It wasn’t the first time I’d heard details like this. For twenty years I’ve worked as a journalist. I’ve interviewed drug dealers, hustlers, and young girls who’ve been beaten, shot at, and impregnated by men almost twice their age. But never have I talked to someone who embodied all these issues at once.
A few nights later I went to see Pat perform at Union Hall, a little club near where I live in Brooklyn. I brought my friend Sharon along. After the show Sharon ran up to Pat and exclaimed, “Your story’s crazy. You should write a book!”
Pat said, “I’ve always wanted to, but I’m not a writer.”
Sharon pulled me over: “She can help you write your book.”
A few weeks later I called Pat. We ended up talking for hours. Pat’s journey from illegal liquor house to the suburbs of Indianapolis isn’t just incredible. It’s also the type of story too few people get to hear. Popular culture has given us plenty of depictions of boys in the hood. But what about the girls? What do most people know about the challenges of being poor, black, and female? Not much. Instead, young black mothers living in poverty are often described as “irresponsible” and “lazy.” I’ve even heard them called “animals.” It pains me to hear young women so callously dismissed by people who don’t know their lives. I could see in Pat a unique opportunity to help bring one of these stories to light. By the end of our conversation, I’d committed to helping her write this book.
I assumed we’d collaborate the way most subjects and writers do: I’d interview Pat, get all the details, and put the story together in a way that makes sense on the page. But Pat is one of those people blessed with an extraordinary memory. When I asked her to describe her grandfather’s liquor house, she could recall every detail right down to the pattern on the faded bedsheets hanging in the windows. This would have been a great advantage had Pat’s life been less eventful. Instead, often I’d pose a simple question like, “What color did you paint your Cadillac?” Forty-five minutes later I’d find myself stunned by some new revelation Pat had casually tossed into the conversation.
Every moment of Pat’s life is a movie unto itself, and she remembers it all in vivid detail. Deciding which anecdotes not to include became one of the greatest challenges of this book. In the end, I focused on telling the story Pat most wanted to share, about how she made it out of the hood and turned her life around when all the chips were stacked against her. I hope I did her journey justice.
During the more than two years we spent working on this book, I spoke to almost a dozen people from Pat’s life, including “Duck,” “Stephanie,” and her siblings “Dre” and “Sweetie.” I interviewed Pat’s caseworker “Miss Campbell,” and managed to locate the criminal lawyer who defended her more than two decades ago. I tracked down “Hubert” Hood, whom Pat hadn’t spoken to in years, and talked to Pat’s cousin “Tata,” her children, and her husband, Michael.
Sometimes the interviews were scheduled in advance; other times the conversations would happen spontaneously, when I least expected it. Pat would be in the middle of a story, and I’d ask a question about the particulars of selling crack. The next thing I knew she’d tell me to hang on and suddenly some guy she used to buy crack from would be on the line.
“This the lady writing my book,” she’d say by way of introduction. And then to me, “Go ahead, ask your question.”
The conversations didn’t always go smoothly. Occasionally I’d ask for clarification only to be met with an uncomfortable silence. In those instances, Pat would intervene with her magic words, “It’s okay, you can talk to her. She’s black. She just sounds white.”
I studied Pat’s criminal history record, called courthouses and county jails. I researched the progress of crack through inner cities in the late eighties and nineties, and the war on drugs waged by the nation in general and the Atlanta Police Department in particular. I studied the history of the city’s housing projects and the horrific Atlanta Child Murders. I discovered that one of the victims, Curtis Walker, was Pat’s second cousin.
Of course there were stories Pat told me for which I had to rely solely on her telling, but for everything I checked and cross-checked, not once did I find an inconsistency. In fact, when Pat shared her experiences of something that had been reported in the news—for instance, the Miami Boys’ infiltration of Atlanta housing projects in the late 1980s—her recollections aligned, right down to the little details, with decades-old newspaper accounts I was able to dig up.
Everybody loves Pat’s story. I’ve heard her on countless podcasts with hosts who marvel both at the hellish world in which she was raised and her determination to get out. But here’s the thing, as shocking as the details of Pat’s life are, the circumstances that led her to sell crack to survive are not all that unique. A few months into writing this book I took a break to work on another assignment, which involved my interviewing economically disadvantaged teen mothers around the country. I spoke with scores of girls who, neglected or abandoned by their own parents, were impregnated by much older men. I learned of young mothers so poor they were living with their infant children in homes with no heat or running water in the middle of winter. I interviewed girls whose greatest challenge was finding diaper money even as they dreamed of a better life for their kids. If you think Pat’s story couldn’t happen today, you’re wrong. It’s happening still.
There is a myth in this country that the way out of poverty is to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” that by sheer force of will one can change the course of one’s life, no matter how great the obstacles. But in all my years reporting, I’ve never once spoken to someone who came from abject poverty and transcended that path without help. Pat talks about how badly she wanted to change her life, but she couldn’t have made that dream a reality without the compassion and care she received from Miss Troup, “Hubert” Hood, “Lamont,” and, of course, “Michael.” She couldn’t have done it without public assistance and the support provided by her caseworkers “Miss Campbell” and “Miss Munroe.” Pat wanted to share her journey to inspire people to get over their own hardships. But the more we talked, the more clear it became: Pat’s story is greater than a tale of one woman rising above her own harrowing circumstances. It’s a testament to the transformative power of love.
—Jeannine
Acknowledgments
From Ms. Pat
To my fans, thank you for all your support. It means everything to me. For years I wanted to tell my story but I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to relate to the things I’ve gone through in my life. But the more I talked, the more you guys supported me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and encourage you to tell your stories and laugh when you feel like crying.