On Monday, November 29, 1943, I materialized clinging to a worldly safety raft floating on the river of time. Witnesses to this spontaneity would carry the secrets surrounding my birth until they flew away into the arms of Jesus. I am not sure of the exact clock hour and the minute I emerged from my mother's womb because no one recorded the event. The setting was in the winter of 1943 in a small one-bathroom house with 364 written north of the door. The number "364" belonged to a house located on North South Carolina Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Four half-siblings, my biological father, and a midwife witnessed my exit from the dark and comfortable chambers of my mother's womb into the scary light of a confused and complicated world. In the mid-twentieth century, the City hospital did not enthusiastically embrace black clients or perhaps there was a more secretive reason for my home birth.
