Max-Yamil
I have a question. Hi Mama Mel.
Mama Mel
Hey baby. How you doing?
Max-Yamil
Good. So you asked everybody what a healthy village looks like, I don't know if we've got the chance to ask you what a healthy village looks like for you?
Mama Mel
Yep, for me a healthy village looks like, people who are in relationship with one another, who look out for one another. You don't have to be best friends with people to look out for them. You know, you don't have to be best friends to be in relationship with someone.
That doesn't mean that you like them or don't like them. It's like, I know my neighbors. If my neighbors need me I step up to do whatever I can. Not because we're the best of friends, because they're my neighbors. Right? And when you have a healthy village, you have people who recognize that we all need help sometimes and that we step up for one another. And it's not just when times are hard, it's when things are good. It's like we celebrate together. We celebrate the good together. We go through the hard together. We do the things together.
For example, a few years ago, when we got the last really big snow, my neighbor across the street, we see the ambulance pull up. And they're both older, and they had not been able to shovel. And we see the ambulance pull out, and we see them come out with this little shovel trying to get to the house. And Mr. Kelly lived across from me and my kids. We all saw them, and we all came out with shovels and dug out their driveway so the ambulance could get in because we thought Mr. McKnight, who was the gentleman who lives in the house, we thought he was sick. We didn't know who it was. And the EMT was like, I've never seen anything like this. We said “What? This is our neighbor.” And all four of my kids, myself, Mr. Kelly, Van's son, all of us were out there just digging like crazy because we didn't know why an ambulance was at his house.
And then Mr. McKnight comes walking out with his, satin pajamas looking like dap daddy, right? And he's like, “What y'all doing?” And you could see my kids were about to cry because they've known him their whole life. And he's like, it's not me, it's my son. But we kept shoveling, but he recognized he didn't even have to-- no one had to ask.
He saw us, he saw the look on my face. He realized that we thought it was him. And he told us, “No, it's my son.” And it didn't mean that we're not going to clear "Oh, it's your son. Now we're not gonna clear it," but we finished clearing it. And then we all just went back home. We all went back to our houses, and let the paramedics do what they did. We came back and checked on him later and made sure everything was okay. But it was just like, he didn't even know, he came outside because he heard the ambulance. And he just came outside and just saw all of us there. And it was the most normal thing in the world.
That's what village is. Excellent question.
Max-Yamil
I guess to follow up to that. That's one example, but how did your community, growing up at least, treat those in less fortunate circumstances?
Mama Mel
Well, I was those in less fortunate circumstances. And when I was growing up in the Bronx, in my neighborhood, my mother had schizophrenia. And there were times when she was in deep psychosis. She just did not take care of me. I'm a latchkey kid to the extreme. I was, like real feral. And there were women in my neighborhood, this was before I came to Rochester. I was a single digit kid. And they would make sure that my hair stayed in place. They would make sure my clothes stayed clean, Ms. Starr would have me bring my clothes to her house and she would wash my clothes. Cookie and Dee Dee's mom would wash my hair and have her daughters braid it up for me. Ms. Roberta made sure I always had money for the ice cream truck. The ice cream truck would come down, Ms. Roberta lived on the fourth floor, and she would wrap change in a Kleenex and toss it down so that I could catch the change and have ice cream like the other kids.
Oh God. All kinds of things. And the beauty of it is they never talked bad about my mom. They never shamed her. They never shamed me. Cause there were times when, because my mom was in a bad shape, I couldn't take a bath because I couldn't allow myself to be naked in the tub while she was there because I was vulnerable. Because she would abuse me, right? So, there were times when I would be literally dirty and they would bring me and give me a bath. But they wouldn't talk about me saying, “You stink” or nothing like that. It was just like, I had a bunch of aunties and mamas that took care of me.
Now understand, not everybody in the village is good all the time. They're not all great people. There were people who were mean. But, Cookie and Dee Dee's mom said to Cookie and Dee Dee, "This is your little sister. You don't let nobody touch her." And folk were afraid of Cookie and Dee Dee, they were twins, and people were afraid of Cookie and Dee Dee, and so they wouldn't bother me. But if Cookie and Dee Dee were not around, other people had their kids looking out for me, because I didn't have, an older sister, or an older brother, or an older person to look out for me. And they just made this web around me. It was like this invisible web of protection that kept me well, even though my mom was like in full psychosis, and we did not have to call CPS.
Max-Yamil
Do you think the view of people in less fortunate circumstances changed over time? Comparing to when you grew up, say like example, somebody homeless, somebody who's seen homeless on the street back when you grew up compared to now?
Kate
Or did you notice differences between where you grew up in New York City and Rochester, once you moved to Rochester?
Mama Mel
No. The base of Village was the same. The base of Village was the same. The way it operated was different because New York City is very congested, very urban, but the people are the same. And because if you think about it, because of the great migration, it's the same folks. Some landed in New York City, some came on up to Rochester. It's southern folks, migrated with southern ideals. But the difference in New York City is that we had southern people, we had Caribbean people, we had all these other kinds of people, right? But the idea of looking out for one another—In New York City we would have rent parties. Here they did it too, but they also did sell dinners. That was something they didn't do—I didn't experience in New York city, that people did here, that they would sell dinners out their house. Generally the village became wider when I came up here.
Up to 174th Street, back to Brooklyn Boulevard, I'm sorry, one, two, three, four, five, six blocks north and south, and maybe one, two, three, four blocks east to west was my hood in New York City. Outside of that, I was a stranger. In Rochester, the eastside was my neighborhood. Whether I was on Avenue D and Clinton, or if I was on Scio, or if I was on Portland—it felt bigger, but smaller at the same time.
So, I could be on Scio Street and a mother be like, "Baby you look hot, I got some juleps". Right? I lived on Avenue D between, Clinton and Remington. So I was a little ways from my hood, my block, but it was still my hood. Does that make sense?
Did that answer the question?
Max-Yamil
Definitely.
Mama Mel
Who's next?
Almeta
Come on, Faith.
Faith
I'm thinking.
Mama Mel
And you can ask me anything. There's nothing I won't answer.
Eshmeron
Are there any vivid memories with your siblings or family members within the neighborhood? Like any funny moments?
Mama Mel
Yeah, there actually is. There's a couple. I'll give you one from Rochester and one from New York City.
When I was little in New York City, I had tons of hair, right? This is back when they would use pressing combs to press your hair. But my hair was so soft that you could put a hot, steamy breath on my hair, and my hair would go back, right? So, I would get my hair braided, and Cookie and Dee Dee would braid my hair. And even with everything going on, I had the flyest hair in the neighborhood, because Cookie and Dee Dee would do designs in my braids. I'm an Aries, so they would put the rams, and my braids were like beads in them and I was like, “Hey”. And I used to love to shake my beads.
And y'all look, it's the seventies. What y'all want from me? But the thing was that they made sure I felt pretty. And it's one of my best memories, sitting on the stoop outside and getting my hair braided. I don't know what it was about it. I'm thinking back and it was just so cool. Cause when we'd be sitting on the stoop, the grease and the comb and the brush and the big bucket with all the hair, Bobo's, the beads and the stuff in it.
It was just the best time, and I think part of it is—I'm thinking it through—is that I didn't have, I have a brother who has severe autism, but I didn't have traditional siblings. So having Cookie and Dee Dee was like, I was their baby sister and I had big sisters who looked out for me, who did my hair, who I got to hear them talk about the boys, and all the things. So I felt like I was a part, I belong.
And for Rochester. One of my favorite memories is—I was older. I think I told this story last time I was here. When my cousin Quentin, my little nephew Quentin, got left at the house and there was nobody home, and how everybody descended upon the house and would not let anyone take Quentin away. And as a kid who's been homeless, who's been in all those situations, watching that manifest naturally. No, he's ours, you're not gonna take him. You're not gonna talk about him. You're not gonna say anything. Watching that village, as a protector. I could talk about silly stuff like us and the twins, down the street playing and just running up and down the street. Yeah, I could talk about that, but this thing, it solidified for me.
Anthony came, one of the kings from the house, we're friends now. And that's what, 40 years later. And he owned the bookstore that used to be on State Street, whatever the name of the bookstore is. I can see it. I can smell it. I can't recall the name of it. But, we talk about things, we'll see each other. We're friends on Facebook now. We'll talk about stuff from back in the day. But my biggest thing is that his mom protected Quentin for us, and just told them, “No, we know who this family is. This is our people”. And they made a barricade, wouldn't let the cops touch Quentin, wouldn't let them take him nowhere until we could get there and get everything straightened out. And knowing that you have that kind of protection, it's just dope.
Does that make sense?
Almeta
Yeah.
Mama Mel
Yes, baby.
Faith
What is the most valuable relationship that you've had in your life?
Mama Mel
I can't answer that
Almeta
That's a difficult one
Mama Mel
Because I believe that relationships are seasonal and I've had incredibly profound relationships, multiple of them across the different seasons of my life. And I'm not going to say—normally I would say, well, it was my mom because my mom saved my life. But then I don't want to not give tribute to Cookie and Dee Dee's mom, and Ms. Brenda, and Ms. Star, and Ms. Roberta. Cause they all did the same thing, but just in a different season. Right? That's why I think I love the village. Because the most important relationship I've ever had in my life is to my village. When I was in the rite of childhood, adulthood, marriage, no matter what it was, the constant is the village. And it's been the most important relationship in my life because all the other relationships in my life grew out of it. And how I'm able to interact in those relationships grew out of it, out of Village. Does that make sense? All right.
Almeta
Good question.
Mama Mel
Y'all are dope with these questions. Go ahead. Come on, baby. You can give me another one, especially because you done cut all your hair off. {in reference to Max-Yamil’s recent haircut, all laugh}
Max-Yamil
How has the style changed?
Mama Mel
The style of Village? Or style period? Of People?
Almeta
How we roll?
Mama Mel
How we roll? We've become a lot more insular.
Max-Yamil
What’s that mean?
Mama Mel
It means we have turned in on ourselves more. Wherein I remember a time where we would just walk across town, walking eastside to the westside and folks would talk. You see folk outside. You just chit-chatting. Believe, because of us, particularly us as people of color, listening to the narratives about us, internalizing those narratives, we have turned in on ourselves and we've allowed outside forces to make us not in relationship in the same way with one another. Make us fear one another, make us not like one another, make us not really want to see one another and judge one another. And in that we've lost, because we have supplanted that relationship that we had with each other with programs. So instead of me going to Ms. Funchess' house or Ms. Almeta's house or Ms. Dot’s house, I'm going to the Salvation Army. I'm going to House of Mercy. I'm going to some institution to meet a need, or to get a thing that I always was able to get through Village. So now we don't even have those natural occurring ways that we used to have that build relationships, build trust and build that connection because they've been supplanted by program.
Almeta
And that's how we functioned in the Motherland and it came over on the slave ships and embedded itself in the new world, and like you said programs now take-they supplant the village and people like, “oh, that's the way it's supposed to be." It's like we've forgotten what worked in the past. And it's not that far of a past because you are young.
Mama Mel
Yeah. Okay. No, because only you can say that, right? {all laugh}
It's something that I talk about when I talk about Village. I talk about three R's: remember, reflect, and return. Remember a time when our lives were not like this. Right? And what I realized is that's a question that you have to ask people of a certain age because many people who are in their 20’s may not remember this, but our lives were not always like this.
All of us can remember a time when it wasn't quite like this. Reflect on what were the things that were good, right? Because I don't look at village historically as in this very Pollyanna, very, romanticized way. I look at it for what it was. There were dope fiends in the village, there were predators in the village, there were all these other things in the village too. At the same time, we had protectors, we had an adult protective shield. We had protective factors. So our risk factors did not become predictive for our lives. So let's reflect on those things and how can we return to some of those behaviors? Because it wasn't the stuff necessarily. It was the behaviors of the people, and how they related and how they use the stuff that made the village. So how do we return to some of those things, to rebuild what we once had?
Yes, baby.
Leka
I guess I have a question. How do you think we could instill like some of those values from the past into the youth today? How do we spark up that progression again?
Mama Mel
Before we have to do that, we have to love them.
Almeta
Ashe.
Mama Mel
We, as the elders, we as the adults, have to literally have a conversation with ourselves to say, do we love ourselves? Do we truly love? And what does it mean to love our young people? Right? It means showing up. It means not judging them for how they wear their hair, for who they love, for how they express themselves, for all the other things. Right? And then once we decide that we love them, how do we make love a verb? And how is love an action word? How do we express that to our kids?
Because, I can't teach you anything until I have relationship with you, until you see me as a trustworthy source to teach you something. Because what I'm trying to teach you is ways of life, you've got to be able to see my life, and show that you feel good in my presence, and see that my life is something worth emulating, something worth learning from. And then I will be able to help, and teach, and do those other things. Does that make sense?
Almeta
Good question.
Mama Mel
And y'all just talk.
Faith
Kind of related to that, I was thinking about how the 70’s—or people say it was like the golden age. And then the 80’s, there was a lot of Satanic Panic, and then drugs came, and so all this bad stuff happened, and I think that's kind of why people are so cautious nowadays, and scared of strangers, there was stranger danger, and I learned about that in school. How do you reconcile that with the notion of village that existed before?
Mama Mel
No, all that happened at the same time, baby. See, the thing is, it's not dichotomous, right? And, I ascribe to a diurnal thinking, which means the joining of opposites. Two things that are seemingly opposite can both be true at the same time. I grew up in New York City during the era of Son of Sam. Okay? I grew up during the Atlanta child murders. Okay? At the same time, I was not afraid in my neighborhood because I had Cookie and Dee Dee’s Mama. I had Ms. Roberta, and Ms. Star, and Ms. Brenda, who we knew were solid. Now, do we know that there were some Chester the Child Molesters working? Yes. But we also knew that there were people who were looking out for us. So both things existed, right? So I think that there are people like me who fully recognize that people were getting mugged and vicked out there in the streets, but I recognized that there were also these other things, right?
But what happens is, again, going back to the media and going back to the messaging that was put upon us, I did not realize that the Bronx was like "South, South Bronx. South, South Bronx" was supposed to be so dangerous and horrible until I moved out of it. And people started telling me, “Girl, you're from the South Bronx. Fort Apache!” Right? I'm like, “What?” They're like, "Hunts Point. Pimps up. Hoes down." And I'm like, "What?" I mean, literally. All those things were true, but at the same time, I knew some of the women who y'all would now call sex workers. At the time we called them ladies of the night, right? And they were moms. Like two doors down from me was Ms. Carol who was a lady of the night. And we knew what she did for a living. We knew that she had a kid that had some kind of medical thing and that she needed to be able to be home. So her friends would come visit her.
I mean, we knew that she was a prostitute. We never, now you were never allowed to use that word, but we knew what she did. And the men in our building, my father included, would tell us kids we were the ops. We were to watch out for Ms. Carol, listen at her door and if anything bad, if any of her friends were being mean to her, we had to go get the men, and so basically they used us as spies to make sure that Ms. Carol, none of her Johns would try to beat her up, try to do anything mean to her.
And she knew that we were all listening and watching for her, but no one judged her because we knew she was doing the best she could to take care of her baby. I knew that at seven. I didn't understand that she was a sex worker. I knew she had friends who would come over to her house and visit her. And we needed to make sure that her friends were nice to her. That means they didn't use bad words to her. They didn't talk to her mean. This is the way they said this, and they said, “If you hear anyone talking to her mean, you come get us.” You go get Mr. Leo, or go get my dad, or go get Mr. David who lived on the fourth floor on the other side. We knew where all of them were, no matter what time it was, there was someone always around and you would go get them. And they knew once one of the kids came to get them and you just say, Ms. Carol needs you, they would run and handle the business.
You know, this is just the way it was. Judge it for what you want, but we recognize that we were all out here trying to make it and the best way to make it, is to make it together. But there was no giant meeting call. It just was, it was the culture.
Does that make sense to y'all? {everyone nods in assurance} Okay, because I know how it sounds from here to here, but after it comes out here, sometimes it doesn't sound the same.
Almeta
Well, it reminds me of the church song, Jesus Is On the Main Line, tell him what you want. The community was on the main line, tell him what you want.
Mama Mel
Call him up and tell him what you want.
Almeta
That's it.
Mama Mel
Other questions?
Katie
I have one. What did having your needs met through community make possible for you?
Mama Mel
It kept me alive. It kept me sane. My life for a good part of my childhood was like—if I was to write it out for people that was a nightmare, it was insane.
I was able to grow up, literally be able to grow up, become an adult, have my mental faculties intact, still have the capacity to love hard, to see the humanity of people, to be able to think critically about situations and not offer just blanket judgment all because of Village.
Because what Village taught me was that my circumstances were just my circumstances. It did not indicate what my character was. It didn't say that I was a good person or a bad person. This was just the shit that happened. So, I mean, it was everything.
Other questions? Dr. Mariner, do you have a question?
Kate
I've asked you a lot of questions over the years. I had a question earlier, which we might have meandered into and out of, but what elements of Village have endured?
Almeta
Ashe
Mama Mel
Love has endured. Love has endured. Sense of connection has endured. And you want to know what it looks like? If I'm walking down the street and I do this to you, {Mama Mel nods her head at Max-Yamil} what do you do? {Max-Yamil nods back} And, why do you do that? Tell me what this is.
Max-Yamil
It's a recognition of community, or a sense of
Almeta
Kinship.
Max-Yamil
Yeah, kinship.
Mama Mel
It's, I see you.
Almeta
Sawubona.
Mama Mel
Sawubona. Yebo sawubona. I see you, and I see you too.
So if I'm walking anywhere, if you're walking, and we're passing each other on the street, and I do {Mama Mel nods} and it may be the slightest thing, the slightest. You catch it, you, {Mama Mel nods as if to answer her previous nod} and maybe it's the slightest move and nobody else will see it. But you know I see you, bruh. I got you, I see you. And that has endured.
What else has endured? I think a basic understanding of respect has endured. People don't know how to manifest it because of pain and hurt but, real recognize real, right? So for example, I think I've told a story about my neighbors when they would be smoking blunts. They wouldn't allow their friends to smoke butts in their driveway because the air would blow up into my living room window.
I never told him they couldn't do that, but they were like, “ah, that's mama Mel. We ain't doing that Nah, Nah Nah”. They walk past my house and pull their pants up. I don't care if their pants are down, as long as their draws are clean, right? But they recognize, and want to show respect. And so it's in us to want to do that.
But I think part of that is because I've always shown respect. And shown myself as someone worthy of being respected. So I think that endures, but we have to do both. You know what I mean? Like people want the young people to respect them as elders, but they've been acting just like old people, not like elders. There's elders and then there's old people. And you've got to behave—like to have friends, you have to first show yourself friendly. To be treated as an elder you have to act like one. So it's both sides.
Kate
It sounds like the things that you're describing that have endured are more internal things.
You said, love, connection, and respect. Like things that we carry with us or have inside of us. And so I'm wondering if maybe the difference between things that have endured versus things that have not endured is things that we have inside us versus things that are external to us which have changed, which are maybe outside of our control.
Mama Mel
And some of the internal things have not endured as well and it's levels to all that because you have to learn a thing. The ways of sharing have not endured in the same ways and that's internal. That “if I have 50 cent you got a quarter”. That has not endured because I think we were taught, become more insular and we were supplanting village for program. We were taught me and mine, which is dominant culture thinking, which is not our way.
My grandmother said, the more you take on the master's amenities, the more you take on his attributes, the more you take on their stuff, the more you act like them. And so I think as we have quote, unquote, gotten free, ascended, did all these things. We've become more and more insular and we've lost some of those things, but those are things that are internal to us, but we've allowed other people's values to supplant our own because we have been taught that what is ours is not—
Almeta
Valuable.
Mama Mel
It's not valuable. That it's inferior, all the way down to like African booty-scratcher. It's like we have been taught that all things that are related to us and our Blackness, our African-ness, are negative and bad. And that we've got to do things this other way, but this other way does not serve us. So, yeah.
Kate
Are there structures, or practices, or rituals that we could build back?
Mama Mel
We can build it all back. And I have got to go because I've got to get back into the next thing, my next interview. But we can build it all.
Almeta
This Healthy Village Initiative
Mama Mel
That's the goal. And the thing is, because understand, all these things were learned. Anything that's learned can be unlearned so good things can be relearned, bad things can be unlearned. And some things are just good and bad. Thank you. Alright.