Wednesday's Children: The Letter
‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe’
In the winter of January 1971, I was a senior at West Philadelphia High School learning about the social and political environments of the time, and how to navigate them. I was discovering music, and my tastes leaned towards Pharoah Saunders, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. I was into The Last Poets, a spoken-word group noted for political activism, heavily sauced with jazz percussion and Afro-Beats.
Facing Mt. Kenya (Jomo Kenyatta), Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison), and Native Son (Richard Wright) were my literary muses. Angela Davis was my role model. I walked around wearing an Egyptian ankh necklace, and my hair in the ubiquitous afro. My foster mom disliked my afro, and on occasion, she would call my hair nappy; but she was from the hot-comb era; so there’s that. In terms of social issues (there were so many), I began to form opinions, and assume stances. I was all over the place. I was ‘different,’ with just a smidge of Wednesday Adams’ weirdness mixed in, to keep things interesting.
I was a color guard, a cheerleader, and for a brief stint, a majorette until I realized I lacked the manual dexterity to twirl a baton. Although these were awesome extra-curricular activities, which by association should’ve earned me ‘Most Popular Girl’ points (but somehow didn’t); art was my main joy, and had been since elementary school. My first foster mother, who I called Nanna, believed in encouraging a child's natural talents. After she passed, my skill in drawing and painting were not nurtured; and it did not take long for me to figure out why: No one is going to spend money on coloring books, sketchpads, water colors and colored pencils for a foster child. Most assuredly they will not, and I knew better than to ask. Nanna was one-of-a-kind. The only place where I could draw, paint, or do anything that brought me inner peace was at school; and I stayed after school for as long as I could. Until someone said: ‘Honey, the school’s closing, you have to go home.’
Home. Allow me to be direct and to the point, as that’s always served me well. The foster home I lived in during my latter year as a ward of the state, was without exaggeration; Chaos. Bedlam. Babel personified. It was a home housing eight people: 2 girls, 4 boys, our foster mother and myself, in a 3-story, 5 bedroom row
house in South Philadelphia. I was placed there due to an incident at my previous home. After which, I was given the option to: ‘Go live with your brother for your last year of school, or go to Sleighton Farm.
The Sleighton Farm School for Girls, was a court-ordered reformatory/disciplinary school for girls aged 12 to 17 years. It housed girls remanded there for offenses as trivial as running-away, mental health issues, average teenage rebelliousness, or in my case, self defense against a physically abusive custodial adult. Any of these behaviors garnered the charge of ‘delinquent’, or in my situation, ‘incorrigible.’ The average length of an incarceration was 2 years, however, since I was close to aging out, the child placement agency made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
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