A drug dealer once told me, “Breezy, you be with everybody. The Bloods, the Crips, the Grape Streets, the Rolling Sixties.”
I said, “Nigga, don’t you know what my color is?”
“What is it, Breezy?”
“Green, nigga. Whoever got it, I’m gonna be with. I got no time to be flying no goddamned colors. How am I gone get money if I just date the Crips? Shit. Y’all ain’t got enough money for that.” He cracked up.
I would be in Crip territory, wearing a red dress, and then one of them gangbangers would say something to me. “Yo, girl, what you doing up over here in a red dress?”
“Nigga, every ho got a red dress! Why y’all keep mistaking me for a gangbanger? I’m a ho; hos have to have red dresses.” And I could get away with it, too. Cause I’m a prostitute.
They start laughing and giggling up. But those were the same brothers who would come looking for me when they wanted to party. They would take me to these swanky, nice-ass hotels, and we would wreck the room. We had so much fun in there. Liquor, drugs, laughing, kicking it. I would turn on the music and do all kinds of little dances and shit. Dealers sat up there smoking blunts. It was like they were at the movies. Cause I was the bitch who was a party. That was me. They had a lotta money, and I had what they needed and I supplied it. Sometimes I would take another girl with me, but she was under my rule. She was in on my party.
So California was rolling. I was based in LA, but I roamed all over. I had the little gangbangers, all them chasing after me and liking me. I would trick with different guys who would take me into the mountains or take me up to Pomona, Pasadena, or Long Beach. I’d find myself in Compton. I’d hop in the car with a Low Rider, and he’d take me to San Diego and Oakland. And in between that I would go to jail because I got busted by vice, and then I would go spend sixty, ninety days in jail for prostitution. Once, it went all the way up to six months for prostitution. That was the most they ever gave me, a hundred and eighty days. In a way, I appreciated it. Those were rest times for me. Sometimes I would be so worn out. I thought about trying to get off drugs when I was in jail. I could give my body some time off, gain my weight back, and be pretty when I came back out. In the twelve years I lived in California, I was in and out of jail a lot. I got busted pretty frequently, but getting busted saved my life. Once, I had syphilis, and another time, I had pneumonia. If I hadn’t of gone in, I would have just kept getting high and got sicker and sicker. I always kept my booty, but I would be so tiny, and that was unnatural for me.
I remember one time I had gotten out, and this girl walked over to me. “Come here, Breezy. Where you been, in jail?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sad to say it, but I’m glad you went to jail. Cause girl, you was walking around here little as hell, looking like a stick with a bobble head.” She had me laughing. I mean, it wasn’t funny, but it was. That crack had tore my ass up. But once I got out of jail, my monkey would turn into a gorilla. It was crazy the way the obsessive-compulsive behavior hit me once I got out. My mouth would be dry.
And that hit they’d give me for free. Drug dealers wanted to be that guy who gave me the first hit and did me that favor so that I would only come back to them. I could be a very loyal customer. They would even ask for me. “Breezy out? Tell her come see me.” I always had good intentions while I was in jail, but the minute they released me, I made a beeline to the drug dealer. “Here you go, Breezy.” And once the drug dealer started me, I’d be off to the races. I would go and spend every dime I got on crack.
The only reason I continued to make money was because I would take care of my appearance. I was fresh and looking good right from jail. The other girls who looked stank couldn’t get. I still thought I was all this because I kept a clean outfit on and carried myself a certain kind of way. But my thinking was all wrong. That was me: always trying to make something work for me and make it seem like it was better than it really was. If I would have taken a hard look at what was really happening, it probably would have destroyed me.
Chapter 15
Friends? How Many of Us Have Them?
What really saved my life, such as it was, was that I was rolling with the Do-Low Crew, off Sixty-Fifth and Denver. Pleasure, Jazzy, Lynn, Momma Jelly, Beverly, Stephanie. Those ladies were my friends and they had my back. We called ourselves the Do-Low Crew because we spent most of our time doing some low-down shit. We were a crew of female assassins. Just kidding. Well, we thought we were. We were a mess, but they would save me from shit and I would save them right back.
I met the first member when she was hanging in the neighborhood. Stephanie. She had never seen anyone like me. I was very advertisement-like. I was out on the level. I was funny and outrageous; I was a ho and a crackhead and none of that was a secret. You knew I was on something. It was like, “This bitch get her money.”
I started seeing Stephanie around, and she’d peep me out and say, “Hey.”
“Hey. There you are. How you doing?”
I thought I was running into her, but she was following me around. She was trying to find out who I was. Where did I come from? Where this bitch come from with all this flare? Popping a ponytail all over the street. In this leather-ass, tight-ass shit. But that’s what I was doing to survive. It took a minute, but we hit it off. Stephanie was—and is—cool people. And she was just one of a bunch of ladies who kept me safe. I met Stephanie first. But once we all got together, we stayed together. We were ladies out there in the life, watching each other’s back.
We used to get into fights with guys. Them dudes would be like, “Y’all think y’all tough.”
And Stephanie told them, “Yeah, it’s tough, nigga.” Pow, pow, fists flying. She was a gangsta for real.
And then there was Jazzy. Jazzy was one of those girls that was like, “My crew might be laughing with you, but I ain’t, bitch.” She watched our back real good. Laid-back. She’s still alive. I still see her now. I see Stephanie, too.
* * *
The Do-Low Crew got into trouble, and then we got out of it. Sometimes. I picked up some real street smarts from those ladies. Like, it was Lynn who hipped us to the clothesline. Before we knew it, we were all doing it. We became the clothesline hos. So here’s how it went. We would be out all night. In and out of cars. We were up and down the streets, and we’d be dirty. And when daylight came, we’d feel dirty. We wanted to wash up and put on some clothes, but we didn’t have our clothes and we didn’t really know where we left them. Sometimes I would find some guy and tell him, let me take a shower at his place. That was how I would do it. But one time, we were in this garage smoking when Lynn walked up in these clean clothes. “Bitch, where you get them clothes from?” We had just left from over at Buddy’s. Stephanie, Momma Jelly, and me we were talking about going to the store and get something to wear.
“Clothesline. That’s where I shop at.”
“You lie.”
“Yeah. You better gone get you some ’fore they wake up.”
So when folks were in bed, we’d sneak in their backyard, trying on their clothes and seeing what fit. Crack is a hell of a thing. We would come right back in the neighborhood, right across the street where the people lived, and we would look at them crazy if they said anything. “What?” You know how crackheads can be: “What? What you looking at?” We looked at them full in the mouth and dared them to say something even though we were wearing their clothes.
Then Jazzy invented the pillowcase outfit. We would go to the hotel and take the pillowcase off the pillows, cut it open and roll it up so it could be a little skirt. And Jazzy would make a halter. We would have a pillowcase skirt and a halter top. Crackhead clothes! Do you understand me? We were having a ball and pulling it off. I was walking down the street with a pillowcase skirt and a pair of leather boots on. Like, I’m killing ’em.
When we weren’t taking folks’ laundry or getting high, we were running from the police. I remember the first time I went to jail in California. This cop
got out of his car and I took off. He went running after me. He caught me. “Why you run off like that?”
“I thought y’all was robbers.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I never been arrested before and I don’t know how y’all do it around here.”
So he gave me a little statement, and then he said, “You really was running.”
“Thank you.” I wasn’t used to California. I didn’t know that they really sent you to jail. I mean, you could get a bond, but you had to post the bond at that station at that time. So I did my thirty days, and then they let me go. A month inside hadn’t changed anything. Crack was still hot. So many young drug dealers had money, and so much money was bouncing around, it was a goldmine. I was staying down there with John Hunt and the lady he was staying with in the back house, which was two blocks away from the stadium they were using for the Olympics. I would tell her I was going to the store, but I would always come back with money. The tourists were everywhere. And I didn’t look like a prostitute. Kept it real low, but sexy. That went on for a couple years in that area.
Doing that kind of stuff made me think I was different from a lotta girls. And it made me think I was better. I wasn’t any better. But that feeling was something I was trying to hold on to, and if I did, that would make everything okay. People keep asking me if the person I was back then helps me out with the ladies I work with now. But no. That’s not it. It’s about what Momma Jelly, Pleasure, Stephanie, Lynn taught me: they taught me about relationships. They taught me how to be a friend—and stay a friend. They taught me that I can build a relationship.
A while ago, when I was working at Dreamcatcher, the foundation I opened to help women caught in the life of prostitution, two old dope fiends came and worked outreach with me. They would play with me—shoot the shit with me, crack up with me. And they would ask me, “What you finna do?”
“Oh, I’m ’bout to get these other bitches and make them take a break from sucking all these dicks. Help them out, you know?”
“Go get them bitches, Brenda.”
So when I get them girls, I remember when I was hurt and the friends who helped me through, and then it’s not that hard to make a relationship.
First, I got to ask them, “What you want to do?” Cause we can’t go nowhere unless I know what you want to do. I can’t get to that point with you, unless you stabilized.
It’s a waiting game with me. That’s why when I’m out there now on the streets, the first thing they need to know is, “Alright, we still here.” The waiting game is all about her making that first step to call me, and when she calls me, we get into the car, and after that I try to make sure that I can make what I’m doing as appealing as it can be to help her make a decision to separate herself from the life she’s living right now. And I can’t do that real fast; I got to do that step by step because we have to make sure that’s working. If it is, we’ve got to wallow in it for a minute and get used to it. And then I’m like, what else I got to do to get to step three? I got to do this and I got to do that. I’ve been clean twenty-two years without drugs and prostitution. And I’m still growing. I’m still growing, because for thirty-nine years, my growth was stunted from the abuse in my life and all of that. I was not where I should have been mentally and spiritually. When I work with my young ladies, I can connect with them because I know how it feels to want to come back, to be whole again. I know how awful it is to feel lost, and sometimes it’s your girlfriends who help you through.
Close as we were, they couldn’t save me from everything. They couldn’t save me from getting raped. They couldn’t save me from getting robbed. But we tried to save each other, and I did the best I could for my friends. Like my girl Pleasure. I was getting Pleasure out of trouble a lot because at that time, when a ho had AIDS, everybody would spread your business. If you had the virus, and you were working in prostitution, the police would pick you up and put you in jail. That was Pleasure. She had AIDS and she was working, and it got around, and people knew she had the package. So she would have to hole up somewhere, but she also was owing some guy, and when they found her, they would bust her in her head. Every time it happened, she would tell them, “Go get Breezy. Go get Breezy.”
They came get me, and I said, “What’s going on? How much money she owe you, nigga? You that petty? I’ll bring it back to you.” They knew I would. I loved to have the money and just throw it in their faces like a little punk. “Here, take this money, bitch.”
“Stop disrespecting me like that, Breezy.”
“Hey, you acting a fool like this. Come on, Pleasure.”
She was a sweetheart. I hated to see her die like that. Sweet little chocolate, and she got caught up. Some fool gave her AIDS on purpose. This brother she was messing with.
As I said, we in the Do-Low Crew tried to look out for each other, and lots of times, we managed. But when we failed, it meant somebody got killed. Like Lynn. Lynn got killed. She was married to a very volatile man. She ran away from him, but she would always tell us she was scared he would turn up. We would stand on the corner, and she would look scared. “Bitch, what’s wrong with you?”
“Bitches, I got to look out for my husband.”
“Bitch, your husband?”
“Yeah, bitch. My husband. That motherfucker looking for me.” But we didn’t believe her because she had been gone from him for some years. But she kept on saying that. What’s the worst he could do? Try to take her back home? “Nah, that motherfucker gone try to kill me.”
One day her husband caught her. He rolled right on up, sat her down in the car, and blew her head off. He blew her brains out.
That messed me up, even though I didn’t see it. I was a block away from it. This man walked up to me and said, “Dude just shot your friend in the head.”
“What?” I was at the hotel, and I came out and walked down the street. “Damn, he got her.”
The ambulance came and took her. Her husband just killed her. He got into trouble, but he killed that bitch. She was a pretty girl, big booty, little waist, and just crazy. She had a girlfriend by then—this little young thing who used to follow Lynn around—and when she found out what the husband had done, it broke her heart. I feel bad about Lynn because I never thought it was that serious. And if it was, damn, she took a lot of chances. And then her chances ran out.
And just like I couldn’t save Lynn, my ladies couldn’t save me from everything. I got syphilis. At that point in my life, I was struggling on the streets. I had gone too long without rejuvenating my body. I had begun to look like a street bitch. Shaggy. The shaggy started to come in. One time I broke out in all spots. Up and down my body. That can happen with the second stage of syphilis. I started telling tricks I had an allergic reaction to something. One guy didn’t care, so I’m pretty sure I infected his ass. Stuff as important as that became a gamble, and I was willing to gamble it. Not for the money, but for the drugs. I was able to turn down anything except for drugs.
So I’m getting high, and I’m up here, floating and rolling. This surge of energy had got me like eeeeeee. Then that whole thing starts to crash down, or I smoked so much, I stopped feeling it after a while. You just smoking, you can’t get no higher. And maybe my body is exhausted, but I couldn’t stop smoking. There’s no reason, but you did it. So when I came down and crashed, I got really paranoid. And then everything I wasn’t aware of, I was aware of. My shoes were dirty; I got dirt on my dress. All kind of stuff like this. I looked like I been up all night.
You get fixated on trying to get out of that situation. I knew I didn’t look proper. Sometimes I was able to say, forget it, and I was able to handle my business. And soon as I got me some money, I would go straight toward a store and do whatever I had to do to clean myself up.
But looking clean isn’t the same as being clean.
The only time I was really clean was when I was in jail. Sometimes I feel like I spent half my time in California at Sybil Brand, the women’s prison. When you fi
rst go into Sybil Brand, you get processed; the cops bring you in and they put you in a holding cell while they wait for your prints to go through. Your prints tell them everything about you. You may have a warrant on you. They find out you caught some shit they didn’t know about. Cross your fingers. So you get through that process. Of course, with me, I always had a prostitution case. Now, I still haven’t gone in front of the judge. They haven’t even given me a bond yet, I’ve got to go in front of the judge before I get a bond. And while I’m waiting for the bond, I’m being put in jail.
I’ve got to go and get changed into jail clothes, and then they send me into this big receiving dorm. It’s just a big, big room with rows of double bunk beds. It’s about eight bathroom stalls, about the same number of showers. And in the front of the room, there are about four deputies standing behind this glass partition. On the side of the deputies, the way you came in, is a dayroom where you can watch TV. But it stayed locked most of the time. Because the women acted up all the time. When folks act up, that’s the first thing they do, lock up the dayroom. No dayroom, ladies. Go sit on your bunks.
They had about a hundred and fifty women in there. Sometimes the receiving room is half-empty, sometimes it’s filled to capacity and they have to pull in mats and women sleep on the floor. You never know. The women who come in there are straight off the street. You tired, you sleepy, you been smoking crack, you smell, you might be beat up. You might have just come from the hospital, the infirmary. When you get your sentence—and I had gotten a hundred and eighty days—you go to the receiving dorms. And the working dorms sleep seventy to eighty people. Upper and lower bunks. In jail, they have three working dorms, and three floors—the basement, one, and two. Three floors and about five or six tiers on each floor. And those are dormitory-like settings, and in the receiving dorm there are like a hundred and fifty women sleeping in the same room. It was a cesspool of germs. Some of the nastiest people were in there. They had outbreaks of lice. People shitting in the shower and dumbass shit like that. Everybody wanted to do their time and get out of there. Everybody wants to go to the working dorm—the laundry dorm, the kitchen dorm, the cleaning dorm, the sewing dorm, the dock dorm. Otherwise, you just sit around and talk shit, braid hair until it’s time to go to sleep. If you sitting around in the dorm all day, you’re going to get into a fight, into squabbling. And the way the officers ran it, if one person got into trouble—got caught doing drugs or having sex—everybody got punished. It’s two, three o’clock in the morning, and they wake everybody up; make you stand up next to your bunk and tell you another inmate just woke you up in the middle of the night. Or they toss your box. See, they give you a little cardboard box where you can keep your little possessions; you accumulate a couple bars of soap and what have you, and as punishment they take your box and toss it in the garbage.
Leaving Breezy Street Page 17
