But this time was different. This time was a heart attack. This time was the last I’d see Walter Sr. Goat brought him into the bedroom and closed the door. By the time the paramedics arrived he was gone.
The next day the whole Davis family arrived. It was something else. Hysteria. At the funeral my momma and my aunties were cuttin’ a fool, jumping up and down, crying and screaming like they were fittin’ to climb up in the casket with him. It was a real scene.
“Why, Lord, why?”
My grandfather’s passing marked the beginning of the end of my life in Bessemer. It wasn’t more than a few hours after the funeral that the Davis family was at odds. This fighting, primarily among the women, would go on for years. On the surface the conflict was over Walter Sr.’s house. But it went deeper than that. It was a power struggle over who was the new matriarch. And my momma was pitted against her two older sisters, my aunties Jean and Pat.
Listen, when I say that my momma and aunties got to fighting, I mean there was blood, on multiple occasions. This shit would be like a saloon fight, spilling onto the front lawn for all the neighbors to see.
One night my momma pushed Aunt Jean through the front window. Another time Aunt Pat came through with a can of gasoline, hollering about how she was going to burn the house down. Things got so bad that my momma took Duke and me to her friend’s house just so we could get away from the chaos.
In the midst of the bickering and fighting my momma became more involved in the church. Prior to this religious awakening, Vicky Davis smoked cigarettes and I think even weed on occasion. I’ve heard she even sold some weed. But all that stopped after she got saved. She even stopped cussing.
With all that was going on with the family, my momma got it in her head that she wanted to get us out of Alabama. Life in Bessemer didn’t get much better than finding a job at Pullman-Standard, the railroad car company that paid more than anywhere else. That was all there really was to aspire to. The ceiling was low. She wanted more. For herself, for me, for Duke.
At the time, my momma had a boyfriend who would travel back and forth to Atlanta for work. He’d once taken us all out there to Six Flags. One day my momma told Duke and me that we were moving to Atlanta with him. Pretty soon our stuff was packed up and out on the curb, ready to go. But the guy never showed.
It would take nearly a year before we actually made the move. Through church my momma met another man, Donald. Donald always struck me as a nice guy, very much a churchgoing man. He drove truck for a living. My understanding was that he and my momma were just friends, but he was planning on moving back to Georgia, and because he knew about our tumultuous family situation, he invited us along. We would stay at his house while my momma looked for a job and got her money right.
I didn’t know what to think when my momma told us for the second time we were moving. Duke was still embarrassed from when we got stood up, so he wasn’t paying it any mind this time around. He didn’t tell his football coach or his friends that he was leaving. He didn’t pack up his things. So neither did I. Sure enough, Donald showed up.
Duke wasn’t happy. My brother had a life in Alabama and he had plans there too. All Duke ever wanted was to play Alabama Crimson Tide football and go on to the pros. To follow in Bo Jackson’s footsteps and be the next star athlete to make it out of Bessemer. He didn’t want to leave and he didn’t understand why we had to.
But I did. As much as I loved my aunties and my cousins, it was troubling to have everybody fighting the way they was. It was no way to live. Even at nine years old I thought it was so stupid how these grown folks were fighting so hard over this rickety little house. It was crazy to me.
Everybody from our street came outside to see us off the day we left for Georgia. It was a big deal for us to leave Bessemer. Nobody in that town just up and moved. This was a community of families who’d lived there for generations.
As the U-Haul pulled off I waved good-bye to family and friends as they chased the truck.
Wow I’ll probably never see any of these folks again.
III
* * *
WELCOME TO ATLANTA
We arrived in Ellenwood, Georgia, in August 1989.
Ellenwood is a suburb a few miles outside of Atlanta. It didn’t seem that different from my community back in Bessemer. Folks hung out on their porches to escape the heat. Squirrels and rabbits ran through people’s yards. Children played outside and rode their bikes without fear of something happening to them. It felt familiar. But our time in Ellenwood wouldn’t last long.
A few months after the move Donald reconciled with his ex-wife and she and their son moved into the house with us. Donald was a decent guy and as far as I know he never told my momma we had to leave. But from the day his wife moved in it was clear she did not want us there. One day she tore down all of Duke’s posters that he’d brought from Bessemer and threw them in the trash. My brother was heartbroken.
This lady and my momma couldn’t share a home. Small arguments turned big. It wasn’t long before my momma wanted out.
Problem was we had nowhere to go. My momma had no idea where to move us nor did she have the means to get us there. We were brand-new to Georgia. No family, no friends, no support system.
We knew my father was somewhere nearby. After fleeing Alabama for Detroit, he’d settled down in Atlanta, where his older brother, my uncle James Jr., put him up until he found a spot of his own. But he and my momma hadn’t spoken in some time. A year or two back my momma found out my father met another woman and that he had two other boys—my half brothers, Ralph and Courtney Walker. That news put an end to his visits to Bessemer.
But we were desperate. So my momma got ahold of Madear, who sent my father to Ellenwood to get us. He came right away. He couldn’t wait to see us; it had been my momma who hadn’t wanted him around. We moved our things into a storage unit and my father put us up in a Knights Inn motel on Bouldercrest Road on the Eastside of Atlanta. It was here that I began to get acquainted with the city that would shape me.
?
Atlanta’s drug trade is tied to its roots as a railroad town. The city quickly became the primary transit hub of the Southeast, with rail lines that ran north, east, south, and west of it. Even after the railroads were destroyed during the Civil War, Atlanta’s identity as a mecca of transport lived on. The rails were replaced by a web of interstate highways connecting cities in every direction. A Spaghetti Junction. Long story short, Atlanta’s got a history of moving people and things. Drug trafficking is a natural part of that history.