The Beginning- Doing Time on Maple Drive

1976

I Carefully packed my Super Friend’s coloring book, my yellow teddy bear, and my favorite Gladys Knight & the Pips” album. My three most precious items. As I closed the suitcase I thought, “ They don’t believe me but I’m leaving! I don’t know where I’m going but I belong here!” I marched down the sprawling driveway, past my Mother who had just returned from the market, barely giving her a glance as I continued my journey down Maple Drive (I really lived on a street called Maple Drive) I still remember Maple Drive, with its quaint perfect houses, where perfect upwardly mobile young black families co-existed peacefully alongside young Upwardly mobile White couples on a wisteria lane type block. Very rare in the south in 1976. Every family on Maple Drive had a Father, Mother, and Kids. All seemed Perfect.


I can still see my Mother waving to the neighbors across the street as she unloaded her groceries. The husband smiled and leered while his dutiful wife clenched her teeth, formed a smile and forced “a good afternoon Jerri, We see Michael’s running away again today!” My mother shook her head and thought “Not again, Why does this child need so much attention, His older brother Tony is never a problem “ the perfect masculine, rugged little boy, but I was different, odd. I would have random acts of Mass Destruction. My Aunt Mary nick named me “Tornado” because wherever I went looked like a tornado hit it after I left. I was also prone to scaring visitors by pretending to be dead or screaming at the top of my lungs until they went home. I also loved to antagonize my father George although I knew even then that I couldn’t win.

When she met my father she thought she had it made. Tall Handsome, and not exactly broke. My father’s occupation up until I was the age of 7 is unknown, in my family we never talk about the past or anything associated with the past even amongst each other, As a matter of fact we rarely discussed anything. If we were not fighting we were cordial, southern and polite. How/what people thought of them was more important to them than being happy. The only thing I remember is my father being in some sort of Secret Club with various shady characters that would phase in and out of our lives. It was normal for him to spend his days on his motorcycle cruising Memphis with various colorful personalities including Soul Singer Isaac Hayes. I saw him around a lot before my father’s accident but not once after. But the “accident “ comes later. Yep she thought she had grabbed the brass ring, She had no idea that the public gregarious George was very different from the monster that raged within him behind the closed doors.


As she watched Michael march down the street determined to get away from Maple Drive she wondered if he had somehow sensed her desire to escape. The irony was she wanted to scoop him up so they could both run away. But she couldn’t because my father would find us and bring us back, as he had before. . During the early 60’s when she was a young girl after her African American Mother died , her Caucasian Father thought it best if his children passed themselves as White so that they could enjoy a better life. It was a tumultuous time in the South. Its easy to judge now but the obstacles that a white father would have had to face with three black children would have been devaasting to say the least. When she meet my father in the early 70’s she had renounced her previous rejection of her mixed heritage and now embraced her blackness. It was the height of the Black Power movement and through this mutual interest she met my father. . My mother had the kind of beauty and senusality that makes grown men swoon in her presence, 6 Feet tall with Long Jet Black hair, skin as smooth as butter and of similar tone. Always impeccably dressed in the latest designs topped off with her signature blood red lipstick. She was used to being called beautiful and had used it to her advantage. Her Goal had been find a rich man like her father and continue life in the in the style to which she had become accustomed. My Mother learned very early on that a beautiful Girl could pretty much write her own ticket. Many Black men at that time were concerned about the skin color of a potential wife because they wanted light skinned babies. I had so many playmates called “Boo” For the very dark and “Redbone” for the very light I couldn’t tell day from night if you pardon the pun. These Men who were actually full of self-hatred wanted a Lena Horne or Lonette McKee type to marry. (A more modern reference Mariah Carey/Alicia Keys) and George Berry was no different. He romanced her with his charming con man ways at 16 by 18 she was married with a baby boy and another one on the way, Me. Now only in her early 20’s she was watching her little boy try to escape the prison she had created for them. Why had she been so desperate to escape the home of her father? At this moment she wished she could run back to her father and tell him that her was abusive mentally as well as physically. My grandfather would have grabbed his shotgun and shot my father square between the eyes, Or my father would have killed my Grandfather. Both options were out of the question, so she said nothing resigning herself to her fate. As the wind swept her hair about her face she looked every bit the “tragic mulatto”, it was role she played very well. As I think about it I was always drawn to those types in movies (The movie Sparkle, etc.) now I know why. One raised me.


George Berry had come from a tough childhood> My Grandfather George Berry Senior decided he no longer wanted a family so he simply as legend tells the story buried my grandmother alive (No Joke! No one will even tell me her name.), Berry Sir then drained his bank account and sold his kids to relatives and moved to Little Rock, TN and started a new life, not glancing back once until this day. My grandparents had 4 boys Willie, Napoleon, George and the baby Robert. The wealthy relatives bought Uncle Willie because as they valued his light-skin, green eyes and “Good Hair”, While My father and his brother Napoleon failed the "paper bag test" so at 7 & 8 years old they were sold to a distant Uncle and forced to work as labor on his farm. If they even asked about School they were beaten until they could barely breathe. My Uncle Robert because of his extremely dark skin, there were no offers to take him even though he was the baby. He was sent away to live with the poorest relatives in the slums of the Ghettos of Chicago. It ain't always a pretty story people but its the truth. The irony is that although he was raised in very a desperate environment and my Uncle Willie was raised with every amenity. Robert was the more blessed, he was loved and cherished therefore he prospered and became a well-adjusted productive adult. I know nothing about my father’s life from the farm days in Grand Junction TN until he showed up in Memphis. Now wealthy handsome, and charming somehow he convinced my mother into a marriage, 2 kids, and a picket fence. Or a picket cage as the case turned out to be. I had made it half way down the street when something told me to turn around and go home like I had a million times before. It was the same routine day, after day. It was almost like I was practicing my escape. I did this little stunt so much that people stopped reacting to my little journeys.

Now there good times also on Maple Drive, I remember the whole family gathering in the family room to watch “Soul Train” or “Saturday Night Live. Laughing, Playing, almost like we were the family in the portrait. On Sunday we could be hosting a neighborhood BBQ where I soon forgot my troubles. We had weeks sometimes months of normal life. On other occasions I could hear my Mother being beaten by father late at night until the Sun rose. Some nights my brother and I would be the ones to endure my father’s Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde personality. The fights between my parents always seemed to be about the same thing my Fathers belief that wives had no minds of their own and were only extension of their husband. He carried the same attitude with his wife that he did with his children “Spare the rod, Spoil the children and that includes the wife’ But Every time he hit my Mom it was like she was getting stronger and soon events would transpire that would clear the way for freedom.