Pretty Eyes My Woman

By Jasmine Munro

 Part One

I had grown up on the other side of Eight Mile Road. A vast distant world of clay faces with upside-down smiles every time they saw this city on the news, my mother one of them. She was a different kind of woman. She grew up on the edge of the city: Warrendale, a neighborhood where people like me didn’t really exist at that time, not yet and when we did, we were ignored. In fact, that’s what my grandmother said to her when she told her about me. 

It was a vicious cycle that my mother had started when she found out that she was pregnant by a man that I never met. But my mother thought she was doing me a favor by not telling me about how the other half lives, my other half. She said that I didn’t need to know about them. They didn’t exist. The ones walking through, driving through, passing through were just visitors. Even their homes were just temporary; Grandma said that we couldn’t exist that way. But she was wrong. 

Growing up, the voice inside me said: “Why don’t I look like you?” 

Momma’s reply, a sad little voice said, “The better to see your pretty eyes, my dear.” 

That was my first important memory of my life with Momma. I remember when she read a letter. It was from across Eight Mile Road. The name I could not pronounce. It was long, at least ten letters. She had been approved for “special housing.” It all started because of what happened on this one particular night. She came home that night to a darkened house and panicked when her ride dropped her off in front of Grandma’s home. She thought that the house was