Reparo

Joyce Wyatt aka Mama Joyce


Though there have been many opportunities for my family to put together the broken parts of our puzzle there have been just as many moments where the true issue is swept under the rug. I blame my grandmother. She was a wonderful woman. Beautiful. Kind. Courageous. And full to the brim with love for others. However, I believe she held a deep secret in her heart. One that she could never truly reveal to the world, much less her children lest she scar herself by admitting the truth. The Bible says the truth will make you free. And I guess the flip side is holding that truth in can make you a prisoner. That is my family's curse. We would much rather deal with the happy issues. Smile at family functions. Toast our triumphs and deny that there ever has been hardship in between time.

Sure, we are a loving, happy, moderately successful African American Family. And I do not fault anyone for that. I take pride in it. But the fact remains, that like so many African American infrastructures in our society, they hold secrets that threaten to tear them apart. Well here's one slash at that chain. My grandfather had a drinking problem. There it is. I said it. It was a little known family secret that I am airing out here because I believe it will bring my family closer to the freedom that we so desperately want. Can't know your future unless you know your past right. So this is mine. No, I never met this man. But everyone who knew him well says I have his smile. His spirit. His voice. Here I thought this whole time that I was the only one in the Wyatt-King lineage who could sing. And my grandpa, Granddaddy Jesse was a musician.

My aunt tells me stories about him, because she's the one who remembers the most about him. She is the oldest after all. She says he was a joyful man. Sweet. And polite. Always used to make my mom and her sisters breakfast before school each day. I remember finding out the secrets of Mama Joyce (my grandmother) and being incapable of believing them. My grandparents had divorced and remarried each other twice. Greatly on account of Grandaddy Jesse's drinking problem. He was an alcoholic after he returned from the war. I'm not sure which one was happening then. I think the Gulf. He used to get belligerent.

Chased my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts around the house. Only twice have I heard the full story my mom told me of her running down the street barefoot at 2 in the morning to call the police because her father was after them. I didn't and still don't understand how both sides of this man played out in concert with one another. Seems like two different people my mom describes when she or my aunt tell these muffled stories. And he died just a few days before my mother's 16th birthday. She was mad at him that day, before she went to school and the only thing I remember vividly from this story that my mother used to tell me is that she never got the chance to apologize to him. Hmph.

I can't really say that I blame my grandmother for never discussing the painful past of her dissolved marriage. But I begin to develop a theory. Many of the women in my family suffer from similar struggles. They marry men like those whom they were conditioned to love and not that all of their husbands are as my grandfather was, but this is the way that generational hurts are implanted in the psyches of one's seed. Not that I regret the sins of my grandfather or my grandmother.

I know them for the wonderful things they each did. Raised three wonderful girls into strong black women. Took care of several homeless, and runaway children. They were both educators in the public school system for over 50 years between the two of them. I just wonder sometimes what how do I discontinue a silence that began long before my mother and stands to flow through the ever-winding rivers of time? How do I not follow in the footsteps of a man broken by his circumstance? And what am I to do with the twinge of disdainful indifference I occasionally feel towards a man I never got the chance to know?