When Victoria Ford was a little girl growing up in Memphis, her family was so widely known, strangers would see her at the grocery store, notice a resemblance and ask, “Are you a Ford?”
But in 2005, when Victoria was still in elementary school, the family cracked apart. Her father was arrested and later convicted of taking a $55,000 bribe. An F.B.I. undercover video posted online shows him stuffing money into his suit coat and pants.
Shortly thereafter her mother, an alcoholic, was convicted of drunken driving three times and imprisoned. In an essay titled “To a Restless Little Brother Calling for Mama in His Sleep,” Victoria wrote:
You may not understand this now, but she isn’t coming back. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Day after that. And no, she hasn’t left anything behind — a sticky note on the refrigerator door or a quick message for the answering machine, her voice a distant echo calling your name and mine. Nothing. I’m sorry because I know you get scared when the wind blows hard like this at night, when the shadows on your ceiling shuffle as if they’ve been alive all this time. But I’m right here. And the sun will not rise for another few hours and the birds outside are still sleeping —remember Johnjohn, your favorite cardinals nestled in the Sweet Gum tree down by the mailbox? The babies wrapped in small, ruby feathers. That’s how you should be right now. Dreaming and resting and not worrying.
Read this amazing story, Finding Voice in the Pain of a Family and It's Fall, in the NY Times, Monday, May 30, 2011.
