Uppity
by
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I have a memory that my mother says is impossible for me to have. I must have been barely a year old, and what I remember is more like a dream than a real memory.
I’m wearing pink p.j.’s , you know, the ones with the plastic feet and zipper up the front? I’m in an unfamiliar room, and I can’t find my mom. After what feels like a long time, I manage to open the only door I see and step outside into the sunlight. It is very bright and the air is hot, and it takes me a moment for my eyes to adjust. Before I can react, the heavy door whooshes shut behind me and I find myself standing on a balcony, high above the ground. Instinctively I reach up and try to open the door, but it is locked. As I look to my left and right, there are doors that look just like the one in front of me that seem to go on forever. I look up carefully trying to find something special about this door so I don’t forget which one is mine. When convinced I’m able to remember, I walk touching the hot, black metal guardrail, burning my fingertips as I look down below at a row of cars. The only sound I hear is that of incoherent voices from below and the scratching sound of my plastic feet rubbing on the hot stone walkway. Tentatively, I keep looking back; trying to remember which door is mine, soon realizing I have forgotten. I stop and begin to cry.
Later, as an adult, I asked my mom about this ‘memory’.
“How could you possibly remember that? she asked. “But yeah, we lived there when I was working as a maid,” my mom said matter of fact. “I was doing tricks to get us money, and you were supposed to stay in the room.”
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About the Book
“I don’t even know how to change her diaper,” Beth said tearfully when she brought newborn C. J. home from the hospital. Seventeen, unmarried, and living with her parents, Beth adored her little girl, even as she was overwhelmed by caring for her. Thus the stage was set for a conflict-ridden mother–daughter relationship that continues to be complicated even now, forty-three years later.
By turns heart wrenching, funny and bizarre, Uppity is C. J.’s account of growing up with an abusive mother who was turning tricks by the time C. J. was a toddler. On the one hand, Beth made sure that wherever they lived, her daughter got the master bedroom suite, while Beth and her husband had a smaller room. On the other, she insisted that C. J. do all the housework and took photos of her beautiful daughter to send to her “customers” when she went to work for a phone-sex line. While C. J.’s friends thought foul-mouthed, eccentric Beth was “cool” and funny, C. J. lived with the knowledge that the next beating could happen at any moment—any time Beth thought she was being “uppity.”
Anyone from an abusive home will recognize C. J.’s heartbreaking attempts to earn her mother’s love and to keep from “provoking” her. Ultimately, this is a tale of survival and even triumph, as C. J. claims her own identity and makes a good life for herself—even maintaining a relationship with Beth. Most of all, Uppity is a tribute to the human spirit.
About the Author
C. J. was raised in Southern California and joined the United States Air Force after high school. In 2005, she married the love of her life. She has two children and three stepchildren; she works as a sign language interpreter in Bend, Oregon.