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Chapter 1
ASHA
Why do black wo the world how desperate they are, I thought as I watched the Maury Povich Show Today’s episode was about woo of their men no matter what they’ve done; and, of course, they picked the loudest, norant sisters they could find I watched a scruffy-looking deadbeat dad stroll out froht that if the world ended toer, Ricki Lake and all the other asinine progra offered on television, they would think that black wory idiots with low self-estee over some sorry-ass man Life’s too short for that shit
All o through ridiculous, tito in the first place My father was one of them; he cheated on my mother in the seventies and then became a crackhead
I guess, at seventeen, e of character but she would definitely live to regret her youthful folly when she was stuck with a one-year-old at eighteen My parents were high school sweethearts, andto make their relationship work but he could never meet her even halfway
They’re both dead now but they had an on-again, off-again relationship foryears
She didn’t learn anything froht stand with a cop who lived in the apartment upstairs produced my sister, Saundra After their encounter, Phil Patterson took Mama out a few ti to s ith my father
I re little arm around my mother’s broad shoulders ain
I guess psychiatrists would say I have serious issues concerning relationships because of ht, but after all the stupid shit I’ve seen in my twenty-four years, they can kiss my ass
When I was sixteen, I got pregnant by this guy nah-top fade hairstyle with a blond streak across the front, new Air Jordans and a triple-fat goose coat toand most popular boy in school Even more important, he was from Uptown At that time, Saundra and I were obsessed with people who lived in Harlerew up in midtown Manhattan and because of that ere called Valley Girls So to compensate for our shameful “white” locale, we ihs We wore huge gold doorknocker earrings and MC Lyte ret
After getting gold fronts and purchasing a few oversize clocks to wear around our necks ere accepted into the much coveted “in” crowd, not necessarily because ere cool but because we looked daood
One night Saundra and I were at our friend T-Rock’s house at the Butler projects in the South Bronx Of course Mama didn’t knoe had traveled so far froht say “no” and everybody was going to be there Besides, we had already boughtblack-and-white polka dot shirts from the Gap and Ha to hear “No”
We looked real good