That’s where we shopped. For clothes, for shoes. We weren’t having it no other way. For our little Fourth of July outfits, we went to the five-and-dime. Everybody had the same little stuff on. The shoes were on a nylon string, stuck together, and sometimes you got the white girls and sometime you got the blue ones—that’s what we called those shoes: we called them girls. All that Nike and stuff, that wasn’t in my neighborhood. Listen, you must have your dress shoes when we were growing up. Everybody wore those dress shoes to church and to picture day. You put on your ankle socks and you go about your business. I put mine on and follow around my uncle Joe anywhere he let me. That wasn’t too far, because he was a gangster, one of the leaders in the Egyptian Cobras, which converted to the Vice Lords. The original Vice Lords. That’s who he was.
Gangs back then were formulated to protect different neighborhoods. At that time Chicago was sliced up into communities and neighborhoods and every one of them—whether it was the whites, the Puerto Ricans, the Blacks—every one of them had their own gangs. I’m not sure about the other gangs, but my family was involved with the Vice Lords. They originated from the Egyptian Cobras, and they turned into the Conservative Vice Lords. Now, the Conservative Vice Lords were some brothers who dressed well and alike; they dealt with things. They were not selling drugs at that time, which was early on. I think they did some type of extortion; they were just running shit or they did some robberies and someone took off something from somebody. They also did something called “policy,” and that was like the lottery, and they ran that around our community. The Vice Lords kept everything in order when it came to being on the streets. Stuff like that. But I was a little kid, I’m not sure what all they were up to. I had heard about some of the guys who did heroin, but that was far and between.
My family didn’t really know guys like that. Most of the guys drank wine and sat on the corner. As far as I know, Vice Lords and the other gangs were about territories and guys who went to dance parties and fought fists with fists. I remember hearing about a zip gun a couple of times, but it was rare when a brother had a gun back then, because they were men. Maybe they had a knife, and when they were serious, they cut you. Lotta guys went to war with a baseball bat, and they could knock your ass out because they were some boxing brothers. I used to see how they dressed. Brothers were wearing the Ivy League look and were sharp as hell. My uncle Lee was one of them. He ironed clothes that came from the cleaners. Do you understand how serious that is?
You know, it took me until I was about nine or ten to figure out Uncle Lee was a pimp. I was so sexualized already. I was kissing this boy in the building. Nine and ten years old—and kissing. I remember seeing some of Uncle Lee’s girls. He even had his trans. He pimped a trans. Her name was Sheba. She came over my grandmother’s house. Ma’Dea knew exactly who she was, but it wasn’t no problem cause my grandmother didn’t discriminate. But Sheba was a well-known trans in Chicago at that time, cause you know they had the ballroom dance contests. I never went to one, all I got to see was Sheba preparing for them. She would sew and make all of her own costumes and stuff. And I would get a sneak peek of the costumes and the glam of it all. The glam was ridiculous. What I did know was that Sheba won all the balls. She was very extra diva, and she carried herself very reserved. She was like, “This is who I am and don’t mess with me. Cause I’ll cut your ass from A to Z.” Grandmomma let me go over Sheba’s house. She had wall-to-wall carpeting, gorgeous furniture; she even had a phone in the bathroom. She had that velvet wallpaper. This is still the sixties, and I ain’t used to Black folks living like this. She was living large. She had a sewing machine in the house, made all her own clothes. Everything in her house was beautiful and extravagant and plush. That’s why I liked to go over her house, and she would make me dresses and shirts, too.
All that time, I didn’t know Uncle Lee was a pimp, and Sheba was one of his hos, but you know grown folks talking around kids and I’m hearing, “Lee gone get himself messed over, taking that thang’s money and ducking.” Uncle Lee had this bad habit: he would take Sheba’s money and then tell her he would give her her cut in a couple days. But then he made sure he wasn’t available. Sheba was looking for him and she was paying him well. And it was about a year after that that my uncle Lee got his throat cut. It didn’t kill him. My grandmother said Sheba cut his throat cause he wouldn’t give her her money. But my uncle said he was at a craps game, and they stuck it up and some dude cut him. Hmm. I think Sheba cut him. I was ten years old and even I knew you could depend on the truth from Ma’Dea. Ma’Dea told my uncle, “Sheba the one who cut your throat, and she gone cut it again, if you keep messing with her.”
My grandmother knew all his business because Uncle Lee went back and forth from living with us to living with his women. When I went over Sheba’s house, his clothes were all in the closet all nice and proper. He had places. But I guess my grandmother’s house was his base and he didn’t want to get too tied up with no particular woman. Two of my uncles came to the house and slept. Ate up all the food or brought something nice by and stayed. They spent forever in the bathroom. My grandmother be like, “Ya’ll acting like sissies being in there for so long. Can’t nobody get in there to do nothing.” She cussed them out because they’d be in there for a long time, like women. Shaving and plucking. Both of them was way into themselves. We lived on Hamlin and Lake, right around the corner where I used to see the women working. Some of those ladies worked for my uncle. My uncle handled most of his business in our building. Our little place had a back door, a front door, a kitchen, and a little bedroom, and then it had a Murphy bed. The living room was our bedroom. We had talked to the landlord, and my uncle Lee had a little spot across the hall. I don’t know why, cause my uncle never wanted to pay the rent. He never wanted to pay nobody money after he got it.
All of his ladies knew to take their cut before they handed it over to my uncle. Uncle Lee had this ho named Queenie, and she looked like Cleopatra or one of those Egyptians. She was so gorgeous—tall, Black, very dark. She had the first afro I ever saw on a woman. Long, pretty legs. She was the first girl I saw in miniskirts, and she wore those Nehru dresses. She gave me one of those Nehru dresses, but it was too big for me. It was a gown. She was very well kept and wore the latest fashions. Oh, I wanted to be stylish like that, and when I got grown, I wanted to handle my business the way she did.
Once, she was working a white guy and my uncle said to me, “Go on in there and get the wallet. Crawl in there and get the wallet and then bring it out to me while they are, you know … busy.” And I did. I crawled in there, took the wallet, then I gave it to my uncle, and he took the money and he told me, “Now go put the wallet back in there.” I was nine years old. And I did all that for ten dollars. Ten dollars was a lotta money back then. I wanted to go to Riverview, the amusement park, and Riverview was closing. It had the sideshows with the bearded lady and all that stuff. Riverview had a Ferris wheel and the parachute where you ride up and drop down real fast. I wanted to take a ride on the Bobs, the biggest roller coaster, and I was tall enough. Oh my God, he made me beg for that money. Uncle Lee made me beg for that money all day long. To get that ten dollars I had to cry, snot, and carry on. I was in my feelings, because I done went on a mission I still didn’t understand. I went in there and stole the man’s wallet and I didn’t know why. I got a felony case and don’t even know it. My grandmomma finally came out and told him, “Give her that goddamned money! Now you told this girl you gone her give that goddamned money, now give it! She been standing at your door crying over an hour.” Why was he even holding on to that money, with his stanking ass? My grandmother said I could get on the Lake Street bus and I go from Western to Belmont to get to Riverview. Finally, I got the ten dollars; his ass was playing tiddlywinks. Even Queenie was telling my uncle, “Give that girl her money.”
* * *
That’s what life was like with Ma’Dea. My grandmomma, cussing and drinking and cooking all the time. She could make
something out of nothing. She talked to me a lot. Everybody else came and went, but Ma’Dea was my always. Me and her were each other company. We had our special shows. We watched Ben Casey. Creature Features. I liked cartoons. TV went off at a certain time a night, 10:30. “The Star-Spangled Banner” played and the TV turned off, and either we played the record player or my ass went somewhere and sat down. And then we fell asleep, woke up in the morning, and she would make me some breakfast. In the mornings, Ma’Dea got the funny papers, and we would get in the middle of the bed, because I slept with her unless I slept on the pallet on the floor. I never had my own room. We read Nancy. We liked Beetle Bailey. See, every once and a while we had fun. I should have known even the little bit of good times that I had couldn’t last.
Chapter 3
Suburban Bullshit
The alcoholic Ma’Dea; the mean Ma’Dea. Anybody in the family would tell you that she had a mean streak. She said horrible things that she wouldn’t take back. When she sobered up, she would say, “I don’t know what I said. But if I said it, I said it.” It was like I lived with two people. I lived with the beautiful Ma’Dea and I lived with the Ma’Dea after too many drinks.
It had gotten real bad for us. Uncle Joe was dead. He got killed in 1968 by a childhood friend. Everybody knew Uncle Joe was a bully. The story was (and I’m not too sure how it goes because I heard it from the streets), this boy had been in my grandmother’s house with Joe. Uncle Joe either wanted to take his money or his gun. There was a restaurant right on the corner of Pulaski between Adams and Wilcox. It was in an alley, and there was a little hamburger joint. Joe had beat on this boy before, and Joe was gone whoop his ass again. My uncle had deadly hands. He put brothers in the hospital. And this boy was scared. Joe came after him. My understanding was that the boy first shot Joe in the chest. Joe step back and said, “You gone shoot me?” Uncle Joe got up and he came back at the boy. That boy was so afraid, he shot my uncle in the head. Right in his temple. I remember going to view the body. That little boy cried when he told my grandmother, “Mrs. Myers, I was afraid for my life.” He had a right to be afraid for his life. But that was a sad time for the family; it was a hard time. Lee was in jail, so he didn’t get to go to his brother’s funeral. My aunties came by, but they couldn’t stay; they had their own families to raise. It was a hard time for everybody.
My grandmother played a lot of Marvin Gaye after the funeral. She just kept drinking and playing Marvin Gaye. “Too busy thinking ’bout my baby. And I ain’t got time for nothing else.” She played that record over and over again. She was messed up. Uncle Joe wasn’t even thirty yet. He was maybe twenty-five? Something like that. He was still a young man. And Uncle Lee was in jail for God knows why. Robbing the cleaners, sticking people up. Uncle Lee was a fool. I had known him all my life to be in and out of jail. When the two of them, Joe and Lee, were out of jail, I was happy. I was always so happy when they were around. They spoiled me. They were so extra with me. Lee sometimes was a little bit mean, but he loved me.
But when Uncle Joe died and Uncle Lee was in the pen for a minute, I couldn’t take the licks. “How did you get that bruise?” she’d ask me in the morning when she’d sobered up. “What’s wrong with your eye?”
“You hit me, Ma’Dea.”
“I hit you like that? You must of did something.” We both were grieving Uncle Joe’s death, but I was the one who had the bruises to show for it.
* * *
One night Uncle LC came to our place to get me. At first, Ma’Dea started joking when Uncle LC said he was taking me home with him, but then she turned into this person whose anger veered toward me. “You bet not move,” she said, pointing at me. “You ain’t going nowhere.” I started crying because I really wanted to go with Uncle LC. I loved being out there in them suburbs. You know, picking the strawberries, turning the flowers over. Just to get away was so good.
“Come on, Ruth, don’t be like that. Let her gone.” He turned to me. I was dressed, but I hadn’t packed a bag. “Come on, Brenda.”
“You sit down. You bet not breathe.” Ma’Dea got real close to me and said, “I don’t care nothing about your crying.” And then she put her finger up in my nose and said, “Breathe on it. I dare you.” I sat there, holding my breath. I started crying because of the emotional things she put on me. Just some real intimidating stuff for a kid. She was a good woman—I don’t know why she put me through that.
* * *
“Oh, come on, Ruth.” She was headed toward the living room and he went to follow her. She probably wanted the hammer she kept under the cushions in the couch.
Halfway there, she turned on him. “Don’t follow me, goddamnit.” I still don’t know how he did it, but Uncle LC shut her up in the bathroom. She was livid. Cussing. “When I get out of here, I’m gone kill your ass.”
“Okay, Ms. Ruth.” Then he turned to me. “Brenda, gone down to the car.”
I heard my grandmother calling out, “You bet not move, Brenda Jean!”
Uncle LC looked at me hard and said, “Gone. I said gone.” And I shot out the door.
I was crazy nervous, shaking in the car. We drove off. And while we were on the way there, Grandmomma was on the phone with Aunt Josie giving her an earful. Ma’Dea was telling Aunt Josie what she was going to do to me. “When she come back, I’m gone to beat her ass.” So when I went in Aunt Josie’s house, whatever was said, however it was said, Aunt Josie told me to come into the kitchen and asked me if she could look at my back. I had these extension cord marks on my back and these bruises. She shook her head when she saw them, and she told Ma’Dea, “You can’t whoop on her like that.”
“I can do whatever I want to do to her. I kill her if I want to.” We didn’t have speakerphones back then, but you could hear her ass all on the phone.
Aunt Josie hung up the phone and pulled my blouse back down. “Do you want to stay out here?”
“Yeah.”
* * *
I thought if anybody could protect me, it was Aunt Josie and my uncle. They were my heroes. It seemed like they wanted a better life for me. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I told Aunt Josie I wanted to come over to her house. Auntie and Uncle LC had moved away from the West Side, to Evanston, Illinois, and they had bought a house. See, Uncle LC had two or three jobs. He worked for a trucking company for many years; he worked in security, and sometimes he was doing some stuff that wasn’t quite legal. No drugs or anything, but maybe some merchandise. Folks brought in some unauthorized things and some state troopers had to get involved. Maybe it ain’t a felony, but you might get caught cause you ain’t got the right credentials. He was a jack of all trades. When he wasn’t doing security or trucking, he was out in his garage fixing somebody’s car. He worked so hard and we all were proud. Auntie and Uncle LC had two boys. Their sons had electric trains, electric guitars. They had nice clothes and matching coats. They were really blessed. I loved having to be a good girl at their house. They didn’t need an extra kid in the house to feed. We girls are expensive. Now my aunt had three kids she got to do everything for. Another mouth to feed, an extra somebody to pick up after, another little person to worry about. Even as a kid, I appreciated that.
My life in the suburbs was great but traumatic at the same time. Going to school was fun; I had a ton of friends there. I was studying, learning stuff. But the boys started to hate me. I was cool as a cousin, but now that I was living there, I was coming in on their situation. So they were very mean to me after that. But I was coming fresh from the West Side. Neither one of my cousins could do anything to me, I used to whoop they asses up in that house. My auntie came home and my cousins would be raggedy as fetlocks. “What happened to y’all?”
I dog-walked they ass around the house. I was a squabbler. They were all scratched up, clothes all tore up. Hair here and there. Don’t mess with me. I’m from the West Side. But here’s the thing, I didn’t know how, but they found out that I was claustrophobic. They used to lock me up in the closets.
I was in there crying.
Claustrophobia is a strange thing. When you are claustrophobic, you panic. When you panic, the more you feel closed in, and as you go through the panic, the smaller everything feels. It closes in on you and you can’t breathe. I used to be in that closet and couldn’t breathe and I was trying to calm down. But then the boys unlocked the door and ran out the house. As we got older, they got bigger and they got stronger, and I couldn’t whoop them both. They were always trying to start some stuff with me. Then they started to blackmail me. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them boys, “Fuck, y’all.” Thinking about it now, I should have said, I’m done with you punks. But they found out how to manipulate me. They made up lies. Like they saw me with a boy, or would tell Aunt Josie I was doing something she told me not to do, or say I was someplace Aunt Josie told me not to be. They used to manipulate me in that way because I didn’t want to get into trouble. I had just left a house where you could get your ass beat into the ground if you were out of pocket. Aunt Josie never whooped me like that, but I thought if I misbehaved, she might.
Now Aunt Josie wasn’t gone to kiss your bumps and all that. She wasn’t a nurturing person, because she wasn’t nurtured. Ma’Dea raised her, too. Aunt Josie wasn’t nurtured, but I wasn’t nurtured either. I was loved, but not nurtured.
* * *
I was ten, almost eleven. I had started forming. I had titties and I had red spots in my panties, so I went and told my auntie, “I need a Band-Aid.”
“What for?”
Leaving Breezy Street Page 4