CHAPTER 6
PATERNAL
Daddy’s Voice
My name is Anthony Drake, but on the block, it was always Tony.
I wasn’t supposed to end up here, not with the family I came from.
I grew up in Mount Airy, the part of Philadelphia where the streets was clean, and the trees leaned over the sidewalks to shade the whole neighborhood.
Our house was a two-story brick place with a small yard out front and a big backyard with a basketball hoop my pops bolted into the ground himself.
My moms, Juanita, first generation Puerto Rican. The sweetest schoolteacher you would ever meet. She believed in books the way some people believed in prayer.
“Con suficientes libros y suficiente amor, todos los ni?os podrían salvarse.” She preached.
“Every child could be saved with enough books and enough love.” She always spoke to us in her native language, that was important to her.
She kept a garden along the fence. Roses mostly, red, pink, and yellow if she could get them to grow. Each spring she planted them with the patience that only hopeful people seemed to have.
My father, Roscoe Drake, a Philly native. He wore suits to work daily. Real suits, with sharp creases and polished buttons. His shoes was shined so well you could basically see your reflection in them. He worked for the city in an office building downtown, a steady job people respected.
The married young and gave me the life kids on the other side of Broad Street could only dream of. From the outside, we was the family people pointed to when they talked about doing things the right way.
Our house was full of respect. Full of routines.
Full of expectations. Dinner happened at six.
Homework happened before television. Sunday mornings meant church whether you liked it or not.
I had good schools. Summer camps. Basketball leagues where parents sat on folding chairs and clapped politely after every game.
I had new sneakers when the school year started.
Clean clothes folded neatly in drawers. A big room of my own with trophies lined along a shelf above my bed.
I was the kid who had it all. But I wanted more.
My father used to drive through the Westside occasionally on his way downtown.
We would stop at the red light while the city changed faces around us.
The houses was older, and they was closer together.
The sidewalks busier. And there they stood, the corner boys.
Leaning against cars that looked expensive.
Bulky gold chains glimmering under the sun.
Nobody on the street flossed louder than they did.
They was animated in a way the boys in my neighborhood wasn’t.
No curfews. No lectures. No parents on them about grades or college plans.
They had freedom. Or at least that’s how it looked to a young boy viewing through the window of his father’s car.
“Don’t stare at them,” Pops ordered when he was aware of my fascination.
“Those boys don’t have anything you want.”
The way they moved stuck in my head though.
The confidence. The swag. In Mount Airy I was just another kid in a polo shirt sitting through lessons that belonged to somebody else’s life.
To a young mind, privilege can feel less like protection and more like being trapped.
My privilege was like a cage, and I wanted to fly.
I was seventeen when I laid eyes on Denise Carter. She waited outside a corner store in West Philly, making the sidewalk jealous. I pulled over, I couldn’t help myself.
“You from ‘round here?” I asked, trying to sound cool.
She rolled her eyes, sharp and beautiful. “Born and raised.”
I laughed.
“Figures.”
She crossed her arms.
“What’s dat supposed ta mean?”
Niecy was beautiful. Fire in her eyes, challenge in her voice. The girls I knew from my side of town was sweet, polite, safe. The way Niecy looked at me, she might slice me open just to see if I was real. And I was hooked from the first word.
After that day, we moved fast. Too fast.
I started driving down Broad Street just to see her.
We would ride with the windows down, her hair whipping across her face while the city lights blurred past.
I took her to jazz clubs, and record stores.
I introduced her to restaurants where waiters pulled out chairs and didn’t wear black aprons.
She showed me block parties where speakers thumped so hard the pavement vibrated.
Niecy was all the things I thought I was missing. Raw. Real. With her, I didn’t have to be ‘the good son.’ I didn’t need to be the star athlete my father could brag about to coworkers. With Niecy, I could be reckless. I could be free.
My parents didn’t approve of our relationship. They never expressed it outright, but I saw it in the way my mom’s smile tightened whenever Niecy’s name came up. In the way my pops asked questions that sounded casual but wasn’t.
“Where you been?”
Niecy came from too many struggles and too little money. My mother whispered words like ‘fast’ and ‘dangerous’ when she thought I couldn’t hear. But none of that moved me. I loved her. Or maybe I loved what she represented. A way out of the neat little box my parents had built for me.
I started skipping class. Spending time in neighborhoods my parents warned me about. The hustlers who once blessed me from a distance started letting me hang closer. They treated me like I belonged. Not as an outsider like the preppy kids in my neighborhood.
First time I flipped a small amount of money, the rush hit harder than feeling I had ever experienced.
My parents’ money was allowance. Street money was respect.
Niecy didn’t push me toward that life, but she didn’t pull me away from it either.
She loved the shine too. The gold chain I bought after my first big win.
How I could pull up in cars that wasn’t mine but flex like they was.
I was living in the block. The disconnect started small.
Running errands. Holding weight when cops circled too often.
Standing lookout when the older hustlers handled business.
The adrenaline was addictive. Money passed through my hands faster than I had ever imagined.
My father’s voice started sounding distant.
The streets had their own voice, and it was louder.
But the pressure kept me awake at night. My thoughts racing. Nerves twitching. A dude I was running with, offered me a hit to calm down, to smooth out the edges.
“Jus’ one hit,” he insisted.
“To take tha edge off.”
And that’s how it started. One hit at a time. Until I couldn’t remember the last time I was completely clean. When Niecy told me she was pregnant, I was already falling deeper than I wanted to admit. We was cuddled on the hood of my car looking out at the skyline.
“Tony… I’m late.”
I hardened, then I laughed nervously. I wasn’t ready to be a father.
“You serious?”
She confirmed with tears shining in her eyes. I cradled her and kissed her forehead.
“We gon’ make it work. You mine, Niecy. I love you.” And part of me meant it.
I tried to be happy, and in many ways, I was.
The idea of holding my daughter, of having a family of my own, filled me with emotions I didn’t know I had left.
But by that time, the streets had dug their claws into me.
Whenever I tried to step away, the pull dragged me back.
The money. The respect. The rush. I told myself I could balance it.
Be a father and a hustler. Keep my two worlds separate.
But the streets don’t share. They don’t compromise.
Once you belong to them, they don’t let you go.
I accepted fire over all else, including the people that I loved most.