Leaving Breezy Street

by Brenda Myers-Powell

  For a minute, I thought it would work. I had gotten a job at the Superdome. They were building it, and all I had to do was watch a certain area all night. I damn near slept through most of my shift. I worked for the security company and then I would go strip. I’d ho on the weekend.

  I got a little friend named Ed. He was a friend/little bit boyfriend, and thank God he was a good person, because I left my kids with him. I was opening my kids up to too much. All kinds of stuff could have happened to them. He didn’t do nothing to them. Later on, my girls told me, “We used to run Ed. He would do anything we asked him to do, Momma.” He was a great guy. Thank God. Thank God.

  I met a guy from California named Crockett. I met him at the strip club. I liked working at the club. The whole thing made me feel like an entertainer instead of a ho. It’s all about the lap dances and the champagne room. I could make enough money at the strip club that I didn’t have to turn a trick unless I really wanted to. Crockett was giving me fifties and hundreds across the floor and impressing me with his big talk. Middle-aged guy. He looked really legit; he had this nice jewelry. He was this dude with game. Crockett had been coming down to New Orleans for maybe about six months. He was coming to town to get water, PCP, and they were transporting it back in a van. They wanted to use me as a mule, but I didn’t know that. They wanted me as a front to be in the van with two guys. I thought it would be so easy. Get a bunch of money, enough to move into a bigger apartment. I risked so much, but I was in love with that fast money.

  On the way to California, Crockett got the idea he could get money out of me, too. So when he took me out there, he had a friend in Laurel Canyon, in LA, who happened to be a nice girl. That was where he took me, to stash me for a couple days until he could figure out what to do with me. See, Crockett had drugs in that van, and he had to deal with that situation. I was just another life to play with.

  I had left my kids in New Orleans with these two girls I had let stay with me. They were strippers, and they had nowhere else to go. They were going to watch my kids for a couple of days, and then I was going to come back. But I didn’t. Then some guys came by looking for me, wanted to do something to me. See, I had messed around with another dope dealer. He had given me some shit to sell—like two pounds of weed, cocaine, and shit. I sold that shit and moved, moved with the money. And he had found my apartment. Those two girls said, we need to get these girls up out of here.

  I was a mess. A hot mess.

  Once, I went to a clairvoyant, and she told me my mother was watching over me, because she could better help me from the other side than she could on this. I totally believed her. This wasn’t the first time people had been out there looking for me. I had some serious angels watching over my ass and my babies. The dudes came over there and were like, “What—she didn’t take her kids?” Those two girls living with me in New Orleans? Thank God those girls got my kids out of there and got them to safety. They saw that something wasn’t right, and they called my auntie the next day.

  So I was in California, and I was stupid and embarrassed. I couldn’t get back to my kids, and I was calling and not getting any answers. I was panicking. I was praying. I was doing all this shit when something said, Call Aunt Josie. I called her and there my kids were.

  Aunt Josie lit into my ass like white on rice. “You ain’t no good, Brenda Jean. You left your kids, these babies, these angels. Nine and ten years old, and you left them, Brenda. I’m so glad that the girls remembered my number to call me.”

  She was telling me what happened, and I had no defense. All I could do was listen to her telling me what a loser and failure I was. Things could have worked out in a way that I could have never seen my kids again. Somebody could have come by and snatched my kids up. I know what the world is full of. How could I have done that? I was listening to her, and the last thing she said to me was, “You need to stay out they life, Brenda Jean. Stay out they damn life. Stay out. Until you ready to be a mother, stay out. Because every time you come into they life, you leave again and you hurt them again.” She was right. She was damn right. Who was I to keep hurting them babies like that? I knew how my daughters used to look at me when I walked out the door. And I carried those looks. I carried all of that with me when I went back out on the streets. After I talked to her, I knew that they were safe, and I said to myself, “I don’t deserve those kids. I need to leave and allow them to be happy.” I could remember how happy I was in Evanston. I wanted that for them. I thought about how much better off they were without me being in the picture. Prune was ten; Peaches was nine. Leaving them was the best thing for everybody.

  So I began my life as a California girl.

  Chapter 14

  Famous in California

  The first thing that girl in Laurel Canyon told me about California was to watch out for STDs. “They share diseases here like candy. You gotta be careful and know who you messing with.” Not too long after that, AIDS started popping up. This was in 1982. I was stripping at this place called Charlie’s, a bikini bar on Crenshaw and Florence. Crockett got me the job, and I would see him every now and again; he’d come and get me from the Laurel Canyon house, and then he’d have me sitting in his luxury van for three, four hours while he was in a card club. Crockett was a heavy gambler.

  Working at Charlie’s helped me get my independence from Crockett. I met a bunch of guys and girls, and I just didn’t need him anymore. I sort of hit it off with one girl in particular—SeQuita. I told her how I was living in hotel rooms when I wasn’t up in Laurel Canyon.

  “Damn, that must be killing you.”

  “Yeah, it’s killing my money.”

  SeQuita offered to let me come stay at her place. So I packed up nothing and went and stayed on her couch. At the lounge, I was dapping and snorting here and there, take a little tip here, but I was still all about trying to stay cute. But I was headed to ugly, because I was on a mission to destroy myself because of what I had done to my kids. That was all weighing on me heavily.

  I got involved with this dangerous drug dealer, Big Alden. Alden used to come to Charlie’s to sell the girls drugs. I walked to the back office, and because I was a little ho and Alden reminded me of players I used to date, I asked Charlie, jokingly, “Who’s that nigga right there? Cause he look like a player.” The next time he came in, she introduced us. He was a sugar daddy. He took me places that I couldn’t believe and did things with me. Once, he took me to the mountains, to these caves where there were jacuzzies. We did a lot of wining and dining and had way-out sex.

  In some ways, he was the sweetest guy in the world. But he was a drug dealer; he was controlling. He was the type of brother you can’t leave. SeQuita thought it would be funny if she told a lie on me. She told Alden I had sex with this other guy. I didn’t know she had told him that. SeQuita and I had come home from work, and we had gotten a little high. I went in the living room and made my little place on the couch. She went into the room and closed the door. I was sleeping on her sofa, windows cracked; it was night. It’s a first-floor apartment, and in California most of the apartments have metal bars on the doors and the windows. I’m sleeping right by the window; it’s summertime, the window is up. I heard this motorcycle and then I heard gunshots, pow pow pow pow. I’m so startled, I rolled off the couch and fell on the floor. This bitch SeQuita is as quiet as a mouse; she didn’t even come out of her bedroom. She knew that was Alden out there shooting up the place just to mess with me, intimidate me. That was the type of shit that was going on.

  I went out with Alden one night, and he took me over to his friend Paul’s house, and Alden pulled a gun on me and tried to make me tell him I had sex with some other dude. But I never had sex with the dude. We broke up after that. It was for the best. I was a hustler; I was a ho. I couldn’t work like I wanted to because Alden was so jealous. I didn’t understand. I was a dancer. I had to get money. How did he think I got my money?

  That was the end of Alden. Too bad it wasn’t the end of SeQuita an
d her shenanigans.

  * * *

  One day, SeQuita came in from work and went to her bedroom where she had her little table and shit and started getting high. She took out this little black bag with some clear tubes inside. She also had a glass bottle full of grain alcohol. Then she put a glass mirror flat on top of the table. She sprinkled the rock on the glass. I didn’t know why yet, but she made a line of the white rocks and chopped them up, fed them into the pipe, then she pulled out this long wire, like a knitting needle but skinnier, and told me to dip it into the grain alcohol. She showed me how to hold it and how to hit it. Oh my God, it was a euphoria. Getting high picked me up; I felt like I was up on top of the world. I could have a conversation about anything. My girls, my problems were very far away. Brenda would leave and a new me would appear. I think to this day that my nickname that stuck, Breezy, developed out of crack. She was my more confident self, my controlled self, my powerful self that could knock everything down. My more criminal self would come up from smoking crack and it would make me so creative. The crack would create a situation and drinking Cisco wine would validate it.

  I looked at her and said, “Give me some of that.” We finished that off and I said, “You ain’t got no more?”

  “Naw. That was it. You want to get some more?”

  “Yeah.”

  A couple of months later, I hooked up with this little cutie pie. Lamar and I were kicking it, but wouldn’t you know it, SeQuita told my new man that she heard I was having sex with somebody else. She put this sympathy act on, and then they started going out. And she got pregnant behind it. I didn’t know all this shit was going on around me. All I knew was, suddenly SeQuita told me I needed to go and find my own place.

  That was fine. I needed to get away from SeQuita. I had lived on her couch for about six, seven months, and it was time to move on. She had too many trifling ways. She had this uncle who used to be the road manager for Ray Charles. Sam was his name. When he came over, they would go lock up in the room to get high together. Weird. And she always wanted to manage how everybody got high. One time, we were getting high together, and in the middle of it, she started putting up all my shit. Had she lost her mind? That was my money and my dope. I ended up going across the street and getting high with the gas station guy. I had started spending time with Dennis Edwards, who was one of the front men for the Temptations. Dennis and I were really good friends. We did not have sex, but we did get high together, because now I was starting to get high. Okay? I had moved beyond recreational use. I wasn’t going out spending my money on getting high, but when an opportunity came my way (and there were a lotta opportunities to get high!), I was there.

  The problem was SeQuita. When I wanted to get high, I was still going over her place to do it, and she just wanted to run everyone and everything. Dennis, his bass player, and I were over SeQuita’s house, and she would always try to create these situations where I was bringing over people who have drugs and money, and she would try to put me out the situation. Finally, Dennis said to me, “Who is she? The high organizer?”

  And a little after that, I left SeQuita’s for good. The girl was just too bossy.

  When people get high on drugs, they go through two or three personalities before getting high is over. I wasn’t into the high like that—not yet. I wasn’t as deep into smoking that cocaine as other people were, but I was getting there. I didn’t understand its power. I was trying to do two things at once. I wanted to have a straight life and then have my drug life on the side. I was dancing at a club out in South Central when I met an electrician named Charles who became my boyfriend. He was a good, decent guy, but I was starting to be more about the drugs than about the dancing. Charles had to let me go because I was toxic to the way he was living, and I understood. I was in a spiral. I’d wake up one morning in one part of the hood, then spend the day roaming, bumping into drug dealers or other girls. I was working at another strip club in Gardena and sleeping with the manager. But I wasn’t going to stay with him long because I was too wild. I bumped into this big Mexican drug dealer named Albert; he used to give me a lot of drugs, give me a lot of money. But before I knew it, I needed more money for more drugs, so I started hitting the streets. I knew how to do that. I would go to the strip club and then go in the streets afterwards. I wore leather, this real dominatrix stuff, but sexy. And I started hanging off Figueroa, in South Central. It was so easy to get so much money over there. I didn’t know why these hos weren’t out there getting money. I would see girls out there, but they were always acting like they weren’t working. I’m from Chicago—we get paper. I watched these girls “working.” They were strawberries. Strawberries are girls who have sex for drugs. I had never heard of that until I came to California. That was what it was all about at that time. Crack was popping. Crack was there. The young dealers were walking up and down the sidewalk. “You need something, young momma?” And of course, I did need it. But I also needed somewhere to smoke that. The dealers would point out a house, and for a little fee they let you inside. As long as you got drugs, people would be nice to you and you could stay as long as you like. But as soon as you done, they kicked you out.

  Everybody was hanging out at the drug houses. And there were all kinds of drug houses out there. Sometimes the people living there would let the drug dealer set up in the front of the house if the dealer paid the rent. And then the people would live in the back of the house and we weren’t allowed to go back there. Sometimes these drug house would just be empty. Nobody lived there. It was just a bunch of squatters. Nothing was inside but a couple of couches and some bare mattresses in the bedrooms. You could hear the rats running around. Buddy’s drug house had a lot of roaches. We would laugh and say Buddy’s roaches were high, because when you turned on the light, the roaches wouldn’t run away. I’d go to get my stuff, and I’d see some neighborhood girls sitting on the porch steps, and I would come back, and they would still be sitting there. I was wondering: Do they live there? But I found out what they were doing. They were waiting for some dude to come through, they’d give the dude some head, and then he would go and get the girls some crack. That kind of transaction was not for me.

  You know what’s funny? Those girls looked down on me because I was a prostitute. But I was looking at them just as crazy. Women have different mentalities. They can act like hos, but they won’t admit it. What’s the difference between me turning tricks and getting money, and them sucking wang for rock? Undercover shit. I was more flamboyant; I was out there. I was from Chicago. But everything was different when I got to California. I had to learn how California was. I knew they spent a lot of time sucking a lotta wang for a hit. And I was like, wait: you can go and get your own money, sit down and smoke your drugs like you want to, and you ain’t got to be begging no guy or mess up your reputation.

  So I was turning tricks again, this time to get money for crack. The reputation that I didn’t have on Figueroa was that I would suck peter for crack. The reputation I did have was that I was a ho. For me, that made all the difference. Being a prostitute and making money meant I was in control. I bought my own shit and smoked where I wanted to. I wasn’t going to give a blow job to a drug dealer for a hit off a pipe. It made dudes respect me. That’s how I managed to keep some cool relationships. Dennis and I continued to be friends. The last time I saw him was after he made the song “Don’t Look Any Further.” He was working on that when I met him. After that, I think he got back with his girl, and he stopped messing with them drugs. Dennis had contracts, and he couldn’t fulfill them because of the drugs. He almost didn’t make it. A bass player I know was telling me all this. The dude was telling me, “I’m a studio musician and my money comes if Dennis completes this project. And I literally had to break the pipes for us to go to work one day.”

  Crack got the best of a lot of people, but Dennis pulled out just in time—and just as I was really getting deep into it.

  I was in my second year in California. Drug dealers reall
y liked me because I was so friendly. I was an entertainer. I would entertain the shit out of fools. They thought I was hilarious. And they were impressed with me because I was a hustler and I would be their girl—well, until I didn’t want to be their girl. I could do all of that because I didn’t have a pimp who claimed me. That was my California shit.

  This is when I got the name Breezy. This girl named Joyce, she had kids, and she used to invite me over her place because I was the person who would get her high. So I would stay over there and hang out at her house. Sometimes Joyce would walk out with me. I mean, she wouldn’t turn no tricks, but she would watch my back. People do that to make sure once you make that money you come back. So Joyce named me Breezy because I did shit so fast. She said never saw somebody come and go so quick. Most folks she dealt with said they were going out to get some drugs for her, would take her twenty, thirty dollars, and take a day and a half to come back.

  “Yo ass is like the breeze. I be talking to you one minute, and the next minute you gone. That’s what I’m gone call you, Breezy, cause you be fast.”

  I was over at Joyce’s house when I met this drug dealer named Dean. He was chocolate, with curly hair, because he had a Jheri curl, a texturizer. Medium height. He always wore these dark sunglasses. Really good-looking. He had a bunch of drugs, bunch of money, and a couple of cars: a Mercedes and a Porsche. He was one of those dudes with a real tough-guy voice, real gravelly. I was over at Joyce’s sleeping on her couch when Dean walked in the door.

  He said to Joyce, “Hook me up with that.”

  Somehow, I was the hook-up girl. Hook me up. I was always hooked up with somebody. Dean had all the hos, everybody was his woman. He had all the girls who came by and bought drugs from him. That was the way he had it set up. And in return, he had this little house where we could come and sleep, take a nap, he would buy us clothes.