Finding Me: A Memoir

Viola and her sisters become a “platoon,” banded together in their desire to make their way out of their family situation. Winning the skit, in particular, shifts their lives in a positive way. The softball bat they win as part of the prize becomes a “tool in [their] arsenal” (68), and Viola’s sister Anita, who later goes on to become an all-star softball player, routinely uses it to kill rats in the apartment.

Viola’s childhood is strewn with some good moments, mostly around Dan’s efforts to celebrate holidays, from Valentine’s Day to Christmas. However, these happy moments are soon followed by various kinds of trauma, from Dan’s alcoholism and violence to extreme hunger brought on by poverty. Viola remembers dissociating from her body at nine years old, an attempt to disappear from her reality. Deloris and Viola also often pretend to be “rich, white Beverly Hills matrons, with big jewels and little Chihuahuas” (71), a game they play when Dan is drunk or fighting with Mae.

Viola and her sisters experience varying degrees of sexual abuse. When Viola is eight, she is publicly groped by a drunk man at a friend’s birthday party, leaving her feeling dirty and humiliated. Viola and her sisters are also often left with older boys as babysitters, neighbors as well as their brother John, and they are abused by all of them, including John.