350 Pounds of Nothingness

I have a sister who is huge.  When we were younger, she was the prettiest little girl you would ever want to meet.  I think, however, she had serious self-esteem issues.  As I can remember, she was always in a fight with women older than her.  Mostly, because of their men, and she was into a lot.  My mother held tight to the idea that she was just so beautiful that people could stand it and fought her.  At eight and nine that was feasible to me.  Plus, I believed whatever my mother said; back then.  Now that I have had the pleasure of growing up, becoming a woman and seeing life through my own eyes, I can't see my sister as a victim.  She's not so beautiful anymore; not at 350 pounds.  She is still fighting with people all the time and she can barely walk.  So, with my new found knowledge of living, I'm going to tell my story.  Believe it or not I think it will go a long way to help others.

Now this is the same sister, who along with Paul McDougal, got me thrown out of Oakland University.  A school I've dreamed of attending for many years.  I can admit that part of this is based on a vindictive spirit.  I don't like my sister.  I love her, and would never want anything to happen to her, but she needs help.  She tries to use my sick mother as an ATM, she's verbally abusive to her children, down-grades them and her grandchildren, sabotages peoples lives for them to fail, and doesn't want anyone to know her business.  This because she infiltrates and tries to destroy other people so much that she keeps all of her business to herself, with the fear that someone else would do as she does.  You know the adage "You only see in others what you see in yourself."  Well, she is dirty, and assumes the world s dirty, too.  Everyone except her family, she knows us pretty well and plays heavily on our weaknesses.  She use to play on mine so much, I practically raised her first two children.  I began to distance myself back in 1991, when she had me babysit, while she chased her then boyfriend across the State.  I spent three weeks with her then two children (she has four now).  I cooked, cleaned, ironed, did the grocery shopping, walked my nephew to school and was their surrogate Mom for those weeks.

Shortly before Christmas, she returned and handed me a card with $20 in it.  She sat at the kitchen table looking angry, I guess because her boyfriend had made her give me the money.  I looked at Hamilton's face and frowned myself.  I said, "This is all I get, for three weeks of doing your job?"  My sister, then only about 180 pounds, turned her nose and said, "You lucky you got that.  If you don't want it, I'll take it back."  My mouth dropped.  I thought to myself, "This bitch is crazy.  I've been shopping, cleaning and cooking ans she don't want to give me nothing?"  She had done the same thing a few months before, but only for about a week.  I guess that was her dry run.  She wanted to see if I would go for it.  I don't have to tell you I didn't.  That never happened again, ever in my life and my sister hasn't gotten a favor that big in...Well, NEVER!

It took me back to when I was 14 years old and my sister got a summer job.  She was 17 years old and had my 3 year old niece.  She told me and my mother that she would buy all of my school clothes if I babysat for the summer.  I gave up practically my entire summer watching her child.  Needless to say that fall I started school in a pair of pants with a rip in the side and one of my bog brother's old oxford shirts.  I didn't have shoes or anything.  My mother thinking she was free to shop for my brother didn't buy me anything.  My sister promised every pay period that she would buy them, but never did.  She never gave me one dime. She even was stealing some of her clothes and had an old man who she was sucking money out of, but she never gave me anything.  My mother did a little fussing, but just left her with a hearty, "You ain't right."  My mother believes that time is a much better punisher than anything she can say or do.  With my sister, I think she's right.

My sister went on in the next couple of years to meet the man she would come to marry.  The first day he met me, he gave me "the look" and when he discovered where I got off the bus after school would be waiting for me.  Take me to eat and buy me clothes.  Being young and poor, I took it all.  One night, however, he pulled into a empty church parking lot and asked me for sex.  I held it a couple of days (an eternity for a person like me) and told both my mother and my sister.  Neither of them believed me.  From that point on, my sister and I relationship went sour.  He was married when she had met him, and his wife was ill and pregnant.  She had a blood disease that kept her in the hospital a lot.  When my sister found out she said it was too late, because her feelings were in it.  Two months later she got pregnant with my nephew.  She didn't care that his wife was sick, pregnant and still loved her husband.  She wanted him and that was it.

My niece (her daughter) is also a victim of his advances, but he was more aggressive with her.  She says he grabbed her in the crotch and stuck his tongue down her throat.  My sister sent my niece away, and left her to live in the street.  My niece only 15 years old met her boyfriend she is with now.  She and he have a home and a family and a relationship that although not perfect, saved her from her mother's betrayal.  I think she is truly blessed. Now I fear for her daughter and his advances on her; not to mention my sister's perversion.  For the record neither my niece nor I ever given in to any of this man's advances - - he ain't cute!

So with all of my sister's scheming and conniving ways, she is a morbidly obese 350 pounds.  I know, because she told my mother.  She is only about 5'5" and her body is slowly giving in.  After the old man she was tricking died, all the furniture he bought her she lost.  Again, chasing her then boyfriend across the state, she left it in storage where it wasn't being paid.  Since she got the unit in "suspicious" means, totally alienating the woman who ran the business.  Telling her she was a liar in front of her children, she auctioned it without a second thought.  Threw away her family pictures and didn't even show up in court when my sister sued for her belongings.  I had to pay the late bill, the one just before the auction.  When I went to testify, the jury was stale faced.  One woman about 30 years old sat like a statue unmoving.  I gave my testimony about the final payment, but I knew it was hopeless.  Besides, my sister and her husband looked desperate.  Her hair wasn't even combed and he had on a shirt that looked like the dog had slept on it.  They didn't even know to dress for court.  Shaking my head.

I think my mother has the right idea, although it always makes me feel good to cuss someone like my sister out.  I haven't done it in forever.  Not even when she attacked me in my mother's hospital room, I had to beat her up, and went back to prison.  My niece upset called and told my agent about the incident and I was back in prison shortly thereafter.  After McIntosh told me that it was my sister who told him I was crazy, I knew it was true.  It just amazing to me how he will take her to court and convince a jury he should have listened to what she had to say, and take my housing and not inform me.  One look at the two of us in the same room would be enough to convince anyone that she is jealous.  Not being able to stop eating is sad.  She came to move her bowels in our bathroom the other night, after eating collard greens all day.  I think she thought she would come and find a broke down Lesley.

First, I was going to sit in the living room while she was here.  Avoiding her all together, but decided no to.  I sat at the kitchen table writing my letters.  My hair freshly braided, a brand new Dooney & Bourke on the table, fresh new tennis shoes beneath me and a notebook on the table that read, "Wedding Notebook '11".  She walked into the kitchen area singing, "...If my smile looks out of place..."  I think she believes that she has made me cry, when in reality she has only helped to make me richer.  People as dirty as my sister are so use to playing people she can't even see when she is being played.  She sees everything at this point going in her favor.  She doesn't believe that I am doing well, but that I'm depressed and miserable.  I told you, "People only see in others what they see in themselves."  But when she stood there looking around at my surroundings and witnessing the unbelievable power of God, and how he can save you from the "wilds of the devil", she became very quiet.  She saw I wasn't stressed out, sad and nothing hadn't change for me at all.  It seemed that things had not only stayed the same, but were improving.  That moment of silence was her soaking all of my "favor" in.

After her long pause, she said a few things to push my buttons, but after I didn't look up from my letter she began her decent down the stairs with a sarcastic laugh.  She in all her 350 pounds don't really tackle the stairs to my mother's second floor apartment often.  I don't know if it was her knees aching, here asthma acting up, or the idea she hadn't crushed me.  But those cackles weren't really amusement, but the pain she feels from living in her own body.  Not only that she is fat, but that she is so mean, evil and dirty.  I can only imagine after that assent up those stairs and all the pain from failure and a disgruntled body she went home and ate some more greens, only this time with fried chick and a juice box chaser.  Her husband who usually takes long hiatuses from her antics is probably either feeling sorry for her or wants to care for their toddler son.  He hasn't left her in the last two years, but he is also getting old.  I believe that my sister has gotten the ultimate  something to hold over him that makes him stay.  One thing I know for sure, my mother knows what she speaks of.  Everything my sister has done to me is all wrapped around her 350 pound body.  She carries all her meanness, evilness and dirt with her everyday in her fat.

We all have our vices, we all pay to God in our own way, but that is her's.

I told my mother, as soon as she learns to love herself, love others and not be so mean she'll lose weight.  Until then, she'll carry it with her.  Everyone she touches she gives grief and God is watching.  I hope she will get it together and we can be a family again.  If not, I think she'll spend her 50's in a bed unable to move.  Someone is going to have to carry her through a window to get her to the hospital for a gastric by-pass.  Honestly, I hope it never comes to that.  Pray with me and for my sister.