Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair)

by Perez, Rosie

  • • •

  I hated Los Angeles—hated it to its core. I hated the pretentious people there. I hated that it was always the same temperature outside. The musical taste and mostly everything else was limited and segregated. I hated the suffocating smog. I hated the fact that you needed a car to get anywhere. The transportation system sucked. I walked back and forth to high school, which was about three miles, to the point where my three cheap-ass pairs of Knickerbocker Avenue shoes had holes in them by the end of the first month.

  And walking in Titi’s neighborhood was very dangerous. I was on constant high alert every day. At school, which sucked, kids made fun of me, and they weren’t just mocking my attire. Los Angeles was the first place other than upstate New York where my accent was pointed out and ridiculed. I had not realized how much Tia’s accent had become a part of my own. Even Titi commented on how Brooklyn I sounded and how much I sounded like Mommie. I didn’t care, kind of. I was used to people pointing at me, gossiping about me. I did my best to disregard most of it and stayed focused on my goals of going to college, having a career, and finding my own apartment.

  Going to school, applying to colleges, filling out financial-aid forms, working part-time at an insurance company as a secretary and file clerk and at McDonald’s as a cashier, and caring for two bratty kids was nothing compared to dealing with a heroin addict. The strain of that alone got to me. Although my GPA was fairly decent, I kept scoring low on the SATs. The emotional stress didn’t make room for any concentration, and I would blank out during the exam. I didn’t understand why I kept blanking out at the time; all I understood was that I kept scoring low, and as a result I kept feeling like I was a failure. But I pressed on.

  I never ratted on Titi about the drugs and stuff that were going on, but Tia knew something was wrong, she could hear it in my voice over the phone. She convinced me to come home for a visit. I saved up enough money to go back to Brooklyn to spend Christmas with her and Dad, who was coming a day after … and to see my mother and half-siblings. I know. What can I say—I missed them.

  Touching down at JFK, I got all choked up seeing the New York skyline. The smell of roasted pork permeating the building as I rushed upstairs made my heart pound. Even though I had stopped eating it since Miguel was butchered, the aroma was too synonymous with Tia and Suydam Street. Homemade pasteles tightly wrapped in wax paper with string boiled on the stove while the pernil roasted below in the oven. “Don’t worry, Rosie. I made de turkey too. You won’t have to eat Miguel tonight, ga, ga, ga, ga, ga, ga!” Arroz y gandules, boiled yucca with mojo de ajo, candied yamas, platanos maduro—the works just flowed everywhere! Heaven!

  I felt all grown-up and proud when I gave Tia a hundred dollars, cash. She refused it. I was heartbroken. “Why? I worked so hard to give you this money!”

  “No, you work hard for yourself and save your money. I have my life. I’ve made my decisions. It’s not your job to worry about me.”

  I hid part of the money in her purse and the rest in the jar above the stove where she kept her emergency fund.

  The next morning I headed to my mother’s house. I had three hundred dollars and bags filled with Christmas presents. Lydia’s extended cheek was replaced with open arms. Say what? It felt awkward, scary, and good. I gave her eighty dollars, leaving me two hundred and twenty. A part of me felt guilty that I didn’t give her the same amount I gave Tia. Was I still angry about everything that went down? Whatever it was, it bothered me like crazy. “Oh, Ma, here. I thought I gave you an even hundred. Sorry.”

  One of my younger half-siblings, Kathy, had moved upstairs into her own apartment. She had just given birth to a son and was living there with the baby’s daddy. It was exciting and weird to me how easily we were clicking since we were never close, I’d never really known her as a person. I saw Terry too, who everyone was calling Tiara now, her birth name, and her little son, Eddie Albert. He was a couple of years old now. I loved Eddie. Loved him the moment I met him at a couple of months old. And he loved me. Tiara always said that Eddie took to me like no one else.

  My half-brother, the one who tried to molest me, came upstairs along with Tiara’s new boyfriend, this asshole, to say hello. I acted like I was happy to see him because he seemed so guilt-ridden. Jokes were told, along with crazy funny stories that had me dying with laughter. I kept thinking to myself, Are these the same people I left just a little under a year ago?

  Kathy asked me if I wanted to go up on the roof while she smoked a joint. We went up, and after we came back down my half-brother and Tiara’s boyfriend were gone. So was my money, all of it—and my return plane ticket. Shocked and upset, I went off. So did Kathy. “Fucking drug addicts! I know they took your money!” She bolted downstairs to our mother’s apartment and returned with both in tow.

  “What? Oh my God! I didn’t take it,” my brother said, feigning shock and dismay.

  “Me either!” said the stupid asshole coke/heroin addict boyfriend.

  “Who do you think took it?” my brother continued, shooting accusatory looks at Kathy.

  She exploded. “What, motherfucker? Don’t even be looking at me! I’m not the fucking cokehead/heroin addict over here!”

  My mother came to the defense of both my brother and the asshole boyfriend, of course, feigning shock as well. “He wouldn’t do something like that. You shouldn’t have left your money lying around like that anyway. That’s what you get.” Pop went my balloon.

  Back at Tia’s, I quietly went into the bathroom and sat on top of the toilet seat for over thirty minutes. I felt so stupid. Tia knocked on the door. I told her I was robbed on the subway, all my money and my plane ticket back to Los Angeles.

  “Oh my goodness. I’m calling your father.”

  “No! Why?”

  “ ’Cause he’s your father,” she angrily snapped back, “so let him start acting like he is!”

  Whoa! Where did that come from? Tia went into her emergency fund.

  “Lemme give you some money until your father gets here tomorrow.”

  Oh snap! Busted.

  “Ay, Rosie. I told you. This is for you, not for me!”

  She gave me back the forty dollars and told me my father would give me the rest when he arrived. I kept hoping she didn’t see the other sixty in her purse and try to give me back that as well. When she went across the hall to Doña Ponchi’s house to use the phone to call Dad, I sneaked into her purse, retrieved the sixty, and put it in the emergency jar.

  My father bought me a new ticket back to Los Angeles and gave me a fifty in addition to the many Christmas presents he brought for everyone. I hadn’t seen him in months, since he’d been away on a ship, and thought I’d need the usual minute to get reacquainted, but no. We simply picked up where we’d left off, sitting in the living room all day listening to jazz records while he told stories of his womanizing adventures during World War II. I know, weird father-and-daughter bonding tactics, but it worked. In fact, I felt so wounded from the incident that it was the first time my body, my being, unconsciously slumped against his for emotional support as we listened to Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett. I remember my dad not making a big deal out of it as he gently held my hand while the record played out.

  CHAPTER 23

  I WENT back and worked like crazy. I studied like hell for the SATs. I think I got a half-decent score after my third attempt, but not good enough for a full scholarship like I was banking on. It bothered me tremendously, especially since I knew I only had a shot at community colleges now. But whatever, I couldn’t afford to dwell on it.

  Conversations on the phone with Tia were less frequent and even shorter. She became so worried that she came out to Los Angeles with Millie, Cookie, and Lorraine to visit “temporarily” after I graduated from high school to stay close to me. I pleaded with her to go home, told her it wouldn’t be good for any of them to live there. She wasn’t having it. She worried day and night about me, and now that she saw with her own eyes what was going on
with Titi, she wasn’t going back until I finished college.

  Millie had found a place in South Central Los Angeles in Watts because the rent was so low and it seemed like a nice neighborhood with its ranch-style houses and palm tree—lined blocks—she didn’t know about the Nickerson Garden projects nearby. We had no idea about the gang culture out there; it was a horrible discovery. I decided to stay with my heroin-addicted cousin because it was a much shorter trek to West Los Angeles and Los Angeles Community Colleges (I was going to both at the same time because LACC had better science classes), and to my new job at a law firm as a file clerk, and sadly, it was safer than South Central.

  I came home from school one day to find Titi’s apartment completely emptied out. She had left without telling me. She owed some dangerous drug dealers a lot of money, and she just jetted, leaving me behind with nothing more than my suitcase and a mattress on the floor with a note on top: “Go over to Millie’s if you need a place to stay.” All of my money that I had saved up to move into my own apartment was gone too.

  I didn’t freak out, I couldn’t afford to. I had gotten used to drama, and I felt that I had to stay on course and not get distracted. I continued to walk to my jobs, coming home to an empty apartment, scared out of my wits, thinking one of the hoodlums would come looking for Titi and kill me instead. It was stupid to stay there, but the alternative, living in Watts, seemed much worse to me. At night I was in constant fear of the drug dealers coming back. I eventually went to Millie’s.

  I continued to go to college, started working again—two jobs, plus doing hair on the side—saved my money, and found my own apartment, unfortunately in the Crenshaw area again. One of my jobs was working part-time at the main office of Golden Bird Fried Chicken—an African American family-run business—as the vice president’s assistant, who was the president’s youngest son, Michael Stennis. I also worked part-time as a waitress at Sizzler’s, but was fired. Only later did I find out that the manager did so because he liked me and there was a policy against management dating employees. At first I was pissed, but I got over it after he took me to Lake Tahoe for a week—I know, but Tahoe was off the hook!

  The Stennises looked out for me and got me a one-bedroom apartment in one of the apartment buildings they owned in the “Jungle” for only $300 a month. It was still in the Crenshaw district but far away from Watts! It was lovely, with all of the palm trees sprouting out of its courtyards, but to my surprise I discovered that the Jungle was the Bloods’ territory. First day, this kid comes up to me: “What set you from, cuz?”

  “Oh? Excuse me, are we related?”

  “No! Fool! What set? You a Blood or a Crip?”

  Great.

  I had to get out, so I took another part-time job at a record store near the Jungle, just blocks from my apartment. The assistant manager, who I knew liked me and who knew I didn’t like him, offered me a ride home after we did inventory till one in the morning. “Oh, come on, Rosie, don’t flatter yourself. I can’t have you walk home by yourself through the damn Jungle!”

  We pulled up. He asked if he could use the bathroom, he’d be quick. I went into my small kitchen to get a glass of water. When I turned around, he was lying on the ugly dark-colored living room carpet butt naked, stroking his erect penis up and down—no lie!

  “What the fuck!” I screamed.

  “Calm down, Rosie! Shh! Come here. It’s okay!”

  Then this ass sits up and makes the mistake of pulling me down on top of his naked disgusting body. I jumped up so fast, like on some Bruce Lee shit, screaming my head off. He grabbed my foot. “Shh! It’s okay.” Okay? Oh hell no! I quickly wiggled it loose and started stomping the shit out of this motherfucker. While he was curling up trying to avoid my blows, my next-door neighbor, Eric, from Chicago, who always looked after me, ran into my apartment and started to beat the crap out of the pervert. He grabbed his clothes and rushed out before the cops came (which didn’t happen until twenty minutes later).

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I put a butcher knife under my pillow, scared out of my wits. It took me forever to decide to go into work the next day. When I did, this fucker acted like nothing had happened. Just as I was about to tell the head manager what went down and that I was quitting, he told me the asshole had suggested that he give me a raise—a big fat raise—for being such a good worker. I didn’t know what to do. I needed that money so badly. I decided to take the money and keep quiet. I quit a week later, though, because I couldn’t stand looking at the piece of shit.

  I asked Michael Stennis if I could have a couple of extra hours until I found more employment. I really liked working for Michael and his entire family. So much so that when there wasn’t a lot of work left for me to do, I used to watch their grandkids and their little friends, one of whom grew up to be the famous street artist Retna. (Can you believe that? I didn’t realize it until my husband, Haze, took me to Retna’s big opening in New York in 2011. “You used to babysit me and my friend Paris, Kevin Stennis’s son.”)

  The Christmas holiday was approaching. After I came home one night beat and tired from work and school, the phone rang. It was my mother. I had not seen or spoken to her in probably six months, not since my last trip to New York. My mother never called or wrote to me, ever. Her explanation was that she hated talking on the phone and wasn’t into writing letters. Funny thing, I don’t like being on the phone either, but I still called her once in a while. I answered the phone.

  “Ma?”

  “Yes, Rosie … I. How are you?”

  Her voice started to crackle. I could hear her trying to swallow her emotions, but she couldn’t.

  “What’s wrong, Ma? Are you all right?”

  “I … How are you?”

  “I’m okay, Ma. How are you?”

  “I love you,” she blurted.

  “I love you too, Ma.”

  “Okay.… So anyway, Merry Christmas. Bye.”

  And she hung up, leaving me confused, excited, resentful, and depressed once again … but I kept it moving.

  • • •

  I began to enjoy Los Angeles. Well, its nightlife. I was having fun, like a lot of fun. Thursday night was my three-hour biology lab class, seven to ten o’clock. I’d always sneak out ten minutes early because Thursday night was also ladies’ night at Florentine Gardens nightclub in east Hollywood—free before ten. My three girlfriends—Carol, a bubbly, intelligent Mexican American; Nia, a smart, sexy, crazy Filipino; and sweet Tracy, who was Latino and black—and I always went clubbing together. We all wore tight clothes, high heels, lots of makeup … like, tons of mascara and black eye liner … and, of course, hair spray—love it! The club was close by, and we knew the doorman—if we were under ten minutes late, he would let us in free. The girls would be waiting outside my class in Nia’s or Carol’s car—there was not a minute to waste. I would bring my club clothes to school, change out of my normal everyday school attire during our dinner break, and come back dressed in a tight-ass hoochie-mama minidress and a gang of makeup. First time I did it, my professor’s mouth dropped and the whole class went silent as I clicked my way back to my seat. It’d happen again when I’d be the first to leave a couple minutes early—hilarious.

  A talent scout from Soul Train saw us dancing at the club one night. He came up and asked me to come on the show. “For real? Soul Train?!” Yay!!!! I told him I would go if my girlfriends could come too. “Well, I’ve gotta see if they look as good and dance as good as you do.” One look and of course we were all in! I couldn’t believe my luck! That’s when my life started to change again.

  We arrived at the studio on time, but were made to wait outside the studio gate for over an hour with the rest of the Soul Train regulars and newbies. Finally the talent scout came out and approached the gate. It turned into a frenzy, like piranhas at feeding time. He proceeded to point out his preferred picks. The pushing and shoving and desperateness were heartbreaking. “Come on, girls. This is bullshit,” I said. As we began to
turn away, the talent scout shouted at me, “Hey, where are you going? You can come in.”

  “Can my friends come too?”

  He nodded yes. That made a few of the dancers crazy jealous, which wasn’t very nice, but understandable. Soul Train created that circus of jealousy. Only the best-looking, sexiest, and most charismatic got in and got to be on the risers, the Scramble Board, or the main platform and received the most camera time.

  Even I got caught up in it. There was this one beautiful girl with short red hair who got a lot of camera time, but that wasn’t the reason I was jealous of her. This stupid boy I liked, liked her, and blah, blah, blah. Of course my pride wouldn’t allow me to admit that—instead, I was a complete ass toward her. “She’s stealing my moves!” You know, all that stupid young shit. I remember complaining to Tia about it. “Ay, you sound so stupid, even. You don’t even know her, what her life is about, it might be hell—and over a boy? Ay, please. Don’t be like that. It makes you look ugly.” I got over it quick after that lecturing.

  When the camera came on, my body shook like crazy. All I kept thinking about was my hair getting all sweaty. This Soul Train regular, Ricky, kind of took me under his wing and partnered with me. We got picked for the Scramble Board! My first day! When I started to speak on the first take, Don Cornelius gave me an incredulous look regarding my accent. I lessened it; he gave a nod of approval. Instantly, I felt ashamed. I had made my first conscious effort not to sound ethnic. Ricky made me feel better, later telling me he thought that my accent was cute, that it set me apart, and to ignore Don.