I Wrote My Way Out

I am not supposed to be here.

Alive, on this stage, at this place.

Alive.

I should have died when I was born. That was something that The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke drilled into me. Not because of my mother's body threatening my life from the moment I existed in her womb. Not because the same thing providing me life wrapped around my throat, choking me as I came into the world. No, he never said it as admiration, as a thing of pride that I beat the odds. It was a weapon he kept jabbing into my sides, bleeding me of my joy and self-respect.

It was because I was a product of a so-called torrid affair. I heard a lot of people call my parents' marriage that since a white woman shouldn't have gone and married a black man. They must have never heard about Thomas and Sally of Virginia. Yeah, I know they were never married, so sue me, but the point still stands – relations between races is not a new thing.

On Pembrooke Street, the quote on quote, nicest street in Pasadena, California, it was a slap in the face for a woman and man who were different colors to be in love. Sure, you could have your smorgasbord of different races on the street, as long as the mixing stopped there. The blacks, Asians, and Mexicans should just be happy they were allowed in such a nice neighborhood, like having a nice house was supposed to placate two kids in love.

A few people called my parents' romance Shakespeare, thus giving them the nicknames Romeo and Juliet. I remember asking them about it one day and they told the story of a boy and girl who fell in love despite their families hating each other. They even told me they died at the end because their love was so great they couldn't live without one another. I told them they couldn't be Romeo and Juliet then because they weren't going to die until they were old and gray.

Then on August 30, 1987, Dad had to go to Torrance for a work trip; he worked as a well-known accountant and was there for a conference. As he was on his way back, there was a detour, taking him through a notoriously tough neighborhood. I remember him calling to let Momma know he would be later coming home.

"Yeah, they have me going through Compton."

"Are you sure you'll be fine? That's a pretty nasty area."

"Of course, honey, I am full on gas and don't plan on getting out of the car until I am home."

"Okay sweetie. I'll see you pretty soon then."

"Forty minutes at the most. I love you. Tell my gifted terror I said to behave." He called me that since I had a habit of getting into creatively intelligent sorts of trouble. Imagine climbing up bookshelves to reach for Little Women, a book out of my reach in more ways than one. It was as much a term of endearment as it was an acknowledgement of a bothersome aspect of my personality.

"I love you too."

Forty minutes past. Then an hour. Two. After three hours, Momma sent me to bed. My stubbornness kept me up; I was going to see Daddy before I went to sleep that night.

After four more hours of torturous waiting, a kaleidoscope of blue and red lights shined through our windows. My mother’s screams echoed through the neighborhood, signaling that tragedy had struck. I ran out of bed to see two men in uniform at the door, one of which was holding my mom up. We, dressed in our pajamas, were ushered to the back of a car where Momma held me close to her as she drenched my hair with her tears.

The car ride wasn’t long at all and soon, a small brick building with ivy climbing up some of the walls came into view. Momma gripped me close to her as if I was a stuffie I liked to sleep with a night, a thing to give her some mirage of comfort. A gray haired, grumpy woman in a white shirt and blue slacks met us at the door. I don’t think Gray and Grumpy realized I was there at first because her grumpy wrinkled face morphed into a one of pity.

Gray and Grumpy took us to a back room and closed the door. The walls were a pukey brown and the floor was a frigid gray. There wasn’t anything for kids there, no toys or books, no TV. Only a couple of cold metal chairs sat against one of the walls. I wasn’t sure what was going on since no one was talking to me, not even Momma, but the room told me that it couldn’t be anything good.

Gray and Grumpy came back in the room through a different door marked “Employees Only.” She kept the door open for a skinny man, Reaper, pushing in a long table with a bumpy white sheet covering the length.

“Take all the time you need.” The door closed ominously behind Gray and Grumpy as Reaper stood at one end of the table, hands ready to yank back the sheet like a magician. As he pulled the sheet gently, I could see Daddy’s face, eyes closed in an everlasting sleep.

It wasn’t until we got home that I remembered I was turning ten the same day Daddy was shot in the crossfire between police and the South Side Crips.

My family is Shakespearean

A Romeo and Juliet tale

except we switched roles

The blade flew from the barrel

and took Romeo in Compton

Mother and I kissed him goodbye

and let the poison, grief, seep into our hearts

killing the people we were

creating shells and alter egos

leaving us vulnerable

to worse than Death

Dad's death twisted me into someone I didn't recognize. She was withdrawn, a bubbling cauldron of hate and pain. She lashed out at her mom as if she was the one who pulled the trigger. She gave up on school, barely doing enough to pass. She became the stain of Pembrooke's street, although truly I figured that was already the case, considering the whole interracial marriage and resulting mixed child.

***

The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke slinked his way into our lives about six months later, after living on the outskirts for most of it. A tall, white, blonde haired man, the Prince Charming cop all the women fawned over. To catch his eye, even briefly, was a supposed God's gift incarnate. I remember seeing him on the street in the morning walking his dog, and as a little kid not being impressed, but what did I know. It's not like I was really worried about the attractiveness level of some guy.

The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke

He came in with his savior bravado and charm,

so understanding and nearly perfect.

A knight in shining armor,

a cliché of a statement,

but oh so fitting.

It started when he picked me up at a local gas station for shoplifting, appearing as a concerned cop who wanted to take me under his wing. Having someone else concerned about her troubled daughter chipped at Momma's walls surrounding her broken heart. If Momma couldn't bail me out of whatever trouble I was getting in, The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke was there.

It became quite obvious, at least to me, he was using me to get close to Momma. By the time Dad's first year death anniversary came around, he was always at the house, spraying his scent all around the house and us. (Momma called it dating, I called it a nuisance and a pain in my butt.)

Part of me always knew The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke was full of it. What I didn't realize was how thick his mask was.

One month after the death anniversary and moving into the house, The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke ripped his mask off for the first time as he smacked me at one of my usual haunts. He apologized fervently, saying he was exhausted from work (and dealing with me even though he didn't say it out loud. It's called reading in between the lines.) He even told Mom what happened and said it would never happen again. That was a big pile of crap since he did it again two weeks later; he blamed that bruise on a quick trip at the bottom of some stairs. Really it was him trying out some 'tough love;' "bailing you out of trouble isn't working," he said before he hit me.

What was worse was for every chalked up story The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke fed my mom, the more she believed him. With every smack, tight grip, and demeaning word, the more he created a monstrous version of myself. And with every new bruise and scar decorating my body, the more I hated my mom, the envy growing and twisting itself around my bones.

One day as he beat and kicked at me, which I'm sure he later blamed on some gang-adjacent kid I was hanging out with, The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke slipped up. That he was a narcissistic psychopathic racist who wanted me dead; I was an infection and he thought himself the cure.

"You are a sin on top of a sin," he told me as he kicked at my ribs again as if he could kick the alleged wretchedness out of my body, "so you pay for your mother's sins and yours." I knew at that point my life became about survival. I was twelve.

Small fights started to occur between my mom and The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke, becoming more and more frequent over the next year. It pummeled against his invisible dam, eroding away the nice charming guy act he played for Mom and everyone else bit by bit until it broke.

I don't even know what they were arguing about. I learned to block them out so the shouting became white noise, static, something barely bothersome. Then Mom ran up the stairs, busting open my bedroom door. Everything after that is a blur--clothes flying into suitcases, screaming and banging against locked doors, my mother dragging me past The (Now Red Faced) Devil Con Man of Pembrooke.

It wasn't until I dived into the car that I saw the red blooming on her face, reminiscent of the first time The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke hit me. He finally showed my mom his true face, and while I should have been grateful to be free, seeing my mom's injured face angered me. "Do you believe me now?"

My mom cried, ugly tears rolling down her face, as she blubbered useless apologies. None of them touched my stone heart as I looked straight at her emotionless and cold. When she paused to catch her breath, I spoke in a harden tone, "just drive. You don't want to get hit again, do you?"

The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke's chains were forever locked on us; we were never going to be free. For months, we ran from home to home, attempting to lengthen the chains as far as we could. By the time I was about to start high school, mom and I were estranged, and I had given up with school. (The teachers passed me just so they wouldn't have to deal with me anymore.) I was on the fast track for prison, gang life, and death; The Devil Con Man of Pembrooke would have been delighted to know he was right. I was not good for much, not as a person or a daughter.

I was not supposed to be here. I believed that.

Until we moved to the town where my old life died. Until another white man with blonde hair entered into my life.

Word Count: 2012 words.

***

In 2007, a movie called the Freedom Writers was released, based on a complied collection of diary entries written by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and her students. This sparked an idea of a story: A female student (name presently undecided) begrudgingly moves to Compton with her estranged mother. Due to her lot of life, she is angry at the world, her parents, everyone; seemingly she is eager to die as a budding gangbanger on the streets. She feels she has nothing more to offer, so why try? An English teacher, Mr. Timothy Winslow, fights to show her differently, introducing her to a better way of leaving her mark on the world. It would take place in the months before the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

I am not sure if this will become more; I hope it does. I do know that I am proud of myself for writing one of my longer (actually, I think it is my longest) stories ever. It took some time, mostly because I struggle to write pieces longer than 600 words, but I did it.

Fast Fact: The first time I wrote this it was just over 800 words.