Royal: I never heard that one. How old were you?
Avery: About 2 months old…That shit never made it to the press cause the Pastor never told nobody but I saw him last year at a homeless shelter downtown and he told me himself. Said all these years he had been worried about me because he knew my mom was a little off and that it wasn’t drugs either.
Royal: Yeah, your mother has a rep for using.
Avery: And the only thing she has ever used was prescribed. She’s never did any illegal drugs in her life.
Royal: Oh, so you don’t hate her that bad. You’re defending her.
Avery: No, I’m not. I just get tired of the lie that she did all that crazy shit when she was high when in reality, that bitch is just crazy.
Royal: Oh, Ok. I see. So what else? What other stories are true?
Avery: When I was 3, she took me to Target and left me in the dressing room. That one is true. When she got home and my daddy asked about me, she said that she sacrificed me to the Yanomami tribe of Torrance.
Royal: The who?
Avery: The Yanomami Tribe. They live in the Amazon in between Brazil and Venezuela. It’s a tribe of primitive people that live like savages, even now in the 20th century.
Royal: I’ma have to look them up.
Avery: Yeah, they’re an interesting group but don’t none of them live in Torrance. And they damn sho don’t live in the dressing room at Target on Van Ness. The only way my dad figured out where I was, was the Target Bullseye cup full of cherry Icee in her hands. My dad told me that Children Services wanted to take me then but that bitch and her shrink put on a hellava a performance and convinced them to let me stay. That shit was just wrong.
Royal: Wrong?
Avery: Dead wrong. The older I got, the worse she got. She started verbally abusing me calling me every ugly, half breed, mop head bitch she could think of. My eyes are hazel and she said they were made of the devil’s dirt and that I was Lucifer’s baby and until this day, she calls me “Luci”.
Royal: Lucy! I read a report that she was in the middle of Rosecrans screaming that Lucy was trying to kill all God’s children and she was directing traffic trying to “save” the Christians.
Avery: I remember that. They almost got that one right. They thought Lucy was some little girl inside my mother’s head, but Luci was me, L-U-C-I, short for Lucifer.
Royal: Well I’ll be damned.
Avery: By the time I was 5, I poured washing powder in my eyes trying to wash that dirty, hazel color off my eyes, but it didn’t work.
Royal: You did what?
Avery: (Laughing) I know…It just burned like hell. Oh yeah, when I was in 4th grade, I got invited to a slumber party by the most popular girl in school. My mama came to my classroom with a dirty sleeping bag full of piss flavored clothes and sat it outside the door. She told my teacher there was an evil spirit in her classroom that was chasing me and I needed to go home immediately.
Royal: Were you embarrassed?
Avery: Super fucking embarrassed! I grabbed my backpack and held my head down as my class laughed at me for being the pissy clothes wearing girl with the wack job moms. When I got outside, she grabbed me by the hand and dragged me across the street into a vacant house where she prayed the devil up outta me. By the time I was 12…
Royal: The stories stopped. I don’t mean to cut you off, but I couldn’t find anything about you or her after you turned 12, except for the last incident from 3 years ago.
Avery: Is that what you call it? An incident? It was murder!
Royal: But who died Ashanti? No one died. I have the report right here and it says…
Avery: Reports only tell one side of the story. I was there.
Royal: I apologize. I didn’t mean to cut you off. What happened when you turned 12?
Avery: She got a new doctor who switched her to new meds. These meds actually worked, she finally calmed the fucked down. We had a somewhat normal existence in my house but the memories of the 1st twelve years had taken their toll on me. My self-esteem was so low, I didn’t care if I lived or died.
Royal: Whoa! And it’s funny that you mention low self esteem. Where do you think your self esteem is now compared to then?
Avery: It’s still hella low. It’s that obvious huh? But I’m not cutting anymore. Look at my arms. These are cutting scars. I haven’t cut in over a year. I wanted to die, so yeah, shit was bad. I hated myself despite how pretty I was constantly being told that I was. You know, I’ve never shared that with anybody?
Royal: Well that’s why I’m here, to get your story in your words and to stop all the crazy bullshit from being reported. I believe you when you say nobody knows you. It’s sorta like we all take the stuff we do know without any regard to what we don’t know or what’s being left out. You deserve to be heard, Ashanti, real talk.
Avery: I appreciate that. You have no idea how many people try to talk to me with all these preconceived notions and questions without even trying to have a conversation with me. It feels good to be treated like a real person.
Royal : “Preconceived notions”? Look at you. I thought you dropped out of school? I looked for school records at every high school in LA, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. Blank mission.
Avery: I did drop out but I taught my self shit I thought I would need to know.
Royal: So the new meds changed your mom?
Avery: Yeah, my mother never loved me and even though I knew she had a sickness that couldn’t be cured, it was something about the way she looked at me that made me feel like I needed to scrape my face off and buy a new one. My body was so round and I always looked fat. I started getting acne and because I’m a half-breed, my pimples were really red and small like fire ants, which went very DISASTERLICIOUS with my nappy, yet curly hair. I had a gap between my two front teeth and I always smiled with a closed mouth. If I could just go buy a new face, I could deal with the rest of me. My mother’s stinging words about how ugly I was always stuck in my head because even though she was on meds, somebody forgot to tell her verbal insults that they were supposed to be high too, cause they weren’t. She still talked to me like I was the scum of the Earth and after hearing it for so long, I started feeling that way.
Royal: You do realize now that you’re not the scum of the Earth right?
Avery: Shit, don’t be so sure about that. When we’re done with this interview, I’ll let you answer that. I wasn’t nothing nice. I started acting out for attention.
Royal: Kinda like what you were doing at Group earlier?
Avery: (laughing) Yeah. (laughing) I saw you laughing, you know that shit was funny!
Royal: (laughing) It was.
Avery: I started acting out hoping that my mom and dad would pay more attention to me because I felt invisible. With her sickness, she had good days, but to be honest, I was beginning to prefer the bad days over the good ones.
Royal: Why?
Avery: Cause on the bad days, I mattered. She thought I was the spawn of Satan and my daddy did everything in his power to protect me. On good days, she just sat in her chair at the dining room table reading her bible and my daddy acted as if I didn’t exist. She only asked me what I wanted to eat and he didn’t talk at all, acting like a deaf mute.
Royal: Really? Reports say that…
Avery: Reports? Again? Really?
Royal: My bad…I’m listening, go ahead.
Avery: My dad was white and his black wife had schizophrenic episodes and he always defended her and stood by her side. Whatever those reports say, I bet they don’t tell about his silence and how he walked around the house acting like a fucking retard? Do the reports say that? Anyway, I had oral sex for the 1st time at 13 and liked it. The guy I was with told me he loved me and I believed him because he didn’t want to put it in. My mom was so high off meds, she never even noticed him in my room and when I told her I loved him, she said I was supposed to. I was shocked when she said I was supposed to and somehow confused giving
blow jobs with real love. So of course, I got a rep for giving Becky, not knowing that these foolish little boys was just using me for a good time and didn’t love me at all.
Royal: At 13 you were giving blow jobs in your bedroom? And your mom knew? What did you like about it?
Avery: I don’t know. I guess while I was doing it, it made me feel powerful and pretty cause after living in an invisible world, the undivided attention was huge in my mind.
Royal: I understand. After being made to feel worthless, the oral sex made you feel good about yourself.
Avery: Yep and by the time I was 14, the first dick that I sucked had become my 1st sex partner. I had been sucking on him for a whole year and on my 14th birthday, we went all the way. I thought I was going to be ready but you’re never really ready for your 1st time. I was so dumb thinking that because we had been going further and further every time we messed around, going all the way would be easy. I even let him lick on my breast and my snatch a couple of times but I got scared when I started cumming. Nothing I had ever experience had felt so good. When he first put it in, he kissed me and assured me that even though he was older, that he had plenty of experience taking young girls V cards without causing them any pain.
Royal: So he was older?
Avery: Yes. Older. A grown man and after that night, we started fucking on a regular basis and then all hell broke loose.
Royal: What happened?
Avery: I got pregnant.
Royal: At 14? Did you know who the father was?
Avery: Yes. Out of all the boys that I had sex with to try to forget my pain, he was the only one I let cum inside of me. I was going to be a mother and have a baby by the man I love. I was going to have a family, a real family, not one with a schizophrenic mother and a father that never talked. It was the only time in all my 17 years that I was actually happy.
Royal: Pregnant at 14 and happy? Most girls are dreaming about their prom dress, but dreaming about a chance at a normal family at 14? That’s deep.
Avery: Well sadly, my dream all came to an end once my mother found out I was preggers. I don’t know why she tried to act shocked. She knew I wasn’t a virgin. She saw different boys going in and out of my room all the time. Since I wouldn’t tell her who got me pregnant, she made me get an abortion and I will NEVER FORGIVE HER for making me kill my baby. MURDERING BITCH! I cried every night. He tried to comfort me but nothing could bring my baby back. That baby was going to change everything. So I started fucking him every chance I could trying to get myself pregnant again. But that didn’t work either.
Royal: So that’s why you call her a murderer, cause she made you get an abortion?
Avery: Yes but I call her a murderer cause she is one!
Royal: Hmm…Ok. So why didn’t having more sex with your boyfriend work? You couldn’t get pregnant?
Avery: No, we got caught before I had the chance.
Royal: Oh, ok.
Avery: Doing it everyday, I guess we were bound to get caught and I will never forget the day we did. She went to the doctor that morning and usually when she goes, she has to see her medical doctor for her meds and then the shrink for her mental health. Knowing this, I decided to ditch school and have him meet me at the house. Everything was going fine, until she skipped the shrink and came home early. She must have snuck in and heard us. We were naked and he was lying on top of me, kissing me, and telling me how pretty I was. And even though I didn’t believe him, I did believe him when he said he loved me. She had to be listening at the door before she peeked in. “Avery, you so pretty, baby girl you so pretty. Can daddy have his pretty pussy now?” is what he was saying to me. I giggled like a girl in love because I was. I guess once she heard that and saw who it was; she ran in the kitchen, got a knife, and went crazy! She stabbed my daddy in the back 12 times and almost cut my hand off trying to get to him. See this scar? That bitch did that. She went BEZERK slicing everything in her way. I think she even cut the dog. She was screaming, “Avery is so pretty” the whole time. I was so scared, I ran out the house asshole naked and I haven’t been home since. Since that day, I’ve been…(crying)
Royal: Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up, rewind, hold up…Did you say she stabbed your daddy? Meaning the baby daddy or your daddy, her husband?
Avery: (crying) Yes, my baby’s daddy and my daddy. ( more crying)
Royal: I’m sorry. You wanna stop?
Avery: (still crying) I sucked my daddy’s dick for the 1st time when I was 13 hoping that it would make him talk to me. He did, but only in my bedroom. In my bedroom, I was his woman. He stopped fucking my mama after the Target incident because she said sex was nasty. So I became his wife. We made plans to send my mother away and live as husband and wife. But it killed me that outside of my room, I was invisible to him. That was his way of pretending that he wasn’t cumming in the mouth of his own fucking daughter. It was our secret and we both loved that it was something that my nosey ass mother didn’t know.
Royal: Damn. So how did he approach you about the oral sex? Were you scared?
Avery: I actually approached him. One night after he put my mama to sleep, he went in the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. When he walked past my bedroom, I was masturbating, with the covers off. I wanted him to see me, since he never saw me any other time. It caught his attention, and he stood at the door and watched me. And for a long time, that was our secret. He would watch me play with my pussy every night before he went to bed. But then one night, I invited him in and when he sat on my bed, I pulled down his pajamas and gave him the shock of his life.
Royal: So you initiated it? And he didn’t stop you?
Avery: Exactly. When we started making love, he would put my mother to bed and then come sleep with me. I always felt safe with him. (crying) And that bitch killed him. She killed him and my baby. I HATE HER!! I HATE THAT BITCH!! (crying)
Royal: I’m sorry Avery...I mean Ashanti. So what happened after that night he was stabbed?
Avery: I ran away from home. I went to the Catholic church on the corner and the nuns took me in and gave me some clothes. They gave me food and a warm bed for the night. As soon as they went to sleep, I snuck out.
Royal: Where did you go?
Avery: The Greyhound Bus Station downtown. If security would kick me out, I slept in hospital waiting rooms. I ate out the trash and begged for money for food until I met Selwyn. She showed me how to hustle.
Royal: Oh yeah?
Avery: Yep! She took me under her wing and showed me the ropes. We were Ross boosters.
Royal: Ross boosters?
Avery: Yeah, Ross Boosters. You know the department store Ross? Dress for less? We would go in there, act like we were shopping, ball clothes up, stuff them down our pants, in our shirts, in our purses, under our coats, or wherever we could fit them. Then we would go to beauty salons and sell them to chicks getting their hair done. See, Ross used to let you exchange shit at any store without a receipt. So all they had to do was take the clothes that we stole, back to the store, and exchange it for stuff they wanted.
Royal: Damn!
Avery: Damn is right! After I met her, I never slept in a waiting room or bus station again. I had enough money for cheap hotel rooms, food, weed, and drink.
Royal: So is this when you started drinking and getting high?
Urban Diaries Page 22
