Leaving Breezy Street

by Brenda Myers-Powell

  I got over there, and she couldn’t hardly sit up. Her breathing was weak. She had smoked so much. But just like I thought, she had money. By the grace of God, no drug dealer had answered their phone for her, and she was too weak to walk up on Howard Street and get somebody. She was laying down, sweating. I looked at her in bed, and I told her, “I’m not going to work. You sounded like you needed me, and from the looks of you, you definitely do.” Stephanie could hardly talk. I said, “Come on. Let me get you somewhere.”

  I put her in my car and drove her to this place called Ad Detox. I went in and told them Stephanie needed a bed. They told me they didn’t have any beds.

  I said, “Come here!”

  “What?”

  “Come here.” I took the man out to my car. “Now, you look at my friend and tell her you ain’t got any beds.” He looked at the back seat and said, “Bring her back at twelve o’clock.” So I took Stephanie to Genesis House, and they allowed her to lie on the couch until the bed was made available. Come to find out, she had pneumonia. Genesis House took her straight to the hospital.

  * * *

  After that, our relationships, all of them, took a turn. Both of us had a habit of picking the wrong men. You know what I was always attracted to? Jail brothers. You just get out the penitentiary, looking buff and fresh, and I am going to make you a better person. I’m a better person, so I’m going to take you, because you’re just out and looking good. You don’t have to go back to a life of crime; you are going to be my man now. And I’m going to make you the best man in the world.

  That was my mindset. I still was falling in love the way I fell in love when I was in the streets. Superficial. Flesh. Flash. I still had this thing about buying love, even when I didn’t have to. I didn’t know how to have relationships without paying a guy, taking care of him. He’s a grown, full-ass man, but I’m Captain Save-a-Ho. So I would always attract the wrong guys. And the only time the relationship was good was when I was in the bed with them. It wasn’t emotional, spiritual. Well, I would be emotional; they wouldn’t be. These dudes didn’t care about me. All my friends could see it. My sponsors, my mentors, my friends from Genesis House, they all knew that I was being used.

  Two ladies I knew from Genesis House who had been there before me, Olivia and Louise, would knock on my door when I would be going through depression because some man had stolen my money. I’d be so embarrassed. My rent would be due, and I’d lost my assets to some random guy. I would isolate myself and not talk to anybody. Olivia and Louise would come over there. They would bring Louise’s daughter, Paris, and tell her to knock on the door, because they knew I might not let them in, but I would let Paris inside. She’d knock on the door. “Please let us come in, Auntie Brenda. I love you.”

  While I was going through all that, I was still trying to build a relationship with my daughters. Prune wasn’t there yet. Mimi could come over, but she couldn’t spend the night. Both of my girls were worried; they didn’t know if I was going to get high again. Peaches used to live right up over me—that was how I got to be with Mimi a lot. Mimi would always be over Peaches’s house. It was a minute before Prune said, “Okay, Mommy, you can come and get my baby.” When I went and picked my grandbaby up, Prune would tell me before I left, “Mommy, take care of my baby.”

  “With my life, Prune.”

  I used to hate that they felt they had to say that to me. But I understood.

  Prune and Mimi came to live with me, and I loved it because I could spend all this time with Mimi. Prune was a great mom. In the morning, she would get up, get her baby ready, get herself ready to go downtown, because the place where she worked had a daycare in the building. She’d walk out the door with the diaper bag and her purse, baby wrapped up snug in the winter, walk to the train. I just thought: How can I help? And so sometimes, Prune would leave Mimi at home with me. And me and Mimi would go out to the pancake house. That’s where I found out my little grandbaby was a diva. I used to buy her these little outfits—little pleather suits, the little Mexican dresses and shit. Prune would be like, “Momma, don’t buy that.” My two daughters dress very conservatively. And I’m flamboyant. But Mimi liked the way I dressed and she liked to dress that way, too. Anyway, she was sitting up there in the pancake house with her little pleather suit on, and she looked at me and she said, “Nana?”

  “What?”

  “Did you get me this outfit from the big-girl store?”

  “Yeah. I got it from the one across the street.” You could see the Rainbow store from out the window. “In fact I did.”

  “Can we stop over there when we get through?”

  “For what?”

  “So I can get a blouse to match my suit. The one I have on doesn’t really match my suit.” I was stunned. I was like, okay, she’s only three years old, but she’s clearly been here before, and in her past life she was a fashion designer.

  That kind of stuff just blows you. I was finally getting a chance to have what I missed with my kids. But then me and Prune got into it.

  I had started dating this hunk named Pookie. The man had a body like a Mandingo warrior and dick in his shoe. Understand? It was like an addiction. I was addicted to that sex. He was so awful. I mean, nobody put they hands on me when I was clean because I wasn’t allowing that. I knew I could fight, and I wasn’t afraid to stand up for myself. But I didn’t stand up for myself where it counted. Pookie could always talk me into shit. He was the kind of brother who would steal my money—then help me look for it. A lotta people have experienced that: steal your money then help you look for it, to throw off the scent. “You sure it was here? You sure?” I mean, what? Ain’t nobody but two people here, me and you.

  Prune wasn’t supposed to be home, so I told Pookie he could spend the night. Well, Prune came home at like two o’clock in the morning and she wanted me to put Pookie out, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. So once again, I disappointed my daughter.

  After that, Prune started talking jazzy to me, no matter what I did. And I just felt like she couldn’t talk crazy to me. Once I got so mad, I chased her ass down the stairs. But now I can see her point. I was always putting men before my kids. I can see her point, and I feel awful about it.

  Things had gotten really bad. I still had a job, but I had gotten an eviction notice; Pookie was robbing me blind. I couldn’t keep up with shit from trying to keep up with him and his habit. This was not working. I remember sitting on the floor crying for about two hours and then I got up off the floor, thinking: What are you crying for? You been shot, you been stabbed, all of this shit, and you have made it this far. So I thought, okay. I’m not going to tell anybody what’s going on with me, I’ll just go to a shelter and keep my job. I’ll regroup.

  That was my plan.

  Later on that day, here go Peaches at my door. “What’s going on, Mother?”

  “Nothing.”

  But she had already heard from the people in the building. They had informed her. She said, “You done packed up. Where you going?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t really made no decisions.”

  “Okay, Momma. Here.” And she handed me an envelope. It had a check in it. “Momma, gone pay your rent.” Peaches walked to the door, but then turned around. “But you need to think about why you need to pay your man.”

  I wanted to smash her in the neck. But it was so true, I couldn’t. She had closed the door, and I was still sitting in the same place. I kept running through my mind, Why do I do that? Why do I do that? What Peaches said shook me.

  I paid the rent. There was this white guy named Jeff who had this hole in his neck that he had to breathe through. Sometimes he would take the tube out and clean it right there in front of me. It was disgusting. Jeff was fat, and everybody used to abuse him; they called him “fatso.” But you know what? He was the nicest man. I started to talk to Jeff about my situation. He said, “You know you need to get out of there, right? Because he’s not going to leave.”

  �
��Well, I’ve got to find a place.”

  “I’ll move you.”

  My cousin Gwen said there was an apartment over there in her building. She lived ten blocks away. I talked to the landlady, Delia; she was a Greek lady, and she told me she’d let me rent a place for seven hundred a month. She and her husband owned the place. I gave her money and she gave me a move-in date. And me and Jeff got ready to make the great escape. He gave me a framed piece of paper; the poem was titled “The Art of the Impossible.” It became my mantra.

  I prayed and talked to God. I told God, “I need this to be lifted from me. Help me.”

  It didn’t come at first, because when I moved to my next apartment, I have to admit, I got back with Pookie one more time. But it was all wrong. And this time I wasn’t blind. I saw him for what he was and who he was. One day, I came home from work and there was a bad feeling in the place. Pookie was sitting on the couch, high. He had just got out of jail, again, and he was talking shit to me to make me overlook how high he was. And I said to myself, Why don’t you get the hell out of here, sister? Out loud I said, “I guess I don’t do shit right.”

  “Oh, you want me to get out?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you just go. Because this ain’t working.” I went in the bedroom.

  He started putting his shit, and my shit, in his bag. Which was actually my bag. I had bought all his clothes, and his TV, too. It was one of those penitentiary TVs, made of clear plastic, so you could see right through it, so inmates couldn’t put shit in them. It had the old-school back on it, not the flat screen. I don’t know what they have now, but that’s what he had.

  He picked up that penitentiary TV and took it with him. I said to myself, You petty asshole. I didn’t want it, but you petty. I don’t even think it was a color TV. But he took his petty-ass TV and I watched him do it. I had a cat named Aretha Franklin. We were at the door as Pookie left out. And my cat was looking at me like, “Let him go. You’ll be fine.”

  I closed both of my doors, locked them, and I went inside my bedroom. I look out my window, and I saw Pookie standing there. Whoever he called hadn’t gotten there yet. But they showed up and came and got him.

  Now how do I get through this period of me leaving Pookie?

  I decided to become abstinent because clearly, I didn’t know how to have a relationship. I needed to learn how to love myself before I could love anybody else. I had all of these great self-help books, and in the meantime, I was journaling. I started to date myself. I would go out to movies by myself. I would go out to dinner by myself. I would go shopping and go and people watch. I would sit up in the house and take long bubble baths. I would powder and lotion myself. I watched my weight. My hair was growing. And sometimes I would take it down and play with it. I would call my little cousins and tell them to take a picture of Auntie. They would laugh at me. I just decided to spend time with the kids and my grandbaby. It was my period of learning self-love.

  I told God, “God, I don’t know what You have in store for me, but if I don’t get in a relationship, I think I’ll be okay, because I’ll have a relationship with me, finally.” I believed that. I was just being with me. I was on this abstinence and I was dating me. Me and my cat, Aretha Franklin.

  Chapter 20

  Me, Living with Me

  In the daytime, I was a bill collector. But when I got off work, I would go and volunteer at a shelter, help women who were in recovery. People asked me, “Why you go and do that when you get off work?” I was living by myself, and I had this extra time on my hands. And I wanted to follow the pattern of the women who had helped me in treatment. Ladies would come to Genesis House and volunteer. It made sense that I should volunteer. I wanted to give back the way those women gave back to me. I had been so happy when they stopped by. They felt good about it, and I wanted to live a life that I felt good about, too. It worked. I was at my best when I was giving back. There was a saying in the program, “You can’t keep it unless you give it back.” So when people would ask why, I told them, the job pays my bills, but the volunteering pays my spirit. Get it? It helped me live with me.

  I had left Genesis House but still went over there to volunteer with Olivia and Louise. Coming back and talking to the girls—that was part of our required recovery. Everything was cool until they got a new director. She started telling the people who worked there we weren’t allowed to come in and volunteer. That hurt. Later on we found out she was embezzling the money, but at the time all I knew was that it looked like she wanted to stop all the good work we had done. She didn’t know anything about the women; she didn’t know anything about the community. All she wanted to do was take over.

  I still wanted to help the girls. So I used to meet them at the Narcotics Anonymous meetings. It wasn’t the same, but it felt important to have some kind of relationship with my sisters. Louise, who was doing work at this place called Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said to me, “Don’t worry about it. You can do other things. I have this friend, his name is Samir Goswami, and he’s doing this great work for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. He’s starting this thing up for women in prostitution. You really need to be a part of that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s looking for somebody to do this speaking thing. You would be good at it. I’m not good for it because I don’t like to do all of that. Talk to him. He’ll take you out and buy you lunch and everything.”

  “They buy you lunch?” Back then, a free lunch sounded very good to me. I’m thinking to myself, regardless of what happens, I get a free lunch out of it. The fact was that I really wanted to go. When I wasn’t at work or talking with the ladies at the NA meetings, I was sort of bored. This way I could go somewhere, meet some people. It would keep me positive. I went downtown to interview with this guy, Samir Goswami. We started having this conversation about everything prostitution. It was terrific. He asked where I came from. How did I feel about the women out there, the way I used to be? He told me that they were going to talk with the state senators because no one had ever spoken to them about prostitution. We talked about the challenges for a woman who was trying to get out of prostitution and away from the life. All of these things that I felt needed to be said, he was telling me, we should and could say to these powerful men. I had never heard anybody talk about helping women to such an extent. The fact is, women who had walked my road needed that level of help. We needed more than shelters or even treatment centers. We needed the law to change. We talked so much for so long that we ran out of time and I never got the lunch. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if I would have been put on the road to be doing it like I’m doing it. He became my mentor, he was my director, he was my friend. He was a gift to me.

  Samir and I became like ninety-eight and two, like Jack and Jill. It was because of him that I started asking the big questions. And I started to feel women in prostitution don’t have a voice. Who is speaking out for women? Speaking up for women?

  Having a voice is a hell of a thing. A lot people don’t, so other people have to speak for them. In the next week or two, I was speaking in front of state senators. I didn’t receive any training. I had never done it before, but I wasn’t nervous. I just thought, okay, here’s my chance to say what needs to be said. Nobody was going to tell these folks the truth. Let me say something to you some-of-a-bitches—that was in my mind. And I felt that’s what I was doing; I was speaking for girls who didn’t have an opportunity to speak for themselves. I had to be careful about what I said, but I also needed to say what had to be said. I had to speak for the countless women who had died out there, who had been harmed, and who had never been able to speak.

  The first time I ever spoke, I was talking about how the courts were giving out felonies to women who were prostituting. The felony upgrades were not helping the situation. They weren’t fair. I told those senators to notice they weren’t doing that to the johns. Nobody was going after the pimps. And they were only doing it in the areas that they were gentri
fying, like Bucktown. I had worked Bucktown back in the day. They putting up million-dollar condos, and the residents had started showing up at court, calling their state senators and congressmen and all that to make sure the women didn’t return to their neighborhood. But you know, even after the prostitutes had left the block, the tricks were still there. And the tricks were actually soliciting the women residents. Now somebody tell me what all that situation has to do with hos on the stroll? The hos weren’t there anymore. It just goes to show that the problem were the johns. Throwing the book at the prostitutes wasn’t going to stop the situation.

  I had to become the voice and the face of prostitution, what they now call human trafficking. I had to take that role on, and if I was going to be that girl, I had to make sure that was okay with my loved ones. I talked to those senators first, and then I realized, oh, man, I’ve got to talk to my kids. My daughters and I had a long conversation about it. I asked them, “How you feel about that?”

  “Momma, that’s your story. You tell your story, especially if you are helping other people with it. Go tell your story.”

  You have to consider the people close to you when you put yourself out there, being known as “former prostitute Brenda Myers-Powell.” I had permission from the people who really mattered. My daughters have supported me totally through this whole journey because they wanted me to heal. And if I wanted to help other people heal, then that’s what my girls wanted me to do.

  * * *

  The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless gave me a podium to speak from. The whole Chicago Coalition was like a family. It felt so good to be there. Everybody that was there felt so good to be there. They were organizers for the homeless. They were organizers for the rights of children to go to school if they were homeless. Everybody there had such big hearts. It was like you left your home and you walked into another home. Everybody was always bringing food in; everybody was working, but it was still family. It was a great place to be. I loved being there.