Leaving Breezy Street

by Brenda Myers-Powell

  I made all their money, and I’d come home and they’d say, “You can’t eat.”

  “Why can’t I eat?”

  “Cause I said so, bitch. And who am I? Who am I?”

  “God. You run this show.”

  “Bitch, gone somewhere with your simple ass. Go sit down. You don’t know what you need.”

  So not only are you sitting up there confused, tired, you got to go to bed hungry. I hadn’t been hungry in a long time, but I cry if I get that way. I mean really hungry and there’s no food. I get desperate. I was with them for five, six months. There had been opportunities for me to get away, but I didn’t see them. Or maybe I was too afraid to take them. I needed someone to rescue me. To say, I got you. I needed somebody like that because I didn’t have the courage.

  As part of my seasoning, they had me in Indiana. For me, it might as well have been in New Zealand. They had me at unfamiliar truck stops and little sleazy hotels. I’m talking Motel 6 would have been an upgrade. Side-road motels with rusty-ass showers. They locked me in the closets, and mold was growing out the carpets, to let me know there were consequences to my behavior when I didn’t follow their commands. “If I ask you something, I need a response right away, bitch.”

  “Well, I thought…”

  “Bitch, why you thinking again? You don’t think. I think. You do what I tell you to do. What was you doing, thinking?” How brutal is that? To take a person’s will to have a thought in their brain. You begin to question even thinking about something. Someone has cut that down to: You don’t have the ability to think. I’m going to do the thinking for you—“that’s why I’m here, bitch.” “If you stop thinking and do what I tell you to do, this would be beautiful.” So you begin to believe things would be better for you if you just go along and do what you supposed to do, and some kind of way you might be happier or at least you won’t get consequences and that will make you happy. You do things to make them happy. After the rape became no more rape to me, it was just part of the formula, they actually stopped raping me. In the beginning, they raped me all the time. Together. Separately. The crying, the begging, it was a part of how they got off. Knowing that they were brutalizing me and messing me up; I was in pain, hurting me was okay. But it became so normal. And I’ll tell you something about myself: I can adapt to a bad situation fast. It was one of my survival instincts. You learn on the streets: you either get it or you get got. I would get to the motel with my money, or whatever they were okay with, because I couldn’t come back to the hotel until they were okay with it, but there was a possibility that I was still going to get jacked up.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen whenever I got to the motel room. Where they going to let me go to sleep? Was I going to get a hamburger or what? If I got a hamburger and was able to go to sleep, it was a good night. And that’s only because they had some other shenanigans going on. Other times, I could expect the brutalization and it didn’t even bother me. I was being raped and not really screaming, not begging and stuff no more. It became a part of the program. It just became, “What you gone do now? How you gone be tonight? Let’s do this so I can go to sleep.” That’s why they went and got another girl. I was no fun anymore. I was doing what they wanted me to do because I was tired of getting beat, I was tired of being brutalized. And they couldn’t find new ways to bruise me up or for me to be sore for three or four days. They wanted me to go get them some money, alright, but it’s hard for me to get it because they brutalized me so bad. I was sore, I was hurting. I needed medical attention, but I wasn’t getting it and I still had to get their money. What they were doing was tearing me down. And I detached myself to deal with it, cause if I detach myself, you can’t touch me. A part of me that got into the game could do that. So it was no fun anymore for them.

  The other girl was about my age. I think her name was Sharon, but nobody called her that, they called her “bitch” and they gave her the street name Sparkle. My street name was Liza. I got it from a soap opera: All My Children. Liza was a trip, so I was going to be a trip. I loved Liza, and I adapted to that name. You become those names in your own mind because you saw those people and you wanted it to be you. I just connected to being people I liked. It helped me disconnect. It wasn’t Brenda doing those things, it was Liza. Brenda didn’t have to take the abuse, Liza did. Things that were going on, they were happening to the alter ego I had adapted. Brenda couldn’t have went through all that.

  By the time Breezy came, Breezy was a mess. Breezy was created by all the other names, and that ho was something else. She was her own reality show. I was on That’s Entertainment! when I was Breezy. I used to have costumes when I was that ho because it had become a game. And I had to be the star of the game. I was the star of whatever was going on. That’s why sometimes people wanted to hurt me. I did this too well. I was always hearing, “That bitch think she something.”

  I don’t know what they think they thought I was, but I was something. I was surviving. I became a chameleon to deal with the situation. I became so desensitized to rape, that I had a rapist turn around and pay me. You think I’m playing? I had a rapist turn around and leave me alone, cause there was no sense in raping me given the way I was acting. It wasn’t even rape. I didn’t give in to what their plan was; I made a new plan while they plan was on top of me. I wowed out with the dude who came to harm me and flipped the script, and now I’m hanging out for two, three days with this monster. But by then I was controlling this game. I was actually enjoying this terror and crazy. It started off dark; it started off with him having something on his mind and I had to change his mind. I remember one time, I told this rapist, “Why are you raping me? This dick is so good. I’m gonna come.” I was just playing him. And, well, he just got up. He was trying to have something from me, and I had to get it off his mind. I sat up and he looked at me and I said, “You want to do this again?”

  He backed away, snatching at his clothes. “I’m good. We’re good.”

  “Sure you don’t want to go again?”

  “Naw, I gotta go.” He was trying to get away from me now, because damn it! I can’t just let you keep on doing this to me. I gotta flip it; I gotta do something with it. I gotta take control. No matter what happened to me on those streets, I had one big thought: I’ll fix your ass. At the same time, I was fixing me, because if I didn’t, the horrible in me might get out. There has to be a good ending for me, I thought to myself.

  * * *

  But before I learned to turn into something horrible to get me out of trouble, I had to live a horror. This was the course of business: the power, the control, the brutality. The unlawful holding of a human being, the slavery piece, the brutalizing piece, all of that happened often.

  In Indiana, I had learned folks in general don’t want to help. People have an ugly part in them. They just don’t want to be involved. People can literally watch someone get stomped to death because they don’t want to be bothered with it. Most folks looking, hoping somebody else will call the police for help. But by then I was thoroughly beat. I watched people looking at me get a beatdown. I wondered what they thought I was saying to myself. Well, let me just pick up my ear that just fell off and go home. Let me pick my body off the ground and go home. That was what they all thought?

  But as soon as I learned that lesson, God was ready to teach me another one. Out there, in places where you were lost, there was a special kind of somebody, a special kind of people who would step outside their comfort zone to rescue or help somebody. I know that from traveling the world and being in situations where if it hadn’t been that kind of somebody out there, I wouldn’t have made it. The majority of people didn’t give a rat’s ass about me. They saw me sitting up in a diner or a truck stop with these two horrible-looking assholes, tears running down my ears, looking very uncomfortable and frightened.

  The waitress looked in my face and said, “You okay today?”

  “Yeah, she okay.” Punk-ass ponytail leaned in too close to me and put h
is hand around my waist.

  “Alright, then.”

  Nobody got outside themselves and said, “I’m gonna call the cops.” That was what I thought somebody would do. I was too scared to move. I was gone to spend the rest of my life in Indiana in cornfields and truck stations.

  But then this big fat hillbilly redneck turned up to be my special kind of white man.

  I had hopped into his cab, and we started to do our business. I don’t know. Maybe I had had too many bad days or maybe I was extra sore. Whatever was going on with me just came out. I started crying and I couldn’t quit. I told him everything: how these gorilla pimps had kidnapped me and had been raping me, putting a gun to my head for fun. I didn’t even know where I was. I had two little baby girls at home. The last time I saw my youngest, she was just one month old. I had people looking for me in Chicago. My grandmomma had probably lost her mind with worry. He said, “It’s a goddamned shame. We’re gonna get you outta here.” And he pulled out the biggest pistol I ever seen. “I’m gonna shoot anybody that come round here.” He still had his entire racist mentality, along with his big-ass heart. But the goodness in him—this shouldn’t have to happen to nobody—overstepped his beliefs about Black people. And God or my angels were working on his ass, so he could work on my behalf.

  So that big fat white guy drove me all the way back to Chicago. In an hour or something I was right in front of my grandmomma’s house. Maybe I was in between Indianapolis and South Bend all that time. I hated leaving that second girl. She and I were trying to flee together, but she wasn’t around, and I couldn’t just turn down that white boy and wait for her. Me and that girl hadn’t made a plan yet, but we had said together we were going to make a run for it, if the space opened. We were both fourteen and we looked like sisters. And she didn’t get beat as much I did because I was there to show her the ropes. Before she stepped out and did something wrong, I would warn her, “Don’t do that. You’ll get a beatdown.” But now I was in this white guy truck and she was nowhere around. I couldn’t ask him to stop and look for her. When was I going to have another opportunity like that? We listened to country music all the way there. He dropped me off right at my front door.

  * * *

  I got home and Ma’Dea said she wasn’t looking for me. She told me that. She was that type of person to say something like that, but I couldn’t hear that right then. She said it with conviction and I couldn’t take it. I was coming off some serious shit. I was looking for something that Ma’Dea didn’t have—nurturing. I had been kidnapped for five months and was planning to come home and get some nurturing, gone upstairs, cry, and sit with a blanket and tell her what had happened with the men. How I survived and got out of it. I thought she would be proud of me because I got out of it. I was tough and I didn’t lay down, Ma’Dea. I just wanted to eat and lay down and hold my babies, but that didn’t happen.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t gone look for that bitch. Motherfucker just show up, like that.” I understand what she was saying now. How she probably said those things to protect herself. It was just the kind of hurt shit that I carried for many years without an understanding. What I say about her even now is through a lot of growth and development and wisdom and being on the outside looking in on how it happens. I realize that somebody who loved you that deep didn’t really mean the things they said. They didn’t know how to deal with you; they didn’t know what to say to you. They didn’t know how to talk about your hurt.

  When I say now I know where my grandmomma was coming from, I mean it. But back then, all I was thinking was Damn. She couldn’t mean what she just said. It broke me, broke my heart. I took two steps at a time up to the third floor where our apartment was. I was so excited about getting up those stairs and getting home. I could hear voices coming from our place. Ma’Dea had a loud voice, you could always hear her. She sounded so good. I knocked. And when she opened the door, we just looked at each other. I looked beyond her shoulder and could see my kids playing on the floor. I took a step inside, but Ma’Dea’s voice stopped me cold. “Well. Well. Look who finally showed up. Ain’t this a motherfucker.” She said such mean things. “Oh, I guess you gone just come home. Take your ass back out there for all I care.” Tears started rolling down my face. She turned away from me and walked further inside. I followed. I could tell she had been drinking. She lit a cigarette and just looked at me. I wanted to say, “Ma’Dea, let me tell you…” but before I could open my mouth, she started. “Your motherfucking ass left me with these kids. Your ass been laying up with some nigga; you ain’t shit.” Nothing came out of my mouth. “I told you I wasn’t going to chase after you in these streets. I got these kids and that’s why I never looked for your ass.” That hit me so hard that she cut me off from explanation. It was like she threw a brick at me. I just stood there and looked at her. As she told me off, called me names, telling me I didn’t care about my children. I didn’t deserve the kids. And those were valid things to be said, but first she should have let me tell her what had happened. But the alcohol didn’t let her. She just went on and on. Into the middle of the night. She was drinking all the while. The kids were grabbing at me and trying to hug me, and then Ma’Dea would yell out, “Don’t be grabbing at her; she ain’t shit.” The verbal whooping went on for a while. Ma’Dea wasn’t the kind of person you could talk back to. If you did, she would pick up a piece of furniture and take a swing at you. So I just sat there and let her have her say. I had just gotten out of a nightmare, and it felt like I had landed in another one. I had just left this place where if I said anything, I got beaten up by two gorilla pimps or chained to the radiator. My mind was still in that place; I hadn’t moved past the motels and the truck stops. I had learned the best way was to shut up and shut down. I didn’t have the courage to stand up to Ma’Dea and speak my piece. You know, looking back, I was as much of a kid as Peaches and Prune were. I sat there on that couch and took my lick because that’s what a child is supposed to do. I think if I would have voiced myself more, things would have been different. But back then I lost my voice a lot of times. I just couldn’t speak up for myself. Maybe if I had, Ma’Dea and I could have had a real conversation. She could have heard where I was coming from, and I could have heard the same. Instead, it took a lifetime for me to really hear where my grandmother was that day. She was hurting because my kids were hurting. And who was there when my kids were hurting? She was. She was hitting back at me on their behalf even though she didn’t know that’s what she was doing. Peaches was just sitting up. And Prune was walking. Ma’Dea told me Prune hadn’t really ate or slept the last five months, cause her momma wasn’t there. Ma’Dea was angry. These babies were suffering. And from where Ma’Dea stood, it looked like for no reason, I got lost with some man. She didn’t know I had been kidnapped; she just knew I was out with some dudes.

  Still. I couldn’t take those kinds of licks. Not when I had gone through what I just went through. Ma’Dea’s abuse was almost as bad as the physical abuse I just escaped from. I didn’t want to leave the girls, but the pain Ma’Dea kept heaping was breaking something inside me. I couldn’t function. I wasn’t sure I would be able to put myself back together later on. One week later, I left. I didn’t pack anything. I just walked out the door.

  Part III

  Fake love can never own you

  Chapter 6

  The Beginning of the Lie

  It used to be, pimps didn’t let they hos come out looking any kind of way: unkempt looking. Clothes on for two days. If they got a fresh ho, they’d take her home, bathe her. Cause if she ain’t looking like money, how she gone make money? Sometimes back in the day, girls would choose a man, get with a pimp, cause of the way he keep his hos. New girls like me would be out there, looking around at the hos on the stroll, thinking, Oh, that brother dress a bitch. Oh, I like that. Let me find out who you with. I’m gone get with your man. Simple as that. Nobody do that anymore. The whole concept about how we do it is different.

  Today, most girls out h
ere making a lotta money work at the escort service. There’s more money for girls online. The internet has become huge in the game. Girls are using the chat lines and websites. All you need is a phone nowadays. Instagram and all that stuff have a part in human trafficking now. But what folks don’t realize is that all this social media has increased the murders of and violence against women. Now girls are picking guys from social media, from a profile or from a couple of conversations on a chat line. You don’t know who you are dealing with. And people have more access to you. These men have more access to you, before you get to them. Before, you had to create a book; you had to have phone numbers; you had to have word-of-mouth advertisement. But today, even pimps have found their way to social media. Hashtag #DoYouNeedAHo. And girls get into this lifestyle because they think it’s less static and stress than the streets. They think to themselves, It’s just sex. They think sex is sex, it only last for so long. When you get involved with something like this, you rationalize it: fifteen minutes and they’re done. It’s quick and its more money than I can make on a job.