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The Neighborhood That Raised Me

Our lives begin with a story we never agreed to. Genesis is not an option — you land wherever you are needed, wherever you are born, wherever life drops you without asking your permission. From day one, your moral fortitude starts forming. Your character presents itself early, long before you understand the world you have been placed in, and life begins whether you are ready or not.

My family came from the South, Norton, Virginia, and Newport, Tennessee. Sharecroppers who migrated north, born under Jim Crow, carrying the scars of a world that told them they were less than human. They arrived in Philadelphia during a time when civil rights were still blindfolded, when the economy demanded change faster than people could adapt. With that shift came a new kind of freedom for our parents — freedom without guidance, without accountability, without the structure their generation never received.

My generation had to figure out who we were on the fly.

Before we moved to West Oak Lane, I only knew two stories about our time in Germantown. Everything changed in the morning when I woke up to find my grandmother living with us. I was seven, old enough to sense that something in our home was not normal. My parents did not argue — they fought. Their battles were rooted in infidelity, mistrust, and two unstable people trying to build a life on broken foundations.

We lived on Sterling Street, close to the top of the block. Our three‑story row home sat in a neighborhood that, on the surface, looked bright, clean, and full of kids who played outside from sunup to sundown. Uptown had its advantages and its setbacks. Being so close to Cheltenham means one thing: stay on your side of the road. If you crossed the invisible line, the cops would escort you right back to where you belonged. It took years before that resistance faded.

Our parents were suddenly exposed to money — new money, fast money — and no one was supervising them. You must understand how different the world was before 1970. Children were not tracked. There were no systems making sure every kid was accounted for or in school. Kids could disappear, move, be sent away, and no one would question it. When the laws changed and parents became responsible for registering their children, it tied families together in ways they were not used to.

But God… God has a way of protecting His children long before the fire comes. Long before the testing. Long before the purpose is revealed.

My parents’ own school experiences led them to choose the closest Catholic school to our house. Walking to St. Athanasius became my first real memory of our neighborhood. In the mornings, hundreds of Black children poured out of their three-bedroom row homes, dressed for the day, heading toward buses, trolleys, the El, or the subway. Our block had about thirty houses on each side — small yards, patios, two flights of stairs leading to each doorway. We all knew each other. We played together, ate together, and learned how to navigate life together.

1978 was the best year of my childhood.

My grandmother was with us, and her presence softened the house. The fighting slowed. Peace settled for a while. She and I shared a room, and those late‑night talks became the foundation I stood on long after she was gone. With my parents running out the streets, she became our anchor. We went to Kingdom Hall with her, ate Sunday dinners, took nasty medicine, and woke up to the smell of her cooking before school. She made life feel safe — even if only for a moment.

We lived two blocks from Cheltenham Ave, on a hill that dipped just enough to make it perfect for sledding and bike races. One Saturday morning, I woke up before everyone else. I told my grandma I was going to sit on the porch, and she waved her hand to let me know she heard me. The whole block was silent — nobody woke up that early on a Saturday. The sky was piercing blue, the air smelled like spring, and the sun was a deep, golden yellow. It was the kind of quiet that felt holy.

The calm before the storm.

That year we had a twenty-eight‑inch snowfall — the kind kids dream about. We swam through snowbanks, celebrated Christmas with more toys than we had ever seen and lived in a bubble of peace that would not last.

Every morning, it was my job to get my brother to school, along with my friend Ronnie. We would join the swarm of kids heading in every direction. St. Athanasius was not far, so I walked home for lunch, ate, and still had time to catch a game of Double Dutch before the bell rang. Afternoons were quieter — just the half‑awake addicts, and the occasional stranger danger kids ran into. But coming home started being heavy for everyone as elements of my parents’ behavior began to affect the routine my grandma had set up for my brother and me. My mother received a beautiful full-length cream casimire coat and hat to match for Christmas, she looked amazing in this combination. My father has an impeccable taste in clothes but his hidden side from his children emerged.

My time in West Oak Lane taught me about danger before it taught me about love. I was eight when a crash from the basement shook me awake, loud enough to travel through the floorboards into my bedroom. My grandmother’s side of the bed was empty, and the yelling below made my stomach tighten. I walked through the house the way I had learned to — avoiding the spots that creaked, moving through the dim glow of the candlesticks she kept lit in the dining room. When I reached the kitchen door, she was already at the bottom of the basement stairs, trying to calm her son. She did not look up fully, just lifted her eyes enough to signal me to stay still. The basement was destroyed, Carla’s new coat ripped into pieces, and my grandmother spoke to him like someone who had de‑escalated this kind of rage before. At eight, I learned that people could hide anger until it becomes a weapon. I learned that the person you love can become the person you fear. That night was the beginning of my testimony — the moment I understood what it meant to grow up in a home where love was supposed to live, but safety never did.

My grandmother could feel my confusion, so she began teaching me what a woman should do for her husband and how a husband should respond. When you meet your husband, she said, “You keep yourself up, and when you go to bed he should know you’re always willing to be there for him emotionally and physically.” The details she gave me in our room were more advanced than I could understand at the time. Her advice reflected her marriage, but it was also grooming — grooming for a husband, not like what her son Freddie became later.

My grandma was a Kentucky migrater, born in 1917 to sharecroppers strangled by the system, restricted to three blocks of a town where Black residents were taught their place. Norton, Virginia was where her children were born and raised, but when her marriage ended, my dad together made seven children. I knew two of my uncles — one lived in Chase, Maryland, the other lived along my route to school — and my aunt lived close by in Willingboro, New Jersey, where my grandmother lived until recently.

Later, my cousin told me her mother got tired of grandma taking food from them to give to us. It was more than that, but it took Nita turning forty-something to tell me the exact reason. You do not get mad at your mom for giving your brother food when we spend Sundays together at my aunt’s house. Three of grandma’s children and all their children in Twin Hills, playing in a beautiful neighborhood that should have been happy compared to where they came from. But when you cannot let go, and decency, love, and respect for one another are missing, the blanks in everyone’s childhood are not coincidence.

My grandma Kathy was moved by my dad and my uncle Pres while my aunt stayed away. It could not have been about food — it never sat right with me because I was there, watching them discuss her moving without saying anything. How could you? Their mom was putting my cousin in the garage all day without food, bathroom, or help. Her body reacted — her kidneys and the lymph nodes on her hips had to be operated on. Nita went through a different hell but similar. After that, we no longer had Sunday dinners. The next time I stayed the night, we were about twelve. The family split in silence — Mt. Holly versus Philly — and whatever happens in your immediate family continues its dysfunction until someone comes along and says, “I’m not doing this anymore.”

Unfortunately, Nita and I became the two who carried that burden. The grooming began after Grandma died, but even before then, her attempts to calm her children were met with silent judgment: “You ain’t no better.” Having children born between 1930 and 1951 shows how tightly this family kept its ranks, in both good times and unspeakable ones. Society taught them to stay quiet, protect their public image, and hide cruelty, punishment, and unhealthy relationship patterns tied to people and money. That disregard for human life — whether family or stranger — and for the depth of a soul came from living without faith, without a center, without the Living God.

My uncle Georgie’s wife told him grandma could not stay with her; he obliged because, like me, my uncle only wanted a peaceful house. Not knowing the true dynamics, the facts faded as school and life picked up. I had two or three clients walking to school and was making five dollars a week. Children do not understand that time is ticking for all of us. We do not get a chance to know death is coming unless our family is spiritually connected. My grandma and Aunt Carrie were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am not downing any covering, and they believed joining them would help them get to heaven without the guidance ready for them outside denominational ties. Their creeds, rules, and traditions are not scripture, but they are still my family.

One night before she passed, she told me, “When you decide on a religion, do your research. Make sure you do not forget, if it does not make sense do not join.” I looked at her confused, not understanding what she meant, but that one sentence saved my soul, heart, and mind through this testimony. Then my cousins Katie and Georgie ran upstairs to see her, and the room shifted back into childhood noise as they played with me and Fred Jr. I saw her get up to go downstairs for her medicine, but I lost track of time the way children do.

My dad told me to take the kids to the basement to decrease the noise. “Stay downstairs, we’re talking.” His tone was different; he looked afraid. I sat on the edge of our dark tan sectional in the finished basement, staring at the closed door at the top of the stairs. My heart started breaking when I heard the front door open and close. You could hear familiar footsteps leading toward the dining room — my uncle Georgie and Aunt Anna. My stomach turned, and I moved up three stairs to see if I could hear. Not possible with a seven-, six-, and four-year-old in the basement being kids. Little Katie saw me move and started asking questions. I did not want them to hear me, so I whispered, “Shhh, I’m trying to see what happened to grandma. Sit there quiet and I will come back and play dolls, ok?” She agreed. I love my cousin Katie; her bluntness reminds me of myself later in life. I moved to the top of the steps and put my ear to the door. It was hard to hear since they were in the living room, but at that moment I knew my grandmother was gone. I turned around, looking at the fourteen steps to the basement in disbelief and fear, then Katie came back. I slid down the steps, trying not to cry in front of them, playing with my Barbie head doll while staring at the TV. Then the door opened. “Kids come upstairs.” I let the younger ones go first while I stood leaning on the kitchen door frame as they told us our grandma passed away when she went to the hospital. My heart sank into the floor, but again, not the place to fall apart. It had not hit me yet. Without explanation, we were sent downstairs to play while they figured out what steps to take next. I had kid duty, so we ate, chilled out, and I put my cousins down on the couch until my uncle came to get them. He woke me up on the couch near the door. “Marla. Wake up, we are home. I got the kids — go to bed.” I shook my head and did exactly what he told me to do.

Post Kate Aftermath

I walked to school in a daze. Getting dressed in an empty room again felt wrong, but I knew I had to get out of the house, so I put on my uniform and walked to school. If people were there, I did not notice. Ronnie pulled me into a Double‑Dutch game to get my mind off last night. I wanted to sit down and people‑watch, and that is when I started sitting on the one step outside the front red double doors shaped like arches.

When I got home, my mom told me to expect people from out of town. “You will get to see and play with all your cousins until they go home after the funeral Friday. Uh, the doorbell. Just expect people to come with food and gifts, straighten up as much as you can.” I blinked, and it was suddenly the morning of the funeral at my grandma’s Kingdom Hall. That place always gave me the heebie-jeebies’, and they made us sit in front of her coffin during the service. When it was time to say goodbye, I gave her a kiss. That is how I knew it was real.

We sat back in our chairs, and I watched my dad break a little before straightening up to walk to the rear of the church when they began the drive to the burial. My parents dropped us off at a busy house full of my aunties and cousins from everywhere. I did not know what to do with myself, so I went to check my room. My hope chest she gave me was gone. I flew downstairs to ask where it went. It was not small — it was the height of our bed and as wide as a full‑size bed, shaped like a pirate chest with locks and straps. The indention was still visible, but the chest was gone.

My cousin Carla came up to get me to play in the basement. On the way through the kitchen, I asked, “What happened to my hope chest grandma gave me?” They all shook their heads while preparing and receiving food. I stood in front of the basement door out of their way. “Honey, we have not left the kitchen. If it were not for y’all’s basement bathroom, we would be in a horrible fix. Go play, ask your mom when she comes. I will let her know you want her, okay?” What else could I do? She handed me a plate full of sliced cakes. “Take that with you. I will bring you a plate of food, okay sweetie? It will be all right.” My aunt Margaret was sweet — my grandmother’s sister — and reminded me of her, different.

Since Carla was there, she asserted her oldest‑child authority. I did not feel like fighting, so I put the cake on the table, turned on the TV, and pulled out my notepad to finish the poems I had just started writing. The food did not stop, and neither did the friction from years ago between the siblings. I only have two aunts, and the aunt in Tennessee has a long‑standing reputation for putting people down or using power to get her way. My aunt Charee kept poking the bear until she and my cousin Pam left after she said she would never go back to this dirty city. No one was hurt by the statement — her mom had just died, and everyone was emotional. But my aunt Charee’s story is not over yet. God has a way of making a child’s reality clear when they are old enough to understand their environment. Mine was changing dramatically as we said goodbye to everyone for now. The white steel door shut like a vault closing.

As we grieved, we tried to go back to normal that Sunday by having breakfast like we always did, but we did not have to bring in a folding chair for Fred Jr. I can see it clearly. My mom cooked, put everything on the table, and sat with her back in the kitchen. My brother was to her right, and I was to her left. My dad sat with his back to the wall that connected our house to the Tatums — the neighborhood bully and his loud mom. My back was to the windows facing the driveway that linked Renova Street to us. My brother’s back was to the open door and locked screen door, letting in the warm May air so close to Memorial Day.

As I was eating, something said look up. When I did, I saw what looked like my grandma floating down the stairs and through the door. I screamed, “GRANDMA! SHE CAME DOWN THE STAIRS! YOU DIDN’T SEE HER — SHE WAS RIGHT THERE!” My mom, dad, and brother looked at each other and said no, they did not see anything. My dad walked to the door to look, then turned around and said, “If you did see her, she was saying goodbye to you. It is okay. You have a certain number of days to say goodbye before you go to heaven. Go wash your face and calm down before you make yourself sick.” I did what I was told.

Art by PhillyzSymphony

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