La Familia 2 (2 page)

Despite having an incarcerated and asshole baby father, he gave me the best thing a woman could ever want in her life: my daughter Eliza. She was my world of joy, the best thing ever to come into my life. I had no regrets in giving birth to her. She was my shining star, my angel, the joy of my life, and she was the only person I cared for. Everyone else could kiss my ass and stay the fuck away from me. I'd been through so much shit in my life, and been down and out so many times that there was no other way but to go up for me, and with Eliza to care for, I didn't have a choice. I wanted better for me and for her.

Eliza was one year old, and it was hard to believe that a year already had passed since she was born. Time flies, but I wasn't having fun. She started walking around eleven months and she was becoming good at it. Regardless of her falling down and crashing into things, my baby girl didn't cry and she would continually pick herself up and try again. I was proud of her already, because she wasn't a quitter; she mastered what life was about. You fall, but you don't stay down. You continue to get up, dust yourself off, and try again. I emulated my daughter. I was down, but it wasn't over for me. I'd been bruised, but I wasn't broken. I'd been up and down like a rollercoaster ride. I'd been beaten and broke, but I was still standing and pushing forward, in spite of living in a Harlem shelter for women with kids. This wasn't the end for me, but only the beginning.

My options were either living on the cold streets with my daughter or taking residence in a shelter that a friend told me about. Of course I chose to stay in a family shelter. If I was on my own, I could tolerate the streets of New York. I'd done it before when living with my crazy fuckin' father became too unbearable and Sammy wasn't able to take me in. But now that I was a mother, things were different; I had to think of my daughter's well-being too.

The women's Samaritan family shelter on 155th Street provided transitional housing for up to twenty-five women and their children. And comprehensive services included individualized treatment for those who suffered from substance abuse, domestic violence or HIV/AIDS, and more. And emergency services were also provided for up to five women each night.

The shelter I was temporarily staying in was comfortable to some extent, but it would never become my home. We had our own tiny apartment, a kitchenette, TV, no cable, twin beds, and a place to do our laundry. The women here had been through hell and back, some worse than others, and I shared some of their pain. The abusive boyfriend, or absent father, drug addiction, gangs, probation, STDs : we been through it all and were only trying to find our way in a world that had forgotten about us or considered us undesirables because of our circumstances or background. A few were living with the monster, and hearing their story reminded me of Sammy's mom who was living with that sickness. I was thankful that I never caught it. I was healthy and my baby was too.

The staff in the women's shelter was cool, working to prevent homelessness through programs that provided budget management counseling, housing referrals, rent and legal assistance to more than 300 families each year.

From where I was over a year ago, living the high life with Rico, experiencing the glamour and finer things in life, and for the first time in my life, living in a luxurious home, to becoming pregnant and ending up in a family shelter for battered and abused women, I would have never thought in a million years that it would come to this. At one time in my life, I was on my way to reaching stardom with my best friend Sammy. We were two talented bitches from out the hood with a growing reputation in the music world. We had great management via Search and great material that we were writing ourselves. But then it all fell apart by the seams, and Sammy and I became bitter rivals. How and why? Rico.

He was the master of destruction, fucking and deceiving us both, turning friends against each other, and us both having his babies. We were out here trying to survive while becoming new mothers. We were hungry, and trying to find our way back to the road paved with gold and wanting better for ourselves and our kids. But every day it seemed things got worse. Every day it felt like I was drifting further away from my dreams and losing touch with hope.

I hadn't heard from Sammy in months; the last I heard about her was that she was stripping in some seedy club in the Bronx trying to make ends meet. And she was frequently taking her son upstate to visit Rico. It was her life and her son. I refused to visit Rico and take Eliza anywhere near him or a prison. She didn't need to know her daddy. I was her mother and father. Rico was hell in my life. He was shit disguised as sugar, and he would never taste like sugar no matter how many flavors he tried to add, and I wanted to eradicate every thought of him, but his daughter was the only exception, and thank God she was looking more like her mother than her daddy. My genes were strong, like the woman I was, and my daughter was going to be stronger. I was going to raise Eliza to stay away from men like her father, muthafuckas who were only wolves in sheep's clothing.

But dwelling on the past wasn't going to get me anywhere. I had to focus on my future, and this shelter, the people in it, the condition I was in; it wasn't going to be my future at all. This was not going to be forever. I had hope and was ready to scratch and crawl my way out of the ghetto like I almost did when Sammy and I were Vixen Chaos.

I sat in the family room in the shelter viewing an episode of
Love & Hip Hop: New York.
I sat among many female residents staring at the mounted TV in the room. It was the only place in the shelter where they had cable playing and
Love & Hip Hop
was the show to watch inside the shelter. It seemed like every bitch in the place would stop everything they was doing for that one hour and be glued to the TV show like it was some religious program on how to catapult your way into their world. These catty bitches on
Love & Hip Hop
were idolized by the majority of women in the shelter. They lived a life that we all dreamed of, and yearned to date and fuck the men they found attractive, and longed to wear the stylish outfits, shoes, and jewelry manifested on the show. I briefly lived that life, and I can't lie, it was fun for a moment, especially when Rico took me on a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue, spent thousands of dollars on me, and had me dining in some of the finest restaurants. But I was never on the level that some of the women on the show were on. They had their own: their own money, owned homes, and ran successful businesses, and had some respect in the industry.

I lived that life briefly, but I never had my own. I wanted to have my own. It was a dream of mines, to become like Yandy or Chrissy. These bitches were beautiful, bad with attitudes and smart, and they had a man holding them down and vice versa. I thought I found that with Rico, but it was only a lie.

“Damn, Joe Budden look like he got a big dick,” Theresa said loudly, being the loud and obnoxious bitch she always was. “I know he can fuck a bitch right. That bitch Tahiry don't know what do wit' that dick, because she can't even hold on to her man.”

The girls around her laughed at her blunt comment. I wasn't amused.

“Yo, I can't stand Erica trifling-ass. First off, that bitch can't sing for shit, and she's a fuckin' slut,” Whitney chimed.

“True dat,” Melanie agreed, slapping Whitney a high five.

They talked reckless about the female characters on the show, but in true life, they envied them all because it wasn't them living the life of luxury, having great sex, and going on lavish shopping sprees. Some of these ladies in the shelter were so broke down and battered that even a miracle couldn't help them out.

I watched the show, but I was in my own world. Eliza was asleep in my arms. I had just fed and bathed her, and now it was time for a little “me” time. But me time was useless when a bitch was broke, homeless, and with a baby on her hip twenty-four/seven. So me time was watching cable quietly while everyone else talked loudly and ridiculed each and every bitch on the show they deemed not keeping it real or was a whore.

During a commercial break, one of the young girls in the shelter came into the TV room looking upset. I saw her wipe a few tears from her eyes as she went toward some friends seated in the room. My focus went from the television to them knowing something went down somewhere. I knew the girl with the tears streaming down her face. She was a teen mother with twin girls and she was from my part of town, Edenwald. She was known to run with some heavy hitters on the streets. Her parents had kicked her out for selling drugs in their apartment. She was fighting with her parents for custody of her twins.

I overheard her say, “They killed String; they killed my fuckin' cousin!”

She was clearly upset and distraught. I knew String. He was part of a violent gang who called themselves the Young Gangster Crew, YGC, and they were at war with the Bronx Mafia Boys. That bit of news became more important in the room than
Love & Hip Hop.
Majority of the girls in the Harlem shelter came from the Bronx and we all had boyfriends, brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, or baby fathers associated with the streets, drugs, or a violent gang, and murder wasn't anything new to us.

They said the murders were on the news; three men were gunned down in cold blood while leaving a KFC late at night. But that was life in the Bronx and I felt immune to the news. My father was gunned down in the same fashion.

I didn't have time to console anyone or get more information on what happened. I simply didn't care. I figured my heart just grew colder in the past year. Not anyone gave a fuck about me or my daughter, so why should I give a fuck about another life being snatched from this cold, hard earth? It was life; you have a birthday and a death day. While a few girls shed tears for String and his friends, I removed myself from my chair with my daughter asleep in my arms and decided to head into my room for the night. I had enough troubles on my mind and I didn't need anyone else's problems coming my way.

However, as I was about to exit the TV room, I saw one of my headaches and continuing problems coming my way. Her name was Dietra; the bitch was walking hate. She was somewhat heavyset, black like tar and ugly like hell with a bad weave in her head and a constant attitude aimed my way. She didn't like me and I didn't like her. The main reason for her animosity toward me was she was Denise's older cousin. I beat the bitch down in front of the whole projects last year, and then Sammy and my homegirls put that bitch in the hospital over a year ago. She wanted revenge for her cousin, and she wanted to take it out on me.

But there was one golden rule in the women's family Samaritan shelter in Harlem: no fighting at all. If caught fighting in the shelter, it was immediate eviction, and being evicted was the last thing I needed in my life when I had my daughter. But despite that rule, there was constant friction between Dietra and me, hard glances thrown at each other, arguments and bickering, but physically we never laid hands on each other. But the pot was boiling between us and I knew it was inevitable that a fight was brewing. She was just itching to find a reason and try to fuck me up, and I was going to find a reason to fight back and knock that bitch's teeth out.

As I passed Dietra in the hallway, she glared at me and uttered, “Fake-ass bitch.”

I was tempted to snap back, but I had Eliza in my arms and I couldn't risk endangering my daughter for this stupid bitch. I had to be better than that. And the fact that she had the audacity to talk trash while I had my daughter in my arms goes to show the type of ignorance and stupidity she was about.

I frowned heavily, locked eyes with the bitch for a moment, and kept it moving. She didn't want any part of me. Yeah, my name was Mouse, and I was small, but I was fierce like a tiger and my hands needed to be registered because I was lethal with them and Dietra was about to find out the hard way not to fuck with me. Because the bitches who used to underestimate me back in the days give me nothing but respect now when they saw me, because, like Dietra, they came at me for a fight and I held my own, tearing out many weaves, blacking eyes, breaking noses, and sending bitches to the emergency room when they came trying me.

I kept myself humble. It wasn't the place or time for a fight. I had too much to lose. Dietra walked into the TV room and I simply stared in the face of my baby girl. Her beauty and innocence kept me calm.

The minute I walked into my room I put Eliza in her bed and then pulled out my pen and pad and started to write as I sat on my bed near the small window overlooking the block. I yearned to write. Expressing my love, pain, sorrows, grief, and much more through rhymes and poetry was always going to be my passion. When I had nothing else, I still had my writing, my soul to take, my heart to wake, and my mind to say. I didn't want to ever give up on my dream, no matter what. Yes, I had a setback, a few over the years, but I had faith that success was going to happen to me.

I started with: “I'm my worse behavior, crime of the time, love of war, endless grind feeling gone, angry at time feeling time ain't never on my side, father time absence like the biological in my life, it's always dark on this side of town, sun don't come around no more, eclipse was what I was born on, look up and stars seemed too distance from me, black is all I see, the black is on me. Who is I, me and mines, turning my black into some success in me.”

Motherhood was becoming a challenge to me, from my son catching an ear infection, then having a high fever and rushing him to the emergency room, along with him teething and then trying to put him to bed every night was a challenge. And when he cried, he cried very loud, with the lungs on my little man feeling like a blow horn was in my room. He was becoming a handful at six months, but that didn't mean I didn't love my son Danny to death. He was my world and my heart, and the most precious thing I ever had on this earth, more precious than diamonds and gold. I adored the way my son's small eyes lit up when he smiled and laughed while he looked up at me. The way Danny laughed when I would tickle him made me light up, too. The way he fell asleep when I held him in my arms always made me feel so motherly. He was my baby boy, and he was going to grow up to become my big strong man, my protector, and I knew he would become the one man in my life who wouldn't break his mother's heart.

I sat by the window in the kitchen of my project apartment gazing out at the ghetto once again. I was back in Edenwald, the place I grew up in, and I didn't like it. I missed the place I had in Co-op City when I was selling drugs for Rico. It was bigger, more comfortable, and a lot more lavish, but staying there came with a cost. I was fortunate that the feds didn't come for me too like they did for Rico's entire crew. I managed to stay under the radar and stay free. It was a blessing.

But then I still felt cursed. I was alone and basically living on ends. My life had changed dramatically. Never in a million years would I think I would become a single mother struggling to survive and barely paying rent. The icing on the cake was being blackmailed by Rico. He had this murder lingering over my head, threatening my freedom if I didn't comply with any of his demands. I was sick of him, but I had to put up with him; he was my son's father, and regardless of him serving a twenty-five-year sentence upstate, he still managed to have control over my life.

I would frequently visit Rico, like I had a choice, taking Danny on the six-hour trip by bus to see his father in Attica prison, and you would think Rico would be appreciative of it, seeing his son, but he wasn't. He barely held his son in his arms or played with him as we sat in the crowded visiting room being heavily watched by a half dozen correction officers. He said he cherished the boy, loved him, but I couldn't tell.

I had to admit, Rico did look good clad in his prison-issued gray jumpsuit and bald head glistening like a diamond. He seemed to be taking really good care of himself and was bulking up by weightlifting. But looks could be deceiving. Prison didn't age or change him at all. He still had that powerful image. But he was still on that bullshit, wanting to be controlling and a perpetual asshole in my life.

He glared at me and had the audacity to ask, “Who you fuckin' out there?”

I scowled. “What?”

“Sammy, you fuckin' heard me. I don't repeat myself,” he uttered.

I was only coming to visit him with his son because he had this murder over my head, and if it weren't for that, I would have been ghost a long time ago. Fuck Rico! I hated him so much that I wanted to kill him at that moment. He had the nerve to grill me about my life, who I was fuckin', and how I did me. No matter what, he was always going to be a jerk.

But he scared me, now more that he was locked up than when he was on the streets. He was a sneaky nigga. It was also brought to my attention that he still had a handful of killers on the streets. I know he did. He made it known that I was being watched like a hawk. Why though? The man had twenty-five years to serve, so was I not allowed to move on with my life? He had the best of both worlds, some of the sweetest pussy from Mouse and me, two of the project's baddest bitches, and we both gave him some beautiful babies.

“You gonna always be mine, Sammy, you know that right?” he said. “You ain't going anywhere. Fuck that.”

He looked at me with his cold eyes, apathy in his heart, and didn't even blink. The statement of always being his had me about to throw up. I was never his in the first place. It was a fling, a damn mistake.

I had no reply to his chilling comment. I just sat there like a damn fool. Danny was in my arms chilling; he was quiet and being a good baby by not fussing or crying. It was Rico who seemed to be throwing the temper tantrum. I felt trapped by Rico's words. He reached across the table to take my hand into his. I hesitated. I didn't want him touching me. I wanted to leave, but I had an hour visit with him and there was no way he was going to let me cut it short. I was there with his son, but he cared not to hold him for too long. His only concern was my business.

“What do you want from me, Rico?” I asked with such disdain in my tone and pulled away from his reach.

“I want you to marry me,” he had the nerve to say.

“What?” I knew I didn't hear him correctly.

“I want you to become my wife.”

It was like he had spit in my face. The muthafucka had to be delusional. Prison had made him go insane. There was no way in hell I was going to marry Rico. I didn't care if he threatened me by exposing me or murdering me. It was my word against his, and he was a felon.

“I'm not marrying you, Rico,” I flat-out told him.

“And why not?” he responded through clenched teeth. “You think you have a choice in this?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I always been in love wit' you, Sammy,” he stated.

Love? Rico didn't even know what the word meant.

He always had been a self-centered and narcissistic bastard. He left behind so much pain from my life to the streets, that people was dying out there, fighting and killing over something he left behind. The Bronx was ugly. He was uglier. He was a twisted gangster with a hard on for drama.

“You got my son.”

“Like you give two shits about him, Rico. You can't even hold and play with him while he's here to see you. And you think you can be a father to him in here?” I exclaimed.

“I still got my resources out there, Sammy, and I can take care of you. Remember who the fuck I am. You can't hide.”

I didn't have any doubt he still had pull and clout on the streets, Rico would always be Rico, but while there was hell going on out there, muthafuckas dying, starving and homeless, Rico had three meals and a cot to sleep on. But his son and I, we were barely making it out there. He put this baby in me, didn't acknowledge my son like it was his when I brought him to the prison, and he left me out there to become a single mother with a baby daddy incarcerated; my worst nightmare.

I glared at Rico as he sat across from me. He might as well been the anti-Christ in my eyes. I had a right to be pissed the fuck off. I felt he took everything from me: my career; my best friends, Mouse and Search; my dreams; and, most of all, my damn dignity. I felt my dreams of breaking into the music business were becoming distant. I wasn't writing, singing, or rhyming like I used to, and I had no one to support me. I supported myself and my son by dancing in this strip club called Crazy Legs. It was a job, however; not the one I ever saw myself doing, but it paid the bills.

My first night I was so nervous that I threw up for a half hour in the bathroom. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. I knew girls who danced, and they always told me it was good money in it. It wasn't me though. Honestly, I felt I was always better than that, too good to take my clothes off for money. I left that scandalous occupation for the whores and birds who were stupid enough to get into it. I had bigger dreams.

But shit always comes back to haunt you.

My first night taking my clothes off in front of dozens of horny and howling strangers was nerve-racking and it was a total contradiction for me. Kawanda got me into it. She lived in the apartment down the hall from me. I would see her leave almost every night to go to work and hours later she would come back with at least three to five hundred dollars a night. She always paid her bills on time and had so much extra to spend on herself, especially since she didn't have any kids.

When your child is hungry, the lights are about to be cut off, and you need heat in your apartment, pride becomes a memory and you find yourself doing what you gotta do to take care of home and your child. I swallowed my pride and went to talk to Kawanda about dancing. She was more than happy to give me the details on it and to help me out.

“They would love you down there, Sammy,” she had said. “You got a great body and you are a beautiful woman. You would kill it in the club.”

I really needed the money. So the next night, I had a neighbor watch my son and I went with Kawanda to Crazy Legs. The club was in the south Bronx, and it was underground, really seedy with the atmosphere that anything goes. I mean, bitches got butt-ass naked and walked around like they were Eve in the Garden of Eden. The customers in the place were perverts, hoods, pimps, thugs, drug dealers, sex addicts, and more; they all went crazy over some pussy.

The minute I walked into the place, all eyes were on me. I guessed they smelled the new girl on me and couldn't wait to see what I was working with. It was a cold night, and I was bundled up in a snorkel jacket, hat, gloves, and some boots. I hid my figure, but it felt like every nigga in the place had X-ray vision and peeled away my clothes, and was picturing me naked.

I hurried behind Kawanda into the changing room. It was a joke, more like a ghetto walk-in closet cluttered with ratchetness. There weren't any lockers to place your stuff in, just a whirlwind of bags: trash bags of clothing and duffle bags, lying about the floor from the door to the back, and inadequate clothing everywhere. Every girl shared one long mirror and the paint on the walls was peeling, and had me worried about asbestos. The changing room looked disgusting. There was ass and coochie everywhere, bitches half dressed and talking shit, either to each other or about the men outside calling a few cheap or ugly, and it smelled. I mean it reeked of unwashed pussy, period blood, and just odor. Bitches were spraying their private parts with some scented coochie spray and wiping their asses with baby wipes.

It was crazy to see.

When I walked in, the seasoned dancers in the room smirked at me and knew I was fresh blood. I couldn't believe that I was about to do this. I wanted to back out of it, but when I saw one girl counting up money, mostly dollar bills, tens and fives, it became enticing.

Kawanda encouraged me to do my thing. She started undressing, getting ready to go on stage and make her money. I stood near her feeling lost. Kawanda was willing to share some of her clothing with me, because I had nothing to dance in. I was used to performing in front a crowd fully clothed while singing and rhyming; but this here, taking my clothes off in front of complete strangers and dancing seductively, was crazy.

Kawanda got dressed in a platinum bob wig, a red G-string, a faux fur light-up hood, and red six-inch stilettos. She oiled her body down with baby oil and sprinkled some glitter on her breasts and her transformation was absolutely amazing. She went from average to exotic in no more than twenty minutes. And I thought that I was a bad bitch. I sighed, knowing I had to do the same thing. I got dressed in one of her white short-sleeved tie tops, and a short plaid schoolgirl skirt. Underneath the skirt, I wore all-over sequined booty shorts, and sported a pair of black stilettos.

I took a deep breath and followed Kawanda to where it was show time. The DJ was blaring rap music, and thick weed smoke, along with cigarette smoke, lingered all through the club. The men were lively and loud, and the stage was in use by a dark-skinned, thick, big-booty stripper with pasties on her breasts, black knee-high boots, and nothing else. Her pussy was shaved and exposed, and she sported more tattoos than Dennis Rodman. She twirled around the pole looking like a professional and enticed the hordes of men surrounding the stage by booty clapping and pole dancing.

I noticed the eyes gazing at me. Men looked eager to see me naked. I was the new dancer, and being a new and beautiful dancer, especially with my curvy and jaw-dropping figure, was like being a virgin in the place. Everybody wanted you to become their first.

“I need a drink,” I had said to Kawanda.

She had smiled and said, “We always do.”

At the bar, I had ordered a Cîroc Peach and Sprite, and downed it like it would be my last. The scenery was overwhelming; something was going on everywhere in the club: lap dances, grinding and fondling, arguments, money raining down on the stage, flirting, drinking, and later on I found out that in the back of the club, bitches disappeared into one of the three rooms with men, and they sucked and fucked these niggas for a fee.

Yeah, everything went down in Crazy Legs for the right price. But I knew my pussy wasn't for sale. I just wanted to dance and make my money. Kawanda went on first to show me how it was done. She danced to the beat of Lucy Pearl's “Dance Tonight.” I gazed at Kawanda and she was on point on stage, working that pole like it was a hard dick in her hand and she didn't hesitate to get buck-naked in front of these thirsty niggas. Gradually, the stage was being inundated with money. It was mostly the drug dealers and shot callers spending money on my friend. Kawanda had these niggas in awe for a half hour and when she was done, the bitch stepped off the stage with money in both fists. She had to have made at least $150 in that half hour alone.

When I stepped on the stage to dance, my heart was beating faster than rock drums in a heavy metal concert. But I was going through with it. I needed the money and had to feed my son. Right away, I had everyone's attention in the place; the new girl was about to perform. The DJ put on Rick Ross's “Diced Pineapples” and I slowly twirled myself around the pole, trying to imitate the professionals who did it before me. I got five dollars thrown at me. I smiled at the nerdy-looking gentleman who tossed the bill.