Joanne and her husband Bill, in McMechen, West Virginia. My uncle Bill had opinions about how young boys were supposed to act, and being a sissy and afraid of everyone in the neighborhood wasn’t his ideal of a male youth. I remember him telling me to stop crying at everything and start acting like a man or he was going to start dressing me and treating me like a little girl. I guess my behavior really didn’t improve that much. Right now I can’t remember what particular thing made him do it, but on my first day in school, Bill dressed me in girl’s clothing. I was embarrassed and ashamed. The other kids teased me so much I went into a rage and started fighting everyone. Turning the other cheek, as Grandma had always wanted me to do, was forgotten. I took my lumps and shed a little blood, but in that school I became the fightin’est little bastard they ever saw. It must have pleased Uncle Bill, because from then on I wore boy’s clothing.
Joanne and Bill were good people and tried to do right by me. In their home I lived what you might call a normal life, but it’s hard to describe where my head was emotionally with Mom in jail and me living with a couple I didn’t belong to. Hell, I don’t know what kind of thoughts were going through my head then. Their treatment of me was fine. I got my ass-kickings when I deserved them and my rewards when I did something right. I was trained in proper manners and taught to wash my face, comb my hair, brush my teeth and believe in and respect God—like any other kid. But if you don’t belong, things just aren’t the same.
I can still remember hearing grownups refer to me as “the little bastard” and the kids I played with telling me, “Your mother’s no good; she’s a jail bird. Ha ha ha.”
One year shortly after Christmas, I got even with some of those kids who were laughing at me. I had spent Christmas with my grandparents. My only present for the year was a hairbrush. A Superman hairbrush. As I opened the present, my grandmother said, “If you brush your hair with it, you will be able to fly like Superman.” Young fool that I was, I carried that brush around with me for days and was constantly brushing my hair. I’d jump off porches, anything with a little elevation, and really expected to soar in the air like Superman. I never did fly and to this day that was the only lie that my grandmother ever told me.
The kids in the neighborhood rubbed things in even more by showing me all their presents. They had toys of all kinds: wagons, trains, cowboy hats and chaps. Even now, I’m not sure if I just resented being laughed at or if I was jealous of what they had and I didn’t, but one day I rounded up all of their toys I could find and carted them home with me. I stacked up some wood and threw the toys on top and started a fire. The kids were mad—some cried, others threatened me, and their parents called the sheriff. And though I wasn’t taken to jail, it was my first encounter with the police. I was seven years old.
Mom was released from Moundsville when I was about eight. The day she came home is still one of the happiest days of my life. I think she missed me as much as I missed her. For the next few days we were inseparable. I was her son and she was my mom and we were both proud of each other. I loved it! I guess my mom did, too. But a twenty-three-year-old girl needs more than an eight-year-old son to complete her world. If Mom had some catching up in her life to do before she went to prison, she was really behind now. It’s a lifetime too late to think about it, but things might have been a lot different if Mom had gone her way and left me with the aunt and uncle. She didn’t—and I was glad.
It was some trip living with Mom. We moved around a lot and I missed a lot of school and blew a lot of what my aunt and uncle had been trying to teach me. Mom and I definitely did not live a routine life, yet I dug every minute of it. I only wished I knew if the next day was going to find me with her or pawned off on someone else.
If I couldn’t be with Mom in the city, my next favorite place was at Uncle Jess’s in Moorehead, Kentucky. My stays with Uncle Jess would vary. Sometimes I’d just be there for a week or two, other times I might stay for a couple of months or more. Uncle Jess lived in a log cabin elevated several feet off the ground by poles. Jess was hillbilly from his heart, with beard, bare feet, bib overalls, moonshine, hound dogs and coon hunting. Family could do no wrong, and Jess would protect them no matter what. But if one of the family gave him any back talk it was their ass, because he was king.
He had four daughters. They were pretty things as mountain girls go; I saw Jess bring out the shotgun more than once to send guys running down the road. The girls might sneak around, but when Jess was there to say something, they jumped. I found out why they were so willing to mind when one day I pushed one of Jess’s dogs off the porch. “Son,” he told me, “that hound wasn’t bothering you. You got no right pushin’ it around. Don’t mistreat no animals.” That said, he proceeded to give me a beating I’ve never forgotten. He wasn’t much of a talker, but when he spoke, people paid attention. He sometimes warned people, “Don’t take them kids off the land.” He was right, for almost everyone who left the land lived to regret it or died because of it. Uncle Jess himself died on his land rather than let someone take him away from it. The law came down on Jess and his moonshine still, but Jess foxed their asses. He blew up the still—and himself.
To return to the story, before being sentenced to Moundsville, Mom had become a pretty street-wise girl, but she really learned all the ropes doing her time. She even added a new dimension to her sex life. I didn’t learn about it until years later, but while she was at Moundsville some of the older dykes showed her that sexual pleasure didn’t only happen between men and women. Of course, back then gays were still in the closet so Mom was pretty discreet when it came to making it with another broad. Dummy that I was at that age, I didn’t mind sleeping in the other room if she had another female spending a few days with us.
With her gameness and prison education, she had all the answers and could hustle with the best of them. Trouble was, she was a fiery little broad who liked her booze and wouldn’t take any shit from anyone. Consequently, we might leave a place in a hurry. I remember one night Mom came running into our little old one-room apartment and jerked me out of bed, saying, “Come on, Charlie, get up! Help me get our things packed. We gotta get outta here.” She had been working as a cocktail waitress at the Blue Moon Café in McMechen. One guy wouldn’t keep his hands off of her. Mom told him to cool it a couple of times. When he didn’t, she grabbed a fifth of booze and busted the bottle over his head. He was still on the floor when she left. “Hurry up, Charlie! I just flattened one of the Zambini brothers an’ I ain’t waiting around to see if he’s dead or alive. Either way, I’m in trouble.” The Zambini brothers were two of the town hoods and everyone was afraid of them, including Mom. We’d moved around some, but that is about the fastest we ever left a place.
The next couple of years saw us in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and probably a couple more states and who knows how many cities. By the time I was twelve I’d missed a lot of school, seen a few juvenile homes, and no longer believed all my mom’s lovers were “uncles.” In general, I was cramping Mom’s style. Some of the “uncles” liked me and others didn’t. But the feeling was more than mutual—I didn’t like any of them. I guess my jealousy and resentment of those “uncles” sleeping with my mom was pretty close to the surface, and it began causing trouble between us. When I was twelve, my mom’s current lover brought things to a head. Unlike Mom’s usual two- or three-day romances, this guy had been around for a few weeks. One night I was awakened by the sound of their booze-leadened voices arguing. The words I remember most were his: “I’m telling you, I’m moving on. You and I could make it just fine, but I can’t stand that sneaky kid of yours.” And then Mom’s voice: “Don’t leave, be patient. I love you and we’ll work something out.”
Poor Mom, we’d long ago worn out our welcome with the relatives and friends who were willing to keep me for any length of time. I’d become spoiled and was accustomed to doing pretty much as I pleased. I’d been tried in a couple of foster homes but I just wasn’t the image those parents felt like being responsible for.
A few days after I’d overheard the argument, my mom and I were standing in front of a judge. My mother,
