Miss Munroe patted me on my back, and handed me a tissue from her purse. “I think there may be something we can do,” she said. Miss Munroe explained that I could get my own public assistance—two hundred and thirty-five dollars in welfare, plus food stamps—if I became an emancipated minor. “It means your mother would no longer be legally responsible for you,” she added. “The benefits would go directly to you.”
She helped me fill out the paperwork, and a few months later I packed up all my stuff in trash bags and dragged Mama’s dirty yellow sofa to my very own place, an efficiency across the yard from Mama’s. It wasn’t the luxury accommodations I dreamed of, but for the first time in years when I turned on the faucet the water was hot.
Derrick must have heard I moved out from Mama. Because I’d only been in my new place a couple of weeks when he started coming back around. I tried to be strong. “I don’t need your cheating ass no more,” I said, standing in the doorway with Ashley on my hip. But he cocked his head to the side and gave me a sly smile.
“C’mon, Rabbit,” he said. “You ain’t gonna let me see my baby? I thought we was a family.”
Before I knew what was happening, he reached out his hand and touched my arm. It was gentle, like how you’d pet a sick puppy, but I felt like he’d set me on fire. My neck grew hot and my palms began to sweat. Then he was leaning forward, whispering, “You know I love you,” with his warm breath in my ear. I hadn’t felt good in so long. With my heart pounding, I opened the door and let him in.
The nurse at Grady Hospital had given me a box of condoms when they sent me home with Ashley. “You’re young,” she’d said matter-of-factly. “You can go back to school with one baby. You don’t need to have another.”
I didn’t want a second baby. But every time I handed Derrick a condom, he laughed in my face. “Look what I’m working with,” he said, waving his hand in front of his wiener like he was a Price Is Right spokesmodel and his junk was a brand-new washer-dryer set. “No way that thing’s gonna fit.”
Six months after Ashley was born, I was pregnant again.
I tried to handle the situation as best I could. I knew I’d need more money, so I got some fake ID that said I was eighteen—old enough to work—and got a job waitressing the overnight shift at the Huddle House. I paid Mama ten dollars to watch Ashley. But going to school during the day and working all night, and being pregnant, was just too much. I dropped out of eighth grade. The next month, I got fired from the Huddle House for stealing five dollars out of the till. All the waitresses were doing it, but I got caught.
My son Nikia was born in November. I was fifteen with two babies under the age of two. I wanted to look for another job but Mama said Ashley was too damn big for her to watch anymore. My welfare wouldn’t stretch the whole month. I started falling behind on the rent and the bills. It felt like I was drowning.
One night I lay on my yellow sofa with both my babies knocked out on top of me. Ashley started fussing first, that set off Nikia. Then both of them were crying their eyeballs out. I didn’t know what else to do so I closed my eyes and called on God: “Dear Heavenly Father, I know I haven’t been to church in a while, but I really need your help . . .” I prayed for strength and guidance. But mostly I prayed for money. “Please God, just enough to pay the rent, buy some Pampers, get my hair done . . .” I knew if God didn’t come through soon, I was gonna be out on the road collecting aluminum cans for change.
I was hoping God would deliver me a paper bag full of cash. That’s how I pictured my blessing coming down. But instead He sent Derrick knocking on my door.
Derrick walked into my place with a big-ass smile. When I asked him why he was so happy, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. It was more money than I’d seen anybody have since the roll of bills Granddaddy kept down his pants. Derrick peeled off a bunch of tens and twenties and handed them to me. “Here’s a little change for you and the babies,” he said.
I looked at the bills in my hand and back at Derrick. “What happened? Fish Supreme gave you a raise?”
“Nah,” he said. “I quit that bullshit.”
“So where’d you get this money from?”
“I’m working for Markee now,” he said. “Selling that shit.”
It was the spring of 1988 and Derrick’s cousin Markee had hired Derrick for his booming business distributing the fastest-selling product to ever hit the hood: Derrick was selling crack.
Chapter 13
Hustlers and the Weak
Right from the beginning it was clear to me that crack divided the world into two groups: sellers and smokers, the hustlers and the weak. Before Derrick started working for Markee, I’d only heard about crack in N.W.A lyrics. It was a West Coast thing, like gangbanging or wearing slippers with tube socks. But the minute it touched down in Atlanta, crack spread like wildfire. I started seeing signs of it everywhere, from zombie-looking addicts trolling the streets to broke-ass niggas like Derrick suddenly getting paid.
The first thing Derrick bought himself was some bling: a gold nugget ring, a thick herringbone necklace, and a gold-plated watch. Then he upgraded me and the kids, moving us out of the busted efficiency in Vine City to a nice one-bedroom across town. Derrick took care of everything; he paid my rent, electric, gas, and water bills. He got me a touch-tone, wall-mounted house phone with a spiral cord so long it stretched all over the apartment. And he bought me a queen-size bed covered in red satin sheets that he picked out himself.
Derrick had so much money that no matter how much I asked for—fifty dollars, one hundred dollars, three hundred and fifty for the rent—he would just reach into the black fanny pack he had strapped around this waist and hand it over. “I got you,” he’d say. When he had too much money to fit in his fanny pack, Derrick stored his bills in the trunk of his car in a brown paper sack inside a sneaker box. Sometimes business was so good it was like he was trying to give his cash away. “Here’s a little extra,” he’d tell me, popping the trunk and handing me a stack of paper. “Take you and the babies shopping.”
Derrick’s new job beat the hell out of Fish Supreme. After struggling to take care of Nikia and Ashley, suddenly I had everything I needed. Derrick gave me money to get my hair done, buy McDonald’s, and pay for the babies’ clothes. Thanks to Derrick, I didn’t need to worry about a thing. Then one day, right when my rent was due, he disappeared.
I looked for him everywhere. I went by his cousin Markee’s place, and searched for Derrick on the corner where he hustled. I checked for him at Jellybean skating rink, and over by his sister’s house. I blew up his pager with “911,” but he never called me back.