April Sinclair is the author of three novels, including the award-winning bestseller Coffee Will Make You Black. Celebrated critically and commercially for her insights into the lives of modern black women, she’s now turned her sharp eye on her own life. Sinclair is currently at work on a collection of personal essays, and she’s been kind enough to share one with Memoirville.

Donna and Them
by April Sinclair

I was an eight year-old, colored girl growing up on Chicago’s South Side and it was the 1960’s. Mama was ashamed of the fact that we lived above a tavern. But, I used to like to look outside our living room window, at the bright, blue and yellow, neon, Hamms beer sign, lighting up the sky. I also dug lying on the living room floor, listening to the jukebox playing downstairs. You could hear it thumping away, every single night that the tavern was open. Sometimes, you could also hear laughter, and loud voices and occasionally fighting or somebody singing do wop, in the doorway.

Mama was a church lady and she hated having to pass by tavern people just to get inside of her own building. Not to mention the obnoxious, staggering, drunk who might make a pass at her. Mama specifically instructed me not to tell my teacher that we lived over a tavern. I think that Mama knew that I thought that living above a tavern made our lives appear exciting. And, it was just the kind of thing that I might blurt out in front of the whole class. I didn’t understand why I needed to hide the fact that we lived above a tavern when I went to school with kids who had patches on their clothes and couldn’t afford the two cents a day, milk money, or wore shoes with cardboard stuck in the bottom of them.
Donna and her family moved into the chocolate, colored, three flat building next door to ours when I was eight and my sister, Marcia was seven. Donna was also seven. My father told us that he heard that Donna’s Daddy had told the landlord that they had four kids, just like our family, but they really had nine. Daddy said they were sneaking some of their kids in at night. Marcia and I shared a bedroom that was across the way, from Michael and Ricky’s, two of Donna’s older brothers. Right away, Ricky said that he was my boyfriend. It wasn’t that I wasn’t flattered. But, Ricky had a big, watermelon head and I secretly liked the older, favored Michael. Michael had a lot more power, plus he was bow legged, which most girls considered a plus. Michael could take a belt out and beat his younger brothers and sisters, whenever he decided they deserved it. I’d even heard Ricky shout, “Swang that belt, Michael! Swang that belt!” And, Michael got to say whether Donna could come over and play with us or not. And, Michael always said,“Yes.”
Mama didn’t even want us to go into Donna and them’s yard, let alone darken their door. Of course, this really made us look stuck up. I was the oldest of the four kids, and the natural spokesperson to explain to Mama that it was unfair for Donna and them to have to always visit us and we could never visit them. But, Mama wasn’t trying to hear it. She reminded me that Donna had a daddy who drank and that she had too many older brothers over there.
“No telling what kinda mess they got going on over there.” Mama snorted.
I didn’t know what kinda mess Mama thought was going on over there. But, she made me more curious to find out.
I told Mama that she made us look like we thought we were better than Donna and them. I reminded her that we had a dirt backyard and listened to rats romping through the walls at night, just like Donna and them, so it was no reason for us to stick our noses up in the air. But, Mama didn’t care what I said. She told me that we weren’t going over there and that was that! I knew not to cross Mama. I’d given it my best shot. I didn’t want to get it with the belt or have to go out in the yard and pick my own switch
Sometimes, Donna and them’s daddy would come home drunk and fight with his wife or one of his older kids, usually not Michael. Michael seemed to be everyone’s favorite child, in addition to Donna.
Donna and them didn’t have a telephone. They used to have to use the phone on the corner. So, you couldn’t really call over there, even if you heard a loud disturbance. Sometimes, Ricky and Michael would come to the bedroom window and tell us, “my daddy goin’ off on my Mama, ovah heah. Donna and Gi Gi up in heah cryin’.
I remember their Mama coming over to our place one night with her baby girl in her arms and her face all swollen up, saying her husband had beatin’ her. My parents let her use the phone and I don’t know who she called, maybe her brother or somebody to come and get her. But, when I woke up the next morning she was gone and we ate our oatmeal like nothing had happened. I went to school and worried if I was gonna get my jump in when we played rope at recess.
Fall had turned into winter when Marcia and I were walking home one day from school and saw Michael standing outside, next to a bunch of rickety furniture and Ricky sitting on a raggedy couch in front of their building. It had started to snow. I knew right away that they had been put outdoors. Ricky shook his head as he shivered against the cold, holding together his tattered coat that had a big, safety pin in place of one of the buttons.
“Our daddy done gone and drunk up the rent money.” He mumbled.
Michael just stared up at the fat snowflakes that were falling from the sky.
“Dag, I’m sorry y’all got put out.” I said, sighing and watching my breath form with my words.
“Mama and them is tryin’ to find us somewheres to go.” Michael said, sounding like a man instead of the eleven year-old boy that he was. “I ain’t really that worried. They gon’ come up wit’ a new crib.”
Marcia sighed. ”We gon’ miss y’all.”
Michael and Ricky nodded. They were boys. I knew that they had to be somewhat cool. But, I felt a tear forming in my eye. Donna was one of our best friends and Ricky had been the first boy who called himself my boyfriend. If they’d stayed, that big head boy might’ve given me my first kiss.
“Tell Donna, I said, “Bye, hate to see y’all go. Tell her we really had fun,” I said, my voice trailing.
“Yeah,” Marcia echoed. “We really had a lot of fun.”
Ricky and Michael nodded, but it seemed like the word, “fun” was almost no longer a part of their vocabulary anymore.

That night, all I could think about when I stared at the bright, neon, Hamms beer sign outside our living room window was Michael and Ricky out there in the cold, gloomy, night. My father told me that they’d be OK, inside of the vestibule. My mother and sister and I had even taken them some blankets and hot chocolate and a can of sardines and some crackers. Daddy said that he’d seen the hot tamale man outside with his cart and he’d bought each of the boys a hot tamale. Daddy said they would be alright. After that night, I never saw Michael, Ricky or any of them again. Sometimes, I wonder if they really were alright. Sometimes, I wonder about a lot of things.