“It’s complicated,” he shrugged.
“Ten is a huge number. Is it some type of Brady Bunch situation?”
“No, my mother gave birth to ten children. My father got her pregnant five times, and then she met someone else who got her pregnant four times because my last two siblings are twins.”
“That is so unheard of nowadays, but it is so cool! I always wanted to have a big family. Growing up in the system, it was always a dream to have big family holidays and stuff like that.”
“Did you have one main family that you lived with?” Morris asked.
“I was initially placed in a home with a woman named Mable. She was old, but she took great care of me from what I can remember. She got sick, and they took me from her and placed me in another foster home. I moved from home to home after that.”
“Do you know what happened to your parents?”
“I was told that my mother was young when she had me. I don’t know if she left me with Mable or if Mable was my foster mother from the beginning. I was never clear on that detail.”
“Where is Mable now?”
“I’m not sure. I went back to the house where she lived. The people that lived there told me she hadn’t been there in years.”
“My older siblings and I were taken from our mother. My grandmother raised the older five,” Morris explained.
“You never told me that.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Why did she only raise the older five?”
“Because my mother raised the younger five. She cleaned up her act and was able to keep them.”
“Good for her…”
“I guess,” he shrugged.
I sensed his discomfort and decided not to ask more questions even though I was curious. This was the first conversation where he talked about his family. Him mentioning his siblings in the past was because I’d asked.
“You grew up in North County, right?” Morris asked.
“Yeah, for the most part.”
“Do you remember Redmond Park and the swimming pool?” Morris asked.
“What black kid in North County doesn’t know Redmond? That was the summer hangout. You went there too?” I asked.
“I was raised in the city, but some of my friends from school lived out that way, so I went to Redmond with them during the summer,” Morris explained.
“I was in one of my last homes and my caretaker would reward us with a swim date if we behaved. That was a great incentive for us to act right. We stayed on our best behavior and were rewarded with a trip to the pool. That day, a boy who I didn’t know pushed me in the deep end. I started to panic due to my fear of water and inability to swim. One of the lifeguards jumped in a pulled me out. Once I got myself back together, I walked right over to the kid that pushed me and punched him square in the nuts. That kid was your barber, Blacc.”
“You’ve known him that long?”
“I didn’t know him when he pushed me. When we started working at the shop together, he had to remind me of who he was. I thought a racist white kid pushed me,” I laughed.
“It was Blacc’s light-skinned ass,” Morris laughed.
“Exactly!”
“So, can you swim now?”
“Nope, but I said I was going to learn. There is no use in me trying to go on vacation and stuff and can’t get in the water,” I explained.