The Dithering of a District Diva

My mother’s hands are delicate but strong. Her nails are always neat, and she takes pride in having a flawless manicure at all times. For 16 years, my mother’s hands represented strength to me. These were the hands that carried me to bed after falling asleep in the car. These were the hands that swatted me on the butt from time to time when I deserved it. They were also the hands that tucked me in at night, smoothing my hair down before a good-night kiss on my forehead.

And then one night, my mother’s hands became a weapon. “Mommy! Please let me go. I can’t breathe. You’re choking me” ….My mother’s hands were wrapped tightly around my neck, squeezing so hard that I thought I was going to pass out…”That’s my man,” she said…”Don’t you ever” — she slammed my head down — “ever” — slammed it down again — “step to my man. You hear me?!”

This is the opening story in Jamilah Creekmur’s memoir, “Raised by the Mistress.” The reader is introduced to a young Jamilah who’s alcoholic mother has finally chosen sides between her daughter, and the married man she loves. This tale of heartbreak and restoration takes place in Baltimore, Maryland, a prison for our heroine, chaining her to a life on the outskirts of love, as she watches her mother serve as a mistress to a married man with 5 kids from two different marriages.

The twist to this book is that Jamilah has taken a holistic approach to story-telling, and has her mother Valli and twice-married Wayne tell their own sides to this tale.  How does one justify having a mistress for over twenty years? How can one live with being a mistress for that long? What is it like for the children who are trapped in the middle? There is no guessing about how it feels to be a mistress, a cheater, or a child-victim — “Raised by the Mistress” has each perspective  plainly told from the viewpoints of all.  And most of all, it shows how arbitrary such labels as “mistress,” “cheater,” and “child-victim,”  can be.

It is a very raw, very human story of  the entanglement of three lives and the paths each of them took to come together.  No-holds-barred, these three boldly express who, how and why they are:  their failures, addiction, abuse, redemption, and triumph.  And most of all, this is a story of unconditional love.

However, the love that Jamilah fixates on and struggles with for over 30 years — the one between her mother and her mother’s man — is not the unconditional love I’m talking about.

Jamilah describes the loving way in which her play-step-father Wayne and her mother Valli interacted. They doted on each other and were so affectionate with each other and were always having sex.  Even after being together as man and mistress for over 20 years, and now as man and wife, Jamilah describes them as having an unshakable bond of true love.   She explains her fitful struggle between admiring what she saw in the relationship between Wayne and her mother, and hating the fact that her mother had no qualms about cheating with a married man, and that Wayne did not respect Valli enough to legitimize their relationship by divorcing his wife and marrying Valli.

Wayne and Valli may very well love each other madly and may be a perfect fit for each other, but theirs is not a relationship that I walked away  wanting to emulate.  It was a selfish love that completely disregarded the impact it would have on innocents like Jamilah and her brother Kenny and Wayne’s five kids, or his wife.  It was a reckless love and lust that would manifest itself — loudly and sickeningly — within the earshot of children.  It was a love that broke other people and took Jamilah alone over 30 years to recover from.  So, no, there’s is not the love I’d want to idealize or emulate — but Jamilah’s unconditional love is.

There are so many different points throughout the book where the reader can vividly see to the point of empathy how Valli’s alcoholism scarred her young children into adulthood.  There are so many points where Wayne’s intrusion into Jamilah’s life, his complete disregard for her feelings could have been the last straw.  But throughout the book, even when she escapes to college to better herself and achieve her fashion-industry dreams, Jamilah fights for her relationship with her mother, and grows to have compassion and love for Wayne — something she acknowledges she could never have achieved without knowing God.  This is the kind of inconceivable unconditional love and perfect peace that we can all learn from and hope to emulate.

Jamilah and her co-author Aliya S. King write in a way that will send you crashing back into your own childhood, your own relationship with your mother and family, your own struggles to define what love is and isn’t and shouldn’t be. It is an American story of a champion who lifts her head above catastrophe, envisions a better life for herself, and dares anyone to stop her from reaching it. It is a story of defeating the demons of addiction, guilt, and shame. It is a redemption song and an instructive story of when — and how — to let it all go.

Jamilah Creekmur’s “Raised by the Mistress” is available at Amazon.com and is a Certified Diva Read:

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