The Coldest Winter Ever

by Sister Souljah

  My eight-year-old sister wanted to fight me for the front seat of Midnight’s Acura. I told her to take her little ass in the back with the twins. I wondered what would make her think she could ride in the front seat with my man … Little girls start getting horny at a younger age every year.

  While Webster’s dictionary offers a limited definition of the word sister, “a female having one or both parents in common with another individual,” I believe the word embodies so much more. As an older sister, Winter should have been her sister’s second most important teacher, after the mother. Whether a sister embraces the responsibility or not, the younger siblings, especially the girls, are using her everyday example and choices as a destination point. Most younger sisters aim to emulate their older sister whether or not she is a positive model. They will be in a constant battle to seek the older sister’s attention, acknowledgment, and more importantly, approval.

  When the Bureau of Child Welfare removes Winter’s sisters from her home, Winter has the appropriate outburst of anger at her housekeeper, Magdalena. However, if she actually loved her sisters is never made clear. Again, love is an action word. It’s supposed to make you feel something, do something compelling. It’s supposed to make you determined and powerful. Winter visits her sister Porsche once, along with the mother. At no point in the remaining months of her freedom does she pick up the phone to inquire about her three sisters. She does not send them a letter, card, clothes, toys, food, or cash. She does not ask anyone to check on them and report back or look after them for her. Nor does she ever visit them to offer a simple glance of solidarity and concern before her eventual incarceration.

  Even in the novel’s final chapter Winter does not mention her sisters. It takes the jolt of her mother’s funeral for them to come into focus for her. We can assume they do, only because she can see them walking up to the gravesite. But couldn’t she feel them while they were gone? Why didn’t she wonder or care or cry or fight over them?

  Winter, Friends, and Acquaintances

  Winter romanticizes her friendships in the beginning of the novel. She believes that she and they are tight. However, the bond between Winter and anyone is only valid if Winter is in the higher and envied position. If her friends ever showed even a desire to reach for the place where Winter stands, she finds a way to cut them off, knock them down, put them in what she believed should be their permanent low position.

  Winter betrays her best and lifelong friend Natalie. When Winter is forced to move back into her old Brooklyn neighborhood, she senses that Natalie has emerged as the new leader of her clique. When mutual friend Simone informs Winter that Natalie has a new man, a drug dealing hustler, Winter is not happy that Natalie has what she wants for herself. Instead, Winter becomes consumed by jealousy. The envy escalates as Winter feels challenged by the new clothes that Will has purchased for Natalie, which she wears to the concert. The idea that Natalie is seated in the box seats with her man Will, above the head of Winter who is seated below, is unacceptable to Winter. Upon entering Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn after the show, Winter seethes as Natalie has all of their friends gathered at a table where she and her man Will are picking up the bill.

  Innocently and conveniently Winter excuses herself and heads for the ladies room. Will follows under the guise of using a pay phone, despite the fact that he’s carrying his cell phone. In the hidden corridor he comes on to Winter, offering to drop Natalie and take good care of her. He feeds Winter’s ego, reminding her that she’s better than Natalie. Winter rejects him once, then yields to his charms and compliments. With her nipples fully erect, she gives Will her phone number and agrees to meet him later on that same night. The complete betrayal of her best friend of sixteen years takes less than sixteen minutes.

  In business Winter betrays Lashay, the group home girl who served as the “middleman” in Winter’s clothing and hair business. The fact that LaShay helped Winter when she was confined in the group home did not make Winter treat her loyally. As soon as Winter received permission to come and go in the group home as she pleased, she dropped Lashay. She decided that the small piece of money she paid Lashay in a very profitable business, was better kept inside her own pocket.

  When Winter receives a call from Simone, who got arrested while boosting clothes for Winter, she hangs up on her and refuses to use any of her personal money to get nine-months pregnant Simone out of the cold jail. Ultimately Simone, Winter’s girl from her Brooklyn block, and Lashay team up and attempt to attack Winter. In the pursuit of Winter, Simone falls, killing her unborn baby girl. At no point does Winter express regret, remorse, or even sympathy for Simone’s loss of her first child. Even in the final chapter of the novel Winter’s words concerning Simone are freezing; “She finally stopped blaming me for the death of her daughter. Or at least she puts up a good front.”

  Winter moves on to betray Rashida, who was very helpful in Winter’s escape from the newly planned second group home attack. Rashida is also the girl who introduces Winter to Souljah. Rashida sets it up so Winter can safely reside at Souljah’s house, locate Midnight, and recover from the group home experience. Obviously Rashida had not done enough for Winter, who spoke against Rashida, assuring Souljah that she and Rashida were never even friends. Winter stops communicating with Rashida, isolates her and focuses on robbing Doc and Sister Souljah, the two women who allowed her to stay in their New York home. Weeks later, Winter is successful in robbing both a church and an AIDS charity spearheaded by Sister Souljah.

  Winter and Her Community

  The most overlooked fact in The Coldest Winter Ever teaches us a lot about the character Winter and the readers who love her. In three years of touring after the publishing of The Coldest Winter Ever, no one has ever asked me about Chapter 16, where Winter fills a sock full of rocks then beats a female senior citizen with them. In describing her attack on the old lady, Winter says:

  Across the street where the woods lined the outside of the highway, I filled my extra pair of socks with big sharp rocks … In a split second she didn’t know what hit her. It was my stone-filled sock up against her head. She withered like a flower and fell to the ground. I had two hundred in cash, one credit card … two diamond rings and those Gucci shoes.”

  The fact that no book club member, audience member, or inquisitive independent reader has ever asked about the female senior citizen demonstrates the temperature in our community—below freezing. It reveals the disconnection from our culture that years ago protected, revered, and honored the elderly. The idea that this crime remains unimportant, unresolved, and undiscussed exposes how our community now accepts the mentality echoed in a famous hip-hop song, “Players Anthem” by the Notorius B.I.G., “That’s okay, she was old anyway.” It bluntly admits that the murder of the old means nothing, they’re just going to die anyway. This was certainly Winter’s mentality. She never even questioned whether or not she had actually murdered the old woman. Why would she? After all, she felt comfortable peeling the unconscious woman’s Gucci shoes right off her feet as she lay silent between two cars in the dark parking lot in the middle of the night.

  Of the thousands and thousands of letters I receive about this novel, ninety percent of them are from girls and women ages eleven through forty, all who swear in ink, “Sister Souljah, I am Winter Santiaga.” For so many women—the majority identifying themselves as black and/or Latina—to identify this way supports my long-time belief that there is a state of emergency in ghettos worldwide.

  When a young girl or grown ass woman says to me, “I am Winter Santiaga,” she is saying to me, “I feel trapped. I don’t have the answers. I’m a ruthless fighter. I feel desperate. I’ll do anything. I’ll rob you if I have to. I’ll kill you if I have to. I’ll get rich, or we’ll all die while I’m trying.”

  Are we saying that Winter Santiaga’s attitude is beautiful? Or is it that beautiful-looking girls and women should be excused and able to get away with absolutely anything? Are her choices cool and accep
table? Is this what we want for our daughters? Is this what we want for ourselves? Is this what we expect and accept for our communities worldwide?

  CHARACTER ANALYSIS:

  MIDNIGHT

  Midnight is the heart of The Coldest Winter Ever. Through him is delivered the strongest and most relevant message to black men ever delivered in the form of literature. He is alive in the most important place, the minds of both men and women. For men he is a goal and a standard. For women he is a dream and destination. In every instance he is a permanent Midnight. Without a man like him in each and every home, there is an absence so deep it stains the face of our women, steals the chastity of our daughters, and ensures an early burial for our sons.

  In The Coldest Winter Ever, Midnight symbolizes the black man’s return to manhood and culture.

  Physically speaking, Midnight is blackskinned because black is the most beautiful. Black is the most dominant and alluring, and somehow threatening. Midnight is tall, because in so many ways he towers over most men. His body is lean because even his personality is devoid of “fat.” Midnight’s skin is described as being “smooth and perfect, laid on top of his bone structure tight like Saran Wrap.”

  I wanted his beauty to carry the precision and power of the ancient African cities, the height of architecture. They were the first cities to be created in human history. They have been admired, imitated, but never properly duplicated. Despite thousands and thousands of years of being hated, raided, and robbed, they still stand as the most unexplained, envied phenomenon. Physically speaking this is Midnight, tough and tightly constructed like a pyramid, visible and explored and desired by everyone. Damaged but still superior, a hand-crafted carving, the symbol of the black man.

  Most female readers think they are in love with Midnight because of his looks. I think, however, Midnight’s spirit is the most compelling thing about him. He represents a departure from the characteristics typically assigned to and associated with young black ghetto males.

  Whereas young everyday males, as well as famous entertainers and athletes, are usually bragging about themselves, their possesions, appearance, jewels, clothing, cars, women, and skills, Midnight is humble. He is not arrogant. He is comfortable and confident. Everything he has you could see. But he would not point it out, brag, or front.

  Many men today lack the beauty of humility. That is why they appear in the eyes of women as boys, and not men. If they have beautiful jewels, they lift them up, talk about them, rhyme about them, shove them into the camera and show them off. But the beauty of jewels, like the beauty of men, shines without assistance. Like diamonds, when they are authentic and clean, they sparkle and capture the seeing eye.

  When Midnight plays basketball, it is a metaphor for life. He wears quality possessions, yet he enters quietly and thoughtfully. Still, everyone notices. He plays with skill, drowning out the voices of trash talkers in his mind. He focuses on the goal, getting the basketball into the hoop. He wins the game, but doesn’t shove it in anyone’s face. He leaves in the same manner in which he came. Humility, in fact, became one of the keys to how Midnight ended up being a rare survivor in the deadly drug game.

  Most men need too much attention. Like small female children, they will do anything to get it. That is why today’s everyday black male is constantly showing off. Moreover, he shows off his woman and not necessarily because he is proud of her. He shows her off to bring attention to himself. To make himself seem like more of a man. This is why rappers strip their women and parade them around. They are insecure. They need to parade these women so that people will view them as big men who control lots of women, thus the constant reference to themselves as pimps. Even everyday men in the streets pimp their women. Male youth brag about the women they’ve got, how they manipulate them, and sometimes even destroy them. They brag about how they fuck them, make them cry, make them work, get money from them. They detail how they use and then dump them.

  Midnight does the opposite. In the novel, when he is rumored to be having a relationship with Tasia, the rumor can never be confirmed. As a man he knows not to discuss with other males or females what he does with his woman. He understands that this is their private business. He does not need to destroy Tasia or her reputation in order to build or big himself up as a man. Winter attempts to ask Midnight about his relationship with Tasia. He refuses her conversation.

  When Midnight is, at the request of Santiaga, traveling with Winter and her little sisters on the low, he takes Winter shopping. As Winter reaches for the sexiest and most revealing clothing, he guides her to something stylish, high quality but more conservative. He does not need to walk beside a nearly naked woman to feel good about her or to feel good about himself. Besides, he acknowledges that his primary responsibility to a woman is to protect her. Part of providing that protection, is to not complicate any situation with her public near-nudity. Many battles have been fought, boys and men locked up or lost lives, because of young men’s belief that women who are nearly naked in public are extending an open invitation to be looked at, approached, conversed with inappropriately, and unfortunately, even touched. Therefore, any man who walks beside a nearly naked woman in today’s troubling times, in today’s streets, escalates the possibility of conflict.

  If a man cannot be humble, it is likely that he cannot be still. To be still is to be silent, without motion. Every man needs to have or develop the ability to be still at some point in each day. It is the time where he can stop and hear his own thoughts. It is the time when he can consider or reconsider his past actions. It is the time when he can think or pray. It is the time when he can allow his conscience to do its job, which is to remind and lead him to know and choose between what is right and what is wrong concerning his own actions and choices. Any man who is constantly talking, constantly moving, constantly high, or afraid of being silent and or alone, is a lost and misguided man. He will never be able to correct himself, a serious flaw that will cause him to die a thousand spiritual deaths, repeating the same mistakes over and over again, a cyclical hell.

  Midnight was able to be still. In the novel he prayed, thought, considered, and reconsidered. Moreover, he studied. In fact, when the character Sister Souljah first saw Midnight, he was seated in the Columbia University library reading. There are many grown men today who never even consider going to a library or bookstore, or opening a book to read and actually think about and consider its content. Their lack of humility convinces them that there is no need to read. Their arrogance reminds them that they already know everything. As a result, they can never grow or change.

  When Winter was in the hotel room with Midnight, she pointed out the books he chose to carry with him, The Art of War and The Wretched of the Earth to name two. He was reading them before they became the popular books for men to read. We can therefore conclude that he was in a voluntary and constant state of reading, thinking, and learning, of evaluating the world and his position in it. This state of reevaluating created an opportunity for him to become a better man who makes better choices in his life.

  The message is clear. To rely solely on your own unimproved state of mind, your own limited thoughts without reading, learning, and debating the thoughts of others, conversing meaningfully and studying from time to time, causes a man to become small minded, closed in and trapped. Careful study increases both your awareness, understanding, and options. A man without study is a hostage to his own faults.

  In business and in his personal life, Midnight was loyal. To be loyal means “to be constant,” to be consistent. In plain language, to be loyal is to know who you are, to know what you’re doing, to know what you agreed to, and to follow through. Word is bond.

  Santiaga gave Midnight an occupation, a job. For hundreds of thousands of youth/men who have been incarecerated in the past, this is an opportunity that is extremely hard to come by. Therefore Midnight was loyal to Santiaga. Many men today cannot do business together successfully because their minds cannot grasp the simple concept o
f loyalty. When a man puts you on and creates an opportunity for you that you otherwise would not have had, the laws of nature dictate that you be grateful and loyal to him for the agreed amount of time of service. Now remember, you had a choice. You were presented with an opportunity. You had time to consider the terms of the agreement and the details. You accepted and agreed to it. You did not have to agree to it. You could have altered or negotiated the terms from the beginning. Once you put your word on it, this is supposed to seal you into the deal, specifically as you agreed to it. A loyal man sticks to his agreements. He does not make excuses for why he cannot do the job correctly. Each time, and every day he should present the same man that he presented in the beginning. Even if he changes his thoughts, or his mind in the process of the agreement, he does not grow angry with the giver, or betray and change the agreement. If he feels strongly that he must alter his behavior midstream, he requests a face to face and respectfully explains his position requesting a change, also known as an “amendment” to the agreement. However, a loyal man should be prepared and understand that the giver has the right to decline his request and hold him to the agreement he made in the first place. If the giver does enforce the original agreement, a loyal man should be ready to continue as agreed without hatred or revenge. As a man he is obligated to handle and take responsibility for his agreements. There should be no transferring of blame.

  A man who is humble, confident, and intelligent thinks ahead and thinks carefully. Then he has no cause to be disloyal. A man who makes choices swiftly, signs contracts without reading them, or does business while high or drunk, without careful thought to the work ahead, is a fool. He will betray you every time.