Leaving Breezy Street

by Brenda Myers-Powell

  When you first go to jail, you have to go to the clinic. HIV wasn’t real yet—later they started coming up with cases, but not then. Syphilis they tested you for. So I went to the infirmary, and they took my blood, and they called me in the middle of the day to come back to the infirmary, which was embarrassing. I found out I had syphilis. They had to keep me up there and injected me with antibiotics because I was in the second stage. I had Blackness in the palm of my hand. I didn’t know what that shit was. So I got saved. And you know what? I was so glad I was treated. I had been in such bad shape. I had an abscess on the side of my leg that was so deep they had to dig a plug in my leg. Abscess was just a poison in your body and it didn’t have nowhere to go. So it was coming out in weak spots and stuff. I was bald-headed, didn’t have no hair on my head. I got some old mug shots. I looked a mess. I had to stay in the infirmary for almost two weeks before they let me go back into the dorm.

  I put in a request to work in the kitchen, but you can’t have syphilis and work in the kitchen. So I got a job at the docks. Now, a job at the docks was where they shipping all that stuff that came into the jail. The Sybil Brand Institute was a working jail. It was the county jail for women, but it also had programs, before people were even talking about programs. Sybil Brand was a rich millionaire woman, and she and a bunch of her friends built that institution up there to rehabilitate prisoners.

  Every year, Ray Charles came in and did a free concert. We all would be standing in line, and Ray Charles would be popping. I worked on the docks, and there was this sheriff there, and she was really nice to me. She ran the laundry and I was in the laundry. I did the officer uniforms. So the officers would put five or ten dollars in their uniform shirts to tip me and make sure I handled their shit real good. So I got money and I would get my hair done. Cause nobody sent me money when I went to jail. Every time I went to jail, it was on me. Just Brenda.

  Nobody had my back or sent me shit, unless I had a trick who I could tell, “Yo, bring me some shit.” Sometimes I would get lucky and have him running me in things and shit. “Bring me some gym shoes. Some underwear.” But most of the time I would just try to make do. I would sing for bitches. Crazy shit. They would ask, “Hey, Breezy, sing me that song.”

  “I got you, boo. Give me some chips.” Cause, you know, I loved a snack. I had a connection in the kitchen and we would trade. They got me something and I would get them something because I worked on the docks. Or, when I went to do laundry, I would have a few dollars.

  Up there at Sybil Brand, the Mexican girls had everything. If one Mexican come in, then another come in after her, that new Mexican is gone be alright. They would pass a pillowcase around, and everybody would throw something in that pillowcase for that new Mexican that came in there. Cause it was always like, “This is my cousin’s sister’s daughter’s niece. You know what I’m saying, mi amiga? She’s cool, she’s cool.”

  They always took care of their people, but I could get shit off them, too, because people liked me. I didn’t have too many problems because when I whooped somebody’s ass, I whooped their ass. Nobody was messing with me because I wouldn’t beef with nobody. I would be stupid and funny, but other than that, I maintained myself.

  I spent a lot of my life in that damned place. It’s not there anymore. They tore it down because they needed a bigger facility, because the population of women prisoners is increasing by 125 percent. That’s how fast women are going to jail now. Almost as fast as men. But Sybil Brand was my second home in California. And it saved my life a couple of times.

  It even saved my baby, because I was in jail for the middle of my third pregnancy. In fact, for most of my pregnancy.

  I had had a pregnancy test in jail, and they had told me I wasn’t pregnant. So they let me go to Mira Loma Detention Center. You couldn’t go to Mira Loma if you were pregnant because it was an old army base. But everybody likes it because you get to walk outside there if you want to. You don’t have to be stuck inside for six months. Sometimes, I’d step out on the dock, and I looked around, and I felt like I had just left a spaceship or something. Who are all these people outside, aliens? Shit was crazy.

  Anyway, even though I took that pregnancy test and it came out negative, it was wrong. I was pregnant. I was in Mira Loma, pregnant. I didn’t know who the daddy was. He was a trick, I guess. Anyway, they caught themselves. I went in to the medical office for a regular checkup, and the test came back and said I was pregnant. They said, “Okay, you got to go back, we can’t keep you here and you pregnant. You got to go back to Sybil Brand.”

  “I won’t go. I love this place and I’m going to stay here forever!” Pancake Day was the best day there! They just laughed at me and sent me back, and I got out of jail pregnant. I was four months pregnant. I didn’t know what to think. But since I was pregnant, I was trying to find me a goofy who I could pin it on. I remember asking a couple of people in the community who knew me and I knew them, if they got my baby, would they keep it safe. I asked two people. I asked Stephanie’s momma, Ms. Hatchett, and Ms. Lee. I knew Ms. Lee from the neighborhood. She and her husband were wonderful people. She had a couple of sons who I smoked cracked with. Ms. Lee said, “Let me think about it.” But then she said, “But then you gone try to get your baby back, ain’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Lee. I mean, if shit keeps happening like this, I might not make it.”

  She said, “You gone be alright.”

  I didn’t think I was going to have a future. The streets were very rough on me and that was all I had. The night before I had her, tricks were coming back to back to date me. Tricks don’t care about you being pregnant. Okay? In fact, they even have a myth that pregnant vagina’s hot. So here I was, all these tricks, and I had almost four hundred dollars on me that night when I decided to stop turning tricks. I was on my way to get me some breakfast, and then I was going to get to Bubby Jackson. Bubby was this dope dealer. He had this deep, deep voice: “You know Bubby Jackson gone hook you up.” Folks would be like, “Is that voice real?” Was his name real? Anyway, he had left town, but he told me I could lay low at his spot. There was nobody there but me.

  The day I had my baby, I had the big-ass breakfast over at this place called Tom’s. They would give you tons of food. You could get chili cheese fries in one of those closed-up boxes. Get pastrami with all the works on it. Oh my God. The best chili cheese fries in the world. I think they were still using government cheese. Can I just say how good government cheese was? It was so good it was ridiculous.

  So when I got to the house eating my food, I had thought to do some cocaine, too. But I said, no, I ain’t doing that shit right now. I had eaten real good and I was laying there, and knock, knock, knock. “Come in.” Pleasure. Here come in Pleasure, and she had gotten in some mess, then got out of it, and she was telling me all about it. She had a little something to smoke and I was letting her smoke.

  She said, “Here, take some.”

  I said, “I don’t want any.”

  We talked a little bit more, and she insisted I take a little hit. She wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Take some.”

  But I said no, because I wanted to get to sleep.

  “Take some with me.” So I took a little hit. I hit that pipe, and as I inhaled, I could feel my water breaking. And as I looked at her, I made a decision. I gave her twenty dollars.

  “Here, go get us some more.” I knew if I gave her twenty dollars, she wasn’t coming back. Twenty was enough to get you caught up. And she knew I wouldn’t care because she was my buddy. When she left out the door, I saw that another guy had taken another room at Bubby’s. I asked him to call the ambulance because my water had just broke.

  He said, “For real?”

  I said, “Yeah.” I went back into my room, and I cleaned up and sat down. When the ambulance came, I started not to tell them that I had took the hit and I had been smoking. I wished I hadn’t. But I did tell them. They started treating me like I was a crackhead
. Not the paramedics, but when we got to the hospital. Those nurses. Bitches. They acted like I had killed their momma or something. They didn’t know nothing at that time about drugs and crack. Bitches were treating me like I had killed the pope.

  If I asked for water or ice chips, they might as well have said, “You don’t need no goddamned chips.” The tone of their voice was, “We don’t like you, you smoking on this baby, bitch.” That was what they wanted to say, but they couldn’t, professionally. I was hollering; I was in so much pain I didn’t know what to do. Eighteen hours of that shit going on.

  Everything was so wrong. She had to go straight to the incubator because she was a preemie. And she was addicted. They had to do all that to that poor baby because she was a drug baby. She was shaking all over, cause that crack was in her system. I was wrong for that. And because of it, there wasn’t an epidural in town for me. You ain’t getting no epidural, I’m letting you know that right now. And I was like, damn, did I kill Christ? Although, I might as well have, because that was some horrible shit. I guess I deserved all that shit they threw at me. And they had probably seen some awful shit in that hospital. The kind of people who were coming in because of the crack. We were destroying babies one crack rock at a time.

  At one time, I actually had enough in my heart to talk to other bitches like that: “Naw, I’m not giving you anything. You pregnant. Give the baby a chance.”

  But what right did I have to say that? That day in the hospital, I hit bottom. I hit it. That shit was messed up. That shit was so messy. And there was nothing I could do. The doctors were ready for me to go home. The baby was in the incubator, and I could come back and visit every day. But it was time for my crackhead ass to get up out of there. I did the paperwork, but they wouldn’t let me take the baby home because there were drugs in her system. And now what I had to do was come back up there every day and come see my baby, and on top of that I had to deal with some social worker trying to figure out if I could keep my baby. That’s what I should have done. And you know what? The worst part, when I left the hospital and went to the hood, people would ask me, “Where your baby at? Where’s the baby?” But when I went back to see the baby, the nurses and the social workers were talking about locking me up. It scared me.

  They gave me a court date for her. The day I was supposed to go to that court date, I went to an abandoned building and I got me some crack and got me a bottle of wine and I broke windows and I kicked in walls and I cried. There were twelve people in there with me. I didn’t know why they were there. I was kicking in walls and breaking windows, and I couldn’t stop crying and crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Because the truth was, I didn’t have anywhere to take her. “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t even own a blanket to wrap her in. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I started praying to God, let somebody come get her who’s good. God, let me see her one day and she’ll be with some rich-ass family. Let her have a good momma. “I’m sorry, little baby. I’m sorry, God. Amen.”

  Chapter 16

  The Facts of Life

  I was in California for four more years after that, but it wasn’t any fun anymore. Trouble was all around me. It was time to go, but I was still hanging around. Todd Bridges, that guy from the TV show Diff’rent Strokes, had come into our community. And that says a lot. The crack epidemic didn’t discriminate. It tested everybody. How did this kid, all the way from Beverly Hills, Hollywood, get himself to South Central? But there he was, getting high, smoking crack with the Do-Low Crew.

  He was such a little bitch. I ain’t having sex with Todd; me and Stephanie were just partying and getting high with him. But as soon as he got him a white girl, he would lose his mind. That was a part of his issue. He was a kid star who couldn’t handle what was going on.

  One time, we were at a friend of mine’s house on Sixty-Fifth and Flower. Cisco had a really nice house. If he would have kept it up, the place could have turned heads. Todd’s momma knew Cisco. Todd had his BMW parked right outside, and the doorman (and when we say doorman, we mean the dude who gets paid with drugs to answer the door at the spot) asked Todd if he could use the BMW to go and pick up his momma from the airport. He didn’t bring that car back.

  In the hood, you get called out if you don’t retaliate. But Todd was such a baby that he didn’t do anything. I mean, the dude took his car, and Todd just stuck his thumb in his mouth. I saw Todd Bridges on TV, talking a bunch of bullshit about this story, and he was telling a bunch of lies, making like he was handling guns and he was a gangster and all that. No, he wasn’t! He was a punk. Todd wouldn’t shoot nobody; that wasn’t his MO.

  When I saw Todd on TV, talking that bullshit, I thought, I wish I was there, so I could bust his ass. Because he was just lying. He should have told the truth. Crack was the great equalizer. Being a TV star didn’t protect you. Being rich didn’t keep you safe. Instead, Todd wanted to tell this lie about how he went from pampered movie star to OG gangster. That just didn’t happen. The only time Todd acted up was when he was with white girls. If they came around, he didn’t want to let you in.

  “Okay, little bitch. Keep it up.” So I stole his shit, and brothers would tell him, “Man, you don’t know who you messing with here. You have no idea—this is Breezy.” The truth was, if you let me, I could pull off some pretty outrageous shit. One time, me and Stephanie had a Cadillac, but the Cadillac belonged to this guy Lionel and he didn’t like me. I didn’t care. Him and Stephanie were together—they later got married—and he didn’t want his woman out there sucking wang, which might happen if she was out there hanging with me. Okay. But when he met her, she was sucking wang. She sucked his wang. Anyway, he had this Cadillac, but the Cadillac didn’t have no front window in it. We were driving down the street. That was some stupid shit. I looked at Stephanie and said, “Bitch, this stupid.” The wind was kicking our ass because it was blowing right in our face; it’s like riding a motorcycle in a car. Everything hitting you in the face and shit. We went through all of that to go and get some rocks. All of our missions were about getting rocks. Getting high and going back and forth from Sybil Brand was my life in California. That was my life.

  One time, John Hunt’s boys let me in his drug house, and when he came in, he said, “Oh hell naw. You let Breezy in here?” He said it like I was a disease. “Y’all got Breezy in here? Man, I’m violating you niggas.”

  “John, don’t be talking about me like that. I ain’t taking nothing from these niggas.”

  Without meaning to, I found myself wandering from one piece of drama to another. At first, I was with this pimp named Rick in Hollywood. I was making my little money, and all of a sudden it was evening time, and evening time was a great time for me. It was going into dusk, when people start relaxing and having their little drinks and picking girls up. All of a sudden, people started throwing beer bottles and shit on the street. And these were white folks. White folks throwing shit at me on the street. I was confused. I didn’t know the verdict had come out from the Rodney King trial. I saw this Black dude and hopped in his car. “Nigga, take me back to South Central.” I went to the hotel where Jazzy sold drugs but wasn’t nobody there. I can’t remember what happened next, but for some reason we parked and watched people loot. People were going in stores, pulling out safes, and rolling them down the street. Refrigerators and couches were on dudes’ backs.

  “This shit fucking up all my motherfucking money.” I couldn’t suck nobody’s Johnson when shit was like that. How was I supposed to get paid?

  I told my new homeboy to take me back around the Do-Low Crew area. And everybody was doing something different. Jazzy was selling drugs, and she had her man. Stephanie was I didn’t know where. I was kind of on my own, and I knew this drug dealer around the corner who liked me. He was about two blocks down. They had put a curfew on the city. How you gone sell twat just till seven o’clock? This has to stop. How was I supposed to eat? So I put a catsuit on and my big hoop earrings. And I went out there to talk with the
National Guard. The National Guard was sitting there, and I entertained them. “Who’s first? Cause this is discount time. I won’t charge you full price.”

  They got tired of my ass and made me leave. I still needed my money. I was still rolling, baby. I never had such a depressing time in my life. Bullshit. That was so depressing. It was just all messed up. I said, “Don’t y’all do that shit no more.”

  I started hanging with a guy who liked me named Chug-a-Lug. Chug-a-Lug was hilarious. Really cute. He always had a great idea. Like how to get high and sell drugs. So I was hanging with Chug-a-Lug, we were up there, after we had gotten our drugs from the Freeway Boys. There was a documentary about the Freeway Boys—about how the FBI used them to put all this crack cocaine in the Black community. They would sell drugs to and buy guns from the Freeway Boys. There was a whole conspiracy that the FBI was behind. The Freeway Boys liked me. I used to knock on their door and ask them, “What y’all doing today?”