Edge of Smoke
Copyright © 2024
by Karlyle Tomms
All rights reserved
Fresh Ink Group
An Imprint of:
The Fresh Ink Group, LLC
1021 Blount Avenue #931
Guntersville, AL 35976
Email: info@FreshInkGroup.com
Edition 1.0 2024
Cover design by Stephen Geez / FIG
Cover art by Anik / FIG
Book design by Amit Dey / FIG
Associate publisher Beem Weeks / FIG
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and except for brief
quotations in critical reviews or articles, no portion of this book’s content may be
stored in any medium, transmitted in any form, used in whole or part, or sourced
for derivative works such as videos, television, and motion pictures, without prior
written permission from the publisher.
Cataloging-in-Publication Recommendations:
FIC073000 FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Transgender
FIC043000 FICTION / Coming of Age
FIC030000 FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023922153
ISBN-13: 978-1-958922-65-1 Softcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-958922-66-8 Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-958922-67-5 Ebooks
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all those who have been marginalized
and mistreated simply because of who they are. It is dedicated to
those forced to play a role rather than being allowed to love themselves
and be themselves. It is dedicated to all who have felt unloved, ridiculed,
rejected, hated, and abused simply for being who they are. This
book is dedicated to the unconditional love that needs to be shared
with all people and to those who genuinely come to understand that
love is the bottom line, for this is a book about love.
Stephanie's Note
All I wanted was to be myself and live the life I knew was mine
to live. Yet, almost everyone around me tried to mold me into
something else. Only one person initially accepted me without trying
to change or force me into a mold where others thought I belonged.
Only one person stood by me and gave me the courage to be myself,
no matter what others thought about me or tried to do to me. I gained
strength from her love, compassion, guidance, and encouragement.
She didn’t try to make me into something she wanted me to be, but
she taught me right from wrong and the difference between love and
control. I also gained strength from what all the others tried to force
me into. I gained strength from what I went through and how I was
punished for not fitting the mold they wanted to force me to accede.
I gained strength from abuse not only by those who tried to force me
into being something or someone who I was not meant to be but by
those who sought only to use me as satisfaction for their debauchery
and malice.
For my entire life, I fought to learn how to love myself because the
abuse and the constant barrage of attempts to change me taught me
that I was worth less than other human beings, that there was something
wrong with me, and that I was an aberration of nature as well
as an abomination to the church. They were not required to love me.
They were not required to approve of me, nor were they even required
to accept me. All they needed to do was allow me to live without being
tormented for not becoming what they wanted me to be. Initially, only
one person, one soul of an angel, stood by me and taught me that I was
worth loving and that I deserved my place on earth regardless of what
others might think of me. That one person taught me I am a certified
member of humanity, just like everyone else. I deserve the respect,
honor, and dignity that every human being deserves; for we are all
part of one humanity. Regardless of our differences, unique traits, or
life course, we are all worth valuing and loving as children of the same
creator.
Humanity is like smoke. There are varying levels of density and
shades as smoke dissipates into and becomes the air, but how do you
know when smoke ceases to be smoke and becomes the air? Smoke is
only a temporary density of specific molecules that soon fades into the
mix of molecules we call the atmosphere. Like smoke, we all eventually
ascend into the hidden world of existence beyond this life, where
there is no definition of one from the other.
How do you define the edge of smoke? How do you determine
what part of the smoke differs from another? Some portions may seem
darker than others, but those portions are still smoke. The lighter portions
where smoke begins to fade into the air are still the same smoke,
and when smoke becomes the air, it dissipates into and becomes one
with the indistinguishable whole. The eyes alone cannot discern when
smoke blends into the air. Even though the smoke appears separate
from the air, it dissolves into the whole and is no longer recognized
as distinct or different. Human beings may also seem different from
each other, but they are still all human beings. In the end, we all blend
into one unified human race despite all the variations that occur. Ultimately,
we are all more the same than we are different. In truth, we
are more united than separate. In the meantime, human beings keep
wanting to create niches and roles that they try to force others into
because it helps them to feel safe in their own assigned role, or they
resent not being able to break free from their engrained expectations of
what it means to be yourself, what it means to be a man, what it means
to be a woman, what it means to be religious or even a human being.
When we finally have a society that fully embraces our differences
and uniqueness rather than fearing and hating it, allowing people to
live peacefully and be who they are without interference and oppression,
we will finally have a civilized society.
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these
my brothers, you did it to me. ” (Matthew 25:40)
DISCLAIMER
There are words and phrases in this book that would be considered
offensive by today’s standards. However, the terminology was common
during the time frame of the story. These words and phrases are not
intended to be offensive toward any person or social group but to portray
the time’s language accurately. An example would be that the term
transgender did not come into common use until the 1990s.
All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to
any person or persons other than the author is purely coincidental as
these characters are not drawn from any person known to the author.
If I have misunderstood or misrepresented anyone or anything
within this writing, please accept my sincere apology, as no part of this
story is intended to be offensive to anyone.
NOTE: Stephanie, the protagonist of this novel, was introduced as a
character in my previous book, The Calling Dream, as each story presents
a character who will become the protagonist of another novel in
the Soul Encounters series.
C h a p t e r 1
Hurting Is Living
My so-called mother was a whore. There is no way to deny it. She
would fuck anyone for a cigarette. You don’t want to know what
she would do for a heroin needle in her arm. My wounded heart had no
sympathy for her. The abandoned child within my growing skin could
not fathom the difference between malice and violent anguish. As an
adult, I realized she was also a product of abuse and neglect. Her eyes
were not always hollow because of drugs. Her eyes were first made hollow
because her soul had been dug out of her childhood and discarded
like kitchen garbage scraped from the sink. Unlike me, she had no one.
She had no real friends and no one to turn to. She grew up half-black
in southern Missouri, a part of the country where almost everyone is
white. Growing up in the 1950s, she had nowhere to turn from the
torment she experienced at home, in the community, at school, or any
playground. The white half of her still could not save her from the
word, nigger. She learned to isolate, withdraw into herself, and suck
any morsel of satisfaction she could find, no matter where she found it.
Unfortunately, she found it in drugs.
I don’t know that she ever tried to be a real mother to me, but it
was not unusual that I was left unattended while growing up in the St.
Louis slums of Pruitt Igoe in the 1960s. Even when I was very small,
she trusted me to our apartment and the Pruitt Igoe grounds while she
ignored the danger, the acrid stench, and the selfish wheedle of the
slums where society pitched the unwanted. The vast majority of the
time, I played alone with the few toys she might have picked up at some
yard sale or out of a garbage can. I dared not go out onto the grounds
where I faced dangers from many instead of the one with whom I
lived. My toys were likely broken before I ever got them, somebody
else’s discards. Even for Christmas, if there were anything, I would
likely receive something already worn and misused. My so-called
grandmother, from down in the Ozarks, might send me a Christmas
card with a dollar in it, but that was quickly snatched from my hand
for “safe keeping.”
It was not easy to be a child, either in our assigned cubicle or the
whole of Pruitt Igoe, and I didn’t associate any more than I had to.
Even if we had been entirely black, there were few places where danger
did not overhang, like clouds full of lightning. Pruitt Igoe was
unsafe, and my so-called mother was a light-skinned biracial. I was
even lighter-skinned than her. I am not sure that she didn’t resent me
for that. Maybe my father was white, but I didn’t know who he was.
Our light skin was unambiguous in the almost all-black slums, and
sometimes, the hatred that white folks commonly cast onto blacks got
dumped back on us in a pecking order of resentment. Those who feel
the most devalued try to find someone to disrespect even more than
themselves. It probably didn’t help that my so-called mother had a
penchant for bedding white men.
Pruitt Igoe was a place where white society could shove away all
those they didn’t want to accept. My so-called mother and I were
scapegoats for that, called high yellow, redbone, and other things that
were not as kind. We were easy targets for rage that often did not find
its way back to where it started. We were neither white nor black, misfits
in either culture.
I took a lot when I was growing up. I took a lot from many people
of both races. I took a lot in my own home and from the asshole my
so-called mother used to farm me out to. He did things to me that
she never wanted to admit, even though she had to have known. So, I
was tough. I had to be tough to survive. Everyone always told me that
boys had to be tough, that I should buck up, and that I shouldn’t cry.
I was taught that real men, boys growing up to be men, take it and
keep going. I did all that, but I was never a boy. I may have been born
with male genitals, but I have never been and never will be male. I was
strong anyway. I may have been born in a boy’s body, but I have always
been female, and tough is something that lots of girls have to be, especially
in places like Pruitt Igoe.
My so-called mother could not stand that I was a girl. She hated my
femininity and tortured me for it every time she witnessed it. Somehow,
it was the straw on the camel’s back of her shame and self-loathing.
That she hated herself was evident, addictions notwithstanding,
but her addictions were her way of numbing the anguish she had carried
all her life. Within her was the insidious concept that, no matter
what, she could never be worth as much as others and never be whole
or happy, and she passed that down to me. My femininity was only
another mark of shame embedded into her graphically scarred soul.
The first time I saw her with a needle in her arm, I must have been
about six years old. I had been playing on my bedroom floor with a
three-wheeled toy truck, rolling it over to an old shoe box that I pretended
was a beauty shop. I wanted dolls, but she would never give me
dolls, and if I happened to get hold of one, she would grab it out of my
hands and scream, “How many times do I have to tell you, boys, don’t
play with fucking dolls!” If she found them, she would pull the heads
and arms off them and throw them in the trash. I tried to make sure
she didn’t see them.
On that particular day, I had been left in our apartment alone. I
had a mangled Barbie in my beauty shop shoe box, but I quickly stashed
it when I heard the click in the lock of our front door. I resented her
for what she did to my dolls, but that was only one in a collection of
resentments that hardened into hatred, which I carried for much of
my life. For a while, I hated her viciously and wanted to kill her. As I
grew older, I refused to call her Mom, Mother, or any facsimile of that.
Her name was Mable, but I wouldn’t even use that without attaching
the word bitch. I called her fake mom, so-called mother, Mable-bitch, and
occasionally - cunt, when she couldn’t hear me. Over the years, I learned
that my hate harmed me more than her. So, after many years and a lot
of therapy, I finally stopped hating my so-called mother, but that came
long after she was no longer in my life.
After the lock clicked, I heard the front door squeak and heard her
come in with some man—not unusual. There were always people, primarily
men, in and out of our apartment. If she wasn’t buying drugs,
she was trying to deal drugs but was never very good at dealing. She
used more than she sold, and more than once, that got her in a lot of
trouble. I became accustomed to seeing bruises and busted lips, but
she was lucky that was all she got. Usually, she whored for drugs and
semi-kept it from me, but I knew there were things she did with men
in her room, and it was not unusual to see some man crossing the living
room buttoning his shirt, trying to pull up his pants or slip his feet
back into his shoes. I never really knew exactly what happened in her
room until that day.
At first, I paid no more attention than usual and went back to
playing, assuming that she would not catch me with what was left of
my doll once she went through the living room to her room. The usual
sounds of adult banter came through thin walls, but this time, the sound
was not as muffled, and I could hear what they were saying. Usually, the
door to her bedroom was closed, so only muffled sounds could be heard.
However, the unmistakable sounds of adult conversation were evident
that day. I didn’t understand anything they were talking about, something
about a horse and needing a fix. I had never heard that man’s voice
before. Sometimes, the same men would come around again, but it was
not unusual that a man would come through our apartment and never
be seen again. None of them had ever stayed for long.
“Come on, Daddy, don’t get hairy about it,” she said. “Momma just
needs a little help with a do-up. I’ll do anything you want. Come on,
baby. Momma needs a little more than money.”
I heard him say something about her being a sleepwalker and that
she needed to quit the brown sugar. I heard her pleading, begging like
she was terrified that he might walk out. The banter went on for a few
minutes. Then I heard him saying, “Okay, okay, okay.”
Hesitantly, I went to investigate. I was very careful about it. I learned
very young never to disturb her and definitely never call for her. When
I called for her, if she came at all, she was in a rage, and her rage was
something I didn’t want to face. I carefully peeked into her bedroom
from my doorway across the living room corner. We had a two-bedroom
flat, and both bedrooms opened onto the living room. I had no idea
why her door was left open that day. Maybe she had been too drunk to
remember to close it, but the sounds were more evident because of it.
I walked silently and cautiously across the corner of the living room
to the door of her room. Then I stopped at the doorway, hid behind
the door facing, and peeked around. I saw her sitting at the edge of
her bed, an old mattress on the floor shoved up under the window. She
had a rubber thing around her arm and was sticking a needle into the
inside of her elbow. She didn’t even notice me. Often, I wasn’t noticed.
I was more like an object in her way than her child, and as long as I
stayed out of her way, she didn’t seem to mind too much.
She pulled the needle from her arm and tossed it and the rubber
thing onto the floor. The white man with her stood by, watching as
she did all this, unbuttoning his shirt and loosening his belt. When
she had finished, he asked her if she was ready. She pulled her skirt off
and scooted back on her mattress with mismatched sheets and blankets
strewn about. She glanced at the door, and I darted back behind the
wall. I stood there for a long time, trembling with fear that she might
have seen me and would come out raging, but she never came out.
When, at last, I peeked around and watched, the man’s pants were
off, and he was thrusting his pelvis into her pelvis. She seemed to have
almost passed out and barely noticed what he was doing. I felt a dull
shock, a numb emptiness as I peeked. I watched the way one might
watch a coffin lowered slowly into the dark ground. The man looked
up, saw me, got up, walked naked across the room, and closed the
door. Startled, I darted quickly back to my room.
A few minutes later, I heard a deep and muffled groan. A little
while after that, the man came to the door of my room as he was
tucking in a Hawaiian shirt that was buttoned only halfway up. His
thick chest hair crawled around the edges of the thin fabric. I pulled
back into the corner because I was deeply frightened of most adults,
especially men. Almost all of them would hurt me.
He quietly strolled toward me. “Hey, how are you?” he gently said.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Would you come over here?”
He made several attempts to coax me before I hesitantly did as
he instructed and walked up to him. He placed his thick hand on my
head and muffled my short hair. I looked up at him, then back toward
my so-called mother’s room. I didn’t know what to say. At the time, I
didn’t know what any of it meant. I only knew that I felt almost sickly
strange. I had never seen the man before, nor had I ever seen adults
doing what had just happened in my so-called mother’s room. I felt
intimidated, but I somehow knew I was safe with him. I don’t know
how I knew since I had never been safe around any of my so-called
mother’s acquaintances, but I knew he was one of the few adults who
would not hurt me. He was different. His demeanor was different.
The man reached down, placed huge hands beneath my armpits,
picked me up, and I allowed it without struggling. He put his arm
under my ass to support me, pulled me to him, and hugged me. I was
small for my age, and he could pick me up as though I might have been
a four-year-old. No man had ever hugged me before, and not many
women. Any man I had encountered had either ignored me or abused
me. My so-called mother never hugged me unless it was a show for
the cops or child protective services. This man felt warm, and the hug
felt comforting. The scent of woodsy cologne filled my nostrils, and
I turned my nose to his neck for a better whiff. Before that, I don’t
remember being genuinely hugged by anyone except Miss Mattie, my
friend who lived down the hall. Her hugs were warm and affectionate.
This man’s hug also felt affectionate, but it was a very different experience
from hugging Miss Mattie.
I had confusing, odd feelings about this stranger. The touch of
his skin was different. His body was different, thick and muscular,
unlike Miss Mattie’s skinny frame. It felt reassuring. He had a different
energy, a distinct essence of protection and strength. It was not
at all like the essence of a woman. The only way I had ever previously
been touched by any man was violent and abusive, but somehow, I felt
guarded by this stranger. Despite what I had just seen him do to my
so-called mother, I felt safe.
He carried me to our ripped and raged second-hand sofa, sat down,
placed me on his knee, and put his arm behind my back. There was
nothing else to sit on in our living room except that old sofa. Our
decrepit black and white TV sat on top of a packing crate on the opposite
side of the room. There were no pictures on the walls; the only
thing that adorned our apartment was a clock hanging on a nail beside
my so-called mother’s bedroom door, but that had fallen off the wall.
“So,” he said, smiling. “You live here?”
I nodded my head.
“What’s your name?”
“They call me Stephen,” I whispered, “but I don’t like that name.”
“Oh, your name is Stephen,” he goaded with a deep, echoing voice.
“That’s a good, manly name, isn’t it?”
I said nothing. He didn’t ask why I didn’t like my name, and I
didn’t tell him. Besides, Mable-bitch had wailed the hell out of me
when she heard me say that I preferred to be called Stephanie.
“So, Stephen,” he said, reaching his other hand into his opposite
pocket and pulling out a clean brown wallet. “Do you think you could
do something for me?”
I stared at the wallet. Then, he nudged me off his knee to stand in
front of him. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar
bill and a five-dollar bill. He first handed me the twenty.
“Now when your Momma comes to—ah—wakes up.” He sweetened
his deep voice. “This is for her. You make sure she gets it. Okay?”
I nodded. Then he handed the five-dollar bill to me.
“This one I want you to keep, just a little bonus for your troubles.”
He placed the bill in my palm and folded his huge, warm hand over my
fingers to close them around it. His hand felt tender and reassuring. I
loved the feeling of it. No one, except Miss Mattie, had ever touched
me with such tenderness, but her hands were scrawny and thin.
“Now don’t tell your Momma I gave you this. It is our little secret,
and who knows, there might be more where that one came from someday.
You just give her the twenty, keep the five, and that’ll be our little
secret. If she doesn’t remember, tell her Mike left her the twenty for
services rendered. Can you remember that? Services rendered?”
I nodded.
He got up, placed the wallet in his hip pocket, and walked to the
door. He turned back to me just before he left and said, “I might come
back to see you someday. In the meantime, take good care of your
momma. She’s gonna need it.”
He winked at me and walked out the door.
After Mike left, I returned to my so-called mother’s bedroom and
peeked inside. She was still lying flat on her back, mostly naked and
unconscious. Maybe what she wanted from heron was to be unconscious.
Perhaps her feelings and experiences were so overwhelming
that she didn’t want to feel anything at all. Maybe it was her way of
being dead before she was dead.
I knew to leave her alone. I learned early in life that the last thing
I wanted to do was disturb her when she was out. I probably wouldn’t
have been able to rouse her if I had tried, but I dared not try. Too many
times, I had been pulling on her arm, trying to wake her, when the
other arm came hard across my head, knocking the crap out of me.
I returned to my room and placed the five-dollar bill on my tattered
dresser beside the door. I hid the twenty in my hiding place, where
the baseboard pulled loose from the wall at the corner of my bedroom.
There was a little hole in the plaster behind it. So, I could stuff small
things in there, and Mable-bitch would never know. I had learned to
take care of myself. There was often no money in the house to buy
anything to eat, but I sometimes lifted a bill from Mabel’s purse if
she had it. Most of the time, she didn’t, and she never knew if she had
money or she didn’t. When I had a stash, I could buy something to
eat if I could get Miss Mattie to take me to the store. I hid the food I
bought, too. If I didn’t hide it and she asked, I would say Miss Mattie
gave it to us. Besides, it was not unusual for Miss Mattie to bring a casserole
or something. Miss Mattie knew how my so-called mother was
and always shared what she had. She knew my so-called mother would
trade food stamps or commodities for drugs, and we were soon without.
So, I learned to hold back. If we went through what we had too soon,
there might be a few days when there was nothing to eat. I learned to
manage my hunger. Later in life, that helped me keep my thin, womanly
figure. I learned to starve myself before I was seven years old.
After I hid the money, I continued to play with whatever I could
find. One of my favorite games was pretending I was a princess in a
grand magical kingdom where the king and queen were both kind and
gentle people like Miss Mattie. In my imaginary kingdom, I had all
the best new toys, including Barbie dolls that had all their arms and
legs and all the accessories. I could go out into the castle courtyard and
play with magical creatures like dogs and cats that could talk or pink
goats that could fly, and I always had the most beautiful things, the
finest outfits and shoes, and the most wonderful delicious things to eat.
After I met Mike, he became the king of my fanciful kingdom, and
Miss Mattie was the queen.
I would drape a sheet around when I played and pretend it was a
sequined gown. I cut up the centers of toilet paper rolls, colored them
with crayons, and ran string through them to make my necklace. I
used some rusty scissors I found to cut around the corner of a cardboard
box and make a tiara. Although she had some costume jewelry
and a few nice outfits, I didn’t dare use any of my so-called mother’s
stuff. She would snap into a rage over the littlest thing, and it only
took getting caught one time using one of her blouses as a dress to realize
that I should never do that again. I did my best to stay out of her
way. When I was little, I was terrified of her rages. As I grew older, I
discovered I could rage just as well as she could, and I began giving it
back. Our screaming, violent fights became more like street fights than
something between a mother and her child.
Several hours after Mike left, I heard her stir in the other bedroom.
Then, she got up, staggered to my room, and stood leaning on
the door facing staring at me. She was still only partially dressed, but
her arms were now in the sleeves of her blouse. It didn’t matter. She
rarely bothered to dress around the apartment anyway, and sometimes
she sat around totally nude, especially in the summer when it was hot,
and we had only a fan to cool us. When I realized she was at the
door and looked up, she hissed, “What the hell are you looking at?” A
smirking grin stretched her mouth.
My so-called mother could have been a beautiful woman, but
she ruined any chance of that. Drugs put bags under her eyes and
deepened the sockets. The sinking skin of her face created craters
around her cheekbones. Most of the time, she never ate enough and
looked more like a starving dog than a human being. My so-called
mother had short, curly hair. She liked to keep it cut short, almost
like a man, because “I don’t have time to deal with that shit!” She
usually cut it herself rather than waste a dime on a coiffure when
the money could be devoted to drugs. She also clipped my hair
close to the scalp for the same reasons. Sometimes, she wore a hat
“Like my momma did.” She could look pretty when dressing up
and putting on some makeup and jewelry, but that was usually only
when there was a family services meeting, or she was trying to hook
up with a new trick.
Her mother was white trailer trash from the Southern Missouri
Ozarks near the Arkansas border, and her father had been black. She
grew up in the primarily white Ozarks down at the south end of Missouri,
and because she was biracial, she didn’t have a very good time
of it. There were only a few black folks in the area, and when they
married, they often had to marry a white person or someone out of
the region if they didn’t want to marry kin. There were some second cousin
weddings, I’m sure. In the 1930s through the 1950s, there was
a separate cemetery for black people outside of town because they
weren’t allowed to bury a loved one next to a white person. At that
time, there were still sundown laws where no black person was allowed
to be seen in town after dark. The only white people who would associate
with them had already been cast out by their own. Mable-bitch said
my so-called grandma and grandpa were married, but I never knew
my grandpa. My so-called grandma told me he died, but Mable-bitch
said he was in prison because he had killed some man in a bar fight. I
never knew what was true and what wasn’t. It seemed like Mable-bitch
would rather lie than tell the truth, and often, a story didn’t match
itself from one telling to the next.
My so-called grandma was meaner than Mable-bitch, and I was
thankful we didn’t visit very often. She wouldn’t come to St. Louis
because she couldn’t stand the idea of a big city and being around all
the traffic and people. I had not seen her more than two or three times
in my entire life, which was fine with me. She lived in a nasty old
trailer on some back road in the sticks. I didn’t like visiting because it
was filthier than our apartment at Pruitt Igo, and she always got in a
fight with Mable-bitch. She would also slap the hell out of me, sometimes
right out of the blue, just because she felt like it.
I stopped asking about my father. Mable-bitch would just say, “I
fucked a lot of men. How am I supposed to know?”
I rarely said anything back to her. I was too scared to say the wrong
thing when I was little because it might make her rage. She would
scream, call me terrible names, throw things, or pick up whatever was
near and hit me with it. So, I didn’t say much to her at all. You might
think I would become beaten down and timid. Instead, I built my
own rage that could stand up to just about anyone or anything. I built
a blaze of burning fury around my tender heart that almost anyone
could fall victim to, even for the slightest thing. I could cuss as big as
she could, like a tobacco-chewing truck driver, before I was eight years
old. She taught me well. As I got older, I gave the rage right back to
her claws and teeth, but when I was little, I kept my mouth shut most
of the time because she could still hurt me.
After standing at my doorway for several minutes, glaring at me,
she suddenly noticed the five-dollar bill on the dresser. She crossed to
it, snatched it from the dresser top, and screamed, “Where the hell did
you get this? What the fuck! Are you stealing my fucking money?”
“Mike,” I said quickly. “This guy named Mike said to give it to
you—for services rendered.”
“Mike?” She smirked as though not initially remembering who he
was. “Oh … oh, yeah … told him he could fuck me for twenty bucks
and a hit of dope. Lying mother fucker! Bastard stiffed me … in more
ways than one.” She giggled a little, apparently thinking that she had
made a joke. “Fucker comes around again, see what he ain’t—gonna—
get!” She folded the five-dollar bill lengthwise over her middle finger
and waved it around her crotch like a magic wand. Then, she shoved it
in her blouse pocket and said, “You hungry?”
I nodded. The truth is, I had not eaten all day. Lots of times when
she was stoned, I could easily go the whole day without eating anything
unless I snuck out and went up the hall to Miss Mattie or I had
food stashed somewhere. Miss Mattie would always feed me, but my so-called
mother didn’t like for me to go up there. I think she might have
been suspicious of Miss Mattie. She might have been afraid that Miss
Mattie had reported her to protective services before, and maybe she did,
but Miss Mattie also saved both our asses on multiple occasions, mainly
by feeding us. Who knows if she turned my so-called mother in? Still,
there had been so many times that child protective services should have
taken me out of there but didn’t. When they finally did, it was too late to
have prevented the toxic effects that would haunt me for life.
“Come on.” She said.
She turned, headed toward the kitchen, and I followed. We had a
little galley kitchen with crappy cheap appliances. She didn’t actually
cook. So, the oven was most often used to store things. Sometimes,
she would pull all that stuff out and bake something, but most of the
time, it was just another space to stuff crap or hide drugs. We used the
burners on top of the stove to heat canned soup sometimes, and if her
fortune were to shine on me, she would scramble some eggs. Most of
the time, I just got bologna or hot dogs eaten cold from the refrigerator,
if there were any. If I was lucky, I might find some bread. I learned
to eat it, mold and all, rather than letting it go to waste. I didn’t go
to my stash unless I knew she would be asleep, away, passed out, or I
couldn’t get something from Miss Mattie.
She went to the kitchen and began digging through cabinets. Some
cabinet doors had been ripped off the hinges, and all the cabinets were
past due for a coat of paint. Roaches scrambled. She pulled out half a
bag of macaroni, threw it on the counter, and went to the refrigerator.
“We ain’t got shit!” she exclaimed as the refrigerator light spread an
alien glow onto her face.
She grabbed a bottle of catchup and a bottle of mustard from inside
the refrigerator door. One slimy hotdog was left, and it was way past
time to throw it out. She pulled that out and threw it on the counter
as well. Then she put a pan of water to boil and threw the macaroni
in. She squirted catchup and mustard into the bottom of another pan,
tossed on black pepper and salt, and mixed in water. She cut the hotdog
into little pieces and threw that in, too. After the macaroni had
cooked, she drained the hot water into the sink using a pan lid to hold
the pasta. She picked up the little pieces of macaroni that fell into the
sink and threw those back into the pan. Then she dumped the ketchup,
mustard, and hotdog mix on top of the macaroni and stirred it in the
pan. She put some of it into a little bowl and handed it to me with a
spoon and a glass of water.
“There you go—enjoy,” she said as though she had just made a fivestar
dinner.
I took it back to my room and sat on the floor to eat. She grabbed
what was left in the pan and carried it to the beat-up couch in the
living room. I heard her flip on the TV and twist the knob, trying to
find a channel. What came out of our old television, with the crappy
rabbit ear antenna, was often more static than entertainment. Even
the wads of foil wrapped around the rabbit ears didn’t help much, but
she watched it anyway. She watched it spellbound, especially when
stoned. Sometimes, she would smoke a joint while she watched television.
I guess it made the static more entertaining. One night, I saw her
smoking a joint, gazing at the smoke rising off the tip. She watched it
like it was the most fascinating thing on earth. Then, as if talking to
some unknown entity or apparition in the empty room, she said, “You
ever notice there is no edge to smoke?” Her eyes rolled around the
smoke patterns as they rose and dissipated into the room. “There ain’t
no edge. You can’t ever tell where the air begins and the smoke ends.
Smoke or air, air or smoke? You can’t tell.”
When I finished my little bowl of macaroni, I took the dish
back to the kitchen and set it in the sink, which I could barely
reach. Then I returned to the living room and asked, “Can I go see
Miss Mattie?”
She looked around the room for the clock that had fallen off the
wall. “What the fuck time is it?” she asked.
When she realized the clock was lying on the floor with the battery
popped out, she exclaimed, “Fuck!” Then she got up and went to her
bedroom to look at her alarm clock, plugged in, and set on the window
sill. She only needed an alarm to get me up and ready for school, but
even with that, she overslept more often than not.
“2:42?” I heard her say. “Fuck! It’s dark outside. Baby, Miss Mattie
is gonna be asleep. It’s too late to be going down there.”
Disappointed, I turned back toward my room.
“You should be asleep too,” She said as she returned to the living
room. “Go get in bed.”
My bed was a few blankets folded on the floor with a sheet over
them and a rank and stinking worn-out pillow.
“I don’t feel sleepy,” I pleaded as I walked toward my room.
“I don’t fucking care,” she exclaimed. “Go lay down.”
“Okay,” I replied. “But I don’t think I can sleep.”
“If it wasn’t so fucking far, I’d call Jake and have him come get
you,” she smirked. “You could stay with him. You wanna go see Jake?”
Jake didn’t live at Pruitt Igoe but in an old house a few miles away.
My so-called mother didn’t have a car, and the phone was often cut off
because she didn’t pay the bill. Sometimes, she would hook up with
somebody who agreed to drop me off at Jake’s. Sometimes, Jake would
just show up and ask her if she needed him to babysit me for a while.
Sometimes, she would borrow somebody’s car or call Jake if she had
remembered to pay the bill. She would get rid of me as often as she
could. Jake never hesitated. He was always happy to see me, but I had
good reason for never being happy to see him.
“NO!” I exclaimed
She knew I hated Jake and had to have known he did things to me,
but she didn’t care. He was some man she had befriended, probably
over a drug deal. He offered to babysit for her, and she didn’t want to
admit why this strange unmarried man would offer to take care of her
kid so often. He told her he loved children, but I doubt he ever told her
what he really meant by that.
I hated Jake. He was a skinny redneck with stingy thin mousy
brown hair and arms that looked too long for his body. He had a thin
nose and beady green eyes that sunk back into his skull like the eyes
of a demon peeking from inside. He was about the same age as my
so-called mother and only wanted to keep me because he wanted to
do things to me—things that sickened me. It still brings disgust to my
memory. He did things that hurt. He liked to hurt me.
When he brought me back home, my so-called mother never asked
why I had cuts, blisters, and bruises around my ass and between my
legs. She would smear a little salve on it and say, “Baby, you got to be
more careful.” She never questioned anything Jake did, and Jake was a
sick bastard, to say the least. It seemed like the more he hurt me, the
more he enjoyed it. He took pictures of me, too. Sometimes, he put the
camera on a tripod and took pictures of himself doing things to me.
Sometimes, he would take photos of me with other kids and make us
do things with each other. If I could have found a way to kill him, I
would have, but I was too little back then to accomplish something like
that. Sometimes, I wanted just as much to kill my so-called mother.
Thoughts of murder should not be in a child’s mind, but when you
grow up in torment, it can seem like your only option other than killing
yourself, and I thought of that, too.
There was this older black boy named Ronza from Pruitt Igoe, and
Jake made me do stuff with him, too. He was maybe about fourteen
or fifteen and much bigger than I was. I don’t know how Jake teamed
up with Ronza, but often, Ronza would be waiting for us in Jake’s car
when he picked me up. Ronza seemed to like it. He liked it as much or
more than Jake did, and then, if I weren’t very careful, Ronza would
corner me somewhere around Pruitt Igoe and do what he wanted.
I started hating Jake early on. I was about three or four years old
when my so-called mother started leaving me with him. It was convenient
for her. She didn’t have to deal with me. She could get rid of
me and do whatever she wanted. She didn’t care what Jake was doing.
Sometimes, she would leave me at his house for two or three days. It
never mattered to her as long as I was out of the way. At least the ugly
mother fucker fed me.
I was thinking about Jake and how much I hated him when my so-called
mother brought my attention back to the moment.
“I’m sure Jake would like to see you.” She grinned.
“I’m going to go lay down,” I said.
“Okay,” she teased, “but you know Jake is always open to taking
care of you.”
“I’m going to go lay down,” I said again. Then I went to my room
and curled up on the blankets. I stuffed the thin pillow under my head,
closed my eyes, and pretended to be exploring all the different rooms
in my princess castle. Soon, I fell asleep.