My Voice: A Memoir (4 page)

One night in the park, as we sat there smoking weed, one of the girls said, “Yo! Have any of you guys smoked coke before?” A few of the kids said that they had tried some in a blunt, a woolie. The girl shook her head, like that was nothing. Then she reached into her pocket, saying, “Well, you need to try this. It’s way better!” She was so convincing. She was like a fucking salesperson. I believed her. And before I knew it, she was passing around a glass pipe and insisting everybody try it. To me it didn’t look like a big deal. For as long as I can remember, I’d
seen my aunts and uncles smoke weed out of glass pipes or bongs or some other smoke-shop paraphernalia. So as it got passed around, I didn’t think twice about giving it a hit.

And then
holy shiiiiiit
! She was
right
. This was unbelievable! And it hit us so fast. Before I had even passed it on, I felt like I was on another planet. And just as fast as it hit, it was over. For the next hour we all sat in a circle like in a congregation, talking about how amazing it was and trying to figure out when we could try it again—maybe we would for New Year’s Eve. We were all planning to put money in and couldn’t wait.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, after watching the news with my mom and hearing a report about the crack explosion, that I realized,
Holy shit! I smoked crack
.
This is horrible. How in the hell did my dumb ass let this happen???!!

The news had stated that after one try, you could become addicted. The thought terrified me.
Was I now a crackhead because I tried it one time?
It scared the shit outta me so bad that I would never try it again—or anything, for that matter.

Later I saw firsthand with friends and family members what crack did to people. Whenever crackheads would stop by places like the hair salon and try to sell a broken VCR or half a pack of Newports, I’d cringe at how people would laugh at them and be mean. I felt sympathy for their desperation. Maybe they were just like me once . . . a regular kid who some knucklehead convinced to try something new. The only difference was that I was lucky enough to have dodged that bullet—getting the message just in the nick of time to stay away from something so lethal.

For some reason—I can’t even put my finger on why—but for the grace of God, I’ve been protected when needed and have been able to wiggle my way past any type of real danger.

There was a minute there when I was persuaded to sell weed for someone at school. My career as a drug dealer resulted in the sale of
exactly one nickel bag. It was not hard, just an easy exchange in the staircase. But I went no further than that. It wasn’t like I got caught. The feds weren’t exactly after me. It was just one of those moments when you listen to that little voice in your head that says,
Maybe I’m going a little too far left
. And you get your ass back on track and go right.

My mother gets the credit for encouraging that voice in my head, the sensibility that, yeah, you can play with fire, but once your skin starts shriveling up, maybe you want to pull the fuck out.
Retreat! Retreat!
I’m good for that; I’m curious, and I like to explore and be open-minded. But ultimately I know when I’ve gone too far.

•   •   •

B
y the time I got to high school—Brooklyn’s John Dewey High—I was pretty much a hip-hop encyclopedia. I knew every artist, every song title, even all the lyrics. I was like a human Shazam app who could name that tune just by hearing a few beats of the intro’s drum track.

At age sixteen I used to hold court on the stoop in front of my building, me standing up and everyone else seated on the steps around me. We played this jukebox game. The way it worked was that everyone would take turns just shouting out a topic at me and then I’d answer by singing or rapping lyrics that went with that subject or theme. Somebody would say something like, “The jungle!” and not missing a beat I’d go right into Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”:
It’s like a jungle sometimes / It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under . . .

Or somebody else would say, “The flu!” and I’d launch into “Hard Times” by Run-D.M.C.:
Hard times are spreading just like the flu . . .

This could go on for hours. I was like a one-girl freak show in the neighborhood. Even I was surprised sometimes by how I could remember every lyric and call it up so easily. Music would just stick to me, as a part of who I was and how I took in the world.

Once high school started, Nikki and I were reunited and back to attending school together. She thought it was cool that I was the hip-hop head that I was—the way I’d hold my own at the lunchroom table with the guys as we debated rappers and who was doper than whom. But aside from a few songs she liked, Nikki was nowhere near as obsessed as me. I did convince her to learn all the words to “Ego Trippin’” by Ultramagnetic MCs, which she never forgot, and by the way, are not the easiest lyrics:
Using frequencies and data I am approximate / Leaving revolutions turning, emerging chemistry . . .

I loved when Nikki would get on board because it wasn’t that often, although she was a definite yes when my aunt Melanie offered to take us to a club—the Roseland Ballroom. In those days, a fifteen-year-old like us could get a fake ID on 42nd Street around the corner from Times Square. I’ll never forget the feeling of walking into a club the first time, me and Nikki trying to act all sophisticated and, of course, Aunt Melanie just being in her element. Everything about it was exciting—the dark room, the beat hitting hard, the lights pulsing, and there in the center of it all, dressed in black leather pants, was KISS FM’s Chuck Leonard hosting the show that night. Though I didn’t have any inkling of what my future career would be, I remember thinking how cool this guy looked and how dope it would be to talk on the mic and introduce the acts onstage.

And in the middle of my excitement, all of a sudden,
Pop! Pop! Pop
! . . . There’s a shoot-out in the club. Everybody in the club scattered, running in all directions in a panic. It was instantaneous. But weirdly, the music didn’t stop. Biz Markie’s “Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz” kept on rocking in the background:
I get the crowd jumpin’, get the girls’ hearts pumpin’ / All the party people say, “Isn’t he somethin’?
” So as freaked out as we were, while we flew to the back and ducked under the tables, I was still very aware that my joint was on!

Hip-hop was growing, spreading out across the country, and that song put it into context:
Rock from New York City all the way down South / Sayin’ rhymes and makin’ music with my mouth . . .

Nikki wasn’t as gung ho to come back anytime soon, but we both got a lot of mileage telling that story at school. Well, I know I did.

Since John Dewey High School was across the street from Marlboro Projects, a lot of kids who lived nearby but didn’t even go to our school would wind up hanging out with us. We’d play handball outside for hours, listening to music and talking shit. I wasn’t the only girl in the crowd who was more tomboy than girlie; that was part of the hip-hop—or just the New York—culture. But tomboy or not, the fashion was real at the time, too. We were into Mickey Mouse and Coca-Cola clothing, those Benetton rugby shirts, and the bamboo earrings that had your name on the inside. I had ’em all. And no one could say shit to me when I convinced my mom to get me the red leather goose with the fur! I wore that jacket every day.

I loved going to school, but going to class was not exactly my thing. Needless to say, this was not a great recipe for staying completely out of trouble. More and more, I’d cut class and be at the handball courts all day or in the lunchroom playing spades. Then there were the hooky parties in Bushwick and Marlboro Projects. That was pretty much my high school experience summed up until, eventually, the shit hit the fan.

Being smart, I developed a system for not getting caught by painting the picture the way that I wanted. I had the key to the mailbox, so I could take out the pink absence slips from school before my mom saw them. I think she got hip to that at some point and started taking the mailbox key to work. That didn’t stop me. Nikki and I figured out a way, with tweezers, to fish out the pink slips through the quarter-inch slots in the face of the mailbox. We were like surgeons with the tweezers.

Then I started making and printing out my own report cards, tricking my poor mother for quite some time. I’d give myself an occasional B or C so it didn’t seem suspicious. But according to my report cards, I was a pretty good student. Eventually, my aunt Cindy, who had moved to Florida in those years, was home on a visit and decided to throw in her two cents: “This doesn’t look like a real report card—anybody could print this out.”

Why is she so goddamn nosy? I got a perfectly good operation going here!

It may have raised an eyebrow for my mother, but she let it go. However, not too long after that, she got a call from Mrs. Webber, the guidance counselor.

Mrs. Webber, a mousy brown-haired lady with glasses, was onto me and had been trying for months to track me down in school. She would see me in the hallway and call my name. “Angela!!!!” I would literally run the other way and act like I didn’t hear her. There I was, racing through the lunchroom, and my friends were saying, “Yo, Ang, what’s up?” and I’d be yelling back, “I can’t stop! Mrs. Webber is chasing me!”

After finally having enough, Mrs. Webber did what any respectable guidance counselor would do and, unbeknownst to me on that particular day, called my mother at work to tell her that I had missed more days than I had actually attended that semester and that I was going to be expelled. My mom hung up, immediately left work, and headed for the train to Brooklyn.

At that particular hour, in the middle of the school day—no surprise—I’d cut out of school and was at home with friends, drinking a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English, smoking, and watching
Beat Street
on the VCR. So there we were, chillin’ without a care in the world, until I heard jangling keys out in the hallway and the sound of the lock unlocking. Everybody stared at the door like—
Holy shit!

And in burst Shirley—and she was PISSED.

“Mom!” I said, in shock. What else was I gonna say?

“Angela! Get everybody out of the house.”

“But, Mom—”

“Do not say another word. Everybody out!”

The next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Florida to live with Aunt Cindy.

•   •   •

F
lorida was total culture shock, like living in a foreign country—especially when it came to music. And I was all about the music. So there I was listening to Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa, KRS-One, and Public Enemy while the kids at Coconut Creek High School in Margate, Florida—about a half hour outside of Miami—were into these Jam Pony Express mixtapes, 2 Live Crew, and Miami bass. Used to drive me crazy. How could they think any of that was good? Years later, I developed respect for why they liked it and I get it. But culturally and musically, it was so different. And I was just lost.

Before long I started to adjust, after meeting other kids from New York whose families had relocated as well. And in that group I met Derek, who was cute and from Brentwood, Long Island, so that cushioned the blow. His family was Puerto Rican, too, and his parents even reminded me of my relatives, welcoming and warm. Whenever I hung out with Derek at his house, we’d do fun things like go fishing in their backyard.

Being part of a family atmosphere mattered to me at a time when I was feeling homesick. Of course, Aunt Cindy and her husband did all they could to be supportive, but they were focused on getting a new business off the ground. And I also knew it was only temporary, as the
plan was for my mom to move down to Florida, too, that is, once she’d saved up enough and possibly found work ahead of time.

But even as I adapted socially, I liked school less and less. Soon I was doing the same shit as before—lying, missing school, hiding report cards. Everything came to a head about six months after my arrival in Florida, when, at last, the intrepid Shirley Maldonado landed a great job as music director at Power 96 in Miami.

We didn’t see each other much those first couple of days after Mom arrived because she was busy getting situated at work. And then came the moment of truth when, without advance warning, she walked into Cindy’s house to get me just as I was in the bathroom fixing my hair.

All of a sudden the bathroom door flings open, scaring the shit outta me.

“Ma!” I scream.

Steely-eyed, she asks, “Did you get your report card?”

Without time to think, I say, “No, not yet.”

She knew I was lying and proceeded to smack the holy shit out of me.

What in the fuck?!

My mother had never hit me. She wasn’t punching me or hitting me with a stick, but she was definitely hitting me. And it freaked me the fuck out. You know that saying “smack some sense into you”? Well, I’m here to tell you . . . it can happen!

Everything just stopped for me as if the smoke cleared and something changed inside me. And I just knew I couldn’t do it anymore; it was not going to be tolerated. I really had my “Who do you think you are?” moment. My mother said so much without words, and I heard her loud and clear:

She is the boss of me. She’s not playing with me
.

And I got my shit together big-time. Not only did I get back to
school, but I also went to night school and summer school, and somehow I graduated on time. So when people argue that you should never hit your kids, mostly I agree, but I do think that sometimes your kid being a little scared of you is okay and even necessary.

There were other lessons that came out of the hard work that was required for me to make up for lost time. One of those was the realization that it’s true what they say—if you put your mind to something and you work your ass off, whatever it is, you can make it happen. That was a pivotal discovery in my life and something that would be of considerable help in my career later on.

The other eye-opener was that even if I didn’t love all the required courses in school, I actually did love learning. In fact, whether I was conscious of it yet or not, one of the things that I loved about hip-hop was what you could learn from listening to the wordplay and unraveling the layers of code and figuring out the storytelling in the rhymes.