Excerpt from Chapter 1: Love Does Not Hit!

Pike Street in Norfolk, Virginia, back in the 1960s was an up-and-coming, middle-class community of predominantly African-American families. They lived in single-story detached homes built perpendicular to a cemetery at the end of the street. There, in the shadows of headstones, was where my mother and father first met. Their beginning before a reservoir of death symbolized the doomed nature of their relationship, which contrasted with the strong sense of living that surged throughout my mother’s always-hopeful approach to whatever life brought her. Love and hope never failed to thrive within her heart, even as her union with my father was dead upon arrival.

My mother, Elsa B. Haskins, was the oldest of two children. Her parents were divorced, and her mother made Mommy Dearest look like a children’s fable. Ma never knew when her mother, frustrated with the realities of life, would kick her down a flight of stairs or tell her she was too dark-skinned, too much a tomboy, to find someone to marry her. From the little I know, my mother endured verbal and physical abuse since the day she was born. It was a hole that gaped ever wider, begging to be filled with love, appreciation, and a sense of self-worth.

She found what she so hungered for in her grandfather, Christopher Bell. Grandpa Bell was a great provider and hard worker, a family man who owned his first home in the heart of the 1950s, segregated South. He adored my mother. He took her to the park, bought her pretty dresses and Barbie dolls, and imbued her difficult life with words of affirmation. He told her she was smart and beautiful and that she would do big things with her life. Every time he spoke to her, he breathed hope into her heart. He helped her make important life decisions, such as leaving Virginia because she had no chance of developing as a woman while living under her mother’s roof. He took her to appointments when she was pregnant with me and did not have transportation, and helped her with rent or utilities when her bank account ran low. To this day, my mother tears up in reverent sadness when Grandpa Bell’s name emerges in conversation.

My father came from a hard-working, educated family. His parents both graduated from college and worked at Norfolk State University. Like Grandpa Bell, my father’s father was a great example who built his Pike Street home from the ground up. He was a carpenter and constructed many homes and businesses throughout Norfolk, including many buildings at Norfolk State University, where he taught carpentry and woodworking. As a building superintendent, his name would one day find its way onto a bronze plaque at the home of the University President. His name, my father’s name, my name: Douglas Edward Luffborough. 

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