Chapter One: Adventures Among the X Challenged by Tennessee Reed

Originally, Dakota thought of teaching as a career, a worthy way to support her true and first choice of writing. After Dakota graduated from the English Department’s MFA program at Mills College, a private college in Oakland, she was invited by Valerie to teach under the Peralta Community Colleges’ Faculty Diversity Internship Program. She was going to teach a Standard English bonehead course, the level above the remedial courses for freshmen, and she would be supervised under the mentorship of Valerie, a former student of her father, Ichabod, who was a writer, editor and publisher. Valerie was going to return to Mills College in the fall for her Ed.D. (Doctorate of Education). Valerie received three Masters degrees at Mills the same day that Dakota got hers. 

Dakota’s father Ichabod was an African-American who was mixed with Cherokee, French, Danish, Irish, Scottish and Finnish. He was five feet eleven inches tall and of average weight with a caramel complexion and thick hair of knotted tight curls. He had brown eyes. Dakota’s mother Charlotte was born into a Jewish family, although she didn’t practice the religion. Her people were from the Ukraine and Belarus and were mixed with Tartar blood from Mongolia. Charlotte was five feet five and a half inches tall with dark hair and light brown eyes. She was pretty thin. Dakota was five feet seven inches tall and at an average weight. Her thick, long hair was dark brown and its many layers were filled with streaks of red, blonde and gray and her eyes were light brown. Dakota liked clothes by Gap and Guess because she liked their logos and because they made clothes for curvy people like herself. Dakota was named after Dakota Staton, a singer popular among the older populations and for her mom Charlotte, an idol.

Dakota was scheduled to start teaching in August of 2005. On July 7, 2005, a Thursday, Dakota and Ichabod traveled to Buffalo, New York, for the Buffalo Book Fair. Ichabod’s mother Rose lived in Buffalo, about five minutes away from the Buffalo Niagara Falls International Airport and near the border with Cheektowaga. Charlotte was not able to travel to Buffalo since she was directing a play by a Pakistani American playwright entitled “Little Knights” that was about to be showcased at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. The play was about a modern suburban Pakistani American family. The grandfather was born in India before the Partition of 1948, in a time when Muslims and Hindus lived in harmony and even intermarried. The father and mother were born in Pakistan and the three children, two sons and daughter, were born in the United States. The showcase was going to run from July 15-16.

Dakota and Ichabod left for the San Francisco International Airport. They were going to take American Airlines, which was the only domestic airline that Dakota, Charlotte and Ichabod flew on and the only domestic airline Dakota had ever taken. The three of them had elite status through AAdvantage, American’s frequent flier program. Dakota always sat by a window and Charlotte and Ichabod always sat by an aisle.

After their arrival, Dakota and Ichabod hailed a taxi to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Buffalo. When Dakota and Ichabod got to the hotel, people working at the front desk handed them a package from the Buffalo Convention Center. They both got a stuffed buffalo, a cardholder and some pens and papers. They went up to the room, which was a two-bedroom suite. Both Dakota and Ichabod had a king sized bed to themselves, a desk and a chair, and their own bathroom with a shower and a bathtub. The suite also included a kitchen. The suite was equipped with wireless Internet. From her bedroom window Dakota could see the golden dome of the Buffalo Savings Bank, said to be modeled after Constantinople’s, and the Buffalo Electrical Tower built in 1912. The 124-foot building that was built for the Pan American Exposition in 1901 was lit up in red, white and blue at night.

Dakota was really tired, so she just crashed. When she woke up around 7:00 AM, the sun was up. There were some high clouds scattered in the blue sky. The air was muggy, but cool. The mugginess came from Hurricane Cindy, which was now a tropical depression and had weakened to scattered showers. Dakota took a bath before heading downstairs to breakfast with Ichabod. The restaurant was crowded. Dakota ate an omelet with French toast, two pieces of bacon, hash browns and orange juice for breakfast. Ichabod had two sausage patties, some scrambled eggs, French toast and coffee. That would be their breakfast menu for the rest of the trip.

After that they decided to take a walk. They walked along the cobble stone street next to the light rail tracks. Even in its downtown, Buffalo looked like a depressed city to Dakota. Ichabod had told her this had been the case since the 1940’s when, after World War II, most of the industrial jobs had left. Dakota’s mother Charlotte was interested in Buffalo architecture and was writing a proposal for a book on women architects, so she wanted Dakota to take notes for her about any changes in the downtown area since their last visit the year before. Ichabod showed Dakota the Lafayette Hotel on Washington Street, which was designed by Louise Blanchard Bethune. She was the first American woman to become a professional architect, and therefore very important for Charlotte’s book on women architects. Bethune graduated from the same high school Ichabod attended, named Hutchison-Technical High School. Mrs. Bethune married another architect, Robert Bethune, in 1881, shortly after she opened up her own architectural firm in Buffalo. Beforehand, Mrs. Bethune worked as a draftsman for Richard A. Waite, an architect born in England as did her husband-to-be.

Dakota noticed the Lafayette Hotel looked in need of major repairs both inside and out. She did admire the lobby’s inlaid marble floors. It was considered a French Renaissance style building, which was one of Dakota’s of favorite types of architecture. Even though in its heyday when presidents had stayed there, the Lafayette Hotel had become a crack house. During its decline it was a place where people who were wanted for murder would hang out. There was supposed to be a fabulous 1940’s ballroom, but it was locked up. The Vietnamese couple, who bought the hotel for $300,000, a steal, disapproved of the people inspecting the ballroom. Dakota remembered seeing a woman crying while she was talking on her cell phone in a jewelry store adjacent to the lobby, while she was paying attention to the chandelier and some of the paintings on the lobby’s walls.

Dakota and Ichabod then walked towards City Hall, an art deco building designed by Kurt Russell in 1932. “The Taste of Buffalo Festival” was taking place at the roundabout in front of City Hall over the weekend. The festival was being set up. A plaza called Niagara Square was in the center of the roundabout. Since Dakota was interested in city planning she especially liked the design of Niagara Square. There was a statue of President William McKinley in the square, because he had been assassinated in Buffalo, and the house where Teddy Roosevelt had been sworn in as the twenty-sixth president, which Dakota had visited with Charlotte back in 1992, had been carefully maintained. McKinley’s assassination had set off an anti-immigrant hysteria. Dakota and Charlotte had been inside City Hall the previous year. Dakota remembered its marble floors, the murals in the city’s council chambers and the view of Lake Erie to the west from the tower.

After that Dakota and Ichabod returned to the hotel in order to get ready to visit Rose. Around 1:30 PM they traveled by cab out to where Rose lived. It was about twenty minutes away. They requested the cab let them off at the corner so they could purchase sandwiches at the deli. They walked to the red brick duplex along a block lined with red-bricked duplexes.

When they arrived at the duplex owned by Ichabod’s half brother, Devin, Devin was fixing the downstairs apartment. He had bought the duplex in 1994. The downstairs apartment had been vacant for a little over a year. When Rose first moved into the upstairs apartment, a Polish couple had lived downstairs. That was from 1994 to 1997. Rose’s cousin, Kiesha and her family lived in there next, from 1996 to1998, and after that a middle aged Black woman had lived in there from 1998 to 2004. Because of poor behaviors, all of these people were given the boot by Devin. Dakota only had heard Rose’s side of the story, and it was told out of anger, but she was sure that all of these people had their own side of the story. When they were together Rose and Devin weren’t the easiest people to get along with. Everyone in the family knew that.

Rose slowly traveled down the steep flight of steps to greet them. She welcomed them with a hug and a kiss. Rose was eighty-eight years old and she was a gorgeous chocolate brown color. There were barely any wrinkles on her face. Her hair was dyed black and was thick. Dakota’s white top reflected in Rose’s large, black eyes. Rose had on a red tee with dahlia flowers printed on it, some pink crop pants and some red slippers. Charlotte had bought her that outfit at JC Penney and she was thoughtfully showing it off to them. Rose wore clip-on hoop earrings since she never gotten her ears pierced. They all climbed up the stairs together to Rose’s apartment.

 CNN was blasting on the TV, near the large living room plant. The window behind the TV faced the main road. Rose sat down in her easy chair with another window right behind her. Dakota got a peek into the neighbors’ home. Rose pushed up the footrest to elevate her feet and Dakota and Ichabod sat down opposite her on the mauve colored couch that was covered in heavy plastic. 
“How was your flight?” Rose asked them in her melodious voice.

“It was fine,” Ichabod replied. 

“It was quick and smooth,” Dakota said. 

“Did you all take American Airlines?” Rose asked. 

“Yes,” said Ichabod and Dakota in unison.

“We brought sandwiches,” Ichabod said. 

“What?” Rose asked. 

“We bought sandwiches,” Ichabod repeated louder, “including one for you.”

They retreated to the dining room and sat at the glass dining room table that had six chairs surrounding it. Dakota’s back faced a glass door that led to a wooden deck and some wooden stairs. The stairs went down to the backyard. The backyard had a large tree, a garage, a fence that led to the house on the parallel street, and several white plastic lawn chairs.

Dakota prepared the sandwiches for everyone on plates, along with a glass of water. 

“I made you some brownies,” Rose said. 

“Oh. Thank you,” Dakota said. They were one of Rose’s specialties and the recipe was a treasured family secret.

“Uh huh,” Rose replied. After Dakota served everyone, it was quiet while everybody ate. Rose didn’t like to talk while she was eating. When they were done with the sandwiches and the brownies Rose told Dakota to take everyone’s plates to the kitchen. 

“Gloria will do them later,” she said, “she is bringing over Elijah.” 

Gloria was Dakota’s twenty-five year old cousin and Elijah was Dakota’s little three-year-old cousin. He was the son of Gloria’s younger sister, Jamie who was twenty-three. Dakota hadn’t seen Jamie since April of 1992 when her step-grandfather, Gavin, Senior, died of cancer. Gavin, Senior and Dakota got along very well. They always laughed when they were around each other. It was a blow to Dakota when Gavin, Senior died. Dakota felt angry at the time because Gavin, Senior hadn’t taken care of himself. Dakota had never met her biological grandfather, Evan; he had died in 1975 and never acknowledged that Ichabod was his son. Rose said he had taken advantage of her on a blind date, which turned into a one-night stand. Evan’s second son, named Abraham, often commented to Dakota that she looked like Evan, even more so than his own daughters did. “You have his mouth,” Abraham would tell her. Abraham lived in Oakland and was a pediatric allergist.

About an hour or so later Gloria arrived with Elijah. Gloria smiled shyly at Dakota and Ichabod. Even though Dakota and Gloria were cousins they barely knew each other. Gloria was fairly tall and thin with a caramel complexion. Her black hair was braided and fell to right past her shoulders. Elijah was wearing khaki pants, sneakers, a Thomas the Train tee shirt that was red, and his hair was in braids similar to Gloria’s. Elijah didn’t say anything to Dakota or Ichabod because he was shy. He gave them a handshake and then asked Rose, “Where’s Devin?” Gloria led him to the downstairs apartment. Rose, Ichabod and Dakota watched TV again. Rose said Devin was really busy, and he didn’t come upstairs to greet Dakota and Ichabod until about half an hour before they left.             

Around 3:00 Ichabod and Dakota returned to for the hotel promising that they would come back the following evening since they were departing for home on Sunday morning. As they caught the cab back to the Hyatt, Dakota had a flashback to Christmas 2003. Dakota had traveled alone on December 15, a Monday, to help Rose get ready for Christmas, since Rose had just had her third pacemaker put in that October. Dakota’s aunt Erica had come from Southern California for two weeks to help Rose after the surgery, so she wasn’t coming back for Christmas. Ichabod paid for her ticket. Erica had to be coaxed into going to Buffalo because there was deep hurt between her and Rose. Ichabod and Charlotte were to arrive Buffalo on December 22. During the first week of her visit, Dakota read Rose’s book Memoir of a Chattanooga Girl, which Ichabod’s publishing company had just published that fall. Charlotte had edited the book on the basis of the contents of Rose’s black notebooks and tape recordings that Rose had mailed. Dakota really enjoyed the memoir. Rose was a great storyteller.

Rose attempted to control the lives of her children even when they became adults. Her three sons and one daughter began to move away. Ichabod moved to New York City and then California. Erica moved out to California. Gavin, Junior and Devin moved to Nashville. Later on as Rose got older and her mental faculties began to decline seriously, she began to accuse one of her daughter-in-laws, named Melissa, of poisoning her. Melissa was the wife of Rose’s second son, Gavin, Junior. Later on, at the age of ninety-two, Rose would accuse Ichabod and Charlotte of stealing over $6,000,000 because someone had told her that the figures on amazon.com represented her book’s earnings instead of its sales ranking. Dakota cooked eggs, bacon, sausages and grits for breakfast, made foot-long sandwiches for lunch, and hot dogs, burgers and steak for dinner. Rose had her Budweiser beer. “I’m eighty-six-years-old and I earned the right to drink a beer. Do you blame me?” Dakota didn’t say anything. Dakota and Rose listened to music, watched TV and read. Dakota also recovered from jet lag, wrote poetry, cleaned the apartment, ran errands, did laundry and talked on the phone with relatives.

Dakota stayed in the room that her cousin Gloria was eventually going to occupy. Gloria was twenty-three at the time. She continued to live with Rose, helping her out, until March 1, 2008 when Rose moved into an assisted living facility. Everything went well for the first week between Dakota and Rose, until Devin came up from Nashville. He had the flu, and Dakota thought he was inconsiderate for exposing Rose to the flu after she had just had open-heart surgery. Dakota remembered the phone conversation that she had with Devin the Wednesday before he came up there. “I got a flu,” Devin said, “But I’m still coming up there.” 

“Tell him not to come up here with no flu,” Rose said.  Her immune system had been weakened from the recent surgery.

 “I just had surgery. I don’t need to be getting a flu or else I’ll die.” 

“Tell her that I am forty-five years old and I can do what I want to do,” Devin replied gruffly. Rose replied by sticking her thumb on her nose and wiggling her fingers. Dakota felt it was odd that Rose let her third son talk to her like that. She hadn’t heard the worst.

Devin arrived in Buffalo on December 21, a Sunday, late in the evening. Dakota hadn’t seen him since she was fifteen, when they all attended Gavin, Senior’s funeral. Dakota was twenty-six at the time of the Christmas 2003 visit. “Dakota,” Devin said, “I thought you would be taller and thinner.” Dakota was five feet seven and one hundred and thirty four pounds, so she was pretty tall and pretty thin. She could feel herself getting angry, but she decided to let it go. Devin was a medium brown color, stocky, of average height, and had thick, curly black hair. He had large eyes and a high forehead. He always wore a prominent smile no matter what emotion he was feeling at the time. The uncharitable might call it an idiotic grin. Rose kissed him. 

The next morning Dakota felt irritated because she not only had to take care of Rose, but now she had to cook for Devin and clean up for him as well. He was able bodied, so she didn’t understand why Rose felt that Dakota needed to take care of him as well. That morning a little mishap turned into a huge argument. They got upset that Dakota had used the wrong sponge to wash the iron skillet. Dakota used a rough textured, wiry blue sponge to get the grit and bacon grease off of the pan.

“No,” Devin said angrily, “You’re not supposed to use that sponge to clean the skillet. You’ll ruin it. You’re supposed to use this sponge.” He handed Dakota a soft, curvy sponge to use instead.

“You should listen,” he continued, “Your parents aren’t going to live forever. You need to know how to do this.” Devin’s familiarity with cooking was unusual for a man. He was obsessively devoted to the domestic culture, which was also unusual. Devin was forty-five years old and unmarried. 

“Didn’t your uncle give you good advice?” Rose asked.

Rose seemed to like men who treated her in a rough manner. This was a family trait. She was married to a man for over thirty years who made her attend to his aging parents who grew old and lost their minds after years of partying and snapping their fingers to the beat. They dressed like they were young people even though they were in their eighties. 

Dakota had visited Rose and Gavin, Senior for two weeks during the summer of 1988. She was eleven and had just finished fifth grade. By that time Gavin, Senior’s mother had been placed in a nursing home, after living with them for seventeen years. She had finally been officially diagnosed as an Alzheimer’s patient. In a fit of rage she damaged the door that hung in between the long carpeted staircase and the short-carpeted staircase that led to the upstairs floor. The door was made out of both wood and glass. The glass was broken and the doorknob had been ripped out. There was a hole in the wood where the doorknob had used to be. The wood was rough and splintered. Rose seemed angry throughout the trip. At the time Dakota took it personally, but as she reached the age of thirty-three she realized that Rose was showing the emotional effects of taking care of her demented mother-in-law. Later, in retrospect, Dakota recognized that this was the beginning of Rose’s decline.

Dakota was so angry that she was crying after her argument with Rose and Devin during Christmastime, 2003. She felt an adrenaline rush coming on. Her heart was beating fast, she was breathing heavily and she was sweating. Her eyes were dilated. Dakota only had this type of physical reaction when she was livid. She heard Rose and Devin whispering in the kitchen. 

“She’s sitting here crying and everything,” she heard Rose say. “I just had heart surgery and I don’t need this stress.” 

“There must have been some bad home training,” Devin said, “She doesn’t know which sponge to use to scrub the skillet.”

“I taught her a lot this week,” Rose said, “She didn’t even know how to make a bed.”

Dakota found this odd because Rose had been praising her housework all week. Rose’s behavior could be attributed to her experiences as a child. Her father was murdered and was allowed to bleed to death in a Chattanooga hospital. “Let that n***er die,” is what the hospital’s doctor said. Rose was in her teens. Her mother was mentally ill. She spent two years in a mental hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and so Rose had to live from place to place in order to survive. Rose learned it was best to take the side of the individual who had the most power in the household, a habit she had never gotten over. Even though Rose had contributed to the duplex’s down payment, paid the mortgage and managed the place while Devin lived and worked in Nashville, she deferred to him.

Dakota decided after what had just happened it would be best for her to stay at the hotel downtown with her parents for the rest of the trip. She also felt that the apartment would be too small to fit herself, Gloria, Devin and Rose. Dakota began to pack her bags. While she was doing so, Rose came in with an angry look on her face. 

“Come on out of there to help your uncle clean up the kitchen,” she hissed. “You’re ignorant. You’re acting stupid right now. You should be grateful that you’re here at all. I should ship your ass home. You’re not all that pretty and you’re not all that.”

“Well, you’re acting ugly right now yourself,” Dakota hissed back.

Rose had a tendency to be verbally abusive. One time when Dakota visited her during June of 1997, she got angry with Rose for taking her traveling money to buy lottery tickets. Rose called Dakota a “bitch” and a “smart ass.” 

“Yeah, it takes one to know one. Look in the mirror before you point out the fault in others,” Dakota answered.

Somehow Rose knew how to push Dakota’s buttons. They both had short fuses, which didn’t present a pretty situation. Dakota’s older sister Tiffany took the train up from New York City to visit with Dakota and Rose for a few days during the June, 1997 trip. Tiffany was thirty-six at the time. She had a different mother than Dakota did and they didn’t grow up together being years apart in age. Dakota hardly knew her at the time. Rose was recovering from her second pacemaker surgery then and needed someone to help her. Dakota was drafted since she was on a break between her sophomore and junior years at U.C. Berkeley. Dakota sensed that there was discomfort between Tiffany and Rose. Dakota didn’t really know the cause at the time. Many years later she found out that Tiffany had stayed at Rose’s as a teenager. She started drinking with Gavin, Junior, Erica and Devin who were a few years older than her. Gavin, Senior caught them drinking in the basement and told them, “Get upstairs or I’ll blow your brains out,” as he held his shotgun. Tiffany had brought strange guys over to the house, so Rose kicked her out after one had entered the house and threatened everybody with a gun because Tiffany had rejected him. Devin drove her down to New York City so she could live with her mother. 

Right before Tiffany arrived Rose told Dakota, “I’m going to put Clorox in the toilet because I don’t want to get an STD.” Every time Tiffany used the bathroom Rose would rush to put Clorox in the toilet. Tiffany sat on the couch and smoked a lot of cigarettes out of stress while she and Rose talked. Tiffany would dump the ashes into the dishwater, so when it was time for Dakota to wash the dishes the water was black and ashy. Rose came into the kitchen and said, “She just smokes one cigarette after another,” to Dakota. “Tiffany, come in here and do the dishes. You dumped your cigarettes in here, so you can do the dishes.” Rose was angry. In a show of sympathy, Dakota went into the dining room and made up the guest bed for Tiffany. Afterwards, Tiffany decided she wanted to go out to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Rose was going to turn eighty the next day. “You’re not going to go out at night with all of the shootings going on in Buffalo and give me no heart attack,” Rose told her. Tiffany stayed put.

A few days later when Tiffany got into the cab to go to the train station, Dakota straightened the living room. “She just comes up here with all that ghetto s**t; that n***er s**t,” Rose vented to Dakota. Rose complained a lot. Even Dakota’s cousin Devin, Junior said to her when he was eight years old, “Grandma, if it ain’t your eyes, it’s your heart; if it ain’t your heart, it’s your hips; if it ain’t your hips, it’s your knees; if it ain’t your knees, it’s your feet.” Rose loved that list so well that she would quote it frequently. Ichabod made a joke that you couldn’t say the word “sick” or “operation” to Rose because those words would open the door for her to list her history of illnesses in great detail.

Rose also could be physically abusive. Ichabod and Tiffany confirmed this. Rose never hit Dakota because she was smart enough to know that Charlotte would go off on her, though there was one time she had threatened to hit Dakota. This was again during the summer of 1988. Rose bought Dakota three dresses, three pairs of tights, a pair of socks, a sweater, a pair of pants and two purses. When they got ready to go to church one Sunday morning, Rose told Dakota that if she got one of her new dresses dirty, she would whip her. Dakota felt sick in her stomach. Her parents never talked this way.

As Dakota got older she figured out that the trip she took up there at the age of eleven was difficult for her because she felt uncomfortable in a lot of ways. She was sharing a space with two grandparents that she barely knew. She didn’t know her cousins and aunts and uncles at all. Her cousin Gloria was eight at the time, Jamie was six, Gavin, III was four and Devin, Junior was two. Dakota always felt uncomfortable around people she didn’t know. It was hot and humid, a climate that Dakota was not used to, and she was going to a lot of events that weren’t of much interest to her. She didn’t know anyone in Buffalo and her parents weren’t around so there was no comfortable place for Dakota to go to. Dakota was a preteen and the hormones had begun to kick in. She found herself getting angry and irritated a lot during the trip. She rolled her eyes a lot and muttered things under her breath. She got along with Gavin, Senior very well. He treated her like she was his biological granddaughter, and in hindsight, she got along with Rose more than she argued with her.

The rest of December 22, 2003 was a blur to Dakota. When her parents’ flight got in they called telling her that they had arrived and they were going to stop by. Dakota told Ichabod what had happened, but this time she didn’t cry. A wave of exhaustion came over Dakota. Ichabod said, “Yeah, pack your bags and come to the hotel with us.” Dakota had just done laundry and she had clean clothes for the rest of the trip. When Ichabod and Charlotte arrived, Devin disappeared into the bedroom Dakota had slept in, to watch TV. The door was closed and he didn’t even come out to greet them. Charlotte, Ichabod and Rose had a pleasant conversation. Dakota was still angry so she couldn’t look or talk to Rose. She didn’t even say “goodbye” and “thank you” as they left.

They finally piled into the 2004 Toyota Minivan that Ichabod had rented and headed for the Radisson downtown. Throughout the trip, Dakota thought about the multiple conversations that Ichabod had with his brother Gavin, Junior and his sister Erica about not trusting Rose and Devin when they were around each other. Dakota could see why. He had a mean streak to him. Devin was known as “the slum lord,” and “money hungry” amongst the siblings. He wasn’t only a slumlord to tenants but also towards his own mother whom he deceived into moving out of her senior citizen’s apartment in the Presbyterian House. By that time Gavin, Senior was dead. Seeing that Rose had lent him the $5,000 down payment, and was the only tenant who paid the monthly mortgage, and she managed the home, one could say that she owned the house, but the title was in Devin’s name. Shortly after she moved into the house, Devin moved to Nashville and for years after that she accused him of exploiting her by luring her away from the Presbyterian House. When Ichabod had reminded her of this, Rose told him to “mind his own business.” Gavin, Junior and Erica complained that Rose had treated Devin better than them when they grew up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. Rose even told them that Devin was smarter than both of them put together. He was indeed a forty-five year old mama’s boy. He was so short tempered and rude that saying “hello” to him could start a fight. “Devin’s number one to her,” Ichabod always told Charlotte.

Devin was a sore subject amongst the family. Devin and Rose always teamed up against any of the family members who dared question Devin’s behaviors. The family felt it was a war of “us” against “them.” In July of 2002, Rose and Ichabod weren’t on speaking terms for a few months, again because of Devin. Charlotte had explained to Devin that if Rose was going to live there things needed to be fixed to make the house safer for Rose. She was worried about the fact that there were no bars in the bathtub and when she opened up a kitchen drawer to get out the utensils it had splintered and left nails sticking out. As there were no lights in the steep stairwell, it was pitch black. Dakota’s Mickey Mouse watch glowed in the dark when she went up or down the stairs. Rose told Ichabod and Charlotte, “Mind your own business,” angrily. Ichabod and Charlotte were angry with Rose in return. In the mean time Dakota had sent Rose some photos of her trip to Philadelphia and New York that she had taken that April. Rose didn’t respond as to whether she received it or not. 

“They’re angry at us,” Ichabod said. 

“It’s nothing personal,” Charlotte said. 

Dakota didn’t understand how she could have not picked up on the fact that she had questioned Devin and how that caused the “us” against “them” to turn towards her direction. Eventually, Rose did thank Charlotte and Devin made the repairs.

On Christmas Eve Day 2003, Dakota and Ichabod dropped Charlotte off at Rose’s to help her cook and they headed back downtown to the hotel. The hotel room was nice for a Radisson. The building itself looked funky, but Dakota liked the French doors that separated the living room where she slept and the bedroom. Dakota spent most of that afternoon sleeping while Ichabod worked on the computer and watched TV in the next room. That evening they came back to Rose’s. Some of the family came over to the house. Gavin, Junior and his wife Melissa came over. They had come to help Gloria move from their home in Nashville into Rose’s apartment. All of them drove up: Gloria in her car and Gavin, Junior and Melissa in their car. They all arrived at Rose’s at the same time and pulled into the driveway. Gavin, Junior and Melissa’s second daughter Jamie had lived in Buffalo for a while. She was twenty-one back then and lived with her boyfriend and her son Elijah, who was a year and a half at the time. Her boyfriend was a crack dealer and Gavin, Junior and Melissa were concerned that their grandson would be caught in crossfire between two gangs. According to Rose, Jamie’s boyfriend was full of attitude. Gavin, Junior and Melissa also had a son named Gavin, III, who was twenty and lived in Nashville with his girlfriend. Gavin, III had to stay in Nashville since he had to work.

Gavin, Junior was tall, very thin and was a medium brown. He had small, black eyes and thick, curly black hair. Melissa was of average height, voluptuous, had light brown skin and had her dark brown hair slicked back into a tiny ponytail. She had almond shaped black eyes. She had been addicted to heroin in the past, but she had kicked that habit years ago. She had become an alcoholic. During an alcoholic rage she put both of her daughters out of the house. Dakota always got along with Gavin, Junior, Melissa and their children. She had spent a lot of time with them when she was eleven. Rose had often complained that Melissa poisoned the hamburgers when she visited Nashville and that Melissa had put “arson” in the water (but Dakota knew she meant arsenic).

Dakota had barely spoken to Rose since the huge argument. During the rest of trip she had Gavin, Junior, Melissa and Gloria to focus on. Rose told Charlotte and Ichabod her side of the story, but she had cleaned it up to make herself and Devin look good. Charlotte didn’t help by telling Rose that Dakota was suffering from PMS because then Rose would think that Dakota had the problem and not her. On Christmas Day it snowed. That was the second snowy day in Buffalo. The first day was Wednesday, December 17, and a blizzard came right when Dakota and Rose’s friend Pamela, a dark skinned black woman with bone straight black hair went shopping for Christmas dinner at Top’s, a grocery store out in the suburb of Amherst. They had just returned from The Dollar Store across the street from Rose, to get some house supplies, when the blizzard really hit.

On Christmas morning Dakota, Charlotte and Ichabod took a walk around downtown. It was really a ghost town then. On the way to Starbuck’s on Delaware Avenue and West Chippewa Street, Dakota lost one of her Dansko slip-on clogs in a pile of snow and she had to dig in there to get it. The Starbuck’s was closed, so they went back to the Hyatt, which was adjacent to the Radisson and had breakfast and coffee there.

Christmas Dinner was at 4:00 PM. They got to Rose’s and it was a small gathering. Rose had said for the last week and a half, “I’m so glad the whole family will be here for Christmas,” but not everyone was. Erica was at home in California, Gavin, III was at home in Nashville and Devin’s son, Devin, Junior was with his mother at home in South Carolina. According to Rose, Devin, Senior got into a fight with Devin, Junior had almost got into a fist fight with each other that fall. Dakota wasn’t sure of the reason why. All she knew was that they weren’t speaking to each other. Devin, Junior was going to turn eighteen the following February and he said that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with Devin, Senior after that.

Gavin, Junior, Melissa and Gloria were with Jamie and her family, who had a separate Christmas party. They were supposed to come over, but that changed at the last minute. Rose was really mad about that. Dakota could tell. Rose’s godson Edward, his wife Elizaveta and their two children, Christina who was ten and Grace who was sixteen, were supposed to stop by, but they didn’t. Edward and Grace had picked Dakota up at the airport. She was supposed to go shopping with them later on in the trip, but that didn’t happen.

Ichabod’s long time friend Fabian and his wife Adriana and came over. Fabian was very tall and quite thin with curly gray hair. Adriana was a little taller than Dakota and chubby with fairly short and thick gray hair. Devin was there, but he kept to himself. He ate in Gloria’s room with the door closed and the TV blasting. He had kept a low profile since the argument and seemed to be in the room brooding and preparing himself for another confrontation. Christmas dinner was not a memorable event for Dakota. She was exhausted and angry. She remembered barely muttering two words to Rose. She talked with Fabian and Adriana for a little bit since was not in a talkative mood.  She thought that a lot of the family didn’t stop by because they didn’t want to be around Rose and Devin while they were together, but that was just a theory.

The morning after Christmas Ichabod, Charlotte and Dakota had lunch with Gavin, Junior and Melissa at the Hyatt. They stopped at Rose’s for an hour since they were invited to a party at Fabian and Adriana’s, which Dakota was happy about since it meant less time at Rose’s. She still wasn’t speaking to her. Rose, Devin, Gavin, Junior, Melissa, Gloria, Ichabod, Charlotte, Dakota, Fabian and Adriana all gathered for a group photo. Gloria’s cousin on Melissa’s side also came. He was tall, slim and dark skinned. He was somewhere in his twenties and Dakota thought of him as a pleasant young man. Ichabod got a photo of Gloria and Dakota watching TV and laughing. Dakota was exhausted from the fight with Rose and Devin, Christmas, and the traveling so she slept at the party. She slept a lot that week.

On December 27, Dakota, Charlotte and Ichabod stopped by Rose’s for a little while as they were on the way to drop Charlotte off at the airport. Charlotte was going to Pittsburgh to visit with her mother, Lily. Lily’s second husband had passed away about fifteen months before and she lived by herself, so Charlotte had been traveling there frequently. Since Charlotte’s timeline America’s Secret History had just been published she had two readings set up in Pittsburgh. Therefore, she was going to stay there for about three weeks.

Ichabod was already irritated that Rose said that he looked tired and that Devin looked good, even though Dakota and Ichabod had witnessed Devin cuss her out several times during the week like he was doing that particular moment. “You’re a whore and always will be one,” he told her. People often wondered what strange hold Devin had over Rose. One theory was that she belonged to the generation where women were submissive to men. Ichabod got really mad when Rose and Devin said that Fabian didn’t look good and called him “hot s**t,” especially Fabian and Adriana they took her in during one of Buffalo’s major winter storms that fall for eight days because the power had gone out in her home. That was during that past November.

Since Fabian was Ichabod’s best friend he said, “Everybody be positive. It’s Christmas.”

Devin replied, “It’s not about being positive; it’s about being realistic.”

Rose got up and went into the other room while Ichabod stormed into the kitchen and told Charlotte, “Charlotte, let’s go. I can’t be in this house a minute longer.” They left. Dakota and Ichabod flew home on the morning of Monday, December 29, 2003 without saying goodbye to Rose. Dakota was burnt out. She had gotten sick of Rose’s constant angry remarks throughout that trip. It took about a week to recover from all of the stress of that trip. She did a lot of emotional eating on that trip and she didn’t exercise. She ate seconds of turkey, German chocolate cake, bread with butter and soda –all foods she usually avoided--so she gained six pounds. She eventually worked off of the pounds by swimming at the Y and at Mills College. Dakota remembered telling Charlotte on the phone, “I’m so glad to be 3,000 miles away from Devin and Grandma.”

Right before the Spring 2004 term began for Dakota at Mills College in Oakland, a private college where Dakota was working on her MFA degree in English, she wrote an angry letter to Rose. The day classes began Dakota received an angry call from Rose. Rose didn’t speak to Dakota directly. Instead, she spoke to Charlotte, calling Dakota a “liar.” For a few weeks Dakota and Rose didn’t speak, but Rose eventually got over it like she had with Ichabod and Charlotte. She still called Dakota her “favorite granddaughter.”