car, pay attention to the lost souls that keep their eyes downward, that stay back in the shadows, those that check the ashtrays for butts to smoke later, those that hang around the libraries because it’s a safe place. If nothing else, share a smile with them. Assist them by helping shelters and soup kitchens and coat and blanket drives. Get your church involved with a mission program to help with clothing or water or shelter. These are people just like you and me. It may be circumstance, it may be bad choices, it may be absolutely no ones fault as to the why. But we have got to love them…these angels of the night and these dreamers of the day….