The Affectionate Heart Tribe

My Nextdoor Neighbor Sissie

I've come to believe that there's a hidden tribe of people in the world. They're called the Affectionate Heart Tribe. They are not shaped by their financial or social standings, their education or cultural constructs. They haven’t been broken down by the hardships they have endured or the results of the mistaken choices they have made. 

They are simply, at heart, kind and loving people who have retained the ability to feel compassion for the innocent and joyful connection to others.

This is a story about my neighbor Sissie who grew up poor on a farm in Kentucky, surrounded by brothers, sisters, a distracted mom and a hard drinking father. Following the family script, she became a pregnant teen and went from the prison of her family to the prison of an early marriage. Literally. Her husband Billy moved her to a cabin in the woods and told her she could never leave without him. Between his job and drinking buddies, he was gone most of the time leaving her alone with baby Jodie. 

Like many women from that neck of the woods, her life had been reduced to cooking, sex on demand, cleaning and meeting the needs of her child and husband. And like some of those women, verbal and physical abuse was part of the privilege. Once she got so stir-crazy, the sound of the leaves in the breeze tormented her and stuffing cotton in her ears didn’t alleviate the relentless song of summer crickets or her child’s incessant demands, so she decided to risk it. She put Jodie in a carriage and went for a walk down the country road.  Her husband was miles away at work. He would never know. Unfortunately a friend of his drove by and within an hour she was home again, getting a beating from him. 

“How did you escape?” I asked as we shared coffee.

“My daddy saved us. He invited us home for Christmas dinner and a sleep over for presents in the morning. I took only what we needed for the trip so Billy wouldn’t suspect anything. We drove up the driveway and as he was parking I jumped out of the car with a bag of baby clothes and diapers over one arm, the baby in another.  My daddy came out of the house and pointed a shotgun at Billy and said ‘You are going to give her a divorce, custody of the kid and never see them again. You decide if giving up your life is worth a fight.’ Daddy had three very rough brothers so Billy just let it go. Besides he was free of a responsibility he never wanted and I didn’t ask for child support. I didn’t want any connection.”

In the late 80’s early 90’s, I lived and painted in a storefront studio on Washington Blvd. in the Los Angeles Mid-City area, a neighborhood that would soon be hosting the Rodney King riots. It was an older brown brick building, built in the 1940’s, with storefronts on the ground floor that had been converted to artists studio’s. The second floor had one room studio apartments mostly inhabited by immigrants from El Salvador, often whole families in one room. My kitchen door opened onto the street next to the door that led to the upstairs apartments and I often sat on my kitchen stoop in the morning sun, enjoying a bowl of cereal and throwing a cheery ‘Good Morning’ as my neighbors went to work. One couple had eight daughters all polite and well dressed as they spilled laughing out of the door and piled into the car to be driven to school. I’d never heard a cross word coming out of that family. I've been a renter my whole life and my upstairs neighbors were some of the nicest people I'd ever lived nextdoor to.

Sissie was a white girl from Kentucky and shared a room up there with her two daughters, Jodie and Ricki, along with a pregnant roommate Dolly. Jodie was about nine years old by then and a slender, pretty blonde child. Ricki, whose father was black, was a lively, beautiful rambunctious six year old. Dolly was a dull-witted, pudgy, pregnant, coca cola addict. When her child was born he went into detox to recover from the amount of caffeine in his system. They disappeared soon after the birth. 

I came to know Sissie through Ricki, her youngest. She would play outside my door with her friends while waiting for the call to dinner. As a child I loved playing outside at suppertime. No matter where we were on the block we could smell food coming from different homes as we kept an ear out for the sound of our mothers calling us home to eat. So I left my door open, allowing my cooking to mingle with the aroma of food being prepared upstairs, enjoying the laughter, little spats and invented games that went on outside. I noticed Ricki because she often seemed to be in charge of everything and the children let her. I too grew up a mixed race, take charge little girl organizing or inventing games for the kids to play. So I took a natural shine to Ricki and little chats led to meeting her mom. 

Sissy needed another adult to speak to. She was in her late 20’s, slender, with straight brown hair, a wide face with faint freckling and lively blue eyes.   Although our backgrounds and culture couldn't have been more different I enjoyed her open-hearted and good-natured soul, her sense of humor, our conversations and her little family, so we became fast friends. One particular Christmas, she was struggling and I was able to get her a small tree with decorations and a couple of presents for the kids. I didn't have much family of my own at the time and was grateful to share Christmas cheer with her.

One day I asked her how she supported herself and was surprised when she told me she was a taxi dancer. I didn’t know that was still a thing but apparently these clubs are popular among new immigrant men. She assured me that all she offered was dancing and company, nothing more, and I had no reason to disbelieve her. 

“Sissie you’re pretty smart. Can’t you find a better job?”

“The only thing I know how to do is be a nurses assistance but I don’t have a license for it.” 

I asked how she could have been one without a license.  

“After I left my husband I had to get a job but I had no skills. The only job I could find was to take care of the people in the mental institution, but the most damaged who lived in the basement of the building. People with IQ’s so low they couldn’t take care of themselves. They needed someone to feed, cloth and bathe them. They were always looking for someone to do the job because people were always quitting, so they weren’t fussy about the license part. Besides the licensed nurses didn't want that job. Well I wanted that job and it turned out I was really good at it. My patients were in terrible shape when I started. Catatonic, lifeless, just existing. But soon they were perking up, happy to see me and they became more cooperative.  I got them involved in activities and they turned out to be really sweet. We really liked each other.”

“Well then you have a gift! Why not do some nursing assistant work?”

She explained that she needed a license here in California and didn’t know how to go about getting one.  I told her there were lots of organizations that help women. I suggested she get the yellow pages phone book out (remember those?) and search for women helping women, or services for women or something like that. Sissie took the suggestion, ran with it and eventually found a group that helped her get her foot in the door. Within a few years she had her license and a job.  

During that time I noticed she had a gentleman caller.  A Philipino man with a slight build and sweet face. Always smiling when I saw him. Sissie had met him at the taxi dancing place and they started dating. I asked what he did for a living and she told me he rendered drawings for architects. I breathed a sigh of relief. “This could be a good one.” Within the year, they got married and gentle Amado joined Sissie’s little family in the one room studio.  

It was great to see Sissie smiling more and Amado turned out to be a thoughtful man and helped share the load. Importantly, the kids liked him. Pretty soon they moved to a one room apartment and the kids had their own bedroom for the first time while Arnado and Sissie slept in the living room. Eventually they moved again and I got an excited call from Sissie: “Dianne this is the first time in my life I have my own bedroom!”  

A few years after that Amado brought over his two sons from the Phillipines and they rented a small house in the valley.  I went to visit them a few times. Once to attend Jodie’s graduation from the police academy. She would eventually go on to become a child abuse investigator. The other time was to attend Ricki’s baby shower. She was still a teen.   

Back then there was no Facebook or the hundreds of ways of keeping electronic tabs on each other, and we eventually drifted apart. Recently Arnado showed up on one of my feeds. I was soon catching up with him and Sissie on Zoom. Jodie had left the force and was living with another woman in another city raising a child. Ricky was working in an office and her young boy had just graduated from high school. Arnado had been elevated at his company. His boys had grown and moved away from home.  I can't remember if Sissy was still working or not but she shared some funny stories about the second cockatoo she had rescued. Her first cockatoo had flown into and hung onto the screen door to her kitchen. When she opened the door it flew onto her hand. She couldn't find the owner so she decided to keep it and they had a long, loving relationship. While she was telling me funny stories about the antics of her new cockatoo I realized why I had befriended this person whose life was so different than mine. She was from my tribe.

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