Imagine a young Jamaican girl coming to America in 2000.
I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I remember leaving Jamaica when I was 11, or maybe I left when I was 10. But I specifically remember being 11 and when I read the article and the flyers they say 11. The experience was surreal. I was amazed at seeing people living together in one building. I was amazed that my mom lived in a building with multiple people and none of them were related. I always thought that if you lived in a house with other people, you had to be family.
In Jamaica, we have something called a tenement yard. It’s mostly a plot of land with multiple houses occupied by different families, friends, and people of the sort. But these gigantic American buildings had all these unrelated people living inside them.
Moving forward, I grasped the identity of a young American girl really quickly. I would always watch television and practice my American accent, so it’s not a shocker that as soon as I landed on American soil, my accent changed. Not completely, not 100 percent, I should say. Every now and then, you could hear something. Maybe my younger self didn’t realize how Jamaican I actually sounded because I was putting on such a front. I’m going to tell you more about why I say that later. But in my mind, I was doing the Yankee accent to the best of my abilities.
The first school I attended was MS 2. That’s where I met my best friend. Her name was Zoe. Well, I should say she was my best friend for that time. Something you should know about me is that I don’t keep best friends for too long. I’ve had maybe one best friend whom I kept for more than eight years, and eventually she had to go. That sounds critical, but it’s not like that. It’s due to me constantly moving and losing contact with people. It was very easy to lose contact with somebody back in the days when you didn’t have a cell phone or any means of contacting people as a child. If your people told you that you had to move, you had to go.
My best friend Zoe and I used to play during lunch break, and the school was somewhat amazing. This junior high school was exactly what high schools were supposed to be. They taught home economics. They had a kitchen and different things that you could learn. It was real. It was a real program. This was what I was exposed to when I came to America, so I had the impression that all of America was like this. Eventually, I had a rude awakening.
But back to my best friend Zoe. She was my first white friend, and I wonder if she remembers me. I’ve lost contact with her. I just remember that she was my first white friend and the first friend I had whose name started with the letter Z.
She was pretty cool. She was also the person who introduced me to Harry Potter. I became obsessed with Harry Potter. Harry Potter was my favorite thing, okay? Between the movies, the stories, and the exposure I had, I became completely obsessed.
One of my first American injuries also happened at MS 2 while I was playing booty tag during lunch .I learned about booty tag when I came to America. It’s when a boy runs around chasing you and tries to slap your butt. The mission is to get away and not let that little boy touch your butt. So here I am, playing booty tag with the rest of the school, when I happen to trip, fall, and sprain my right wrist.
Ask me what I told my mom. I definitely didn’t mention the booty part of the tagging. I probably just said that I was playing tag during lunch, tripped, and fell. You know my mom is Jamaican. I don’t remember if I told her the entire story about what I was doing, but I know that with my mom, I had to omit certain things. I couldn’t tell her I was running around playing booty tagg with boys.
I went to Kings County Hospital. That’s when I got my first little American blue card, real Brooklyn girl. I also learned about riding the subway and the MTA buses. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I moved to New York. That’s like the Mecca for Jamaicans in America. This was around the time when they still had bus tokens. Those little coin things with the hole inside. I still remember them. We are so far gone from that time now.
Now let’s move into the living environment with my mom. Imagine this: a young girl from Jamaica moving into a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. Remember, I said a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. The only person I knew in that apartment was my mother. Yeah, I had a sister, but I didn’t know her. She was born in America, and I had never met her, except maybe once when she was a baby. It was two people I didn’t know, one person I barely knew, and my mother. My mom worked overnight as a home health aide, taking care of elderly people. That meant I was left at home with my stepfather.
My stepfather was a piece of work. He would call my mom to antagonize her and tell her how much her daughter, meaning me, was giving him such a hard time. Let me explain what he considered a hard time.
“Tracy, you need to clean the bathroom.”
“But I didn’t make a mess in the bathroom,” I would say.
Then he would call my mother.
“Your daughter is disrespecting me and having an attitude.”
Another example: dishes would pile up in the sink. His son used the dishes. The dishes had nothing to do with me.
“Tracy, you need to wash the dishes.”
“Why do I have to wash the dishes? I didn’t use them.”
Then he would call my mother with the same routine.
Here’s the thing. When I was back home in Jamaica, you could say that I lived like an only child. When there was work to do, the work was equal. If we were cleaning the house, everybody who lived in the house was going to clean. It was never one person’s job. It was never, “You’re the girl, so you have to clean the house.” But for some reason, here in America, the mentality was that everything fell on the female in the building.
I didn’t subscribe to that.
I guess that was his problem. Maybe accepting me into his home was his way of thinking, “At least I’ll have a little housekeeper.”
I was never the type for that.
When I was back home in Jamaica, I was busy running away, climbing trees, catching fish, playing in dirt, minding my business, and doing whatever the fuck I wanted to do because I was free. Whether I was living with my grandfather, my aunts, or one of my mom’s friends, I was outside. Imagine coming to America and not being able to go outside because there was no grass. It was just pavement. My mom was also terrified of letting me outside because of the crack epidemic and the crack needles she said were on the ground.
I never saw one.
But anyway, my stepfather would always call my mom to complain. Then my mom would get on the phone and start yelling and screaming at me.
Mind you, I had just gotten here.
Why am I being yelled at? For what reason?
As a child, I had extreme reasoning skills.You yelled at me for no reason. That means you don’t want me here. So you want to know what I’m going to do?
I’m going to fucking leave.
I’m not fucking staying here.
That is what I would always say. It didn’t matter who you were or where I was. If I felt uncomfortable, I was getting the fuck out.
So that’s what I did.
The first time I ran away, I had memorized where my aunt lived. Her house was the first place I came to when I arrived in America. She lived in Canarsie and had a really big house. One of her walls was covered with mirrors. It was the coolest thing. I had never seen anything like it. That was also where I ate Chinese food for the first time. I had chicken wings with pork fried rice and duck sauce. Don’t let me tell you about my obsession with duck sauce afterward. My mom refused to let me eat Chinese food, so when I tell you I relished the time I spent at my aunt’s house, it was the best time of my life.
My mom and my aunt used to work together, so I became visually familiar with where they worked. Now, let me preface this by telling you that I am extremely terrible at directions. So don’t ask me how I memorized how to get to my mom and aunt’s job, but I did. The first time I ran away in America, I decided, “Yeah, fuck this shit. I’m going to live with my aunt.” I didn’t really know Brooklyn like that, and my mom was acting grossly funny about this whole environment. I was realizing that I didn’t even know my mother anymore.
I had been left in Jamaica when I was probably six years old, maybe five. The relationship my mom and I had was completely strained. I guess you could say I was living in a house with a bunch of strangers, feeling like I didn’t belong. At my aunt’s house, I felt like I belonged. So I wanted to go back there. I ran away and went to their job. I was brought back home and got my ass beat, but it was all good. I had been beaten before. It wasn’t too bad.
But listen, this is not the juicy part of the story.
Things get a lot juicier.
This next part is something I could never forget because this was when I started living my Home Alone life and the one memory that I can’t forget. As I said, I had a terrible home life with my mom, stepfather, stepbrother, and sister. I wanted out. I ran away to my aunt, but she didn’t want me. I ran away a few more times, but it didn’t work.
The last time I ran away I took my jewelry box and planned to leave with my boombox in my book bag … Picture it. As a child, you take the things that belong to you, the things people gave you, and the things you love. So I took my little trinkets. Back to the last time I ran. I got in trouble the night before school. It might have been a Friday, or maybe it was a Monday. I don’t know. My mom called and yelled at me. We wore uniforms to school, but I decided that day that I was going to wear regular clothes and my good sneakers. I didn’t bring my gym sneakers to school that day. That caused my mom to come to the school. I was sitting in class, being a good kid, because I was never a bad kid in school. I was in class doing my learning thing, planning to run away after school. The next thing I knew, my teacher received a call and told me I had to go to the office.
“Your mom is here. You forgot your shoes. She brought them for you.”
I’m like, “Oh, fuck.”
I was wearing regular clothes. If I went to see my mom wearing regular clothes, I was going to get my ass torn up when I got home. So I took the pass, left my things behind, and slipped through the side doors. I snuck onto the train. I believe it was either the 2 or the 5, and I rode it all the way to the last stop. I know now that I was in the Bronx. Back then, I had no idea where I was. I got off the train and walked around for hours and hours. When it started getting dark, I called 911.
“Hello? I’m lost.”
“What do you mean you’re lost?”
“I’m lost. I can’t find my way home.”
They asked me what my name was.
I told them my name was Shameara Lawson.
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