Iansá Magazine

By Maryam azeeza muhammad

The following excerpt was written when I was 20 years old as part of an unfinished memoir that I started back in 2021. Though it was only four years ago, the memoir was started at a time where I felt the need to constantly reflect on the foundation of my parents’ marriage, and the role it played in my religious upbringing. Below is the beginning of what would’ve been the second chapter of the memoir had I completed it—entirely based on the memories of a child who was only about nine years of age at the time.

One afternoon, my mother picked me up at dismissal, and she was clearly in a panic. As soon as we walked out of my school, she rushed me into the car, which was carrying a bunch of stuff from our house. Almost everything she and I had owned was stuffed in her small car, including the little TV from my bedroom and a large amount of our clothing. Once we were in the car and she was driving, I asked her where we were going. But, she didn’t answer my questions. She just didn’t have the time. 

My mother kept driving until we got to our driveway. When she pulled up, she sped into our house and came out with the remainder of our belongings. When I saw her rushing more things into the car, it finally hit me; we were leaving, and likely never coming back. All of that divorce and separation talk wasn’t a phase of my parent’s marriage—it was actually going to happen.

But, if we were going to leave, I wanted to have all of my favorite personal items with me. And since I was a child, I wasn’t very concerned with my clothes and shoes. 

“Don’t leave Maggie!” I said to my mom as she got back into the car and shut the door. 

Maggie or Magdalene (that’s what I refer to her now), is a little Black babydoll that I have had (and still have) since I was the age of three. Though Maggie is an inanimate object that cannot walk or talk, I always took comfort in her presence. Even now as an adult, I often think of Magdalene as one of the few things in my life that’s been consistent. She’s never left my side.

“I didn’t leave Maggie,” my mother replied, “she’s here in the car.” 

“Where? I don’t see her!”

My mom quickly handed Maggie to me before she put the key into the ignition and drove off.

I can’t recall if she turned on the radio for the 30 minute drive from New Haven to Bridgeport, but I hope she did. If she had, the station she turned would have likely been 94.3 WYBC, New Haven’s most popular station for R&B. And, as for what song might have played, my top guess is Alicia Keys’s “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready),” which was the number one R&B song during 2010. Interestingly enough, the unthinkable was exactly what this entire situation was; I never thought that my parents were going to split up and that my mother was going to move us out of our home. But looking back as an adult, I can’t say that it was the worst idea. I’m 99.9% convinced that if my mother had stayed, our already dysfunctional living situation would have turned into a very abusive one (it was starting to become one anyway). 

While I wasn’t there to see how my father reacted to my mother’s choice to leave, I would later come to find out that he wasn’t unfamiliar with a mother gathering her children and leaving, or a father coming home to an empty house. Almost four decades ago, my grandmother had done the exact same thing. Sick and tired of my grandfather, my grandmother Lorraine grabbed all of her belongings, along with those of my father’s and the rest of her children. She then moved everything to a small apartment where they began to live for some time. My grandfather, Gladstone, came home to a half empty house. 

Time might heal all wounds, but generational curses often fester.

When my mother stopped driving, we were in front of an apartment complex near Boston Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The area we were now located at was much different than the area our house had been in. For starters, our original house in New Haven was in a more quiet and secluded area (I guess you could call it a “suburb”). This place on the other hand, was a bit more lively, with far more people walking around, blasting music, and walking their dogs. We were now in a more inner-city area, down the street from a chicken spot, a barber shop, and a laundromat that we’d later be utilizing to clean our clothes. I wasn’t that used to being in such a crowded space, and I’m still not used to it, to this very day. 

Readers, let this be a lesson to you: if you value your privacy and time to yourself, avoid living in an apartment building at all costs if you can, because you’ll dearly regret it. I know that my mom and I did.

My mother and I hopped out of her car and began to make trips back and forth to and from her car, carrying our things inside a small, currently nearly empty studio apartment. When we finally finished moving everything inside, I just stood there, still shocked and amazed how my mother had simply decided to uproot our lives and change everything in what felt like the blink of an eye.

“How am I going to get to school on time tomorrow?” I asked her. The Bridgeport to New Haven drive could often be tedious, especially during the weekdays.

“You’re not going to school tomorrow.” 

“Why not?”

“Because we’re going to find you a new school to go to.”

“That’s not fair!” I was livid. Because of circumstances that I still didn’t even understand the full extent of, I was now going to fall victim to a series of dramatic changes that I had absolutely no control over. Looking back, I truly didn’t understand the severity of the situation at hand, so naturally I felt that this was a huge mistake. I thought my mother was simply insane, taking us away from our secure and familiar home to a strange, somewhat unstable environment that very much seemed to be unattractive, and not to mention chaotic. 

My mother began to unpack our belongings and set the apartment up. She put the few decorations and items that we had on the kitchen counter and also on a very small, wooden table. Then she started to put our clothing into an extremely small closet that nearly looked like a crawl space. After that, she inflated a small, light blue air mattress and I sat down and watched her unpack more things and try to make such an unfamiliar place look like somewhat of a comfortable home.

 There wasn’t much else to do after she was finished unpacking and setting things up. Although we had a television, my mother had yet to have any cable installed so that we could watch anything. So, I played with my Nintendo DS until it was time to settle in and go to bed for the night. 

When it was finally time to go to sleep, it took me some time to get comfy, as I had never slept on an air mattress before in my life. Not only was there no support for my back, but there was a very limited amount of space due to my mother also being on it with me. Because she was significantly larger than me in size, she took up most of the space too, which wasn’t very beneficial to me, a wild sleeper. In spite of this, I managed to fall asleep and get some shut eye to prepare for whatever would await me the following day. 

In the morning, when my mother and I awoke, we were quite literally on the floor, as the air mattress had deflated over the course of the night. Both of us were slightly sore from the entire ordeal, but nonetheless, we didn’t have time to complain. There were things that we had to accomplish that day, one of the first things being that my mother had to get me transferred from my old school to the other school down the street from where we now lived. That morning, I received a text from Nyla, who was one of my very best friends at the time, asking me why I was not at school that day.

If I’m being honest, I don’t quite remember how I replied.