As I sit back and think about what just happened I can only think that everyone is right, Zach, Ari, even Quick is right.
I wanted that "nigga" to jump out of me so bad in the restaurant. One, because I was so angry and also because it will probably feel good to just let this professional guard down but I can't. I can't go back to that. My "nigga" days that is.
Before I decided I wanted to be a lawyer, I was a knucklehead. Nothing too bad, don't get me wrong but I was far from an angel.
Before my high school days, I was in public school. I've always been very smart, so school work was pretty easy. My grades were way above average. I was an angry kid, though back then, I didn't know what I was angry about and that's a problem
I'm the youngest of three kids by my parents. One older sister and one older brother. My sister is seven years older than I am. She's really smart too but wound up getting pregnant at sixteen, so she probably never reached her full potential; but she's doing pretty good now so I guess it's cool. My brother, he's six years older, quick turnaround for my folks but life was different when they were born, so they could do things like that.
Before I was born, my family lived in the suburbs. My mother was a stay-at-home mom ,while my father had worked his way up to be a Construction Manager making great money. The issue was that my dad didn't know how to change once he came into all that money. Both of my parents only graduated from high school and Pop just started making dumb decisions in his later years.
My mom says Jamal, my dad, was no stranger when it came to cocaine. She knew he used but not much because it was expensive and he wasn't bad with money. However, when he became a manager, he did at least a gram of coke per day, that's one hundred dollars every day for one gram. Sometimes he would do more.
Moms had enough by the time my older brother was three. Jamal did some coke while he and my brother, Eric, were home alone. By the time my mom and my sister Nia got back, my dad was laid out on the floor while Eric was in a playpen crying, smelling of feces. She called the ambulance but didn't even stay to see them come, she took them both and left back to the city. With some money she had taken out of the bank from their bank account, she got a tiny apartment in Washington Park on the south side.
With moms only getting as far as an high school diploma, the best she could do was bartending here and there and bus driving. Things were really rough around 1985, my mother was in between jobs more and my brother and sis were getting older and just needed more. Jamal tried to give money but it was never accepted, he couldn't talk to his children or see them. Eric doesn't even remember him, and Nia, just vaguely.
Now she needed help so she went to him. The old house is different, she would say. It looked old and dusty, kind of like the old house you would see on a horror movie. Still he got her in there with plenty of begging and pleading. He told her he was changing and he wanted the family back, that he was healthy again. She said he took off his shirt and said "Baby look at all the weight I gained, I'm back" grinning and slapping his chest a few times.
"No Jamal."
"Baby I promise. I miss you, I miss the kids, please come back." On his hands and knees with his head to my mothers feet and tears dropping of his cheeks.
"Ok." She said. She says those were the words she had been waiting to hear for four years so it didn't take much for her to budge. "Look I have to go get the kids from mommas and take them home an..."
"No, baby don't go yet." He interrupted her began to kiss her hands, still on his knees, and worked his way up. Her stomach, then standing to kiss her breast, necks, and finally her lips.
She broke. Here she is hearing the words she's been waiting to hear for years and being touched in ways she hasn't been touched in years.
Of course they worked their way into the bedroom, stumbling over the mess in the floor on the way up. She stops her story there. They have sex and that is the night I was conceived.
My mother leaves on cloud nine, thinking everything will be fine. After she picks up my brother and sister, she arrives home with the police there. He OD'd.
After the initial shock, moms realized he was never off and that he was just lying. "It was bound to happen with the lifestyle he chose." She would always say. Actually she had some hope, they could go back to the house. That was until she received a letter about all the missed payments. The house was gone. The cars were gone. Savings were gone. The best part, she was now pregnant with me.
No Pop, no money, two siblings that experienced a father, I was angry. I would take that anger out on anyone, my teachers, my classmates, my family, everyone. My mother used to tell me "Ain't nobody gon hire no angry nigga. You wanna live like this forever?"
