Jenisha from Kentucky

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You just told the whole world

all your secrets.

So how do you feel at the end of this, this whole ride you took?

Everything I've said about my life, I can defend it.

Like, I'm comfortable with the parts of myself that I've decided to share.

I'm okay with it.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

This is Radio Atlantic.

And that is Janisha Watts, a senior editor at The Atlantic who just did a risky thing, which is write a cover story about her family and their secrets.

And she did it because when Janisha was making her way in journalism, she never met anyone with a background like hers.

No one who grew up like her or talked like her.

Now, Janisha found her own ways to fit in.

She just kept moving forward.

Until by her 30s, she was a really long way from where she started.

And then Janisha reached a point that people reach sometimes where being so far from home doesn't feel right anymore.

It feels closer to avoidance, maybe even lying.

So Janisha, the journalist, used her reporter skills to go back and learn more about Janisha from Kentucky.

She found a lot of stuff she didn't know.

From her grandma, who she lived with starting in fifth grade, her brother, Colby, who she was separated from when they were kids, and her mom, who struggled nearly her whole life with addiction.

Janisha calls her Trina.

I'm about to record you.

You hear me?

I'm recording you.

Okay, all right.

Say her name.

Trina Renee Watt.

You know, born October 16th, 1965.

i'm looking to my past except where i come from and who i come from and who's like people i am and being okay with that

journalism is so elite very white male dominated even from like the beginning and i think being a black woman in these very white spaces, like you don't want to have like those kind of like sad, sappy kind of stories.

I don't know if that makes sense.

Totally.

But it's just, i think it's just more of who can be a writer and who can identify with being a writer katrina i don't want this cigarette smoke come here

i can't smoke

open the door no no it's not normally people that that's like me it's people that come from families of like scholars or you know parents who were in academia or you know read them books every every night when they were kids it's not like you don't hear like my kind of stories let's go back to the beginning so i looked up like i had the birth certificates i was bored okay so you had me

janisha jashay jacobe i named her when i listen it's the daughter talking to her mom but it almost comes across as like an interrogation or something what are you trying to get from her

What I'm trying to get is just the truth, as much as the truth.

And are you trying to get the truth because your mom and other family members are hiding something or like whitewashing something and you're just trying to pull it out?

I definitely think that when

people know they've been interviewed, they do try to like dress it up.

So I think a lot of times like when I'm talking to them, I just want them to just try to tell me without like.

try to like make it pretty.

It's kind of like when my grandmother talks about, you know, I want to open a can of worms, but I think like eventually you do just have to open the can of worms and just see what happens.

And I think I just wanted to just like, just get it all out so I can just move on from it.

When you were little,

you and your siblings lived with your mom at first.

What did your mom's house look like?

Was it an apartment?

What did it look like?

Yeah, it was an apartment.

It was just bare, just like a basic apartment for like a single mom, like trying to raise her four or five kids.

Cobe,

what was it?

Like, was it a crack house?

I didn't know what a crackhouse was, but now that I know what one is, yeah.

That's your brother?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's your little brother?

Yeah, he's the third kid.

I remember the old TV we had that went to sit on the ground.

Remember the old TV?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I think I do, yeah.

I remember that TV because I remember dopes sitting on top of that TV one time.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

And when you and Colby were talking about the house, did you remember it the same way?

Yeah, pretty much.

And did you feel always unsafe?

As a kid, I don't think I felt unsafe.

I don't think that was, it was just what we knew.

When did you start using drugs?

A guy lived downstairs.

He came up there one day.

And he had a glass spot.

Back then, they had bowls and everything.

And he had one.

And I was like,

what is that?

You know.

And he said, here, he said, try it.

So, and I did.

It ain't his fault, but he's the first one to introduce me to the drug.

There's been so much thinking about the crack epidemic and how it happened and how crack ended up on the streets and whose fault it was.

And I was wondering, is there any part of you that thinks of Trina as a victim?

I think that

it's hard to step outside of it and look at it

through a wider lens when you've been so close to it your entire life.

So I think that's why I think of a scholar or

someone that's detached from it would totally look at her as a victim.

But not her daughter.

Yeah.

For me, it's just...

It's just too personal for me.

Why at this moment do you need to press your family and make them tell the truth about hard things?

It's that I'm a mom now.

I always like to joke with my friends about like, I hate making it about the mom thing, but it is like, I think when I became a mom, it's just, you know, first you can understand like addiction.

You can kind of get why people are addicted and you can have empathy.

You remember ever leaving us?

Because I knew, like, what?

I remember like just, you know, leaving and being gone for a long, long,

you know, that's real depressing.

I don't want to talk about that.

But Hono,

I know it's depressing, but you've got to tell the story.

So what, so

when did you leave us?

Then when you become a mom and you have a child

and you love your child, like you just can't wrap your head around leaving your kids.

Tell me, like.

What do you remember about when you left us?

It wasn't like I intentionally tried to do it I just you know went and then you know there I was getting high

but you know I didn't know that I was hurting

so many people I didn't know I just thought it was just me but now I know that I have hurt you know I hurt my children

They tell me, you know I'm saying how they hate me and

yeah, but it's up Trina

Yeah, you gotta get it out.

I'm sorry

You gotta get out

Yeah, y'all look so sad

Just so sad like why

you know Trina wine I said ain't gonna do it no more, but I turned around and just let the drug take over me

I don't like seeing her break down like that.

Yeah.

And like how I felt like I have, because because I wanted, like, she was crying.

And I did, I kind of, I wanted to cry too.

But I was just like, no, I'm not, I'm just not going to get mad.

Cause it's just like, wow, like she does, she won't ever know what it's like to mother someone.

But the thing I don't understand, make me understand this, is that, because you had kids, because now that I'm a mom,

I can't, like, my son, I just like being around my son, but like having kids wasn't enough, like having us wasn't enough.

when you're single you can be whoever you want to be like you can go out in the world and pretend to be who you want to be but i think that's harder when you have a kid because like the kid is connected to a lineage and it just brings up all kinds of stuff yeah but i want to always kind of be upfront with my son because now i have his human to take care of and like guide you know i don't want to be the kind of mother like some people that I know like they have secrets and just carrying that that stuff like that that bitterness bitterness, you know, like just or the pain.

A lot of it, too, is just me of like wanting to be able to like purely mother him.

I don't know if that's possible, but but just not carry so much, not put so much on him, you know, because of like how my mom was.

You know, if he asked me about my life, I would just be able to talk about it in a very free, detached way.

Were the drugs just that powerful?

The drugs was powerful.

Yeah, the drugs, you know, they just...

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, back then, yes.

My mom's an addict.

She still is sometimes, you know, off and on.

And she's just not going to change.

Like, I can't change it.

Like, as much as I wanted to, you know, go back in time and like make her a mother.

Like, it's just, like, impossible.

It's what it is.

This is who she is.

For years, I've just had like a lot of anger towards her, too.

And I think now it's just, you you know, kind of like leveling out and just, you know, you kind of have to push through.

Does your son look like anyone in your family?

I'm starting to think he looks like my

sister's son.

I was looking at photos of him like a couple days.

My youngest sister, Ebony, her son, I think they kind of resemble.

And then my brother Aaron claims that he looks like him.

Was there ever a time you were playing with him and you were like, you saw like a flash of Watts?

Like, yeah, I do.

His last name is Ose, which is your husband's last name.

But he has some of the Watts personality.

And what I mean by that is just like he's just kind of like his own person.

And he just, he's, he just does things just off impulse.

Come,

you remember trying to eat

when we didn't have food, trying to eat

the cranberries?

Mm-hmm.

The free lunch truck.

Oh, you remember the free lunch truck?

What do you remember at the free lunch truck?

Pie cake, but hot dogs, Kool-Aid, noodles,

sandwich chips.

It was like chocolate milk, right?

Yeah.

I was in the fifth grade, and that's when I found out the state took all my siblings

and I was living with my granny.

And is that kind of what started you down a different path than they, than your siblings?

Yeah, so when I moved, we moved to a different house in

the suburbs and then she enrolled me into like a magna school in the sixth grade.

And my sister was living in, still living in her projects with an aunt.

And then the other siblings, you know, they were living with different people.

And then that's what my life, yeah.

I had my own room, own telephone, television, CD player, everything, and had like transportation, had a car, like she had a, she had different cars and we would go on vacation, like she'd take me on vacations and spring breaks.

And I know your siblings,

they kind of got into some bad stuff and had some hard times.

Do you think when you were talking to them, you're trying to figure out something about yourself?

Like, why did I have this kind of life?

And they didn't.

Like, was it their circumstances?

Was it personalities?

Like, is that part of why you needed to talk to them?

Yeah, I think so.

Just seeing how,

because I do ask myself that a lot.

Like, why me?

I do.

I really do.

And I, I,

and I think talking to them helps.

Like, making some of that clear.

But, Kobe, like, how do you think, like,

why do you think I got up?

And, like, like the other ones are here.

Like, what, what do you think made me

Uh

I don't know, I can't explain it.

Yeah, you was thinking forward, not as a kid, like you was just thinking, thinking, thinking.

You think so?

Yeah, I I know I'd love you too, since you know I'm proud of you.

Yeah, for what?

But

just for for

making it.

Somebody had to make it.

You made it.

You're good.

Why do you think I made it though?

We know you've been around her longer,

You know?

So, yeah.

So, of course, you're going to want to get away.

I was too busy trying to come home.

He says, of course,

you wanted to get away.

I was too busy trying to come home.

That just like really sticks with me.

I know, yeah.

What do you think he means by that?

I think that with him, because he wasn't in Lexington, like he told me in the past, he knew that when he turned 18, he was going to come back home and it was just going to be all great and glory.

It was just like him always trying to get back home, just like chasing the mother he loved that he just never received as a kid.

It's just hearing that, it's like the two of you were going in opposite directions.

Yeah, that was, yeah,

yeah.

So, Kobe's going through a lot of stuff, and your siblings are scattered.

And I mean, you are, you're having this kind of stable life with your grandmother.

Like she's helping you focus on school and focus on a future.

Do you think of your grandmother as like the savior of this story?

I think it's really complicated.

So it's weird.

So like my mom, like I know that my mom loves me.

I know that she loves me unconditionally.

Where my grandmother, she's provided for me and I'm like grateful, but I wouldn't say that she's always 100% treated me like how a mom should treat a child.

If like, some, for example, my grandmother, um, when I got married, you know, she was at the wedding and then she left.

When I was at the reception, I was like looking for my grandmother and she left.

And I just remember just being like really sad by that because, like, she, yeah, I've always looked at her more as like my mom.

And she'll tell people all the time, like, I raised her, I raised her.

But I'm like, but gritty, you didn't, you know, you never visited me in New York.

I mean, you was in New York for a Broadway play.

You didn't, you didn't visit me.

Like, so I don't know.

I think she just, I think because I'm my mom's child, I mean, maybe that's what it is.

I don't know.

Can you tell me that story of how you made it to New York?

I actually caught the Greyhound to New York City, like the very cliche typical way of like going to New York City.

Janisha has her New York adventure and then realizes you can only escape the past for so long.

I need to talk to you right now.

It's just like I found some some stuff.

That's after the break.

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Janisha, you leave behind your granny, your mom, your siblings, everything and everybody in Kentucky.

Tell me the story of how you made it in New York.

Like, when did I?

So it was at the college.

So I interned in Essence, like the year

before I graduated from the University of Kentucky.

So

I was in the University of Kentucky.

After I graduated, I kept emailing my old editor, like trying to see if they had any work.

And I don't think she realized that I was still in Kentucky.

She emailed me like in August and was like, oh, we have this position.

It's a freelance position.

It's available for a month.

It's like $10 an hour.

And I can start that Monday.

But I don't think she realized, again, like I was in Kentucky.

So then I like packed up like a few things, put them in my suitcase.

Right now, I'm sitting just across from the chair that you sat in so many days and nights and evenings and mornings.

And Miss Brown, Miss Brown, asking me a thousand questions.

Sometimes I was just like, okay, Judicia, that's enough.

A couple months later, I ended up living with this literary agent.

Her name is Barie Brown, and she lived in Harlem.

So I lived in her Brownstone.

And

she was actually the person who

taught me how to be,

how to be among these people.

When you say these people.

Who are these people?

When I say these people, what I mean is just the

people that I kind of wanted to aspire to be.

So I would say like more of the elite black people, the well-read black people, the people, the jack-in-jail black people, I guess is what I call them.

So that's what I meant when I said those people.

And what were you noticing about them that was different from you?

In my mind, like I romanticized, you know, the children that grew up with like both their parents who taught them how to eat at a table and, you know, how to be in corporate America.

People had like clean fingernails, but just like just in some ways like politicians wife or a politician.

Maybe Obama's like the quintessential like black people.

I'm trying to imagine Janisha from Kentucky looking up at these people.

I mean did you what was did you just feel really far away?

Were you like how am I gonna cross this gap?

Like how am I gonna make it to the other side?

Yeah, because I do remember like sometimes just listening to people talk and I'm just like wow, how can someone just talk that clear without just just tripping up or just, you know, just randomly saying just big words without, you know, just being so confident?

I think the biggest thing to me was just like the confidence.

It was just like even people who

in my mouth, who's like basic, had like confidence of like Beyonce.

And I'm just like, dang, I want that kind of confidence.

I think I do remember too when I

walked into Brownstone house

Ed Bradley and James and the James Baldwin books.

And in my head, I was like, yeah,

I want to live here.

But it strikes a chord, you know, with particularly young black people.

But just this recent weekend, I had, you know, a couple of young white people here, and they were just enamored with, you know, the house, you know, the books, the photos, the art, the plants, all of that.

When I stayed in Miss Brown's house, like, I'll pick up a piece of bread and she's like, Janice, just you, when you pick, you have the, you pull it like a piece at one time, not like just pick the whole piece in your mouth.

Or when I'm trying to eat some soup, she'll say, like, just take the soup and just put it to your mouth and like slow down.

She would always like give me advice on how to kind of like move in those circles.

How did that, that's amazing.

Because that might be insulting.

Like you might have been insulted.

Like, how come that all worked smoothly?

No, it didn't.

I mean, sometimes I was annoyed, but I trusted her because, I mean, she was, one, she was a book person.

She knew everything.

She's probably like one of the smartest people I've ever met.

Like she had so many books in the house, and she can talk to you about like almost any subject.

She would ask the questions, and you know, from experience and life, you know, I knew that the answers for some of them or the exposure that you needed, they was in these books and magazines and newspapers.

And I think, too, like she was like a mother figure.

And I lived with her.

I know that she cared about me.

So she was just always just trying to like help me and like make me better.

But yeah, some days it was annoying because I'm just like, I would think that, you know, I'm saying a word the right way.

And she's like, no, it's not how you say it.

Or she's like, say it again.

And I'm just like, gee, like, wow.

Just going back and forth.

Well, your favorite thing was like, Janica, quit going back to Kentucky.

Yeah, great.

That's what you would say.

Quit being Kentucky.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, you tell me now, looking back on that statement, what did you think I was saying when I said, okay, Janishia, you being Kentucky now in your thinking?

What was that?

I think you meant like I was like slipping back into like this

negative victim-like kind of mentality.

Excellent.

Yay!

Like I had one friend, her mom was a doctor, and then her dad worked on Wall Street.

And we had another friend who was in a group, and she graduated from, I think, either Yale or Harvard.

And then when you like were with people, did you just like fake it a little bit or, you know, try and like, what did, how did you?

A lot of times it was just like I would just agree or the same type of drink.

They all like talked about going to private school.

So then like when I have conversations with them, I'll say, oh yeah, I attended private school too.

But it was so it was just like me like kind of fitting in with them.

Or maybe they'll talk about their parents and I'll be like, oh yeah, my parents, but you know, they divorced, but like they was never married.

So stuff like that.

Sometimes it was intentional i think sometimes it was just like me quickly just trying to like just fit in like i've always wanted to kind of like be that

you know belong in that in a in a way like that if that makes sense yeah all of it makes total sense

i think We need to talk about your grandmother.

I mean, to this day, like, I've been, I care so much about what she thinks.

You know, like, I've always looked at her more as like my mom.

And at one point, I did, I used to call her mom, but she, you know, told me, she's like, I'm not your mom.

But yeah, like, my grandmother.

I mean, she seems like she has the most, I don't know, like pull for you or something.

Yeah, she does.

Yeah.

She does.

You know, like, she can be, say hurtful stuff to me.

She can

not, she can just do a lot of stuff to me.

And I will still like

give her second and third and fifth chances.

You told me that it was hard to get your granny on the phone to talk about this project.

How did that go?

So, my grandmother kept scheduling times, different times that she would talk to me, and then she would just flake out.

So, like, when I was in Kentucky, she was like, Oh, okay, like come to the house, and I'll, you know, I'll, we'll do the interview, and I would get there, and then she had to go somewhere.

And then she was like, Okay, well, call me when you're at the airport.

And then I call her at the airport, and she didn't pick up, or then she'll say, Okay, well, I'll call me back in 30 minutes, and then I wouldn't hear back from her.

So, it was just more of like a lot of different like phone tag and dancing around.

Why do you think that was?

I think it's because if she knows that Trina's involved in it,

it's going to be truthful.

She's not going to hold back.

Trina says that my grandmother's

first husband raped her when she was a teenager.

That's been something that she's always said.

The rape was reported in a local newspaper and he was arrested, but he never went to trial.

The rape stuff was the hardest thing for me to talk about for my grandmother.

Because

she's so clear on what happened and has a different version.

My granny says she called the police right away.

And I feel like talking about the rape in some ways is like me picking a side between my granny and Trina.

But really, I don't have any side.

I just hate the fact that the person accused was married to my grandmother.

It was just so connected.

So in your mind, you're telling Trina's version, you're telling your granny's version, and you can't tell the version of the person who's accused of this because he's now dead.

So like you're not coming down on one side or another.

I'm just telling the story.

You're just going to tell the story.

So like my grandmother, like she's always had,

she's just always been put together.

She's always been put together.

Like she's always worked hard.

She owned different homes, cars.

So I think for her is that when she looks at Trina, she's everything that she's not.

And I think it just like, it probably infuriates her.

Uh-huh.

It's squeird.

Like, because even like when I was going to interview her, I still get like scared to ask questions.

And I don't, I think that's maybe that's my addiction.

It's like my grandmother's approval.

Like I know how uncomfortable this will make her, but I also know how unhappy she'll be with me.

Your granny is this person who has this hold on you.

Like maybe you're even a little bit afraid of her.

And she's the same person who doesn't want you or anyone to be talking about all this stuff.

She's very private and proud.

She doesn't want people to know all her, like what what she would say her dirty laundry or open up a can of worms because even now it just makes me feel icky like just knowing that I'm about to like portray her in ways that like I'm just I'm scared.

Yeah, I really am

Hi

Can you hear me?

I'm recording the call now

She was like, oh call me tomorrow and you're lunch quick.

I said no I need to talk to you right now.

It's just like I found some stuff.

So the thing is, I was doing some research, and the researcher found this

document.

It was a case in 1988.

It was sealed.

So this is the thing, this is what freaked me out.

So they didn't.

So

it said that the defendant had sexual contact with J.W., a person less than 12 years old.

I mean, I don't mimic

this.

And then it said it was was a granddaughter.

It was his granddaughter.

And

she was three in 1988.

I remember you calling me right after you talked to your grandmother.

And you were like in a different frame of mind.

Yep.

That's right there.

Flame is that.

It was a case, a legal case.

And then we were thinking it was around my mom's right.

And it said his granddaughter.

his i'm the only one with those initials i'm the only one that would have been at that age around that time oh my god and i said that's sure like it's i mean it's not like it's some another william dishman it's the same one you know and it's also like you basically having the same experience your mother had

yeah but i was three years old

he i basically he was doing stuff to me in the car and i guess no one saw the case is this and this but that's my initials and it's the same age I was that year.

And I was, and it was crazy because

they saw my initials.

And I did, they're like,

oh my god.

When I listened to the audio, I think at that moment, I was just in this.

I was in a high as like being a journalist, as discovered this information and separate from Janisha, the person.

And I think like maybe a couple days later, it just hit me that, you know, it was about possibly like a three-year-old me, a three-year-old JW

just makes my stomach have knots in it.

Yeah.

I think I know what you mean when you're in journalist mode, you get that like, I found a document, I got to the truth, and I'm going to confront this person with the truth.

Yep.

both trina and my grandmother were just like no it would just and it never happened like i don't maybe it was a different jw like we they was just very adamant that like they don't remember that they don't know where i got that from i want to say like my grandmother and trina's in denial but i also just want to believe them i want to believe maybe they just genuinely don't know yeah but i'm like someone out there knows because someone filed a police report and then it got dismissed.

Yeah.

I mean,

maybe too because I'm a mom, but like, it's just some things I can't, like, I don't read about with kids.

If something happens to a kid or if I see a child in need, it just, it breaks me.

And I think

like

three, just something, the fact that this kid was three years old, I, I, it just, just does something inside of me.

I just, I don't know.

I mean, maybe

this whole project, I thought, okay,

you're getting to the heart of the thing.

Like this, you're trying to clear the air, like,

but you're not ready for this one yet.

I've never imagined in a million years that I would ever find something like that.

Yeah.

Not with me.

I think the other thing, because I'm like, okay,

you don't know for sure what happened to three-year-old Janisha, but

at least for that three-year-old JW,

like you can just speak up for them.

You can tell their story.

And I think that's the way that I can try to come to terms with it.

But I don't know.

It's just not something I, I don't, I haven't accepted it yet.

Maybe it's naive on everyone's part to think like, oh, I'm going to go on this journey.

It's going to get all wrapped up

and I'll be done now.

Like the story's out.

I talked about it.

Move on with my life.

Like when does anything ever work that way?

I know, yeah.

It's like life is just always the gray.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jocelyn Frank and edited by Claudina Bade.

It was engineered by Rob Smirciak and fact-checked by Michelle Soraka.

The managing editor of Atlantic Audio is Andrea Valdez.

If you or someone you know are looking for support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

Also, to read Janisha's full story, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Hannah Rosen, and we'll be back with new episodes every Thursday.