Harlem Girl Lost (5 page)

“Do you follow or do you lead?”

“I lead,” Silver said.

“But?” Jesse asked with a frown.

“
But
is word used by procrastinators.”

Smiling now, Jesse bent down. “Now, lastly, what is the absolute worst word in the world?”

“The worst word in the world is
can't.”

“Good!” Jesse said, her smile growing. “Now give Mommy a kiss and go play with your friends.” They hugged and kissed, and then Jesse stood and watched Silver run over to her friends who were jumping double dutch. Jesse smiled a moment, then turned to go home for a well-deserved rest and a hot bath.

On her way home, Jesse spotted her mother, Thelma Jones, walking down Lenox Avenue toward her. Jesse wanted to turn and run the other way, but it was too late—her mother had already spotted her. Their relationship had been strained since she had gotten pregnant twelve years earlier. As Jesse got closer to her mother, she felt as if the air was being sucked out of her. She badly wished she had taken another route home. At least she'd changed her clothes before leaving the house. As they met, Jesse took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Hi, Momma, how you doing? I haven't seen you in a good while … so how's it been?”

Her mother looked her up and down. Uncomfortable, Jesse tried to change the subject. “Your granddaughter asks for you all the time. She says, ‘When am I gonna see my grandma?’ And she said she wants to be a doctor some—”

With a disgusted glare, her mother cut her off. “Are you still selling your body for money, Jessica?”

Caught off guard, Jesse said nothing, and cast her eyes toward the ground in shame and embarrassment.

Mrs. Jones continued. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Jesse raised her head, sad but defiant. “Momma, why do you always have to put me down?”

“Why not?” she said quickly. “You degrade yourself by prostituting your body and shoving that … that poison in your veins. It's just disgusting, I tell you!”

Jesse had heard this many times before. “Momma, I'm sorry I didn't turn out the way you wanted me to, but I've changed,” she pleaded. “I haven't messed with those drugs in six months. I also plan to go back to school and start going to church.”

“Church!” her mother said with astonishment. “God don't want any two-bit junkie whore in his house!”

Crushed and defeated, Jesse fought back tears, realizing that nothing she said could ever change her mother's mind about her. Deep down though, Jesse so badly wanted her forgiveness. But her mother was relentless—intent, it seemed, on making her suffer for the rest of her life.

Mrs. Jones saw her humiliation. “What? Are you ashamed? Are you ashamed like you shamed your father and me?”

Just hearing about her father made Jesse feel lower than she already did.

“God bless his soul,” Mrs. Jones went on. “You killed him! That's what you did. You broke his heart when you got pregnant and left!”

Angry and in tears, Jesse protested, “But you put me out!”

“You damn right I put you out!” she barked. “No no-good pregnant whore was gonna lay up in my house! You shouldn't have been out there spreading your legs to every nigger you met. Now look at you—you live in some beat-up building with some faggot and your bastard child!”

Jesse could not believe her ears. The cold venom of her mother's words had pierced her very soul. To call Jesse's child— her own mother's granddaughter—a bastard was too much for her to bear, and Jesse could only stare at her as she walked off.

Jesse walked aimlessly
through Harlem, stinging from her mother's wickedness. As she turned up 115th Street from St. Nicholas, she heard a familiar voice.

“Jessica?” A
tall man stood in front of the Japs restaurant. “What's happening, baby?”

Jesse looked up and saw Fast Eddie, one of her old dealers, who eyed her from above his sunglasses. Out of habit, she smiled and said hello, but kept moving. Ever since Jesse had gotten clean, she had learned to disassociate herself from the old crowd.

Lifting his sunglasses, he stared heartily at her ass and hollered, “Girl, you looking good! Go ahead with yo’ bad self!”

Jesse had walked five feet before she was suddenly hit with a familiar and overwhelming feeling—she wanted to get high. Feelings of pain, guilt, and compulsion were a combination that
awakened the old monster within her that had been sleeping for six months. The sudden need for just one fix took over. She cursed herself for this notion and tried to walk off, but she was stuck. Doubt convinced her she couldn't win, so she reasoned,
Hell, I deserve it. I'll do just one and that's it. I can handle it.
She turned on her heel and spoke to the dealer. “Yo, Eddie, are you straight?” Her stomach was already starting to flip with anticipation for the drugs. It was said that your body releases adrenaline when you're about to cop some drugs, causing you to get high before you even use the stuff.

But his smile turned into a frown. “Naw, Jessica, you done beat that monkey down, baby, long time ago. You doing so good!”

“Look, man, I ain't got no time for no preaching,” Jesse snapped impatiently. “Either ya holding or ya not, ‘cause if you ain't gonna sell to me it's plenty niggas out here that will take my cash.”

He shook his head in pity. But business was business. He snapped back, “How much?”

She reached inside her purse. “Give me two.” He looked around to make sure everything was everything, then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out two small glassine bags. He looked at her as if he was about to make one final plea, but she impatiently extended the money and stared him down. Reluctantly, he took the money and shoved the bags into her hand. She stared at him for a second, then headed home.

JUST AN ILLUSION

S
aturday was girls’ night, and no matter what, Jesse made sure nothing came between them and having a good time. Jesse, Silver, and Birdie would just stay home and get dressed up, pretending to be royalty. They would do each other's hair and nails and bug out singing and dancing all night.
Come on, boy, see about me.… come see about me …
Jesse loved the Supremes, especially Diana Ross.

“Everybody thinks she's a bitch,” Jesse said. “She probably is, but she fought for what she wanted, and she is paid! Now she can go anywhere she wants, buy anything she wants, and be whoever she wants. See, Silver, Diana Ross was poor and from the projects, but she refused to accept that she had to stay that way. She had a dream, and that's all you need to start with to get what you want.” She paused, then said, “Tell Auntie Birdie what you gonna be when you grow up.”

“Oh, let me guess,” Birdie said. “A ballerina?”

“Nope.” Silver laughed.

Like a big kid, Birdie tried again. “Ooh, wait, wait, let me guess again … a nurse?”

“Close,” Jesse said.

“Tell Auntie what you gonna be.”

“I'm going to become a doctor,” Silver answered proudly.

Even prouder, Jesse spoke up. “That's right. My baby gonna be a doctor so she can help all the people when they get sick.”

“That's beautiful, baby,” Birdie said. “And you can do that. All you have to do is believe in yourself and work real hard and you can become anything you want. Yeah, I can see it now: ‘Paging Dr. Jones, paging Dr. Jones … please come to the emergency room … paging Dr. Jones!’ “

“But you can't get sidetracked,” Jesse said. “That's why you got to be strong no matter what, ‘cause the only person you can rely on in this world is you, and don't ever forget that. You remember the rules?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“What's the worst word in the world?”

“Cant.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don't have the word in my vocabulary,” Silver answered, “I can do anything.”

“And what about boundaries?”

“If I don't place boundaries in my life, I'll never know when I'm out of bounds.”

“Love?” Jesse asked.

“Don't expect to find love in others if you don't love yourself first.”

“And lastly?” Jesse inquired.

“Always do what you say and say what you mean, because if you lie to a friend, you may lose a friend, but if you lie to yourself, you may lose your soul.”

“My baby!” Birdie said.

Jesse jumped to her feet. “Bonus question,” she said enthusiastically. “What is the secret girl rule?”

Silver jumped up smiled. “God gave man strength to conquer the world—”

The three of them finished in unison, “But God gave women a nana to conquer man!”

They all laughed and started dancing once again to the Supremes.

Later, as Jesse was putting Silver to bed, the child asked, “Mommy, why do you always make me recite the rules?”

“Because I want to prepare you for life so you can be ready for anything this world has in store for you, because life is an illusion.”

“How is life an illusion?” Silver asked.

“Well, sometimes in life you are given choices, and the things you choose you may sometimes have to live with,” Jesse replied. “The tricky thing is, everything that looks good or feels good is not really good for you—it's only an illusion. Sometimes people spend their whole lives chasing something that's not really there, and after a while they come to their senses and stop chasing it only to find that they wasted a lot of time and effort.”

“Mommy, did you ever chase an illusion?”

Jesse turned her head, stared up into space, and reminisced back to her teenage years.

TWELVE YEARS AGO

S
ummertime in Harlem … there isn't anything like it in the world. It seemed everywhere you went there was a party bumping. It was party fucking central, and music was everywhere. Hip-hop was just starting to take over, but disco was still king. Go to any block or any park on any given weekend, and nine times out of ten they were throwing down. From 111th Street to Sugar Hill, from Spanish Harlem on the East Side to the Bronx, which was right over the 145th Street Bridge, it didn't matter, because niggers were up in there. And it didn't matter if you knew who was throwing it, either, because the bottom line was, the more the merrier.

There were just a few unwritten laws to go by: don't step on anybody's fresh kicks; carry a blade or box cutter; roll thick with your crew; and most importantly, BYOBB (bring your own brown bag). A dollar was all you and your crew needed to stay toasted and blessed all night, because that would get you a bottle of Cisco or Swiss-Up. If you were lucky, you had enough for a trey bag of smoke and some Big Bamboo.

The main crew was Vonda, Jesse, Lynn, and Tiny. They went to an all-girls Catholic school together. Vonda and Tiny
lived on the same block, on 138th between Lenox and Seventh. Lynn lived only a couple of blocks away in the Drew Hamilton projects. Jessica's parents, however, owned a building in Harlem's affluent Strivers’ Row. The bugged thing about Strivers’ Row was that walking through it was like stepping into the Twilight Zone, because one minute you were surrounded by abandoned buildings, junkies, and trash, and the next you wouldn't see any trash on these well-maintained tree-lined blocks, or anyone hanging out on his or her stoop; you barely saw anybody, period. They had the most beautiful and expensive brownstone homes, owned by black doctors, lawyers, and actors.

When Vonda met Jesse, they'd clicked, and they'd been down for each other ever since. They had to be, because they were the targets of public-school girls who hated them. It wasn't uncommon to see dozens of public-school girls beat the shit out of a couple of Catholic-school girls. They thought all Catholic-school girls were stuck up and thought they were better than anyone else because they attended private school. But Jesse and her crew really did think they were better, so it just built their egos up even more, and over the years they grew tighter.

At first glance, you would have thought a party was going on, but Jesse and the girls were just in Vonda's room preparing for a big party that night. Torn-out pictures from
Right On
magazines and posters of Parliament and the Funkadelics, the Jackson Five, and the Sylvers covered the walls. Talking mad shit, the girls were bugging out, getting fucked up as they passed around some Panama Red. As they danced, a disco strobe light lent a psychedelic effect, enhancing the ambience. Vonda, the
shot caller of the crew, had smooth dark skin and sharp piercing eyes, and was tall like Jesse. She was more tuned to the streets with hipness and fashion. She was the only girl in her family of five brothers, all street niggers. Nobody on the block was stupid enough to fuck with her on the strength of who her brothers were.

Lynn and Jesse were practicing a new hustle move they'd seen some Puerto Ricans do on the East Side, killing it as they finally perfected the intricate moves. Standing on the sidelines, Vonda watched the two spin and turn to the beat.

“Oh, that shit was fly. Do that shit again,” Vonda said, passing a joint to Tiny.

Tiny sat lazily in an armchair inhaling the reefer. She eyed the group and took a final pull before she got up to pass it to Lynn. Arms folded, she stood in front of them and blew smoke in Jesse's face. “Wack! Wack! Wack! That bullshit y'all doing is straight wack!”

The mood was broken, and the girls turned to look at Tiny.

“Bitch, you can't do it!” Lynn said.

Tiny wiped ashes off her clothes. “Don't even try it. Y'all bitches ain't doing nothing but bitin’! But me …” She patted herself on the chest to emphasize the point. “I'm gonna be original with mines!”

Jesse sucked her teeth. “Aw, Tiny, you just mad ‘cause you can't dance.”

“What?” Tiny said defiantly. “You shouldn't even talk, bitch—I don't even know why you dancing ‘cause you mama ain't gonna let you go to the party anyway!”

Everyone stared at Jesse, who grew silent.

Vonda shut off the disco lights and switched on the regular lights. “Jesse, your mom's gonna let you hang tonight?”

Deflated, Jesse walked away. “I don't know. I ain't asked her yet.”

“Bitch,” Vonda said. “I don't know what you waiting on, ‘cause this shit is gonna be the joint. My brother told me DJ Herk is gonna be spinning there at Stevo's house party, so you know all the playboys gonna be up in that piece.”