“The bullet struck my back with enough force to hurl me through the air. My body hit the ground so hard it knocked the air from my lungs. The pain was so intense my body shivered as it attempted to shake it away. The burn, so demanding, I’d lost the ability to move as it ate me alive. Someone had started groping me, their rough touch jostling my injured body. At first, I assumed they were attempting to help me, but instead their ugly words hit me as hard as that bullet had. ‘Stupid little bitch was stealing food. Let’s go’.”
Dumbfounded, my back stiffened, as my unblinking gaze remained on Laura whose face was aimed at the bright view of the city, her mind lost within the horrific memory.
“They’d shot me and left me there to die. I couldn’t see them because I was afraid to unclench my eyes but discerned it was a group that had gathered to stare at me. No one bothered to help me, the overlooked, the left for dead, and the empty space they pretended wasn’t there. They left, every last person, and I was left with the lingering chill of silence for company. I knew how our hood was, people peeked from doors and windows, but as far as they were concerned, they hadn’t seen or heard anything. I was a nine-year-old kid, who’d been shot in the back and no one cared. For what felt like hours, I remained there struggling to breathe.”
My teeth sunk into my bottom lip, shaking my head. This explained her small circle of friends and why she was reluctant to let anyone in. Why she needed to be hard and tough, not only for herself but for those she cared about.
“By the time the paramedics arrived, I must have blacked out. I woke up to them moving my body and yelling to each other I was alive and calling for more medical supplies and equipment. I spent three weeks in the hospital with a collapsed lung and broken ribs. The bullet had traveled nearly through me and rested below my skin, under my left arm. Other than damaging my lung, it hadn’t hit anything else vital. My mother visited me once and it was at the insistence of the police after they’d gathered enough information from me to track her down. Believe it or not, my hospital stay was the best care, food, and comfort I’d ever gotten. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me at that point. The way the medical team took care of me, checked on me, combed my hair. One even sung to me. It made me want to be that kind of comfort for someone one day.”
Her weeping eyes and gloomy face had rendered me helpless. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” I sympathized.
“You think that was it? I’m not even close to telling you how I became so tough as you put it,” she stated with a huff of a laugh. I inched a bit closer. Laura was not going to want my sympathy, but she was getting it anyway. I placed a hand on her knee. When she didn’t remove it, I left it there.
“One day, months after being shot, I walked into our roach-infested, Section 8, second-floor apartment to find my mother being attacked by one of her Johns. She had two types of Johns, the ones she screwed for drugs and the ones she screwed for money to get drugs. This one was beating her with no mercy, fist after pounding fist. I attempted to help, using one of the rusty candlestick holders that sat on our burned-out wooden coffee table. I struck the man over the head, but I wasn’t strong enough for my lick to matter. He shoved me across the living room floor, sending me into the wall before I clumped to the floor in pain. I crawled to my mother’s room, and with each glance back, his fist continued to wail on my mother who screamed for him to stop.”
The fact she was telling this story, undoubtedly, one of the most difficult parts of her life, spoke volumes about how far we’d come. Although saddened by what she’d endured, I was grateful and humbled.
“It took me forever to find the right shoebox, but I found the one my mother kept her gun in. I’d seen her pull the gun on one of her Johns after he’d screwed her and then refused to give her the drugs she’d been fucking him for. By the time I’d returned to the living room with the gun, the man was choking her to death, telling her he would kill her and rape me when he was done.”
My grip on Laura’s leg tightened as a strong crease of concern wrinkled my face. Laura kept her gaze straight ahead. Her face had grown indifferent, hard.
“I aimed for his back and pulled the trigger. The next moment, his brains were leaping from his head and hitting the couch as his body slumped over my mother’s, shaking and twitching. My mother shoved him off her, letting his limp body tumble to the floor. His lifeless eyes were aimed at me, scolding me for shooting him. That’s when I noticed some of his brains were splattered on my mother’s shirt near her shoulder. Instead of ensuring I was okay after I’d shot a man in the head, she started searching his body for her drugs. I stood in place, gun hanging in my limp hand, immobile. My mother, with her bruised and beaten body, stepped across the dead man, who was leaking blood as his haunting eyes continued to stare at me.”
She closed her eyes tight before reopening them, no doubt, picturing the horrific scene. The lump in my throat refused to go down as I fought to keep myself in place.
“My mother wasn’t thankful that I’d saved her, letting me know she’d let go of life long before I came along. She sat on the couch next to the globs of brains, loaded her crack pipe and started sucking. The love of her life had been away too long, and not my wellbeing or the dead man that I’d killed laying at her feet were of any concern. I stood there until my body thawed. I stumbled into my room and prayed that it had all been a nightmare.”
“Laura, I’m so sorry,” I offered, unsure of what to say to someone who’d been through such tragedies at such a young age.
She released a deep sigh before glancing in my direction when I moved close enough that my knee brushed hers. I slipped my hand around her waist, but I didn’t pull her closer, allowing my hand to rest there.
Laura had shattered who I assumed she was, but this part of her filled in the shadowy parts. This part of her allowed her to walk into the darkness without fear.
“I walked into the living room and found my mother passed out, the dead body stiff at her feet. I woke her and was met with her fist for doing so. Before her eyes were fully opened, she was yelling at me to clean up the blood as she ran toward her bedroom to finally change her clothes. I was a nervous, shaking mess, but if I didn’t find the strength to clean up the mess I’d made, she would beat me until I did. I threw up three times while cleaning. I gagged, choking on the scent of the man’s exposed head contents. My eyes watered and my body quivered in fear and disgust as I scooped up chunks of flesh and bones and blood with a dirty wet dishrag.”
At this point, I dredged up images of her as a young girl forced to kill a man for her mother and later forced to clean the horrific crime scene.
“My mother called another of her Johns, promising sex and drugs if he helped her with what she called a problem. When the man arrived, he didn’t even flinch at the body. He aided my mother with rolling him into the cheap dirty rug that sat under our couch before helping her to carry him out. They carried the dead man two buildings down and tossed the body into the dumpster, knowing that a dead body in our hood, even if found, wasn’t going to lead to a police investigation. As a matter of fact, the rug was worth more than the man’s life.”
My head shook back and forth for a long moment. I could hardly digest the gravity of what she’d been through and couldn’t imagine living through it.
“My childhood mentality was fucked up for good. My mother never hugged me or soothed me or anything, and although I wanted it, I knew I’d never get it, not from her. Imagine living with a woman who you knew as your mother, but you didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about her. I’d never been told stories of her childhood. I never knew if I had aunts or uncles, or grandparents. I never knew a time she wasn’t on drugs. Had she finished high school? Who was my father? My mother was a complete stranger. Anything I wanted to know I found out from the streets, and they knew about as much as I did. Monique Parker was a crack-head hoe.”
The psychological impact this must have had on her; I couldn’t imagine not knowing the woman who had given me life.
“After killing that man, I didn’t think things with my mother could get any worse, but they did. Her drug use increased and instead of just crack, she used whatever was available—meth, heroin, coke—it didn’t matter. She wanted it and was willing to do anything to get it. Since she’d used up her body, she started to offer me up as payment for her drugs, but I’d been smart enough to keep that gun close. When my mother couldn’t get drugs, the one thing that made her feel better was beating the shit out of me.” She had a brief pause before proceeding.
“I received a lot of practice on how to take and appreciate pain. It was the one thing that I could always rely on from my mother. It was the one thing I promised myself I’d protect others from. I’d grown combative enough to fight anyone, but I never lifted a hand to hit my mother back. She deserved it, but I clung to a small level of respect simply because she was my mother.”
Another pause followed a deep sigh and her pensive gaze lingered on a spot she’d picked.
“When my mother discovered she couldn’t control me with beatings or curse words anymore, and that I wasn’t going to allow her Johns to use me for sex, she allowed her brother, Dennis, to come and live with us after he offered her a couple hundred dollars a month in rent. Other than her saying so, I didn’t believe he was really her brother. She’d offered him my room, but I refused to allow him to enter it. He turned the couch into his bed even with the reeking stain on it. It didn’t take but a couple of weeks before he started to eyeball me with lust. I knew the look well, had seen it many times in the hungry eyes of my mother’s Johns.”
She shook her head automatically, but it didn’t stop her words.
“Dennis repeatedly attacked me, each time I’d find a way to fight him off. Once he attacked me with my mother sitting on the couch too high to do anything, not that she would have. Another time, he’d slammed my head into the wall so hard I’d ended up with a concussion and spent three days in the hospital. He must have thought he’d killed me after the blow to my head had knocked me out because he’d disappeared for two weeks until he found out I was still alive. I couldn’t get a break. I couldn’t even be a kid. I was in and out of juvenile detention so much, the staff knew me. Most times I’d get myself tossed into juvie just to get away from my situation at home. I’d inherited adult situations and considered myself grown from the moment I could think on my own.”
“Laura,” I whispered as I drew her into my side whether she wanted my affection or not. She’d never gotten it from her mother, and I wanted her to know that I cared. I’d tell her how much if I didn’t fear she’d push me away.