CHAPTER 3
MATERNAL
Mama’s Voice
Before I was Mama, before I was the woman standing in a cramped West Philly kitchen yelling at my daughters to stay out of the streets, I was Denise Carter. A.K.A Niecy. I was one of ten children packed into a three-bedroom house.
Radios blasted gospel music on Sunday mornings and Motown during the week.
There was never silence, even the walls felt crowded.
We slept two, three to a bed. The older boys shared one room, the girls another.
The rules was simple. Eat what was on the table for dinner.
Wear what was passed down. And don’t complain.
The one thing I didn’t have was a father.
At least, not anymore. My daddy’s name was Earl Carter.
Most of what I knew about him came from stories.
Mama used to say he had the shoulders of a linebacker and hands strong enough to carry three kids at once.
Said he loved music and used to whistle around the house while fixing broken chairs or tightening loose screws in the cabinets.
He went to Vietnam when I was old enough to remember his face.
He never came back. The government sent a folded flag and a letter full of words that didn’t make a dent in the emptiness he left behind.
After that, all we had was Mama. Lorraine Carter.
A woman built from equal parts grace and steel.
Her hands was rough from scrubbing white folk’s floors.
But when she rested them on your shoulder, they was soothing, like she could make the whole world calm down.
Her voice was soft as a hymn when she sang in church on Sundays.
And when life demanded it, that same voice could roll through the house louder than thunder.
She raised ten children the only way she knew how.
Like soldiers. Sundays we lined up for church, shoes polished, collars straightened.
Mondays we lined up for school, books tucked under our arms like armor.
Evenings we sat down for dinner, plates passed around the table, even when there wasn’t much food to go around.
Mama had a way of stretching things. Stretching meals.
Stretching patience. Stretching hope. She kept us all moving forward.
I was number five. Right in the middle. Being the middle child in a house that full meant you could disappear if you wasn’t careful.
The loudest ones got the most attention.
The youngest ones got the most protection.
So, I easily slipped into the background.
I didn’t stay invisible for long though.
I had the kind of beauty that showed up early and made people stare longer than they should.
I used that beauty as my shield. Sometimes a spotlight.
By fourteen, it terrified Mama. She started paying more attention to me. Making me come straight home after school. Checking my clothes before I walked out the door. Every night she repeated the same warning.
“Pretty ain’t protection, Niecy.” Her voice carried the weight of lived experience.
“Pretty make you a target if you ain’t careful.”
For me, beauty was power. And power was something I had never known before.
I loved my brothers and sisters but I wanted more than that crowded rowhouse.
More than hand-me-down dresses and cracked linoleum floors.
I used to stand outside the corner store watching girls from uptown walk past.
They had perfect hair that was store-bought.
Purses swinging from their wrists, like tiny decorations.
They laughed like the world belonged to them.
And I always wondered what that felt like.
To laugh without worrying if the lights would stay on.
That was the summer I met Anthony Drake.
My Tony. He wasn’t from my world, not really.
You could tell the second you saw him. The polos he wore wasn’t from discount racks.
When he talked, there was a confidence in his voice that came from growing up a place safer than where I lived.
He was handsome in a way that made me nervous.
His skin was honey-toned and smooth. His eyes sharp and playful like he always knew a joke nobody else had heard yet.
For some reason, he kept coming down to our side of Broad. Hanging out and asking questions like the police. Like he was searching for something.
The first time he spoke to me, I was leaning against the railing outside the corner store. My hair was freshly pressed, lip gloss slick on my mouth. He stopped, looked me over, and smiled,
“Yo’, you from ‘round here?” He asked casually, already knowing the answer.
I rolled my eyes.
“Born n’ raised.”
He laughed.
“Figures. Nobody else could pull off standin’ on dis dirty corner and make it look like a photo shoot.”
I tried not to grin, but my cheeks betrayed me. That was my Tony. Smooth. Funny. He was older than me by a few years but not so old that it felt wrong. He made me feel seen, and not just for my looks. And before long we was inseparable.
Tony took me places I had never seen before.
Drove me to South Street for water ice and cheesesteaks, held my hand like I belonged to him.
He introduced me to jazz records, to books his Mama kept on her shelves, to restaurants where waiters pulled out chairs.
For a while it was love, lifting me out of my neighborhood.
But he also had a restlessness in him. A hunger that his parents’ money and comfort couldn’t feed.
He wasn’t satisfied with good schools and safe choices.
He wanted the fire, and he dragged me with him.
At sixteen I thought that kind of danger meant passion.
His temper. His charm. The way he promised me the world even when his pockets was empty.
I believed every word. When he kissed me, I thought nothing else mattered.
Not Mama’s warnings. Not my sisters’ whispers.
Not my brothers’ threats. Not the way he sometimes disappeared for days.
By seventeen, I was pregnant. I remember the night I told him. We was sitting on the hood of his car overlooking the city. The skyline flickering in the distance as my hands trembled,
“Tony… I’m late. Like really late.”
He froze, laughed softly.
“You serious?”
I moved my head up and down, tears burning behind my eyes.
He ain’t say nothing. He just pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead.
“We gon’ make it work,” he told me. “You mine, Niecy. Always been. Always will be.”
And I hung on to that vow.
But love alone don’t keep lights on. Love don’t keep a man from chasing the streets. As handsome as Tony was, as sweet as his promises sounded, I saw him slip deeper into that life. The one my Mama warned me about.
I became Mama before I had the chance to grow up.
Shaylene came first. Born during the worst blizzard of 1981, January 4th.
The snow piled so high, like the hospital windows was buried in the clouds.
Three years later came Summer. She entered the world on the hottest day of 1984.
The city sweating under a heatwave. I held her for the first time, she was like fire and peace all at once.
When I look at her face, I see both of us staring back.
My fire. Tony’s sweetness. She carries our whole story in her skin.