Justice For Billie

Billy Dee Williams is his name no joke, I still remember when my mother came home from the hospital with his chunky butt June 17th 1989 two days after his birth.

I was so happy to have my first little brother because I had already been blessed just a year before with the birth of my first sibling which was my little sister.

Not only did I now have extra company but I now had two of the best people in the world that I could protect and love unconditionally.

Two new best friends that were here to stay forever and that would look up to me so you can imagine how important it was for me to make sure that these kids were happy and no harm would be done to them.

My brother was a great kid always and OMG he was a mama's boy at its best, but he was never a cry baby that is for sure. I cant remember one time that this kid got in any trouble or had to get a whooping.

I do remember back in September 1990, my mother gave birth to my third sibling which happen to be another boy. Billy would go missing but only some where around the house of course, and my mother would be confused as to why the new baby would be just crying so much after she made his bottle.

Thats when she would realize that Billy and the babys bottle was gone. So we would go looking and searching for Billy, and like clock work I would be the one to find him in one of his few hiding spots.

I would look behind the trash can or even one of the large laundry baskets we had in the house just to see Billy big beautiful innocent eyes staring up at me with the baby bottle in his mouth and empty.

My mother use to say "why is my baby still hungry?", well after a while she got the answer to the question she was always asking which was pretty funny.

Growing up my siblings and I were always with our mother day in and day out, with her being a single parent at times but she made sure that our childhood was as normal as possible.

There were times that our mother worked and some she did not but one thing is for sure and never stopped was the love she gave us all and we gave to each other.

Our mother made sure that birthdays were celebrated and holidays were too. We would all wear the same colors with me and my sister having the same outfits and the boys having the same outfits.

When the time came for food stamps "back when they were in paper booklets" our mother would give us all our own little booklet after she did her grocery shopping, so that we could go to the store and get what we wanted for ourselves.

Well one day I decided to play a trick on all of them and one of my cousins that had spent the night at our house. Because we use to put all of our food stamps together and have what we called a party, I would be the one to hold the food stamps.

So one day I told the kids that I had lost the food stamps and oh when I say they were highly upset with me, WoW. Now with the room being so quite because everyone of them were so hurt, my brother said to my cousin in a low voice " I cant believe she lost them".

My sister all of a sudden hollers out "JUST DONT TALK ABOUT IT!". I was crying laughing so hard that I had to let them know that it was just a joke, it had been the funniest thing I had heard and boy were they happen when I said it was a joke.

My siblings were never they kind of kids to be in the streets or having friends that were in the streets breaking laws, they were good kids and always stayed at home with my mother.

In July of 1993 we welcomed another sibling and then from there it would be more and more siblings we would welcome making it a total of eleven children our mother would give birth to.

Since I was the oldest of them all I had a lot of responsibilities and at times I could not do things that other girls my age was doing like going to the mall and going to parties or just hanging around friends.

I was always in the house with the kids because thats what my mother wanted and that was my only option being in her house.

Though when I was able to get out the house it was only to go spend the night at one of my cousin houses not anyone else. Our mother did not play that spending the night at outside the family houses, oh no.

My mother had so many children that we did not have to go out to find friends, we had each other and our many cousins to play with so there was never time for anyone to feel alone or bored.

Fun to us was playing church and playing school, something children these days would not attempt to do.

My mother took her time with showing us how to love one another and be there for each other, we never were the kind of kids that fought on each other and not one of us was the type of kids that use foul language.

As we got older and started to make friends at school and around our neighborhood, our house was the place everyone came to play and hang out.

Well at least for my siblings because my friends never came to hang out at mom house and I was happy with that because by that time I wanted to go out in the world and explore.

Billy always had a passion for drawing things, characters from movies, himself, other people, or just things around him. Most of his childhood thats all he would do was stay at home and draw if not playing the video games but no matter what drawing was always and has remained his passion.

I remember when he had his first girlfriend name Melissa, I believe he was in junior high school, they had to break up because her grandmother was really racist and use to accuse Billy of being much older than her grand daughter.

Thank God the girl mother was cool enough to come talk to my mother because my brother would have probably been arrested because of this woman assuming things and not trying to get to know about him or us.

So, he and Melissa broke it off with each other and man oh man, that was the first time that I have ever seen my brother so down. He was heart broken and I was hurt watching him like that at such a young age but I wanted him to go through his little experience and learn from it.

Sitting under the car port outside the apartments we lived in at the time or being sleep was the only thing he did when he was not in school, literally he did not want anyone company or anything. He just wanted to sit out there or sleep.

Even though they had been broken up for a while, Billy always got her gifts on the holidays or made her things like cards or designed t-shirts, and he kept all of it in a box for a long time. He would just add more and more things to it, I figure he did that with hope that on day he would be able to see her and give it to her.

Eventually as time went by he finally said that he wanted to go give her the box so that he could really move on and live his life again. So Billy along with me and our mother all got in the car one day and was on our way to go meet up with the girl and her mother so he could.

Finally my brother was back to himself again, hanging out with his siblings and cousin and having fun. I am pretty sure he was always thinking about her because come to find out she was actually his first.