The Coldest Winter Ever

by Sister Souljah

  I stuck my face up against the window bars. The sun in my face was a luxury. Because of the way my cell was situated in the building, I rarely got any sunlight.

  The airplane offered more magazine selections than we were entitled to inside. The officers, who pretty much know my style, were relaxed. They had no reason not to be. I was chained to my airline seat. I peeped people tryna glance over at me. It wasn’t easy for them to get a good view because I was seated in the middle chair, in between two guards. I looked right back at them though. I was checking out shoes, watches, jewelry, dresses, just so I could tell the girls on the inside what was up. When food time came, I got filled up on the aroma alone. Three choices of food were offered. That’s two more choices than I’m used to having. My nose was so keen now I knew what they were serving before the stewardess read off the selections.

  When we got to the city, I was placed in a prison vehicle. New York street sounds brought back memories of so many things. Mostly memories of freedom. Being able to go to the store or the movies. Getting fucked in a parked car by the river or in the grass or on the back stairs. My eyes checked the cars, the updated series and models. I noticed new hairdos, new buildings that weren’t there before.

  As I rode in the back of one of those prison vehicles, the car with the metal gate separating the officers from the convicts, I saw people looking. It seemed like they were wondering what I did. I wanted to tell them nothing. I didn’t do shit. I’m doing fifteen years for having a bad attitude. That’s what it boils down to. Sure, I rented a car that was being used to transport guns and cocaine. But they wasn’t my drugs. They wasn’t my guns. But since I was sitting in the car I rented, with the stuff concealed inside the teddy bears in the backseat, they considered me guilty. I’m a conspirator for renting the apartment me and Bullet lived in. I’m a conspirator ’cause guns discovered had bodies on them, people I didn’t kill. Some of them I didn’t even know. Now, you tell me how can I be involved in a conspiracy when nobody else involved in the conspiracy was convicted of nothing? They wanted Bullet, but I wouldn’t help them. The name is Santiaga. We don’t snitch. Besides, even if I was a rat it wouldn’t matter. That nigga Bullet had it all figured out. His name wasn’t on nothing. He wasn’t caught doing nothing. Joey the doorman disappeared before the cops could get to him. There was nobody to testify against him about shit.

  When Natalie got sent up here one year after me, for just riding in a car with a nigga with contraband, she told me the deal with Bullet. Now he has a bootleg tape business. He got all the rappers shook, be stealing they music and selling it on the streets before the record companies could. He’s got a legit record store that he sells the tapes out of, and he’s paid out the ass.

  The graveyard was located in Queens. When we pulled up, all I could see were the backs of about four men. As we came into closer range, I saw that three of the men were armed and wearing bulletproof vests. The two officers with me greeted the three officers with Santiaga, my father, who I had not laid eyes on in eight years. As soon as he turned to greet me, the tears came gushing out of my eyes, after so many years with no tears at all. I couldn’t stop them from falling. Santiaga gestured slightly like he wanted to hug me but his hands were chained, and so were mine.

  “What’s up, baby girl?” he asked in a low tone. There was no privacy. Any emotion shared here was a group thing. We were being watched like a motion picture.

  “Hey Daddy,” I whispered, admiring how handsome he still looked, his tall frame still sturdy, filled out and masculine.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, looking into my face in a concentrated way. I cried more because I knew how hideous the scar on my face was. I had stopped bothering with the mirror about five years ago. “Even with the scar,” he added, as if he could read my thoughts. “You’re still the prettiest girl in the world.”

  The old white priest cleared his throat. All six of us, me, Daddy, the guards, stepped up to the open casket to take the last look of Momma we would ever have. When Santiaga looked in, he broke down. He broke down so bad, he fell to his knees. “Who is that? Who is that in the box? That’s not my wife.” The guards prodded him to stand back up. Both Daddy and me tried to collect ourselves.

  Seconds later, some more people wandered over to where we were. We didn’t know them. We assumed they were looking for another plot. As two of the guards moved to inquire, words were exchanged and they allowed them to pass on to our way.

  For the first time in many years, I became self-conscious. I felt ugly. I wanted to fix myself. I wanted to rip off these clothes and tear out these braids, comb my hair or something. It was Midnight. He was tall, black, and regal. He looked more amazing than I remembered him being. Instantly, I felt jealous of the women with him. It was a piece of me that was dead, that was somehow coming to life again. My eyes locked in on their faces for an immediate comparison. It’s funny. The girls’ faces were familiar, but I could not place them. Then an alarm went off within me. Lexy and Mercedes, the twins, my sisters. They had to be at least fifteen years old now. They were so soft and delicate and different. Their eyes were different.

  Midnight approached Santiaga first. He hugged him, which the guards allowed. Then he presented Lexy and Mercedes, like they were strangers in an initial meeting. They talked to Daddy in a formal way, not like daughters. They spoke to me with sympathy and distance in their voices. Everything that needed to be said was not being said. Midnight did most of the talking. Like old times, he reported to Santiaga on the status of things. It was about Santiaga’s daughters. I turned away from them. I didn’t want Midnight looking at me.

  Just as the priest started going through the motions, a big, black 600 series Mercedes Benz with black-tinted windows pulled up on the pavement. It had been moving at a high speed so it stopped with an abrupt jerk, alarming the guards who had already assumed the shooting position. They called out for the person to identify himself. But the music coming from the vehicle was so loud, I was sure the people inside could not hear anything else. As the door opened, a model type of girl, straight out of the pages of a high-fashion magazine, stepped out of the car. Dressed in a white Versace slinky dress—odd color for a funeral—and white Dolce & Gabbana leather stilettos. She was obviously paid out the ass. I still couldn’t see her face behind the sunglasses. Stepping carefully on the new, soft spring grass, she came right over to me.

  “What’s up, Winter?” She smiled wide and pulled off her sunglasses. It was Porsche, my sister. She came alone, pushing a whip it would take the U.S. president’s salary to pay for. She hugged me. She kissed Daddy. She waved at Midnight, Lexy, Mercedes, and the two women with him. She stepped up and looked in my mother’s coffin for all of three seconds.

  She stepped back, grabbed my arm, and leaned inward to talk privately with me. The guard signaled for her to back up. “Damn!” she screamed on the guard. “Can’t I talk to my own sister without you being all up my ass!” So they let her talk. I couldn’t believe how she chumped them.

  “I wanted to come and check you, girl,” she said, chomping on some bubble gum. “But you was just too far away. Tell me what you need. Whatever it is, I can get it for you.”

  “Whose fucking whip is that?” I asked, amazed.

  “Buster’s,” she responded.

  I raised my eyebrows, like Who dat?

  “It’s a long story,” she said, waving her hand in the air like it wasn’t nothing.

  “What’s up with Lexy and Mercedes?” I asked her, almost at a whisper.

  “Midnight adopted them. They all religious and whatnot. They be wanting to tell somebody how to live they own motherfucking life. That’s his wife right there. She ain’t all that. I look better than she do.”

  “Who’s the other girl?” I asked.

  “She’s his sister. They live out in Maryland. Midnight owns a barbershop, can you believe it?” she said chuckling.

  “So what do you do? Where do you live now?” I asked her, cautiously.

&nb
sp; “Oh, I do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We stay over there by Central Park in Manhattan,” she said casually.

  “We who?” I asked.

  “Me and Buster.” She said it like I should’ve known already.

  “Oh.” Now I took a good look at Porsche. She was perfect. Her hair was perfect. Her legs were perfect. Her clothes were perfect. But I wanted to warn her about certain things in life. Usually I’m not at a loss for words. But I didn’t feel good enough to tell her what I really thought. I knew what she would think: Winter, you’re just saying that ’cause you’re in jail. Winter, you’re just saying that because you’re old. Winter, you’re just saying that because you’re ugly. Winter, you’re just saying that because you’re jealous. So instead of saying what I had learned, what was on the tip of my tongue, I said nothing at all. Hell, I’m not into meddling in other people’s business. I definitely don’t be making no speeches. Fuck it. She’ll learn for herself. That’s just the way it is.

  THE

  COLDEST

  WINTER

  EVER

  SISTER

  SOULJAH

  Special Collector’s Edition Reader’s Guide

  ASKHTHEHAUTHOR

  THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS

  1. Why did you choose to focus on and write about drugs in your first novel?

  I have always been in love with the human soul. In every person, I see some beauty, and most of all, a lot of potential. As a very young child I remember watching everyone very intensely, as if I were a visitor in my own home. At first, I believed all human beings shared the same feelings and ideas. I assumed that all mothers and fathers were similar. In a short period of time I was proven wrong. I would sit and wonder why a person would do a certain mean, strange, or destructive thing. I was always searching for an understanding of what was going on in someone else’s mind. In the slim corridors of my Bronx, New York, project building, my brown eyes captured a lot.

  Each night when I would lie down to sleep, it would be difficult for me to ease into it. I would think about what caused one of my “good friends” to suddenly turn against me that day. I would be obsessed with words my mother had spoken to me earlier, and would lie on my back wondering about them. After all, I depended upon her to explain every little detail I observed and experienced. Fighting sleep, my mind would still be reviewing, dissecting, and questioning.

  This condition of wondering and searching for answers led people to refer to me as “deep.” I did not know at the time what “deep” meant. I did know, however, that being seen as deep separated me from everyone else who surrounded me—my people, family members, friends, and other ghetto dwellers.

  Within my immediate family I became separate. If something tragic happened, my mother and her boyfriend of the moment would tell my older brother and younger sister not to tell me about it because, if I would have known, I would not only question it for a long time, I would feel it in my heart. It would echo in my mind and live there forever.

  When a man in my building was murdered by his girlfriend, my family hid it from me. I would see this man fixing his broken down car outside of our building almost every day. When he disappeared I kept asking why he wasn’t outside anymore. It was a very small detail missing from my everyday snapshot of my little ghetto world. After about a week, my brother finally confided in me late at night, when I was having trouble drifting to sleep, that the man had been killed by his girlfriend inside the apartment upstairs from us.

  My mother was right. Maybe he should not have told me the truth. Because every day for a long time I wondered what happened right before he was murdered. What did he say or do to his girlfriend that made her feel it was all right to rip his chest open with a knife and spill his blood onto the floor, stealing his breath and life and presence? I wondered how he felt while being stabbed. I wondered how she felt while stabbing him. I wondered how she got out of jail so quickly, in weeks even. I wondered how she could still be walking around smiling and dating like nothing ever happened. I wondered about her soul and his too.

  My mind had the power to relive incidents as if I had been there, even though I hadn’t. I could feel what I believed others felt, whether it was terror, depression, or joy. I could easily place myself in someone else’s shoes and this added to my sense of humanity. I became both more compassionate toward the pain of others, and more furious with wicked people and unjust circumstances. I would soon learn that I had the gift of imagination, complicated by the gift of powerful spirit.

  It was my extremism that caused my mother to introduce me to books. She felt she did not have the answers to all of the questions that I bombarded her with. She would read to me and my siblings at night. She got me my public library card at age five. My efforts to understand my family and the people who surrounded me by reading and studying books began then.

  Although many of the books I read were fascinating, they were not really about the world that I lived in. None of the children’s books described my day in my hood, the people, places, or familiar things.

  In fact, when my mother held my four-year-old hand and walked me around my project building, describing everything around me so that I could learn to be strong and unafraid of walking to the store alone in the ghetto now that I was about to be the big five years old, the things she showed me were not in any children’s picture book.

  Momi pointed to young men with needles in their pocket, heroin addicts. She pointed out men standing on the corner. They were so drugged and so high that they looked like tightrope walkers inching their way across a thin line elevated 500 feet in the air, while attempting simply to stand up.

  Momi pointed out what route to take and which ones to avoid. How to walk foward and watch behind you at the same time. She told me never to eat or drink from anyone else’s house or hand, not even a so-called friend. She told me to never go into anyone’s house without her permission no matter what. She told me if she granted her permission for me to visit a friend, I was never to go into their bedroom. I was never to allow anyone to take me into a room alone and close the door. She told me not to talk to strangers, especially men with their drugs, teenagers with their tricks, or fast little girls or women. At the end of this lesson in bravery, my greatest fears were born.

  I was afraid of drugs, needles, smoking, the people who used them, the people who sold them. I was afraid of the way the drugs caused the people to act. I was afraid of the way drugs caused the drug taker to look. I was afraid of what the drugs “made” people do. I was afraid of the drug dealers too. I did not fear the boogey man or monsters. There was no evil green or red guy with horns under my bed. There was only the men who were described as “the pushers,” who might slip something into the punch bowl at the block party and make the minds and hearts of all of us children and adults change forever.

  In my deepest thoughts, drugs were responsible for changing love to “I don’t give a fuck.” They were responsible for turning beautiful girls into ugly old hoes in a matter of weeks. They were responsible for turning good men—fathers, brothers, and sons—into enemies to be feared and despised. I was afraid of a thing so powerful it could make a child not love her own mother. Or a father not love his sons and daughters.

  So I buried myself in books. I separated myself from people who I deemed were not in their right minds. I even slept on top of my arms at night, so no one could inject them with heroin while I slept. I did not eat or drink from others. I did not accept even the gas mask at the dentist’s office, for fear the gas would make me high, ignorant, broke down, and most of all out of control of my mind, and separated from my true feelings, the ones God gave me at birth.

  So I guess it’s not so suprising that as a grown woman, I would write about the effects and impact of drugs, the topic that troubled, frightened, and disturbed me so much as a child.

  2. Is The Coldest Winter Ever a true story?

  No. My novel is not based on a true story. However, it is based on real events that happen every
day. That’s why it feels so real. After all, drugs are real. Drug dealers are real. Drug wars are real. The ghetto is real. Jail is real. The state is real. The consequences of drugs are the most real; the shootings, disappearances, kidnappings, murders, the slow death, the quick spurts of wealth, shopping sprees, then shocking downfalls into poverty. All of that is real.

  So many people have felt The Coldest Winter Ever so deeply. They believe that it is their own story. The incredible thing to me is the idea that anyone thinks a drug tale can be their own private or personal story when everyone in the drug “game,” thousands and thousands of people, have all experienced the same exact thing: material wealth, spiritual poverty, shootings, killings, fear, pain, loss, incarceration, and devastated families and friends.

  I felt that in weaving this tale in an attractive and dynamic way, I was bringing forth a gift that would free thousands of youth and families who believed these horrible and crazy things were only happening to them. I believed I could place into the minds of the young certain universal truths about drugs, growing up, family, sex, and life. I was certain that it was needed.

  The focus of the modern drug tales needed to switch, I thought. So many writers had taken time to write books and screenplays about the rise of drug kingpins and their empires. I thought the effect of The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas, and New Jack City, had been to cause poor young black and Latino boys and men to identify heavily with the real poverty and truly emasculating conditions that created the drug dealer in the first place. Of course, they then accepted that the drug dealing business was a justifiable, suitable, and acceptable way to rise out of poverty. It would elevate them from the underclass, not into the working class, but into tremendous wealth and power. They loved the way the characters in these books and films went from being boldly disrespected to being respected, served, and feared. They loved the way the characters beat the system, the same one that had them trapped. These books and films became the Black Boys’ Guide to Business. In the ghetto, barrios, and favelas, the actor Al Pacino, star of Scarface, the movie, became more well-known, impactful, and heroic than Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, and Bob Johnson.