riricapadona I got money to blow - December 04, 2009 add/view comments (0)

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Living in Oakland, California, anything is bound to happen and a person just has to be prepared for it. It seems like everybody's selling drugs and selling anything that will get them some drugs. Everyday somebody you know is found dead. It's like society is immune to death. An average teen is so brain washed that he or she thinks that school is a waste of time because they're not making any money there, but in reality it is making money.
I learned the hard way. I too was one of those kids that thought that being in school was useless although, I didn't start out in Oakland. My mom didn't start in Oakland either, but it took a toll on her life as well.
My mom started in San Francisco, California. My granny died when my mom was thirteen. After my granny died, my mom moved to Houston, Texas to live with one of her big sisters; Hilda. My aunt Hilda introduced my mom to my daddy and then to crack cocaine. The good part about that is that she introduced my mom to my daddy first. My mom gave birth to me and then turned to alcohol and crack to relieve the pain from the bruises and broken bones from my father beating the %#&@$! out of her when he was drunk, she was drunk, or both were drunk. My dad mostly got drunk on payday. People could tell he had just gotten paid by how drunk he was. If he got drunk enough to pass out then he'd have just gotten paid. If he was just two or three beers drunk then he didn't have very much money.






The beatings weren't always for those reasons though. Sometimes my mom would take her frustrations out on me. She'd slap me maybe. She'd scream at me. One time she yanked a chunk of my hair out. In return my father would defend me because I was a baby and couldn't do it myself and because he felt that he could. Unfortunately that didn't work out because my father was extremely abusive. My mom got tired of being scared to go home after staying out late partying. She got tired of my father doing to her as he pleased. The last thing mom endured was walking in on my dad sleeping with a woman my mom calls Althea, my dad calls her Lou. At that point my mom felt there was no need to stay in Houston any longer. She thought she'd be a damn fool to do so. One payday my mom waited until my dad got piss drunk and passed out to go into his pockets. She stole all the money he had left from his paycheck and she took me and escaped by plane, back to California to live with her oldest sister Fredia and her husband Raymond in Oakland; Sobrante Park. It seems as though everything went down hill from then on. Auntie Fredia was on crack too. So when my mind moved in with her, that didn't stop her from smoking. Actually it only made her want and get more.
Somehow my mom got in touch with her old boyfriend from her adolescent years, Kenney. The bad part about that was the fact that Kenney was on crack too. During their separation Kenney had also had a daughter whom he named Lakenya. Lakenya lived with her mother on the other side of Oakland. Kenney did a lot of things for us. He would come to pick us up and take us places like Macdonald's or to the park in his old beat up blue 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic eighty-eight, Kenny called her Betsy. After awhile, Kenney had become a burden to Auntie Fredia some kind of way. Maybe she was just miserable and wanted to take it out on anyone.







So my mom left Kenney and auntie Fredia, took me and moved into our own place in Sacramento, California. This was the first time we'd had our own place. Things were ok for a minute. My mom then got herself in some trouble. She went out one night and left me back at the apartment with Auntie Hilda who had came back to California shortly after my mom did and cam to stay with us in Sacramento. My mom left to go and get drugs. She got into a fight and stabbed a lady in the back four times. The lady didn't die, but she went to jail and I was released to her step-grandmother, mama Ruby, who also lived in Sacramento. That was the first time my mom had left me.
At mama Ruby's house things were ok, I was alone until Auntie Hilda went to jail and my cousin Zeke had to come to mama Ruby's with me. I liked that. I liked having someone around that I knew. Zeke protected me. He took care of me. The only time he really didn't help me at all was when mama Ruby started beating me. I had a really bad bladder back then because I pissed in the bed every single night. Sometimes I would piss in the bed and I would be awake. I was too afraid of the dark to get out of the bed and walk to the restroom. I slept in mama Ruby's waterbed with her. Zeke slept in the living room on a day bed. Every time I pissed in the bed, mama Ruby would put me in the bathtub and beat me with her thick leather belt. I cried and screamed; screamed and cried, but Zeke never came to make her stop. He would fight kids that picked on me even though he picked on me himself at times, but he never stopped mama Ruby from tearing my skin away with that leather belt on my wet skin.
Soon my mama and my auntie Hilda both were released from prison, but shortly after that, they went back. They sold dope to and undercover cop right around the corner from mama Ruby's house. Zeke and I had to stay at mama Ruby's a little longer than our poor hearts desired. Mama ruby never beat Zeke. She started beating me for more than just pissing in her bed. I got beat for sneaking in ice cream, staying outside too late, even crying too much. Zeke had it easy. Mama Ruby had one leg. She got around in a wheel chair. One time Zeke took her cane and hid trying to play a trick. She swore up and down that I did it. She fussed about it at me all day and Zeke let her. Then when she pulled out that belt and was about to beat me, Zeke confessed and gave her back her cane. She still beat me for not telling her that Zeke had hid it from her. I hated mama Ruby.
When my mama and my Auntie Hilda came home from prison that second time, they tried to come stay at mama Ruby house with me and Zeke, but mama Ruby wasn't going for that. My mama didn't argue. Auntie Hilda did. Auntie Hilda got in mama Ruby's face and mama Ruby busted her in the head with the twin end of a hammer. Auntie Hilda bled from her head rapidly, but that didn't stop her from beating the crap out of mama Ruby with her one leg and all. I watched with delight. I was saying, "Get her auntie," in my mind for all the beatings she gave me. I was happy she was finally getting beat back. We left there. Auntie Hilda and Zeke went to live with Zeke's father in San Francisco and my mama called Kenney for help.
Kenney moved me and my mom into his Grandma's house back in Oakland with her and her husband Freddy. Kenney, my mom, and I shared a room and a bed. I thought that we would be ok from there. I was wrong because after we moved in with Kenney, the violence started. My mom and Kenney fought what seemed like every single night. Back then I didn't know why they fought so much about. I later learned that those fights were over crack. Who had taken a longer hit than the other or if one of them had dropped it on the floor and they couldn't find it then that would also have been a fight. When you're a kid you don't really care why anyone, especially a man is hitting your mom, you just want them to stop. Once again my mom had landed herself in a bad situation and once again she had managed to drag me along with her. Again I had to sit back and watch a man beat on my mom. The only difference this time was the fact that I was old enough to hurt behind it. I understood it and I was old enough to know that it wasn't right. My mom bled every time. She also cried and screamed %#&@$!, hoe, and bastard. She called Kenney every name but the child of God. Kenney's grandma never called the police when they fought so that meant it went on until one got tired or hurt too bad to continue which usually was my mom.
One day Kenney and my mom were fighting and Kenney punched my mom's two front teeth out. My mom went to the hospital and was there for a few days. Meanwhile, I was back at the house with Kenney. When my mom was released from the hospital she announced that she was pregnant. Nine months later my little sister Jantrina was born. Although Zeke was the closest thing to a sibling to me, I kind of liked having a sister. I had been the only child for seven years. I wondered what life would bring now to my mom and me with a little sister to follow us on our journey.
The fighting between my mom and Kenney never stopped though my little sister was born. In fact, one night Kenney and my mom were in bed fighting and Kenney accidentally punched Jantrina, who was sleeping in between them, right in the head. My mom got furious and hit Kenney in the face. Kenney tried to hit her back but by that time she was picking Jantrina up and Kenney's fist landed on the other side of Jantrina's head. My mom and Kenney had to rush Jantrina to the emergency room as a newborn with two big knots on both sides of her head. My mom was so pissed she told the people that Kenney had did that to her. They took Kenney to jail immediately. Jantrina was in the hospital all of two months or more. She had brain damage. She was so little and looked so uncomfortable with all those tubes in her everywhere. It was sad.
My mom, Jantrina, and I continued to stay with Kenney's grandma. We didn't really have anywhere else to go. My mom and Kenney stayed in touch. Kenney's grandma and my mom always went to visit Kenney in prison while he was there. One day they had gone to visit Kenney and left me at home with Michael and Maurice, Kenny's sister's kids, and Freddy. Freddy went with them sometimes, but this time he was sick so he stayed behind. Michael, Maurice, and I got bored and decided to go bother Freddy. He started playing a game with us. He was the monster. We would run in his room and he would rise up from the bed and roar at us like a monster would, then we'd run out screaming. We kept doing that over and over until one time we ran in there and he didn't get up. Michael jumped on top of the bed. I punched him in his testicles, but still he didn't move. When I leaned over to look at his face and pick at his eyes I noticed that I'd put my hand in something wet. Freddy had pissed in the bed. We got scared and immediately came to the conclusion that he was dead. The phone rang and we all ran to answer it. It was Kenney's brother Napoleon. We were all anxious to tell him that Freddy was dead. He told us to call the police and he was on his way. We did just that. The ambulance came and so did Napoleon. We called him uncle Po for short. They took Freddy away and we sat watching quietly and disturbed feeling like we'd killed him when Michael jumped on the bed and I punched him in the testes. Uncle Po stayed with us until my mom and grandma came back. When my mom and grandma got back home we all rushed to tell them Freddy died. Grandma nearly passed out. She was really hurt. My mom took Jantrina and me into the back room where we slept. My mom asked me what had happened and I told her the whole story. She thought it was kind of funny. I didn't. I was seven and felt like I had killed a man.
After Freddy died my mom, Jantrina, and me moved to 88th and Hillside, another street in Oakland. Again, Auntie Hilda and Zeke came to live with us there. Kenney got out of prison and we all couldn't stay in that small apartment together so we moved to 82nd and MacArthur and Zeke and his mom stayed there on 88th. Kenney stayed home long enough to get my mom pregnant again then he went back to prison for a violation of parole. They let him out on parole with the exception of being around Jantrina for a certain amount of time. They got into an argument, someone called the police, and although he hadn't hit her, he wasn't supposed to be there. He went back to jail and my mom gave birth to another baby girl. She named her Jamika.
My mom could barely take care of us when it was just her, Jantrina, and me. So she knew it would be practically impossible to take care of Jamika too. She asked a lady named Ms. Johnson to take care of Jamika until she got herself together. Ms. Johnson is Tony's mom. Tony and my mom tried dating off and on when Kenney was in jail, which was quite often. Ms. Johnson agreed and it went back to being just Jantrina and me.
After that we moved to Berkeley, California. I was going to Malcolm X Intermediate School. No one in the school liked me whether girl or boy. Then a girl named Amarrah started going there and she was just like me so we became the closest friends. No one could come between us. We were the blood that's thicker than water and we were just that: water. Kenney came home from prison and my mom had another baby. It was a boy this time, she named him Jamaine. After Jamaine, we moved back to Oakland, and Kenney went back to jail. I never saw Amarrah or talked to her again after that.
One day this man came and kicked down our apartment door and tore up our house and beat the crap out of my mom while we were living in Oakland. We stayed on 92nd and Sunnyside. His friends held us down and made us watch how he threw my mom all over the apartment and slapped, kicked, and punched her all over. She owed him money for some drugs that she had gotten from him on credit with the promise to pay him on the first of the month. The first of the month had come and gone twice and he was fed up. I was in the seventh grade at this time, still too young to branch off to myself and take control of my own life. I had to stay around; I had to take care of Jamaine and Jantrina. We were all each other had.
This incident was like a last straw for my family. They couldn't continue to sit back and allow my mom to drag us through hell. My aunt Fredia's two older children: Anasa and Virgil came and took us away and sent my mom to a drug rehabilitation center. They told my mom that if she didn't get her life together that she wasn't ever getting us back. We went to live with Anasa in San Leandro, California with her, her husband Otis, her daughter Trenell, and her son Damonte.
We liked living with Anasa. She bought us nice clothes and shoes. Our stuff always came from popular stores like Footlocker, and Macy's. My mom only could afford Payless shoes and Wal-Mart clothes. We didn't really mind though because we didn't know of any other types of clothes in order to miss or want them. My mom never had a job. She always relied on welfare, so the welfare checks didn't supply money for expensive clothes and shoes. The checks just supplied enough money for the rent and utilities and they weren't always paid because my mom spent most of the money on drugs and alcohol.
We stayed with Anasa until my mom got out of the rehab. When she had gotten out Anasa had moved us to Fairfield, California, so she came out there and found her an apartment. Jantrina and Jamaine went back home to her, I stayed with Anasa. I couldn't take being apart of that lifestyle again. I had gotten used to the life that Anasa had given me. Anasa had enrolled me in school right around the corner from where we lived. I finished my eighth grade year there and graduated. I didn't make any friends the entire year. I was always quiet and to myself. I had gone through so much at that point in my life that I didn't trust many people; especially guys.
With Anasa there wasn't any drugs and alcohol. There was fighting between her and Otis sometimes, but never anything major. Anasa wasn't a saint though. She showered us with nice expensive things with illegal money that she had gotten from writing bad checks for expensive items, changing the receipts from saying check to cash and then returning the items to whatever store she had purchased them from. She made a really good living from doing that and we lived a pretty good life from her doing that. I had no complaints.
I made it one month through high school before I got kicked out for fighting. I spent the rest of my ninth grade year in continuation school, in a classroom with only seven or eight other students. They told me I couldn't go to any other school in the city until the following year. I thought I was going to be a dummy.
After my ninth grade year was up Anasa moved us to Alameda, California. We stayed in an apartment complex called Buena Vista Apartments. We called them the BV's. That's when I met Dawn. One day Trenell wasd outside playing and she came in the house crying to me about some chick outside bothering her and was bigger than her. When I went outside to approach the girl, she told me her side of the story and I understood because I know how Trenell could be. Trenell likes to start trouble and then run to get a family member to fight her battles. She especially liked to get me for some strange reason. I guess by then we had grown up as sisters instead of cousins so she felt like it was my obligation to fight for her. The girls name was Dawn, we became best friends after that day. We began fighting and standing up for one another after that.
Anasa enrolled me into Encinal High School. This year I was determined to do good, and I did sometimes. I took band and they put me on the flag team. I hated that. I didn't want to be around all those girls for so long. I like flag because the class was always outside. I liked being outside. I passed flag and english with an A. The rest of my classes I was having trouble with. I wasn't having trouble because I was unable to comprehend, but because I just wasn't interested. I grew a fondness for my math class because there was a guy in the class named Dorian who I fell in love with as soon as he joined the class. I liked him because he was cute and funny and a smart. I loved him. I stared at him at times. I stared wishing he'd love me back. He never did unfortunately.
I finished my tenth grade year at Encinal with a 3.28 GPA. I couldn't believe it. After I finished tenth grade Anasa moved us back to Oakland and enrolled me into Skyline High School. I couldn't focus at all by then because I had a lot of my cousins at Skyline with me and that made it all too much fun. We cut classes a lot together. We got into a lot of fights together. The bus ride home from school was always the best part of the day. At the end of the day we'd all pile up onto the city buses and pack it to the roof so that there weren't any seats left for anyone. We'd even be sitting on each others laps. We talked loud, we hung out of the windows, we horse played around, we had fun in our own little way. Skyline was the last real high school I went to. It was 11th grade year, I barely passed but I did. Anasa got tired of my bad behavior and sent me home to my mama.
My mom had moved to Oroville, California by then. When I went back home that feeling of "not belonging" immediately sprang up. I didn't want to be there. My mom was still using drugs and consuming tons of alcohol still. My mom enrolled me into and adult school that didn't require me to sit in a classroom. All I ad to do was go into the office every Monday and pick up a new home work packet and turn in my completed one. I worked at my own pace did the assignments and turned them in when they were due every week. I graduated from there with a 4.0 GPA and walked the stage with a big smile and no one in the crowd to applaud me. My mom had stayed home because she was drunk, my dad was in Houston, and Kenney was in jail. Anasa didn't even come. I didn't care though, I was just happy I made it.
After high school I didn't go straight to college, I hung out in the streets. I got used to the free life. My mom and I had begun to go completely separate ways when it came to our opinions. So I left home with the intention to never turn back.