Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro
Page 36
By late August, the obvious influences of camp life had dissolved. If Coco cursed, Mercedes no longer said, “Mommy, please don’t swear.” After failed attempts at employing her fledgling skills as a diplomat in her dealings with her sisters, Mercedes resorted to petulance, then bullying. Her battles with Brittany and Stephanie resumed. Mercedes still sang the camp songs, though. She taught “Boom Chicka Rocka Chicka Boom” to Pearl, who made song sounds as she splashed in the tub. Mercedes taught Nautica, who sang sternly to her dolls. Mercedes even shared the songs with Brittany and Stephanie, who set the lyrics to cheers. Matthew and Michael were too young to say the words but they liked to watch their sisters do flips and cartwheels. Mercedes even sang as she cycled, which was how Coco could tell when she pedaled by the front window and was about to turn at the tree. The way she held the handlebars reminded Coco of Cesar.
Mercedes loved riding her bike through Corliss Park. She would coast down the sidewalk hill and take the shortcut by Milagros’s to avoid the boys hanging out at the basketball court. She would wave to the white ladies who sat at a picnic table smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all afternoon. She knew the sidewalks, exactly where the bumps made the front wheel hop. She knew where to slow down for the turns on the dangerous sand. The ladies at the picnic table could sense it—the pleasure she took in her sturdy legs, the confidence suggested in the determined chin, the delight of the freedom and the fresh air. They seemed to share her exuberance, even as it passed them by. The smoke from their cigarettes rose in the sun, like haze, and made its way above the poplar trees.
PART IV
House to House
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By December, Coco and Frankie were back together, but rarely having sex. She told her mother, “I feel like a damn nun.” Foxy replied that she couldn’t imagine Coco with anyone but Frankie. “Show me a perfect person,” Foxy would say, “and I’ll kiss their ass.” Frankie sometimes kept his drugs at Corliss Park, but he himself was usually out: he had gotten a car. Coco wanted him home, but when he was home, she didn’t like his treatment of her girls. One morning, she caught Frankie snapping scissors in Nautica’s face. He said that he was fed up with her demands for food she never ate, but to Coco that was no excuse: “It’s okay if you trying to show them something, trying to teach them, but not to make them feel fear.” She told him that he would never treat his own kids that way.
The violent bickering between them was contagious: Coco yelled at Nautica, who then pulled her mother’s hair and kicked her in the back. Mercedes pounded Nikki, who scratched to draw blood. Pearl clawed at herself, as Coco used to as a child. One morning, Nikki woke up in tears. “I feel like it’s seeing my mother all over again with Richie,” Coco said. The next thing she knew, just before Christmas, Frankie got arrested.
He called Coco crying; she called his mother, who said to Coco, “He made it all this time without getting in trouble, why’s he going to start acting stupid now?” Frankie had been stopped for not wearing a seat belt. He gave the officer his license, but his name had an arrest warrant attached to it. As luck would have it, the warrant was for a murder. Frankie panicked: both he and Coco knew people who’d been arrested and convicted for crimes they did not commit, just as they knew others who’d committed crimes and were still at large, committing new ones; crimes and punishments rarely added up. Even Iris’s husband, Armando, a solid working man, had been stopped by police. Luckily, fingerprints cleared Frankie, and his mother wired Coco money and Coco bailed him out. The episode made Coco seriously consider moving back to the city, where she and her troubles would feel less conspicuous and Frankie could live with her without being subjected to this level of scrutiny from the police. In fact, whenever Coco felt trapped, she fantasized about moving.
But Cesar, whom Coco had written to about her restlessness, told Coco to stay put. He was in solitary confinement again, and he’d been thinking a lot about his daughters. If Coco returned to the Bronx, she was resigning herself to a lifestyle they’d both tried to escape:
I understand what you mean about Albany being too much for you and Mercedes, but I really don’t want my daughters growing up in the Bronx. Try to move and stay in Albany think of the kids and stop thinking of yourself all of the time. . . . You had those kids for all the wrong reasons, and now you’re paying the price. I know I’m in jail for something I did, but with your selfish ass self and your selfish way of living you’ve made things psychologically worse for my daughters and yours. I am not saying you are a bad mother. You take very good care of my kids and I will never take them away from you, but you ruining their minds. But you don’t see this because you’re too busy fucking and having babies after babies by dudes who don’t give a fuck about you or your or (THEIR) kids. . . .
Coco I’ve made my mistakes but I didn’t want you or Roxanne to have these babies because I knew I wouldn’t stay with either of you, but you both gave birth to those girls for the wrong reasons and now my daughters are paying the price along with me. Mercy was the only baby I agreed on having. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my daughters equally and with all my heart. But it hurts me to know they’re suffering because of OUR inconsiderate actions. . . .
You may think that being a good mother is enough but it’s not. I know the effects of growing up in a household with brothers and sisters from different fathers and seeing different men with my Mom and all the other shit you’re doing. It’s not good. . . . I am trying to open your eyes to see the pain you’re going to cause those kids. I know I been through it. The pain is paramount. Start thinking with your mind and stop thinking with your pussy. A child can be physically healthy and seem to be alright, but psychologically trauma is a very serious disease that can effect the healthiest of children and cause serious problems in their life. Look, learn from your mistakes and stop making them over and over again. Why do you think I haven’t had a baby with my wife? . . . You know I’m dying to have a son, but I can’t allow my child to go through the psychological torment that me, Mercedes, Whitney, and Justine and Naughty are going through. . . .
. . . I’m not saying to stop having sex. I’m saying to stop having babies like if it’s okay. Your having them for all the wrong reasons and all your going to do is cause them pain in the long run. And they are going to see you and say, Oh, my Mommy’s a hoe. And if she has had kids from a bunch of different men, then it’s okay if I do it. I don’t want my daughters to come out like you or me. . . . Anyway this letter wasn’t meant as a bad one, it was meant to open your eyes. I’m really tired of staying shut and watching you destroy the lives of you and your kids. I hope you take my advice because it’s for the good not bad. Anyway, I want for you to send me a lot of flicks of my kids. . . . Listen, I also expect to see my kids with YOU. Those are our kids, and OUR responsibility. . . . I want to see Mercedes and Naughty with their Mom. I’m bringing this to a close bye bye.
Coco read the letter, then reread it and said, “It makes me feel dirty. It’s bad enough I have them, he don’t have to remind me what I did.” That very afternoon, she left the kids with Milagros and took the bus downtown to the offices of Planned Parenthood.
Coco’s attempts at birth control had been much like her attempts at many other things—well-intentioned and wholehearted, dwarfed by other problems, and eventually forgotten. After Pearl was born, she’d asked the doctor if she could have her tubes tied, and he told her to ask her regular doctor, but Coco didn’t have a regular doctor. She had also asked a hospital nurse, who wasn’t sure whether the procedure would be covered by Medicaid. Coco had meant to pursue it, but within a month she and her girls were homeless, upstate. Since then, she had considered other options, but she also knew her limitations. If she couldn’t always remember to give her own children their medications, how could she possibly remember to take the Pill? Her sister, Iris, had Norplant, which she swore made her queasy, and Coco thought it was creepy to have small cylinders lined up on the inside of your arm. She’d also heard from frie
nds the rumors that the government needed guinea pigs to test Norplant and was encouraging its use mainly among Puerto Ricans and blacks. Coco had debated getting “the shot,” Depo-Provera, but she’d been turned off by the rumors of its side effects. Elaine claimed that it had ended her sex drive; Iris heard that it made girls lose their hair and lose weight, and Coco, at four feet eleven inches and 133 pounds, was still trying to get fat. But Cesar’s letter was the push she needed; she made an appointment for the following morning.
That night, as Coco labored over her response to Cesar, reconsidering and editing each sentence, Mercedes asked her mother if she would write down a letter for her. Mercedes dictated as Coco scribbled:
Dear Daddy,
How you doing? Fine I hope. As for myself I’m confused about something. Mommy’s boyfriend got locked up and she bailed him out. I want to know why she didn’t bail you out. Daddy I’m sorry about telling you about Mom’s boyfriend. I don’t understand. Mom tried to explain to me. I want to hear what you have to say now. Daddy I’m telling Naughty every day that you love her, and when we went to the city she was crying for you. Daddy write back once you get my letter. I love you. ♥ U Daddy
Love,
Mercedes and Naughty
Coco carefully copied it onto a fresh page of paper ripped from Mercedes’s notebook from school before returning to her own letter. She picked her face as she mulled over the final version. “My face is destroyed,” she said miserably.
“And you still picking,” Mercedes said tartly. She listened as her mother read her rebuttal aloud:
Dear Cesar,
What’s up? I wish you were not in there. I know shit is hard for you. What you need to know is that just cuz you’re the one in there, that it’s not hard just for you. It’s hard for me also. If you wasn’t in there, it would’ve made our daughters and my life easier for real. I’m tired of you demanding for me to bring your girls. I’ll bring them if I could. You always made me feel like I had and still have to do as you say, and it’s not like that. . . . I’m tired of acting scared of you or feeling like I have to stay shut from you. I want you to hear me out. You made me cry by the letter you wrote me. You always want to bring the past up too. Whatever I did in the past I want it to stay in the past. I love my future now.
. . . You told me once there’s no one going to love a girl with four kids. Well I’m proud to say you was wrong. My man loves me and my girls. He’s the only one I been with and fucked for two years. I’m not a ho. I changed a lot. I’m not proud of the shit I done, but I learned from my mistakes and I don’t regret my four girls. Probably I did have them for all the wrong reasons, but hey, I’m doing all that I can for them. . . . I’m not a ho no matter what anyone says. I take care of what’s mine. I’ve been, and I fucked one guy in two years.
Probably if you was out here long enough I wouldn’t have cheated on you. You wanted me to suffer for mistakes you made, the times you got locked up. When you were out here I did you right, even when we wasn’t together. Also knowing that you out fucking bitches without a condom. Yes I know that’s my fault. I loved you that much that I took so much shit from you. You told me one time if I fucked someone that you don’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. That’s when you were out here. That’s why I didn’t cheat, because I didn’t want to lose you completely. Anyway. The reason for saying what I just said is cuz I don’t want you to hate me cuz I got shit off my chest. And cuz of all the stuff I learned from you I learned how to be a bitch from you, I learned how to fuck good and also cheat the way you did. I learned from the teacher. . . .
As for his daughters, Coco wrote:
I will bring them when I can. It’s hard. There’s no babysitting. I don’t leave them just with anybody. . . . You act like shit you tell me don’t hurt me. But it does. I wasn’t a great girlfriend, but I feel that I was there for you. . . . Anyway take care. Your girls love you. Write to them soon.
Coco kept her appointment at Planned Parenthood and decided on the Depo-Provera shot, but she didn’t react well to it. She bled heavily for a solid week; when she reported to Planned Parenthood again, she was instructed to continue taking Motrin. Coco asked if she could get her tubes tied and was told she had to make several appointments, including one for an hour of counseling. Between her chronic problems with Frankie and with Pearl, she never made it back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Things were far worse for Cesar than he’d admitted to Coco. From the box, he wrote Jessica that he no longer valued his own life. He feared that his hate and anger ruled him. In the same way that Serena had been Jessica’s inspiration to get out of prison, Mercedes became Cesar’s lifeline to survive:
Jessica, the only time I feel at ease is when I’m with Mercy. Naughty and Justine are lost to me. They don’t treat me like their father. . . . Mercy is all I have left. And she’s slowly slipping away. . . . Once she’s gone I’m going to lose it. I can’t lose her Jessica because then I will lose myself. She’s everything to me.
Cesar had been extorting people to finance his increasing drug use. “There’s a lotta people in here you can talk into anything,” he said. “You can extort them and they don’t even know you’ve extorted them.” But threats always created other threats. Unlike Tito, who’d joined up with the Latin Kings gang for protection, Cesar took care of business on his own. “If I want to rob somebody, I gotta ask?” he said. “I can’t see asking no man about what I can do.” But in order to operate without backup, he had to prove that he was capable of doing anything. When five inmates jumped him, Cesar fought back. Afterward, they all got searched, and Cesar was found carrying a shank—a homemade weapon—and he was thrown in the hole. Then he dug his trouble deeper: outside the hearing room, he attacked one of the five guys, who he believed was about to snitch.
The authorities put Cesar in the box. He faced nine months for the internal weapons violation, for which the state was considering pursuing an additional criminal charge. If he was convicted of possessing contraband in prison, years could be added on to the nine to eighteen Cesar already had to serve. Serving time for killing his best friend was justice, but serving time for needing money for drugs he’d sworn he’d never use filled Cesar with self-loathing. Even though he shared his unhappiness with Jessica, he kept his drug use secret.
Dear Sis,
. . . As for why I had the knife. Jessica, nobody in N.Y. sends me money. The family done forgot about a nigga, my wife hasn’t been on her job for a while now, so I’ve got to live off the land or starve. Now when I chose to live off of the land I made a lot of enemies in the four years I’ve been down. So I don’t have to explain the rest. If you’re not ready or I’m not ready, I could end up with a cold piece of steel in my chest. I’ve lived the life of a warrior in here & to change will mean signing my death certificate. What keeps my enemies at a distance is my rep. . . . If I change now, I’ll starve & they will hit me up in a matter of days. I have enemies throughout the state and I’m always getting transferred from jail to jail so I can’t change. It’s not a matter of pride it’s a matter of surviving. Plus Jessica I got a solid chain link, $300.00 nugget wedding band & $125.00 Guess watch. I will get robbed day one if I ain’t ready. Jessica this isn’t the feds. This is the jungle. This is where all of the murderers, rapists, stick-up kids & societies worst are all put under one roof. If you walk away from a confrontation you’ll get treated like a bitch & the next thing you know somebody’s going to be trying to make you their bitch I ain’t with that. I’m going to live the thug life until the day I’m released!
Plus Jessica nobody sends me no money at all from N.Y. Elaine brought me $30.00 in like June of 1996. Mom sent me $25.00 last month. That was my income from NY in the past 8 months. So you know I have to do my thing. If Mom & Elaine sent me at least $40.00 a month I could chill out. But I ain’t going to starve.
. . . I don’t need a psychiatrist. I saw one of those for almost two years when I did my last bid. All he kept saying was that “I wa
s too young to be full of so much anger & rage.” But he never helped me. They get paid to listen, they don’t want to. I’m okay without one. You’ll be my psychiatrist. You love me & care & that’s what I need. But Jessica it’s going to take forever to finally get everything out.
You see Jessica, while I was growing up I put up a shield. I couldn’t let the neglection get to me so I closed up. But that was how it affected me. It caused me to become frustrated. That’s why when I was a bit older I took to the streets. I was acknowledged out there. I was taken in and they showed me love (or so I thought). But now I realize that all they loved was that hatred inside of me. They fed it. And I kept that shield up for all that was good & vibed off of the evil.
Jessica, I went & took my problems out on innocent people. Because my family was bad I made other people suffer. But never to ladies, old people, or kids. . . . I regret what I’ve done because it wasn’t fair. I hate what I’ve become Jessica. . . . I’m so fucked up inside. But I’m going to straighten it out. My kids need me! . . . Yo, about me, & Mom talking & letting out our secrets. She’s too old & sick for that Jessica. I don’t want to cause her anymore pain. . . . I don’t want to speed her death up. I want her to live in peace. What I got inside will hurt her too much because she’ll know it’s true. Mom knows how her & the family neglected me. But I forgive Mom, she’s been through so much as it is. I get angry at her a lot but she’s still Mom. . . . Boy do we come from a dis-functional family! Smile! I guess some people go through hell to end up in heaven. Only God knows why we go through the things that we do. But I do hope for better days.