That’s when he’d catch me off guard again. But, my mother would often go in the room to vacuum or get my laundry and would leave the window open to, ‘Let it air out,’ she’d say. Then, I’d have to worry about him sneaking in my room again. Then when they’d argue, because he stole from her, or slapped her for accusing him, she’d put him out and call the cops, well, vice versa. I’d sleep with my mother a few nights, then, she’d take him back and he’d just sneak in the bathroom to get off on his drugs. That happened off and on until I was 12-years-old. When he did go out the window, I closed and locked it, then ran in the room with my mother, locked her door and put the dresser in front of it and got in the bed with her in case he came back. Those few minutes seemed like forever, and I had to wait through the nodding and waking up, beginning to leave and then nodding again. I just lay there until he finished shooting his drugs and left out the window again. “With all or most of my friends being molested by their mother’s boyfriend, neighbor or uncle, who knew what he was capable of? When he came in the window like that, back then, he never touched me. I didn’t know what he was going to do, even when I saw the dope, needle and spoon he placed on the nightstand by my bed-I was 9, how would I know. Then, he’d take out a thick piece of a short rubber rope I always saw him start to tie it around his arm as I slowly turned around to face the other direction. It makes me uncomfortable,’ he would say. Then he would reach in his pants and empty the contents of his pocket on my nightstand.
‘You ever tell anybody, I’ll use this razor to cut your throat!’ is what Morris use to say to me each time he snuck in my room from my bedroom window. Morris seems like a good guy,” she said, noticing Geeda getting more irritated, sickly and wanting to burst her bubble. “Don’t seem like a man with a name like Morris could be mean or as bad as you make him seem. “It’s not just growing up there that I hate, it’s hunger, police, fighting, stabbing, shooting and, some kids, they had a dad or step dad, I had Morris. “They don’t want you to fall back to sleep, might as well talk.” “Now,” Paula continued, “how could it have been hard for you when it was your parents who were working to feed and clothe you?” Pauses to no response. Nothing but zombies and their eff’d up families there-never going back. Pulling her cover over her, trying to warm up, “I hate that place.
Boy I’ll tell ya, crack heads will shake anybody down to see what they have, even a bum on the streets.”
Not so bad, at least not until the kids come around and those crack heads of course. I walk the beat in that area sometimes, met a few older guys and gals my age and play chess in the park. Poverty is horrible living,” Geeda said as she shivered. Looking ashamed to say where she was from, Geeda stared out and didn’t say a word, but then she realized she was speaking to a bum, a woman who literally lived in the streets, “I lived on Bergen Street in Newark, Li’l City in East Orange, then around the corner near Death Valley,” pausing, “but,” squirming on her hospital bed with chills, “about ten years ago we moved on up like the Jefferson’s to Maplewood,” pausing, “a few miles from the middleclass section. Instead, it’s a different kind of madness and a life she wants nothing more to do with. However, when her husband is away on business longer than normal, Geeda loses it and surounded by the wealthy insane, finds out the hard way that life isn’t greener on the other side. Geeda spends most of her life growing up around the hard streets and ghetto, placing value and working toward a healthy life on the other side of the fence.