Fortunately, that wasn’t God’s plan. He had a whole other schedule for me. I had no idea that that was going to be the last day that I turned another trick, sucked another penis, saw Madison Street under those conditions. You couldn’t have told me that this was going to be the end for me, cause I had always had success in prostitution. I mean, I was the baddest ho out there. I was. In my own mind. I always wore the latest outfits; my body was tight. On my best night I could pull in fifteen hundred dollars, and if I robbed somebody, I could come back home with five thousand dollars. Is that what made me a bad ho? Is that what made me the coldest? Or made me an excellent prostitute? I don’t know, but for whatever reason I thought I was. My pimps brought me up that way. To get me out there and get more money, they brainwashed me to feel I was the coldest bitch out there, with the best thieving hands. I knew how to catch a trick and take everything and bring it back to them. So yeah, I was one of the baddest, stupidest hos out there because this lifestyle was made for me and to change meant I had to give up my title. Why would I come this far without being the best? And trust me, I was always going to be in the game. You wouldn’t believe the shade and slick-ass things I could say about being a prostitute, about being able to get that kind of money from tricks. If it ever came to the point that I couldn’t turn a trick, if I ever got too old, I always thought I could sell other people’s poontang. I’ll retire, I thought, and I’ll sell me some hos. Cause I’m a cold bitch, right? That’s what they used to say about me. You a cold bitch. How can you hear anything but a compliment? You one of the baddest bitches I know. Bitch was always in the equation, and I ate that up. That was the medal on my chest. “You don’t know me? I’m one of the baddest bitches out here.” That’s the bullshit I had told myself to stay out there. I’m the coldest; I’m the baddest; I’m the best bitch out there. I was the bomb.
But when I hit that hospital that day, I went in there as a victim. Nobody wanted to help me. And I needed help. The people dealing with me didn’t think I was a bad bitch; they called me a crackhead whore. I heard the police tell the nurse, “She’s a prostitute, and she probably did something to some poor guy and got what she deserved.” The hospital curtain was pulled, but I heard every word. And she was giggling with him cause she and the police, they’re friends. This smug-faced white nurse just giggling her ass off. And I knew the cop, too. Old fat dusty bald dumbass. I had run into him before. Stupid-ass beard. Fat ass. He had busted me before. I always wondered if that laughing nurse knew that the minute her back was turned, he probably talked shit about her, too. He was talking about you, too. I laid there in pain and in panic, and I wanted to stop my face from burning and my side from burning. I needed help so bad. I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t really talk, cause my face hurt when I moved it. I couldn’t really see out of my eye cause my eyelid was torn. I was in so much pain. My breathing was crazy cause I have asthma. Everything was just messed up. I became afraid. Am I going to die? Are they going to let me die?
When they came back, that nurse went and pushed me out into the hallway, as if I didn’t exist. Like I was invisible. I looked at her. “I see you,” I told her.
She saw the tears roll out my eyes and she half-assed looked at me. Then she said, “Somebody’ll see you soon.” She walked away. I remember turning my head, and I whispered, “God, these people don’t care about me. Could You please help me?”
After a while, I had to go pee, and somehow, I made it to the bathroom. I got to the stall, then washed my hands. The mirror was right there. I was scary to myself. The first thing that went through my mind was, I guess I won’t be going to the safe house. I ain’t going to be going nowhere. Where can I go? My face is gone.
I didn’t have no face.
There were people passing me by, looking at me like I was a monster. I wanted to cover my head up, but I couldn’t breathe good under the covers. I laid there and I cried till I went to sleep. When I woke up there was a doctor over me. She was a petite little lady and talked with a Russian accent. She had brown hair, and she was white. She was nice. She admitted me into the hospital, and she nursed me. Real cool lady. She didn’t say nothing jazzy to me about being a prostitute or ask me a bunch of questions—how did this happen? What you do? She just said, “It’s going to take a lot to get you back together, young lady. I hope you don’t leave, so we can help you.” Just real encouraging, you know? And like after a day or two or three, I woke up and I saw her sitting in the chair. She was doing her charts. She looked up and said, “Oh, look who rose from the dead! I been waiting for you to wake up. How everything is going with you? How you feel?” I looked at her and my whole heart broke. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk cause my heart was broken. And I felt like the biggest piece of shit that ever walked the earth. I didn’t want to live; I wanted to leave here, forever. I had always told my people, if you find me dead, know I didn’t commit suicide, somebody done killed me, but that day I wanted to go. It was too much; I didn’t want to be here. I was so tired.
The doctor lady kept talking. It was positive stuff. It wasn’t about me, really; it was just about life in general. And I started thinking about, how did I get here? How did I get to that monster in the bathroom mirror? Being tore up from the floor up? How did I get to having all these scars on my body? How did my life get here? How did that white businessman know that he had come to get me off the streets, because that’s what he did. I don’t know what his motive was; I don’t know what kind of freak he was; I still haven’t figured out what was on his mind while he was hitting me, but I know one thing for sure: this wasn’t the first time he had done it. And I figured that’s why he didn’t want me to get in the car. He probably sized me up. Neither one of us knew how much he could mess me up.
Still. How did I end up like this? That doctor with her pretty accent was telling me to keep my head up, but I couldn’t think of anything happy. That’s when I started thinking back over things. Not just this day, the day I became the lady without a face, but all the days that led to it. Because truth was, if I slipped into a big sleep and died, everybody would be okay with that.
I was thirty-nine years old.
You know, County Hospital in Chicago is one of the biggest hospitals in the country, and it has saved a lot of people’s lives, and I guess it saved mine. If anybody had seen me laying in that bed, I don’t think they would have thought somebody like me could rise up and start from scratch. Or that I could leave the life of prostitution that spanned most of my childhood and all of my adulthood. I never thought that after years of trying to make a home for my daughters, Peaches and Prune, they would come back to me, forgive me, let me hold my grandchildren. I had years of birthdays and Christmases and anniversaries waiting on me, but I didn’t know it. I had no idea that I would find my best friend and business partner, Stephanie Daniels-Wilson, and together we would build the Dreamcatcher Foundation, an organization that helps young women who are on the verge of walking my road and women who are living the chaos I have lived. Lying in that hospital bed, I had no idea that I would someday lead a life where I worked so hard and yet felt so blessed. Little did I know that somewhere out there was the love of my life and that I would find him. Or that God would let me raise a son and be the mother I couldn’t be to my daughters. None of that was on my mind as I lay on that hospital bed. I was steeped in the past, wading through everything that had gotten me there.
I think maybe all that had happened for a reason.
Part I
It starts in the family
Chapter 1
Life with Ma’Dea
Every day I wonder how God works things out. How He do that? How He allow so much to happen? How He make my first memory, my first memory? And why?
I was three years old. I woke up and it was Christmas. I don’t know if I woke up or if Christmas woke me up, but all these people—my grandmother; my cousins Charles, Dennis, and Renee; my uncle Cleveland; Uncle Lee and Uncle Joe; my aunt Josie; my uncle LC; Ike, the man who w
as a grandfather to me—were in the house. I could smell Christmas. We were living in one of the biggest apartments we ever had. It was a six-floor building. We had the first-floor apartment on the right-hand side. Our apartment was huge. The front door opened into the living room; down the hallway was the bathroom, and then the bedroom and then another bathroom and the dining room, and then there was a back door and a back porch. I remember being little, crawling out the bed with my grandmother and feeling my way to the fridge. Dark everywhere. But I felt safe. And when I turned on the lights … there was a little girl standing in front of me. There was a silver Christmas tree in the corner of the living room. Doilies covered everything. My grandmother’s name was Ruth, but all us grandkids called her Ma’Dea. She loved a knickknack. I don’t know where she got them all, but she had little crystals all over the place. We had these plants on top of the TV and in the windows. And there was this beautiful girl.
I walked up to her, and I said, “Hi.” She didn’t say anything. So I said, “Hi!” But she still didn’t say anything. Everybody around me started laughing, but I was trying to figure out why this little girl in front of me didn’t say nothing, so I pushed her and she fell down.
It was a damn doll. An “I walk, I talk” doll. Everybody was laughing and shouting, “Pick the doll up.” Back then everybody called me Fat Mommy. “Pick her up, Fat Mommy!” they yelled. Ma’Dea couldn’t stop laughing. She had a beautiful laugh. I think. It scared you a little, but it made you want to laugh, too. My grandmother was a good-looking woman with a nice shape. Thick. One of those Black women who was built like a brick house. Nice curves and strong muscles. Everybody knew if Ma’Dea hit you, you were going to get knocked out. So didn’t nobody mess with her. Her hair was always red, Miss Clairol #33R Flame. And she was stylish. Jazzy. Beautiful. She was the kind of woman who looked good in a housecoat, which is what she was wearing that Christmas morning when she was laughing at me and that doll.
“Ma’Dea, you laughing at me!”
“I’m laughing with you, Fat Mommy!” She threw back her head and laughed some more. “You gone love that doll.” And that was my first recollection as a child.
I remember dragging that doll around the house by her hair, cause she was the same size as me. She was three feet tall. And she was Black. I ain’t never seen no Black baby doll like that. Chocolate skin with blue eyes. I dragged her around, danced with her and stuff. She had so much style. A little pleated skirt and a white blouse, with ankle socks and bow-tied shoes. I think my aunt Josie and my uncle LC bought that doll for me.
But what I remember most was a lot of spankings and a lot of whoopings. Sometimes I think God made my first memory a Christmas memory filled with happiness because He knew I would always remember the first time somebody tried to mess with me.
* * *
He was one of my uncle’s friends. His name was Woody. He was very tall. Six feet four, six feet five, and he had very long legs. I liked it when he came over with his long legs and wanted to give me the bouncy knee ride. I started bouncing on his knee, and then I bounced all the way down to the end again and he’d pull me back. The bouncy knee ride was so much fun. I was bouncing on Woody’s knee, and I could smell the food Ma’Dea was cooking. Candied sweet potatoes and fried chicken. Collard greens that smelled so good, your head turned. The windows were sweating from the heat coming out of the kitchen.
You know, when you are a little kid and you’re the only child in the house and the only time you have any playmates is when your cousins come and that’s the only time you can go outside—all that makes up for a lonely childhood. But my grandmother was working all the time, at Learner’s Cleaners, so there was nothing to do about it. I was a child in an adult world. And in our house, it was mostly adults popping off. Getting drunk and bossing me around. I grew up during a time when being a good girl meant being a mannered child. Stay out of grown folks’ way. All my grown kin said, “I don’t want to catch you on somebody else’s knee. Can’t be sitting in everybody’s lap.” But I wanted attention, I wanted love. I wanted to play. That “I walk, I talk” doll only said so much. “Quit sitting in everybody’s damn lap, you little fast-ass girl!” Ma’Dea said, and I thought, I ain’t fast. They like me. I’m four. I wasn’t even going to school yet.
So I got in his lap, and he was giving me a knee ride, and I was laughing. You know how when you a little kid, you got next to nothing on? You got your little panties on, you got your little slip on? Cause it’s warm in the house and everything. I think I had one of my slips on and a pair of panties. He was bouncing me on his knee and it was fun. And all of a sudden, I felt his fingers slip inside my panties. His fingers went inside my little coot. I got stiff as a board. “Shh, shh. Hush up, hush up. Don’t say nothing.” His breath was hot against my cheek. I kept thinking, he didn’t even smell like a man anymore. He smelled like an animal. Musty. Sour. He starts fumbling my privates. He was doing his fingers in and out. I couldn’t talk. My grandmother walked in the room and he released his grip on me. She looked at me and said, “Girl! What’s wrong with you! Brenda Jean, what wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” She had scared me. He scared me. She scared me cause she had always said don’t let me catch you in nobody’s lap no more and here I was breaking that rule. And he scared me cause he had done something wrong to me and I was scared to tell her. So I’m afraid of her and I’m afraid of him and I’m four years old and I don’t know what to do. You know I had a little irritation in my pie after that. I remember her putting a little cap of that Campho-Phenique on my stuff. And it started to itch, cause he’d had no business in there. And my grandma was like, “How long you had these panties on for, with your nasty self? What wrong with your body?” I didn’t know how to explain to her what had happened. She washed out my pie with that red Lysol. Lord, You know, old people put anything on you back in the day. It’s a good thing we still alive after all that. Swear to God—those old folks were trying to kill us. They put bleach in the goddamn bath water. Ma’Dea was like that. Good-natured, but she thought if Lysol was good enough to clean a floor, it was good enough to clean a child. But I made it through.
I remember after that not feeling good at all. There was nothing my life-sized doll could say to help me. Woody and his nasty ass still came around, and he was still looking at me, and I would go to another room. But when I saw him, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t even know how I felt about it. Wasn’t this my fault? How many times had I been told to stay out of folks’ laps? I tried my best to stay out of his way and I hoped he stayed out of mine. It took a minute, but I learned how to be satisfied with my doll’s conversation, because anything else could get me in a kind of trouble I couldn’t explain.
I chalked the whole thing up to my little girl pains, and like all hurt, it faded, replaced with better memories. Not everything was bad. I remember listening to Mary Wells and Curtis Mayfield and Rufus Thomas, “Walk the dog, baby.” In the living room, out on the sidewalk, we did the Dog. We couldn’t do it too nasty or our mommas pulled us off the floor. “You fast.” Teenagers were listening to brothers singing on the corner, they were doo-wopping. My grandmother watched our carrying on and made dinner while singing Tommy Tucker’s “Hi-Heel Sneakers.” My grandmother wore this knit dress buttoned down in the front that she looked great in. I always think about my grandmother in that red dress and how that red dress got her in trouble. That red dress brought out the fire in her. And Ike, my play granddaddy, would look at her and say, “Where you going dressed like that?” He knew he better ask, cause Ma’Dea looked damned good. And she best have the right answer or they were going to fight before she left the house. The dress was fly, the makeup was set, and her wig was cool. My grandmother had a wig or two. One was red and long and had a flip-up. The other had bangs. It was also red. Wigs were optional back then. The wig man came by with the big case, the stand, the whole shebang. My grandmother didn’t wear a lot of wigs because when she was drunk, they went crooked on her
head. Her wigs were crooked a lot.
But drunk or sober, wig or no, we had music in our lives. We used to play a lot of the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” I got a lotta quarters if I sang that song. I would throw in a little drama. Those Motown songs spoke for us and to us. Renee, my cousin, who was around the same age I was, and I used to sing the Supremes. We crooned the Marvelettes’ “Don’t Mess with Bill” or the Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself.”
While we were all singing the Spinners, Ma’ Dea was always cooking something in the kitchen. She was a special cook. She cooked for us all—me, Uncle Lee, Uncle Joe, my aunts, my cousins, the strangers who floated in and out of my life. I loved, adored my uncles, especially Joe. He was a pretty boy, and his reputation was that he was the coolest brother on the planet. No need to panic. He was the type of guy who could slide into the set, and everybody wouldn’t even know he’d been there. My grandmother used to call him sneaky, but that’s not true. He had swag; he just had some real cool-ass swag. My uncle was cool, but he was a dangerous guy. He was a bully. He knocked a brother out just for the sake of knocking a brother out. He would be like, “I don’t like that nigga. I’m gonna knock that nigga out.”
My grandmother was the only person who could control him. You know, people came to her, “Please, Miz Myers, your son down there beating my brother up and he won’t let him go.” And my grandmother slipped on her house shoes and put her duster on. She put something in her pocket because she going down there to knock him out. She know he down there hurting somebody, right? She said, “I’m gone down there and kick his ass.” You could see where Uncle Joe got his fight from when you looked at my grandmother; she was just as hard-core as he was. She went down there, and he saw her coming and then he started laughing. “Hey, old girl.”
Leaving Breezy Street Page 2