Yulandra's Story
Okay, let’s see. I have five, four older sisters. Okay, my oldest sister’s name is Stephanie. She’s married, has two children, and two adopted children. And her husband’s a fire fighter. She does insurance, car insurance for Nation Wide. Let’s see, she graduated from national business college, and her husband did, also. She has a major or degree in accounting. My sister, I think she’s about fourteen years older than me. Actually she graduated from college before I even started kindergarten. So there’s a big year gap there from her. When I was little, I used to come up to Virginia and spend the summers with her when I was little.
My second oldest sister, is Jackie, was actually Jacquline, but we called her Jackie. And, she went into the army when she got out of high school. I remember we were living in Michigan, and I was still in second or third grade. And one of the TV shows we used to watch when I was little was M*A*S*H. So when she told me she was going into the army, I remember crying because I thought she was going to get killed in the army, like you see on TV.
She has two kids—actually her daughter’s like my oldest niece, she’s in school playing basketball. She has a second, well she had three but her middle child died I think maybe two weeks after she was born. I think her lungs weren’t developed all the way.
My third oldest sister is Melonie, we call her Nyna for short, she has two kids and she’s a divorced, single parent. Her oldest son is graduating high school next year. And she started going back to school, she’s a librarian down in Sumter, SC.
My fourth oldest sister name is Denise, we call her Neesy for short. She’s not working right now. She went to Virginia Western and got a degree for Criminal Justice. She has three girls, and she’s married.
I am a lot closer with them than I was with parents. I pretty much lived with two of my sisters while I was in high school. Well actually I lived with one for about a year, and the other ones I just visited during the summer and things like that, so I am pretty close with them. Well, when I got to, after I got out of jr. high, I didn’t want to go to the high school, the high school I had to go to in my district was too rough. So I went to live with my sister for a year. And then my parents decided to get back together again, and they moved to a different district where I had to go to school.
As far as relations, I’m pretty much not really close, close, close with any of my sisters. I don’t think I have a favorite. I think I pretty much feel the same about each and every one of them. The one that’s before me, Neesy, lives closer to me, so I probably talk to her a lot more. But I think the relationships are the same. I don’t have like a favorite, you know a favorite sister, or one that I’m closer to or anything like that. And all four of my sisters, they’re all half sisters. We all have the same mother and different fathers. Except for two of them. I think it’s Nyna and Neesy; they had the same dad. And Stephanie and Jackie have different fathers. And I have my own father.
My mom had me when she wasn’t really expecting to have a fifth child, I don’t think. She had me when she was 35, after she had met my dad, and, my dad was in the military. He was in his twenties. There’s like a ten-year gap between my parents. My mom was 35, and my dad was like 25. He took on a big responsibility because my mom already had four kids already and already been married one time. And my dad was like 25, and he had no children. And he married my mom and took on responsibility for her children. And I came along.
As far as my parents go, I don’t know. I wasn’t really close to them too much, I guess as a kid. I can’t really say too much, cuz I didn’t really get to know my parents too much. I kinda played around and did my thing, and my parents, they had their problems when I was younger, and they got a divorce when I was 13 or something like that. I don’t really have a father-daughter relationship with my dad, and I didn’t really have a mother and daughter relationship, we just—they were just there, and I was just there, and we didn’t really have that closeness, you know, or anything like that, so…I know they had problems, marital problems, and um, they got a divorce, and later on they tried to work things out and try to get back together, and it still didn’t work. And they ended up, well they didn’t get a divorce, but separated and then, you know, try to work things out later on, and that didn’t work, so they separated again. Now they’re back together again, and I don’t think they’re happy. That’s all I can say about my parents. I wanted to divorce my parents; my parents probably wanted to divorce each other. That’s probably just what happens.
I really don’t remember my family heritage. I really didn’t know my grandparents or my family on my father’s side, but the ones I kinda knew, well the only one I really knew was my grandmother on my mother’s side. And the only think I knew about her was that she was half Indian, and she was half Black. I think her mother, my great-grandmother was full blooded Cherokee, and my grandmother had 21 children. She never really worked; she just had babies. She kept most of ‘em, some of them died. Some of them she gave away. And most of them, some of them she kept. Let me see, I’m not sure how many she kept, I think it was about 13 of them she had, actually raised herself. And my mom was raised by her aunt, my grandmother’s sister, because I guess because of the age. I think she had my mom when she was 16 or something like that, when she was real young. So my great aunt raised my mother. But everybody else, my grandmother raised herself.
We used to call my grandmother Tina Turner. She was just no usual grandmother. You know she was, I don’t know, she was kinda wild. She was still she was still talking about goin’ out dancing, still talking about going out to clubs even in her sixties and stuff. She really didn’t look her age; even in her 60’s she looked like she could be 50, you know. She just never really looked that old. I guess you could say she looked good for her age. They say she had a baby every year, probably by different men.
Let’s see. As far as the best years of school, I guess that would have been high school. I think I liked it. I was pretty good in math. I realized that when I was in high school. And I took some business classes when I was in jr. high. Actually the teacher that taught my first business class when I was in the ninth grade at one school, it was in a different district than the high school I was going to later on. And then that teacher transferred, or moved out of that district, and ended up teaching at the high school I was at, and then I ended up taking accounting class with her again. And her name was Beverly Weatherford, and she was a nice teacher. She was more down-to-earth, well not down-to-earth, but I don’t know, she just. She was just a little bit funner in class, talking in front of the class and stuff like that.
I always liked the history. I always liked the Civil Rights Movement’s times. They weren’t really going into Vietnam, and I always wanted to learn more about what happened in Vietnam, and stuff like that. I still like history. It was something I always liked.
I don’t really think I had a special teacher or anything like that, one that really stood out that just kinda, you know, done anything for me.
In high school, I had two friends that I talked to. One was…her name was Katrina Carmain, and her father was in the military. My father was retired by the time I got into high school while her father was still in the military, but they didn’t live on base. They had a house somewhere off the base. And then my other friend, her name was Rika, but I don’t remember her last name. And she was my neighbor. Actually I think when we moved on that street that she was probably the first person that I met, and we just kinda talked and hung around during high school. And that was really the only two people I talked to when I was in school.
My senior year in high school, nothing really exciting went on. There’s nothing I can really think of. I guess the football team made it to the state championships. That was the only thing.
I was quiet, I was shy. Um I used to get picked at a lot. I was that kid that everybody picked at. I remember in school, I used to hide out. I mean when they had programs, I used to hide in the bathroom. I avoided as much as I could. My pictures for the yearbook, I dodged that too. But if they had any type of program, I wouldn’t go, I’d dodge it. I hated it. I hated being around a whole bunch of kids.
A lot of it was in ninth grade. See I was a chunky kid. I was heavyset. I remember when I was in the ninth grade, I had to get on the bus everyday, and I had to sit, see the buses were overcrowded. They should have had more busses, but they didn’t. So most of the people on the bus were sitting three to a seat. And those seats really can’t hold three people, really, unless you’re small. So I had to sit with two guys. Two boys, one was in high school, and one was in junior high with me. And they were just mad at me every day. They would try to be nice about things and let me sit in the middle, and then the other one he got this much room (hand gesture) and he used to be mad at me every day because he had to sit with me. And then I had people in school who used to, I don’t know, they just, they used to…I don’t want to say they were mean spirited, but they just like to pick. And I was just the type of person that would let them pick at me, so they did, everyday.
I remember this one girl, her name was Jeanne-Marie, and she was really, she was big. I mean she was a very tall girl. She had to have been at least around six feet. She had to be close to, maybe three hundred pounds or something. This girl was huge, and she used to pick at me every day. You know, I guess it was because she was big, and she knew she could do it, you know. I remember just being picked at every day by her, tormented every day. And there were other people too. I guess once one person sees you get picked at, and sees you take it, then everybody does it. They say, “oh you know she’s a little wimp we can pick at her too.” And everybody wanted to join in and have their little fun, so I hated it.
So by the time I got to high school, I hated it, I was ready to get out of there. I just didn’t like it. I would avoid programs; I would hide. I would hide in the bathrooms. I didn’t go to prom, I didn’t take my senior pictures, I didn’t do any of that stuff.
Frances Marian is in South Carolina. It’s in Florence, SC. It’s co-ed, the dorms are like three floors, and the bottom floor is where the guys stay at. And the two top floors are where the girls stay at. It was a nice campus. It’s not like here where you have the apartments across the street. The apartments were actually on the campus.
Well, the reason I decided to go there, was because at the time I was in church. And the church was in Florence, SC, but I lived in Sumter. So we would drive, me and my sister and some other church members, would drive all the way to Florence every Sunday. So, Frances Marian was right there in Florence, SC, so that was the school of my choice.
As far as the classes, I took psychology, which I hated, I didn’t really catch onto it too much. It was mind boggling. I’m sittin’ in class, falling asleep. I had a boring professor. I took political science, and that was interesting. My professor, he was from Africa, from Nigeria or something like that in Africa. He would pronounce my name real funny, my last name. He would take it up a pitch higher or something when he would say my last name. And one of the girls livin’ in the dorms, she used to pick at me.
Let’s see, what else I took? Mostly a math class, and I took a writing class. I was taking, actually I didn’t do too well as far as the writing part of my SAT’s went, so I had to take one of the remedial English classes. So I didn’t like that too much. I didn’t like writing those papers. I hate when a teacher tells you, gives you certain topics. You know, what you have to write, I like to write what I want to write. I just don’t like to, unless it’s a research paper, I can do that. When they give you a few topics to write about and you just have to pick one. I don’t like the topics. They always want you to write about something you really don’t know about, and it’s supposed to be something you can just write by experience. What are you supposed to do, look it up or just make up something. So I really didn’t do good in writing. I did better as far as papers when I could just write about what I wanted to write about.
I took an earth science, which was kinda interesting. We learned about you know, trees and leaves and went to a landfill. And I learned that in Florence, SC, that the river where they get the water, they have alligators in the water. That’s kinda weird, even though I know it goes through a treatment, but still. Just knowing alligators living in the water you drink. So that was interesting. That was really all the classes took; I was only there for a year. And I didn’t have money to stay in. So, I came to Virginia and got a job here and started working.
I love that place. I think it was one of the worst decisions I ever made in my life. I would have lived my life so much differently if I had been able to pursue that. I wouldn’t be working here. I wouldn’t be cleaning toilets for a living. I don’t know, it was something that I really wanted to do with my life, you know, go to school and get a good education and a good paying job and all that stuff. And then to have to make that decision, you know well, you know, ‘we don’t have the money to stay in,’ ‘you gotta get a job.’ Well I probably could’ve made some better decisions. I coulda went home, gone to community college…you know one of my friends, Katrina, we both left and went to college. Her first year of college, she didn’t like it, she couldn’t get along with her roommate. So she ended up coming home, and stayed home for a year and went to community schooling. She decided to look around for other schools. And I probably coulda done the same thing, but I decided no I don’t wanna do that cuz in SC you really can’t get a decent job. So my mom was sayin’ why don’t you go up to Virginia, stay with your sister—you can probably get a better paying job. And at first I was going to just do it for the summer, you know, come back home and then go to a community school, and then I got up here, and then I decided to go ahead and just stay up here and just keep on working.
Well I first started off at Virginia Western, I was going to major in finance, and then I switched it to computers. That was when computers really started to first get big. And then I switched it to accounting, and then I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And then I went to Criminal Justice. Now I am doing General Studies, just cuz I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do.
Yulandra on her Childhood
We didn’t move around that much as some families. Pretty much when we got stationed somewhere, we usually stayed there a good four or five years before my dad got new orders put in to go somewhere else. He was a mechanic. Well I think when my parents first got together, they weren’t living on the military base at the time. I guess they were probably waiting on housing and by that time, he got orders to go overseas. And we went to England. And the military base was called, Bentwaters Airforce Base. And I was about, I think I was like, four or five years old. I remember some of it, I think that some of my first memories were living over in England, cuz I don’t remember anything before then. And, what I remember, we lived there for like a year.
There’s only three of us that went over there at the time, because my older sister was in college; it was her first year of college. We was living in SC, and she went to college here in VA at the Nationwide Business school. So she didn’t go with us when we went over there. And it was just me, Jackie, and Nyna, and Neesy.
And, my memories there—I remember the military base. All the houses were in a whole circle. And in the middle there was a playground on a little field. And I remember the other kids in the neighborhood would play kickball and stuff like dodge ball.
And then, what else I remember? I remember our Christmas. I guess that was the first Christmas I can actually remember. I remember actually getting a spanking on Christmas Day. Back then they was coming out with those Polaroid cameras, the ones where you take pictures, and the pictures would come out; it was something kinda new. They were just starting out with that. And my parents had gotten all my sisters one. I didn’t get one. So I got mad. I was mad. And I said something I shouldn’t have said. I cussed. And I remember getting a butt-whoopin’ for that. But I remember some of the things I got that year, that Christmas. This doll that stood up about, I guess about three feet high, and it was a black doll. I guess when you lay her down, her eyes close, like she’s sleeping, and when she’s standing up, her eyes open up. And then, you can adjust her hair. She had like a little hole in the top of her head, and you could pull her hair. And in the belly button, you had a little button, and you push the button and you can pull the hair out, and you can pull it as long as you want. And in the back of it, in the middle of her back, there was a little thing where you could twine it, and her hair gets short and stuff like that. I remember that doll.
Back then I had this favorite song, by the Commedores called “Brick House”
That was my favorite song back then.
What else, what else…I went to the emergency room one time. I remember everybody was playing kick ball in the middle of the circle of the houses. And at the time I was still really little, and I couldn’t really do a whole lot, so one of the girls, I don’t remember her name, she was riding her bike, and she offered me, you know, a ride on the bike. So back then you either ride the handlebars or ride in the back, so I got on the back. She told me “keep your legs out” you know, “keep your legs spread, spread out.” So I did for a while, you know I’m riding. I just got tired so I kinda gave up and gave in. And the back of my heel hit the wheel and knocked a chunk of my skin, a chunk of my heel off. And I remember going to the emergency room. I actually had a scar on the back of my heel for a very long time. I think it’s gone away now. I had a scar there, it’s like a little circle, you know, where that little piece of chunk got knocked off. I think that’s really.
I remember we mostly stayed on the military base. Usually when you live on a military base they pretty much supply most things, like the grocery stores. It’s called a PX, and then you have your BX and that’s like a little K-Mart or something like that, like a retail store. You have all that on a military base, so you really have no need to really go out of that military area. And I really don’t remember us going out that much. I think there was one time we did, and I remember seeing those red double busses, those that you see in England, those double decker busses and stuff like that. And, I think that’s the only memories I have there.
You lived on a military base, and you’re around, you know, a bunch of military kids, and they’re all from the States. We called it the States. When you’re overseas somewhere, you know, when you talk about the United States, you say the States, instead of saying the US or America. We would just say the States. And you know, most of the kids were from the States, and we didn’t go out. I don’t really remember going out. I’m pretty sure we did, but I don’t remember actually going in town, as far as the cities in England or anything like that. I don’t remember doing anything like that, so it wasn’t really different
And let’s see, Michigan was our next place. We, let’s see, we went to, upper Michigan, and the military base was called KI Sawyer. Um, let’s see, um, I remember um, walking to school every day. You know, the thing I loved about that base was the winters because you know of snow. And we just got a lot of snow. And during the winters we used to go back, cuz you know the military base was surrounded by a lot of forest, a lot of wooded area. And during the winter months we would go in the woods back there, and we used to go sledding. And they had like a hill back there also. And a lot of people sled or ski off that hill. And some of the places around the military base, were locked off or gated in because there was bears.
Um, I remember, let’s see, during the summer, there was a man made lake. They had this hill, it was called Suicide Hill, something like that, I’m not sure if it had a name to it or not. And we used to go down there during the summer, and have picnics and stuff like that, and go swimming in the lake.
And, let’s see, I had a friend, a best friend, Cheryl. But she had a brother, and I think her brother was retarded or something. Me and Cheryl, we would race to see who could run the fastest, and she would always beat me. She moved about a year before we moved. I remember the day she left, I watched her drive away, never heard or saw her again. KI Sawyer got boring to me.
Uh, let’s see I was, probably six, six or five, I started kindergarten. And some how, I don’t know how, I flunked kindergarten. It is possible, so somehow I flunked kindergarten. I had to repeat it for the second time. That was embarrassing. I don’t know how you do that, how you flunk kindergarten. They said something about how I didn’t do work, or something.
And I was there until I finished the fourth, I think the fourth, no, the fourth or the third grade. And then we ended up moving; at the time my dad was trying to get out of the military. He was trying to get orders back to SC so that he could retire there. So, he put in for orders, and gave them to them, and then we ended up moving back.
But during those years in Michigan we used to go home every summer. We used to go home and visit, and you know, my grandmother, and two of my aunts were living in this place called Wil John. I cannot describe this place. It’s probably been abandoned now. But you would not believe what this place looks like. You drove down a dirt road, okay, and there’s houses on each side of the road, and the houses, they’re more like shacks. I mean, it’s probably, I mean I don’t know the history of this place, but I’m pretty sure it’s probably some time of slave house. I mean it’s probably some type of, you know you got the plantation houses, the owner’s, you know his fields, and people just would live in these little shacks, and that’s just what it reminds me of. And, they lived down there, and it was mostly all black, you know, poor people living down that way.
We used to um go down there like every summer and visit my grandmother and I had an aunt, two aunts that lived down that way. And it was called Wil John. I always wonder about the history of that place. Because now that I think about it, that place had to be some type of plantation, has to be like, see everything in Sumter SC you know is a lot of plantations and everything. And homes, and you still see cotton fields in SC if you drive through and stuff. And a lot of stuff is still, if you look at it, you can tell that it must have been some type of slave home or some type of plantation cuz it’s still kinda there, its been remodeled, you know, renovations and stuff like that. You can still recognize certain things, you can say that looks like…this must have been…you know, and now you got all this stuff built around it. And stuff like that. That’s what it reminds me of when I think about that place. Seems like it was some type of, some type of slave cabins or something like that. Cuz like, it was a wooded area, bunch of woods, and there was nothing but a dirt road, one way in, one way out. And it was just houses on the side, you know, across from each other, these old, run-down, like, cabin-like, homes. And I think we would stay with my grandmother or my aunt or somebody.
And then my aunt, well both my aunts, ended up marrying men that were in the military. They end up, you know, getting a chance to get away from that place. My grandmother, she ended up staying down there for a little bit longer, until her last child, I think my aunt Charlene, ended up graduating high school. And then she ended up marrying a man that was in the military also. That was the ticket out! Find your military man! Get outta here. She ended, up, my grandmother, moving, in with one of my aunts, I can’t remember, which one. And you know, that’s how she got away from livin’ on you know, Wil Johns.
But, I haven’t been, I haven’t been home in like a year. And when I did get home, I didn’t really get a chance to really ride around and look around. I did get a chance to ride around downtown and…it’s like a ghost town or something like that. Everything’s closed down and everything’s just got a bunch of old buildings, or where things used to be. It’s like a ghost town or something like that. But I’m, I’m pretty sure that place Wil John probably doesn’t exist anymore, probably just, I’m pretty sure it probably just closed down…nobody’s living in those homes anymore. I have to get on the internet one day and see if I can find some information on that.
Okay, I remember the drive. It was a long, long, long drive. I think it took as long as four days or something like that to drive all the way from Michigan, all the way to South Carolina, something like that. My birthday’s in July, so I remember we always celebrate my birthday, and my aunt’s birthday, her birthday is July four. And then my birthday’s July second. So we always celebrated birthdays.
[Cancers] got ALL the mental problems, nah I’m just kidding. You know, I guess Cancer’s always the sensitive, supposed to be the creative, sensitive touchy person.
My dad got orders to go to South Carolina. So we’re back home and I started, as far as school, I started I think the fifth or fourth grade, in SC, and um…We’re on a military base, and the military base is called Shaw Heights Air Force Base. And my school was called Shaw Heights, Shaw Heights Elementary. Most of my friends were all military kids. And at the time, my aunt, they were living on the same base as we were, down the street from us.
Um, the only difference about this base, it’s kinda divided, because they had different housing areas. You had the five thousand area, you had the four thousand area, had the two thousand area, and the one thousand area. And the five thousand area’s just probably the bigger homes and the bigger families. And you got the four thousand area, I think the bedrooms, we had, we had four bedrooms in our house. And I think you know, each apartment, each area, you know, I think the house was a little bit smaller. I remember walking to school. We didn’t get a bus, we had to walk every day to school, and walk home. And you had to go down this hill, and go up, it’s like this really steep hill, like I think this was the place I was talking about. Both places had hills, and I think this one, the one in SC had a name. We called it Suicide Hill. And we used to walk down it, and at the bottom of the hill there was a little creek running through it.
And, um, I had some friends. There was a family, actually I think when we moved there, two of the girls that actually lived in that family came over to the house and introduced themselves. I remember, let’s see, it was Michelle, and um Alethia, Stephanie, and they had a little brother named Freddy. And I think Alethia, I think she was adopted by the family. And I think Michelle, I think they were like the same age or something like that. But we were all pretty much in the same grade, but Stephanie and Freddy, they were a year younger than us.
But I used to walk to school, and walk home every day, with them, every day. And after school, after we did our homework, we’d go outside and play. Their parents were really strict. I guess they were into church and stuff like that. And they were really strict. You know, she was like mean, kinda strict type of person, so, I don’t know, and they moved away. And they moved, I think, to Japan. They wrote me one time, and that was the last time, I, I heard from them. And the other people that lived, my neighbors, they had two kids. And the oldest child that was a girl, her name was Heather, and she was a little bit younger than me and Michelle and Alethia. She was a spoiled brat. I mean, I mean, she was like one of them pritsy type of girls, that, she was stuck up. I can’t describe her; she was just stuck up. Her younger brother, he was a brat. He was, I don’t know, he was horrible. They just, they stayed inside a lot, but both of the kids was spoiled. The girl, she was you know, like a little princess type of thang. And the boy, he was just, he was just bad.
There was another family, and I think there was one person, one child that lived in that family. And I really don’t remember him too much. I know he was heavy set. I don’t remember his name. And there was another black family that lived in our little circle. And, they didn’t really come out much; I didn’t really see them. They had a son that was around my age. And then they had some other kids, and they was around my sister’s age. But I never really seen them come out that much, come out and play or anything like that.
We stayed on that base for a couple of more years and then my dad retired. And after my dad retired, that’s when my parents got separated. And it was just me and my mom, and my dad moved on. And then let’s see, me and my mom, we worked, we lived in a trailer for a little while, and then she got a little house, and then we moved out of the little house and got another little house, and then by then, I’d graduated out of high school, you know? Then my parents, no wait a minute, then that’s when I moved away, that’s right, I moved away! I moved away to Washington, Washington State. I went to live with my sister. She was living in Tacoma. Now this is the second oldest sister Jackie. And she had two kids at the time, so I was up there, living with her so, for about a year, and the high school I went to. This was my first year of high school. Tenth grade I think, yeah. And it was at Lakes High School.
Let’s see, one of my sister’s friends had a daughter around my age, she was younger than me. But me and her hanged out. And I liked it. I liked it at that place. It was like Michigan, cuz it snowed, it got cold. And we had the snow and everything. That’s something we didn’t really have in SC. It got cold but it never really snowed. But Tacoma, Washington, it was cold, it was real nice. The military base was nice.
Me and her used to hang out a lot, um…One thing I liked in Tacoma was the bus; it used to run all the way until twelve o’clock. So we’s always riding around on busses, going places. They had this movie theater, and me and her used to go like every weekend. Actually it was next to a Swap Meet, and we used to go to the Swap Meet first and walk around and buy things and stuff. And we had this one place where we could get T-Shirts made, and stuff like that, you know, words, and cuss words all over the T-Shirts and stuff. And we used to go to the movie theater all the time, and you could go see two movies for the price of one, like a double feature or something like that at the movie theater. So we used to hang out there all the time.
I stayed there for about a year, as far as school goes, it was okay. I didn’t really have any friends in school. There was also, where I was living that situation with the Bloods and the Crypts, and stuff like that. So there was also, when you was living there, you had to watch what you wear. I didn’t really know that much about it. I just know from what people was telling me that you had gangs in upper Washington, and it was called Bloods and the Crypts, and you know, Bloods wear red, Crypts wear blue. And you always had to watch what, you know especially with the little scarves and bandanas. Don’t wear no blue or red scarf or anything like that. Cuz they might take you as a gang member.
And that’s about it. I took a photography class, and I really enjoyed that. That’s probably the only class I really remember that I really liked.
That was the only high school that I ever went to that had a swimming pool.
That’s when I came back home, to SC. And my parents try to get back together again, try to work it out. I was in eleventh grade, going to Sumter High. That’s when I met um, Rika and Katrina.
Yulandra on Hurricane Hugo
The first year I’d been back home, we had a hurricane. I think it hit SC in like ’89. Hugo, yeah, well the hurricane was called Hugo. I remember that day, I know they was talking about a hurricane. They had been talking about it for a couple of days. In you know the news, on the weather channel and stuff. But I don’t think we really cared, or we didn’t really think we was going to get hit, or didn’t really expect what we got.
I remember that day, getting out of school. They didn’t even let us out of school early. We got out at the regular time. I remember coming home, and it was kinda eerie feeling cuz the wind was blowing, kinda hard; it was you know kinda dark outside; and you know everybody’s kinda like this kind of panic, not really panic, but you can tell something’s going on. You know that type of thing.
My mom gets home from work, not long after I get out of school, and she says she tried to go to the grocery store and try to get some milk and some bread, and she said she couldn’t find no bread. Cuz everybody went to the store and bought all the bread and…stuff, so. It was on a Thursday, I remember that. And back then, I think, the Cosby Show was still on TV at the time. It was something coming on Thursday night, and I think it was the Cosby Show. Well my friend Rika, they’re from Chesterfield SC, and they decided to leave, and go out to Chesterfield, which it was a good thing, and then it was just me and my mom at home. My dad was at work. He didn’t get home til later at night.
Anyway, the wind was blowing, and they’re talking about a hurricane and all that stuff. And they said we’d probably get a little rain, some wind, and that’s about it. But I say, about eight or nine o’clock, I was watching something, I think it was the Cosby Show, I think it was A Different World, or something like that, and the power went out, and I was mad! They were interrupting my TV show. Thursday night TV shows. So there was nothing to do, the house was dark, we had a few candles, and we lit those candles. My mom went to her bedroom, and went to lay down, and I went to my bedroom and lay down, and you could hear the wind blowing and everything. And my dad’s still at work, and it started getting worse and it was starting to rain and wind and stuff like that. Then my dad got home later on that night. And we was just at home, and just waiting for it to pass, or you know, waiting for it to be over with.
I remember laying there. I had this little radio. I had batteries, so I just listened to the radio, listened to what was going on, what they was talking about and everything, and they was talking about the eye passing and everything. And our house was surrounded by a bunch of trees. So I’m sitting here laying in bed and saying “oh my God! One of these trees gonna fall, and I’m gonna get crushed!” So I’m just laying here waiting, and the wind was blowing. And I guess the time when the eye was passing by, it sounded like a train. And then, I pretty much stayed awake after that. I pretty much couldn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t sleep, I was scared of one of the trees landing on the house.
And, the next morning, I got up, went outside, and it’s a mess. My neighbors came by real early the next morning to make sure everything was okay. But we were lucky. Cuz the only damage we really had, we really didn’t have that much damage. Just a few shingles blew off the house. The trees and the bushes in front of the house were uprooted.
My neighbors, like I was saying, they had left to go to Chesterfield, which was a good thing. A tree, I guess the piece of the tree, because you know the trees are so old and so tall, and everything…the wind had broke the tip of the tree, and it landed on their house, so it was a good thing that they did leave that day to go to Chesterfield. Neesy came by that morning to see if everybody’s okay, and I left with my sister to go drive around, took my camera. And we rode around town, to see what the damage was.
I still have the roll of film at home, but for some reason I never got around to developing them. I have to do that! I really don’t even know what’s on there. I have a couple of rolls of film that I took of the hurricane, all the damage around our house, and the damage around our city. We rode around the downtown area, and I took pictures of things I saw. Mostly, we didn’t have that much damage, like trees are down, power lines are down. You know I think the worst thing I seen, I seen a tree landed, on top of a car.
And I think that the first day we rode around it was kinda exciting, cuz nothing really happens in SC. Especially Sumter, SC. But I think after the second day, it got kinda tiring, cuz we had no water, had no electricity.
You want anything, you had to stand in line for it. I remember going, cuz we could use some candles, so we tried to go and buy some candles, and I think, um, there was a store called Roses. Okay well we went there, and they had a back-up generator, but it didn’t light up the whole store. So they would let like a couple people at a time and go in and buy things. So everybody’s standing around, standing in line for everything.
We didn’t have no ice, no water, so we’d try to stand in line to get water. Everybody’s standing in line at the gas station. I never understood why people were standing in line at the gas station. Everybody’s trying to get gas, and I’m not sure, I couldn’t figure that out, what you need gas for? But I remember standing in line for everything, not having any water, couldn’t really bathe. And if you could get a hold of water, you had to put a little bleach in it, boil it to sterilize it, cuz you’re not really sure where it came from. I remember you couldn’t, as far as taking a dump...If you needed to take a dump, there wasn’t any water to flush the toilet.
After a while it got tiring, not having any electricity, and not having no water and stuff like that. And at first, at the beginning, we didn’t really get any help, from the government, until a couple of days later, when they realized what happened when Hugo came through, you know the damage and everything, that we needed some help. So we started getting some help, and they started giving out some ice and some things.
I think it was like that for about two weeks. We were out of school for that long too. And it got old after a while, after not being able to have electricity, and have water, and stuff like that. I think my parents had a freezer, and they had a freezer full of food and stuff like that. And you know the food going bad, they were trying to grill, trying to grill everything, but you still got nowhere to store anything. You grill it up and, I think that was what a lot of people was trying to do if they had a grill. They was trying to grill what they could. And you had a bath, you just filled it up if you had enough water, you know you would fill the bathtub just a little bit. You know, and everybody had to use the same water, and that’s not fun.
I don’t know, I guess now, if I ever had to go through a hurricane, I’d probably know what to do. I know to fill the bathtub and buy bottles of water and all that stuff like that, get candles and batteries and all that stuff like that. I wouldn’t want to do that again. I wouldn’t want to experience something like that again. And we was out of school for two weeks. That was probably the only good thing about the whole thing. But then you had to make up those days.
Yulandra on her Present Personal Life
I’m 29. I’ll be 30 on July second.
I look forward to going to the beach every year. I found a, I went to NC two years ago, to the Outer Banks, and I loved it. I look forward to going every year to NC.
I go by myself. I try to get people to go, but I don’t know why, I can’t find anybody to go with me. I’d be willin to pay for things, you know, but people would be like, “eeeeeh,” so I’d have to go by myself. But I don’t like the drive. It takes me 7 hours drivin’ by myself, and I don’t like to drive. Wish I had someone to go with me, you know, to cut the driving in half and stuff. But, it’s nice though, I love to go fishing, deep water fishing so. That’s my retiring dream, is to live on a beach or close to it so I can go fishing like every day or you know like every weekend or something.
I go to my other job after this one. But on the weekends, I just bought a house, earlier this year, so just doing things around the house, and I am kinda excited about it, you know just having a chance to do what I want to do instead of livin’ in an apartment. So…I got a lot of dreams. A lot of things like a garden and all these little things that I want to do.
I like Fishing, and, I like to go swimming, what else do I like to do? I don’t get to do a lot of things that I want to do. I think if I had my life the way I wanted it to be, I probably would be going swimming every weekend, and I probably would be going somewhere—I like taking pictures, you know just things like that, gardening, and eh, just doing anything that makes me relax.
I always say I want to go out and buy me a nice camera, and ah just go out to Smith Mountain Lake or something like that. Just do it as a hobby or something like that.
I don’t have any friends. I work. I work 16 hours a day. I don’t have time to worry about making friends. I guess if I really want to hang out, I take my nieces, my sisters’ kids. They’re always sittin’ around the house, and got nothing to do, so I just take them out with me.
At first I didn’t like my neighborhood. Cuz I live next to like a, like a projects, right across the street. And I didn’t like that too much. But then now, it’s real quiet over there, so I don’t have any problems or anything, so, I’m starting to like it, it’s not really a problem too much.
I’ve lived here just about ten years, ten or nine years now. I had two sisters living here. Well first I started off just staying here for the summer, just stay here and work and then go back to school, and then I realized I didn’t have enough money. So I made the decision either I was going to go home and work and maybe go to one of the community schools, or was I going to stay here, and you know just start here and get a job, and I decided to stay here.
I was 25 the first time I had a serious relationship. But before then, no.
Seven year relationship—dead end relationship— not going anywhere—trying to get away from him—type of relationship. Um, I don’t know, it’s just like a dead-end job. You know, you know it’s not going anywhere. You know you’re probably not going to end up getting married. You know, it’s just, you know. Right now, I feel, how you put it…I guess I just keep him around until someone better come along.
At times we’ve talked about living together. It would make things easier for me. I mean I wouldn’t have to work two jobs, but then at other times, I don’t know if I want to be around him 24-7. I kinda like that time to myself, you know my privacy in a sense—times when I don’t want to bother with him, I don’t have to bother with him. You know I like my space, I like being single in a sense. I don’t know, I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up yet, to have somebody there, all the time, and cleaning up after somebody, and you know…bigger responsibility, more headaches, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up my, freedom.
Here’s it’s boring, no where to go, you gotta have money to do anything, everything costs so much money. If I hadn’t bought my house, I think I’d be in NC or Georgia somewhere. Somewhere with some life or excitement, something. Somewhere I could go to a concert or something. It’s so boring. SC’s boring too. It’s really dead. I went home to visit last year, and it was like a ghost town, everything was closed down, it was so dead. I’m glad I left.
The only thing good about Roanoke is the, is the scenery. Mountains, but that’s really the only thing I can say about VA, it’s really boring. Nothing to do, no where to go, no entertainment. They’re trying to something with the Dazzle basketball games, the uh football games, the whacha call it, the Insiders, something like that. It’s not the regular football, it’s the inside, arena football! That’s what it is, they’re trying to do all that stuff. It still sucks. I mean, if I want to go to the beach, it takes four hours to go to the beach. Why’s it take so long? Why I gotta drive so far?
I guess for the longest time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I guess I just liked different things. I don’t really know what influenced me. I guess the older you get the more you learn about who you are as a person, and you start to figure out, you know, what you want to do with yourself if you don’t figure it out when you’re young.
I haven’t studied yet, or I haven’t gone to school yet. I’m supposed to be going back, to get myself enrolled at Virginia Western this fall. But in the past I was always taking like finance classes or accounting or stuff like that. And then I just decided I wanted to do some counseling and stuff like that, or you know social work or something like that—do stuff in the community. I don’t think it was anything as a child, in my childhood or anything like that.
I think it’s just getting older and I guess you just look at life differently, and things differently and kinda change your perspective on what you want in life as you get older. I guess when you’re young, you really just think about yourself, and then as you get older, you start to realize your parents get older, and then they become more of a responsibility to you, as far as making sure they have, you know, what they need. You take on more responsibility, as far as your parents and just family members and stuff like that. It kinda changes you a little bit, even if you don’t have kids, and I don’t have any children right now. But I guess when you’re young and you have children, children always change your life. Even if you don’t have children, as you get older, you start to change with that.
I guess I want to work with teenagers in a way. I guess I watch a lot of TV, and you always see a lot of teenagers who are out there doing a whole lot of crazy things, and things like that. And I wouldn’t mind working with them. You know, see what I could do help out. I always wanted a job that I guess could be more meaningful, instead of having one of those regular old jobs. I wanted to do something that would actually make a difference. It really doesn’t have to be counseling. It could be doing social work, or something like that.
I guess I remember when I was a kid, and what I hard time I had when I was a teenager, so I hate to see you know the kids nowadays, and how they just throw their life away, and getting in trouble. I look at is as, well you don’t, well trouble don’t last always, when you’re a teenager you go through things, but things change when you get older, when you get on your own. You’ve had a hard time with your parents and all this stuff. You gotta follow rules and regulations, and when you get older, things do change, it’s your life. It’s not your parents’ life, you get to make your own decisions. If you mess up and kinda throw your life away, you just make it so hard for yourself. You know when you really get on your own and you really do something with your life and you make your life where you want it to be.
I always thought about working in the prison too. I thought about teaching at the prisons, you know probably one of those juvenile centers or something like that. And then I thought about, I don’t know if I want to be a teacher. So maybe a counselor might be better. I wouldn’t mind even being a parole officer or something like that. I always like the justice part of the, the criminal part of things.
As far as graduation, it’s going to take a long time. Right now, with working in two jobs, VA Western offers an independent study type of thing where you can do it at home, and on the internet, you get all your assignments and stuff like that. And the only time you gotta go to school is to take your tests. And they offer Weekend College, too; they have classes on the weekends, every other Sat. So you can kinda do that, and I could do that for a couple of years, maybe two years. But later on I think I’d have to take classes either in the evening, or in the morning, so I would probably have to find another job or something. I’d have to let one of my jobs go to finish up. But as far as years go, I’m hoping it won’t take me longer than five years. I hope it won’t take me that long.
It’s probably an associate degree. And then I’ll probably have to go somewhere else, also. Maybe somewhere like Radford. I know they have a program where you can take classes from Radford at VA Western. Cuz then you don’t have to drive all the way to Radford. I think they have stuff like, Old Dominion and stuff like that too. So I’m probably going to get enrolled there, and get the first two years knocked out of the way.
Yulandra on her Employment History
First job after I graduated high school I worked with Dominoes Pizza. And I did that for a few months, about 2 months. Favorite job, I haven’t found that yet, I haven’t gotten to that point yet. Mostly, I worked at McDonalds. I started out working in fast food, McD’s, Wendy’s. So far I have been working two jobs ever since I got started. First time I worked one full time and one part time workin in fast food, and then I did security like two years. I’ve done Custodial work, and that’s about it. I started out in food service, did a little security, and then I went to custodian work, and that’s all.
Yulandra on Working at Hollins
Well, I’m a custodian, and I do mostly housekeeping work, and mainly sweeping, mopping vacuuming, all the fun stuff. Actually I started in food service, working for Man Power, a temporary employment service, and they had an opening for a custodian, and I applied and I got the job. I was a dishwasher, I was bussing dishes, so oh yeah I like this a lot better. I’d say I worked here about four years now.
I also work for Roanoke County School System, and there’s not too much of a difference. Um, as far as everybody goes home when you work in the school system, so if you wanna play some music or something like that and that’s how we can clean and do all that stuff. You know versus where someone’s always here, and you always you know picking up and doing little things. You get to the point, well, here you never finish, you never get to the point where you finished, you just work until it’s time to go home, and there you get to the point where you finish. And you know you go home finished. So that’s pretty much the difference.
It’s a kinda nice, here, you know, cuz you get to know everybody, you know. You just get to know everybody, get to know little things about them. And then time when they graduate, you kind of miss ‘em, you know when they’re leaving and everything. It’s kind of nice, kind of comforting. I kinda got to know the seniors, I guess living in this building, you know some for 2 or three years. So those are the ones I pretty much got to know a little bit, and I talk to them a little bit.
Uh, I think the physical part of it is, uh, I guess I’m realizing I’m getting old I’m starting to feel it. That’s the only thing that really kinda sucks, the achy bones.
Everybody’s fairly nice. I really never had any problems; I really don’t socialize very much. I stay out of things, you know there are a lot of ‘he-said-she-said’ you know a lot of things that go on. When you work a job there’s always a lot of gossip, a lot of you know someone don’t like this person. Got a problem with management, or you know complains, you know and I don’t really get involved, so I don’t really have any problems, I stay out of it; I stay neutral.
I’ve had worse jobs than this.
It’s not that bad I guess. I
guess any time you got a job, especially if your job is not what you really,
really want, you have to kinda decide on what you can tolerate, and what
you’re not going to tolerate. I
guess there are the good things about a job, and there are always the bad
things. And it’s deciding what
are things you can tolerate about the bad things about the job.
And this one, it’s not too, too bad.
I mean, I’ve had a lot worse jobs than this, so I can’t really
complain.