It made him feel more okay with himself after he did that. Like he was okay with what he was doing because I was okay with what I was doing. I hated all of that. Years later, when I was in therapy, my therapist told me it was my body reacting and there was nothing I could have done about that. I never knew that. Maybe if I had of gotten therapy earlier, I wouldn’t have rejected and hid my body, cause doing that has an effect. It’s like a toxin to you. After Cecil, if I wanted to have a good time or have some good sex, I had to be high on drugs. All at the same time, I was having sex with the neighborhood boys and Cecil was raping me. I decided I needed to be around a girl my age, somebody I could be normal with.
So I found a friend. I started hanging with this girl who lived next door, Gloria Brown. Gloria was my friend who I used to tell all my stuff to. She used to hear my grandmother beat me. Everybody knew what my grandmother did to me. I guess that was why nobody ever told her when I was ditching school and doing the things I was doing. Nobody ever told on me because they knew the ass whooping I got if they did. In fact, I used to hang out with older people all the time. One time this lady came upstairs and I felt so bad for her, cause she tried to say something about me skipping school and my grandmother was gonna whip her ass for coming to the door. I never felt so bad about somebody. My grandmomma cussed that woman out. But Gloria wasn’t scared of Ma’Dea. At least she didn’t act like it.
I hung out with her quite a bit. Gloria was sixteen years old and she had a baby and she was not a good example, but it was what it was, and I thought she was cute and she was. Looking back, I can understand why my grandmother thought it wasn’t a great relationship for me. I was twelve years old. Gloria was older and she had been doing older things for a long time. Most of the girls in the neighborhood had. There was a girl named Lee Ann, and I used to say she going Ho-Ann. She had a nasty walk. There was a mixed girl who used to hang out with us, Ezal. She must have been only thirteen, like me, but Ezal was living with grown men. Mayola had a scar on her face, and she was about thirteen or fourteen. She got that scar on her face from sitting in a grown man’s car, not messing with him or anything, just sitting in the car drinking and smoking weed and his wife came from around the corner and slashed her face. She hadn’t done anything. She had been so pretty.
Me and Gloria used to sit on the porch with the baby, or sit on the fire escape, cause we both were on the third floor and the fire escape was on the front of the building. Men used to climb the fire escape to try to rob our house. Ma’Dea knocked two dudes off the fire escape. Bam! That man hit the ground and he got up, hopping and running. Folks knew not to mess with us. Ma’Dea damn near knocked him out. She said, “I got him.” She went to the front door, opened it, and called out, “Come on back!” She turned to me and said, “Yeah, I heard him tipping up here. And when he stuck his head through that window, I handed that bat to his ass.”
Our bathrooms, me and Gloria’s, were tiny and right next to each other. I could sit in my bathroom, on the edge of the windowsill, and she could sit in hers, and our knees almost touched. She had little Terry, and we both be in the window, gossiping. Friday we’d be bored and she was like, “I’m bored.” But I’d tell her, “Something gone jump off in a minute.” It was Friday, folks gone start to drinking and then they gone fight; somebody gone whip somebody’s ass. Domestic violence was entertainment in our community. People were getting they ass whooped. And if bad stuff didn’t happen, we used to pull our own shenanigans. I used to make little Terry cuss. I tell him, “Say motherfucker.”
“Mufa, mutha-fa, motherfu, motherfucker!” And we laughed when he said it. “Motherfucker!” One time Terry called my grandmother a motherfucker. She spanked his little leg. Gloria was so mad. I felt so bad cause I had taught him how to cuss. We were kids, man. We were kids raising kids.
Mayola lived over at Thirteenth Street, over there near Holy City where the Vice Lords were. Gloria started going with this boy who lived on the first floor; Mayola lived on the second floor, and so I tagged along. They had a singing group, and Bernard Page was in the singing group. Well, of course, when you have a girlfriend who has a boyfriend who has friends, that’s how you hook up. So me and Bernard start talking. Bernard started coming over my house after my grandmomma went to work, when I was ditching school. We had sex all day in bed or on the mattress on the floor. You know how young people get it on, all stupid like? Just screwing each other, because what else is there to do? Sweating, screwing. He was sixteen; I was thirteen. Getting it on. Kids. I watch kids. That’s why I know what they will do. People never believe kids will do the stupid stuff they do. But they will. I’ve never been shocked when I hear sixth and seventh graders getting blow jobs. When I was that age, I wasn’t sucking nobody’s peter but we were having sex. Eighth grade and having sex for no reason. I wanted someone to like me. I was looking for validation, and I found it with these little boys. I wanted them to tell me I was pretty. Those hookups were my comfort. They were hugging and kissing on me, and I needed that kind of touch. My grandmother hugged me, but only when she was drunk. You know, back then I really did believe in the white horse and shining knight. I thought maybe if one of those boys thought I was pretty enough, they could take me away from all of the trouble I was in. It would happen as fast as “Hi, how are you? Let’s do it.”
So I ditched school, and we went to the basement and did it. Or he snuck over Granny’s and did it with me over there. I ended up getting pregnant by Bernard Page. But I had a boyfriend named Charles Mitchell who was in the navy, eighteen years old. He wanted to marry me even though I was young. He thought that was his baby, but I knew it wasn’t. It was Bernard’s baby. Bernard denied it. My grandmother told me, boys will deny anything. I didn’t think that was going to happen, cause me and Bernard was cool. He was my boo. I didn’t think he would take me to court, but he did. He took me to court for a custody hearing. He was there with all these guys who testified they had had sex with me, too. Out of all of those guys, I had only been with one of them. But I guess they were backing up their friend.
He told me, in front of my grandmother, he didn’t think I was having his baby, and she turned to me and said, “See? What I tell ya? But it’s okay, because we know whose baby it is, don’t we?” I didn’t answer, so Ma’Dea answered for me. “That’s our baby.”
When we got back home, she started taking care of me. I was thirteen years old and seven months pregnant—going on eight—when I told Ma’Dea I was pregnant. The milk was just squirting out my titties; I had toilet paper all in my bra. She was mad for about a week or two. Real mad. She didn’t talk to me. And when she did, she said some real horrible things. “I guess you gone be like them other bitches on the street, just have them babies and squirt them out. Like one of them dogs.” She said all kinds of crazy stuff. She was just angry. “Take out the garbage, cause that’s all you good for now. You done messed your life up.” And I think she was so mad, cause before I told her, I would just lie, lie, lie. She would look at me and say, “Brenda Jean, something going on with you? You pregnant?”
“No, ma’am.”
Later, she told me, “Your momma was woman enough to sit me down and tell me she was pregnant.” She just wanted me to be honest, and I had lied. I didn’t know why. I had some issues. My issues were on top of my issues as a kid. I couldn’t be honest with her because first of all I was intimidated by my grandmother, and second of all, I just didn’t feel like I could talk to her like that. I could tell everybody in the neighborhood about me being pregnant, but I couldn’t talk to Ma’Dea about it. She was mad about that, too. “All these people walking around me. They know my baby pregnant.” She cussed Gloria out.
But Gloria told her, “You can get mad at me if you want to, Ms. Ruth, but it wasn’t my place to tell you. It was Brenda’s place to tell you.” That was the truth. So Bernard Page was an asshole and is still an asshole; to this day, he hasn’t confirmed that he’s the daddy. But one day after school, when my daughter Prune was five,
he followed her all the way home from school. I was waiting for her at the window. Prune called out, “Momma, this man following us!” And I saw who it was and I went outside to them.
“I saw this girl and asked her if her momma was named Brenda. And she didn’t answer. This your baby?”
“Yeah, Bernard.”
He looked at her and said, “Right.”
* * *
I was the neighborhood girl who knew what I could tell and what I should keep secret. Just like I waited to tell Ma’Dea the truth about me being pregnant, I knew I had to keep secret that Cecil was messing with me. He was coming by our place, like a dog with a bone. The minute Ma’Dea stepped out the room to go get a drink, he would antagonize me. When I was pregnant, he would say, “That’s my baby, ain’t it? I know that’s my baby.” I remember him once grabbing me by my hair when I was real pregnant, like eight months, and raping me. The whole time I was trying to have little boyfriends, he did that to me. I had too much stuff on me.
I was pregnant, a kid, I was getting raped all the time. Ma’Dea ain’t making it easy because she’s so disappointed in me because I’m about to have a baby. The hole I was in just kept getting deeper. Everywhere I turned I felt like I was less than a piece of shit. I was less than a piece of shit because Cecil was coming at me and raping me; I was less than a piece of shit because I was having babies and breaking Ma’Dea’s heart. I was less than a piece of shit no matter what I did. The only peace of mind I had was when I hung out with my girlfriend Gloria. She used to really talk to me. “You gone make it. You’ll get through.”
Cecil’s drug addiction had progressed, and I was working. Ma’Dea wasn’t. She was watching Prune while I went to work and tried to go to school. Ma’Dea was getting an aid check. Cecil came in one Saturday, and he wanted fifty dollars. He told Ma’Dea if she wrote him a check, he could get her a TV. And Ma’Dea said, “Alright, Brenda, go with him.” So we got in a cab, and I somehow knew the whole time what was going to happen. Some shady things were going to pop, and the only question was, what was I going to do when they did?
“I’ll be right back. Okay?” Cecil got out of the car.
I waited and waited. And waited. But he never came out. When I went to the door to ask where Cecil was with the TV, them people said, “Cecil went out the back door, baby.” But I never regretted losing that money, because when he took it, he could never come to our house again. I was so happy.
I went back home to Ma’Dea and told her, “He went out the back door.”
“I’ll kill that man if I ever see him again.” She meant it. That’s the kind of person she was.
She didn’t talk nonsense, she handled nonsense. Ma’Dea’s sister, my aunt Ola, was like that, too. Ola had a husband named Marvin, and Marvin was molesting one of my little cousins. Jackie turned not right. When she was about five or six, she sat and rocked in place and didn’t nobody know why. She didn’t play around with us; she would sit and stare. You’d talk to her and she just look past you.
She was like a deer. “Jackie. Jackie! Don’t you hear me talking to you?” And Jackie had a fever or something and went to the hospital, and them people told Aunt Ola, “She tore up down there.” He had done something to her. She was traumatized. So we all went back home, and Marvin was in the big chair looking at the TV. Aunt Ola went in her house to the dining-room table, and there were some scissors right there on the table. She picked the scissors up and walked over to Marvin and stabbed them down his neck and then called the police. “Come get this man out my house.” Aunt Ola lost her mind for a few weeks. But she got him.
That’s how we dealt with the trouble back then. So I have no doubt that my grandmother would have killed somebody if she knew about me. And then she would have gone to jail forever. I know my grandmother wouldn’t have been one to say, “Oh, that didn’t happen.” She would have cold killed somebody.
So Cecil was out of the picture. And pretty much for me, I was controlling things. I’d had a baby. I was hanging with older girls, older guys. Sometimes adults. A lotta times adults. My grandmother was questioning everything and everybody who’s coming through the house, cause she knew I was laying down with grown-ass men. She ran a couple out the door, when she told them how old I was, but most of them didn’t care. They just wanted to be with me cause I was so fresh. So that’s kinda what I was doing. I was messing with a lotta Super Fly–type brothers who had nice cars, or guys who had good jobs, like bus drivers and men who worked at Chrysler or had them good-ass Ford jobs. Steel mill brothers. They liked my ass. I was young—I was thirteen, fourteen—and I was gorgeous. It’s not until you are old that you realize how pretty you were. You remember being beautiful when your body starts falling apart. I was very pretty. I couldn’t walk down the street and some dude damn near ran into something. That was the kind of body I was handling. Like, if it were now, I could give them Kardashian girls a run for their money.
There used to be this place called the Garfield Organization on the West Side of Chicago, led by a man named Doug Andrews. He was a community activist who was in politics. I met Doug on Madison Street at Guy’s shoe store. A lot of brothers hung out there—newspaper guys and dudes like that. Guy’s was like the unofficial meeting place for a bunch of political Black guys and businessmen. They used to come through the back, and the man who ran the shoe store—whose name was really Guy—would let them sit down and have a beer. They would talk about the community and all the issues that were going on. I went in there one day, and I was introduced to Doug Andrews. He was actually doing good work in the community. He saw me. I was young and built like a brick house. I had potential. But what kind of potential? I didn’t know. But Doug knew what kind of potential he wanted me to have.
This guy looked at me and was thinking, Shit, this girl can make me some money. Doug was saying to me that I didn’t need to hang out with these greasy men who were taking my money. If I was smart, I could hang out with him and I’d be able to keep my coins. It’s not like I charged anybody, it was more of a situation where I let the guys I was with know I needed a little money to get by. I would get a look on my face and then they would ask what was wrong. “Oh, I don’t know how I’m gone make rent this month.” Stuff like that. And then they slipped me money and told me not to worry. I didn’t know what they were going to give me until it was time for me to go. There was some times when I’d spend a whole day with a guy and walk away with nothing, and I thought, man, I should have asked for money upfront or I should have been more clear. But I guess I wasn’t that bold yet. Trying to pick the guy who was going to be the most generous was all a part of the game.
Doug didn’t want my money, but he had dudes who wanted to be entertained. He told me, “We like you, Brenda. You don’t need no pimp. You can just hang out with me.” You know, men who did things with girls or young men were not considered bad guys. They were just thought of as men who liked a taste of the outlaw. So I started going to the Garfield Organization because it made me feel important. I would ask for Doug, and he would tell me to come on back to the office. The funny thing about Doug was he never tried to get in my pants. But he had ideas of who I could get with. A couple of weeks after I met him, I was working down the street from Guy’s shoe store, at this furniture shop. Guy came into the furniture shop and said, “Brenda, Brenda! Doug and Stu Gilliam are at my shop and they asking for you.” They were over there because they were promoting Burger King. They were going to build more Burger Kings in the community so that Black people could have jobs.
I ran over there. “Hi!”
Doug said, “Yo. That’s my girl over here. That’s Brenda. We call her Turtledove.”
And Stu Gilliam saw me and said, “Hey. Well, alright now.” He grabbed my hand and put me in the limousine. I get in the limo with Stu Gilliam and Hilly Hicks and Doug and some other guy. We went riding to a few more places. We ended up at the McCormick Place, and we went upstairs and I sat there while they did their radio show. And that was just th
e beginning. Doug would call for me when celebrities came to the city, and he made sure I was with them.
So I was sleeping with the neighborhood boys and the neighborhood men. I was getting down with the celebrities. It wasn’t like I was a prostitute; I was more like the go girl. And wouldn’t you know it? I got pregnant right behind Prune with Peaches. The daddy was this dude who worked for Pepsi-Cola. One of these good-job brothers named Spoon. He was in his thirties—really sharp dresser. Nice car, smooth talker. He was Gloria’s man’s friend. Gloria’s man was named Mac, and Mac and Spoon were friends. Looking back, I realize Gloria brought a lotta nonsense in my life. But I liked him. It wasn’t like we was close close, but I liked Spoon. He was just a cool-ass dude. I liked him, but I didn’t think I was gone get pregnant by Spoon’s ass, though. I had just gotten my six-week checkup. I hadn’t gotten my birth control together or nothing. And he was loving it, cause I’m a young-ass girl and cute as hell, and he was infatuated with all this. I never told Spoon Peaches was his baby, I guess because of what Bernard did to me. But as soon as Peaches came out, I knew whose she was. Spoon’s.
Everything about her, he was, too. He walked like a duck, with his feet sticking out. So does she. On her face is some of his features mixed with mine. Spoon knew when I got pregnant, but he didn’t think it was his because I was with a lotta men then. Nobody was confused about what I was doing. I wasn’t either. That’s why my grandmother said to me, “You come in the house with all kinds of men. Old, young, light brown, black, green. Cadillacs, fast cars, motorcycles. Goddamnit, you ought to let some of these men give you some money. You should never come in the house without Pampers and a gallon of milk. And get me a pack of cigarettes, goddamnit. All these guys pull to the curb and blow for you.” So what was she telling me? Maybe she was trying to say, stop laying up under these men and get a good job. Straighten up. Find a decent man and settle down. But I took it literally. I started asking dudes for favors. Now when I climbed those third-floor stairs, I had bags in my hands. A few dollars in my pocket. I hadn’t really learned how to ask for money yet. But that was coming.
Leaving Breezy Street Page 6
