CHAPTER 1 #2
When she couldn’t hold everything together, Aunt Dee stepped in.
Aunt Dee had arms strong from years of working and a laugh that filled the whole room. On Fridays she fried fish in her tiny kitchen, the smell drifting halfway down the block. She made sure me, and Shay had full plates, no matter if it meant her own plate got smaller.
My big sister, Shaylene. Shay is only three years older than me.
She had Mama’s beauty but sharper around the edges, quick smile, and quicker mouth.
She spent half her time acting annoyed with me, and the other half protecting me from the world.
She would sit me down on the floor between her legs and comb my hair into tight little twists, while I squirmed and complained.
“Hold still, Sum,” she would spout, clicking her tongue.
“You wanna be lookin’ crazy out here?”
Shay always split whatever she had with me.
Half a sandwich, half a bowl of noodles.
She would wipe my face with spit and a rag like she was my mama.
Shay was my first teacher, my first protector.
She was the one who taught me the rules of the block.
She recited them the same way church folks recited scripture.
Serious, unquestioned. Like it was law, because it was.
“Don’t stare too long when tha hustla’s countin’ money.” She tightened another braid.
“Don’t snitch. Not even if tha cops ask you straight up.” Another braid.
“And if somebody call you out…” she paused, pulling the last braid tight.
“You either put up or shut up. Ain’t no in-between.”
Our survival depended on remembering every word. Shay wasn’t teaching me the rules, she was trying to protect me from a world she was still figuring out herself. Neither of us knew then how much those rules would matter. Or how many times we would have to break them to survive.
The late ’80s wasn’t kind to nobody in the ‘hood. The crack era was a monster that ate families whole, and mine was no exception. At first you heard whispers about it.
“Such n’ such’s cousin overdosed.”
“Wus her names uncle gettin’ high.”
“Phylicia down tha block actin’ strange.”
It was everywhere. Vicious. Fathers turned into zombies.
Men who used to work decent, steady jobs disappeared for days at a time.
Mothers turned into ghosts chasing the next high.
Neighbors into strangers. Grannies who once walked their kids to school started drifting through the neighborhood, eyes empty and skin stretched tight against their bones.
It chewed up families and spit them back out broken. Kids was raising themselves.
Sirens wailed through our neighborhood, like church bells announcing tragedy, at least four times a night. Sometimes more. Police swarmed constantly. But they wasn’t there to save us. They was just another presence, another gang, another threat.
Even as a little kid, I could make the distinction between police sirens and ambulance sirens.
Police sirens was sharp and angry. Ambulances sounded sadder somehow, like they already knew what they were driving toward.
Somebody’s mama overdosed. Somebody’s daddy got locked up.
Somebody’s brother didn’t come home. Those stories repeated themselves over and over until they blended together, like background noise.
Still, inside all that darkness, life refused to stop. There was joy tucked in between the pain. And through it all, the music played, sweet and heavy, a soundtrack to both the hope and the heartbreak of the era.
Summers on our block meant block parties.
The drunk uncle dragged old orange construction barrels into the street to block off traffic.
Neighbors pushed cars onto sidewalks and folded chairs appeared out of nowhere.
A DJ would set up two turntables on a shaky folding table plugged into an Auntie’s extension cord running out of a first-floor window.
The bass would drop, and the whole block would come alive.
Men danced over smoking grills built out of old oil drums cut in half.
Ribs sizzled over charcoal while the smell of barbecue sauce drifted through the warm air.
Women danced in the middle of the street wearing biker shorts, tube tops, and gold hoop earrings that swung when they laughed.
Perms bouncing, curls shining with grease and sweat. Kids running wild.
Big Money drove the ice cream truck. We ain’t know his real name, it wasn’t important.
Big Money had thick gold rings with dollar signs and a fat chain bouncing on his chest when he leaned out the window.
It had dollar signs too. Each afternoon he lingered down the street, the ice cream song drifting through the heat, like a sweet promise.
The jump rope girls had their own rhythm. Clack. Clack. Clack. The rope slapped the pavement while they sang rhymes in perfect rhythm. ‘Cinderella dressed in yella…’ their braids swung as they jumped. I tried sometimes, but I was better at hopscotch.
Shay loved the block parties. The second the music started she would disappear into the crowd. Meanwhile I stayed glued to Mama’s leg. I was small, shy, still trying to understand the world I had been dropped into.
Mama would stand near the sidewalk, holding a paper plate piled with food, one hand resting on my shoulder. Sweat glistened along her collarbone in the summer heat, but she managed to look beautiful, she always did. The whole block moving, like one big living thing.
For those few hours, nobody talked about drugs. Nobody talked about the police. Nobody talked about the empty houses or the boys who had disappeared. For those few hours, the block was family, real family. The kind that showed up for each other even when nobody had much to give.
I later understood that those nights wasn’t just parties, they was survival.
People fighting to feel alive inside a neighborhood that was slowly breaking apart.
Even with the drugs, even with the cops, even with the hunger sitting quietly inside too many homes.
We still had something, something stubborn, something beautiful. Something worth holding onto.