The Coldest Winter Ever (20 page)

The House of Success was a group home for teenage girls aged thirteen to eighteen. Don’t ask me how or why they picked that name. As far as I was concerned it was a joke like everything else. This building was set up like a house. Somehow somebody thought they would take a whole bunch of anonymous females, put ’em in a building set up like a house and have them pretend they was like family. There were four girls in each big room. There were about ten big rooms. There were two kitchens and one big-ass living room that doubled as the recreation room. There were offices where the people in charge did whatever they were pretending to do. Across from the offices were a set of small rooms that some counselors and personnel slept in when they did the overnight shift.

This was minimum security where a girl had to follow certain rules and would somehow be rewarded with “little freedoms.” As Ms. Griswaldi put it, “For the next thirty days you will be evaluated. If you are not deemed to be violent or suffering from a learning disorder or illness you will be treated like a young adult with adult responsibilities.” So the deal was I had to be on lockup, meaning I couldn’t leave, or come and go as I please. I had to stay within the facility for thirty days while they decided if I was ready for the world.

I wasn’t scared. Santiaga raised me to be strong. I’ll admit I had all those fucked-up scenes in my head from the movies like some squad of butch women dragging me out of my bed, fucking me up in the bathroom, and shoving a broomstick up my pussy. But I would fight anybody I had to before I would let them get me down. They’d have to kill me before I’d let some chicks eat my pussy or make me lick theirs. All that shit was dead.

The House of Success wasn’t like the movies, though. In the room I was assigned to, I met all kinds. First, there was this girl from Haiti. The only thing I could say about her was that she was the greasiest
person I ever saw. She had a dogged-out, uneven, jheri curl with all the grease activator and gel that comes with it. She had the jheri curl grease colliding with the Vaseline on her face. She had greasy lotions for her hands and feet, and in general always looked wet. Her name was Claudette. There was no worse nightmare than the clothes she wore. It looked like she picked a year from the past, let’s say 1975, and decided all her clothes would be from that time. To make it worse, she just said fuck the color scheme. I’ll wear a purple shirt with green gauchos with a yellow hat with a big pink flower on it and I’ll top this shit off with some wooden platform open-toed shoes so I can show off my big maroon bunion. Needless to say, Claudette mostly stayed to herself. The only time I seen her chilling with the other girls in the house was when they chipped in and bought her a cheap Walkman for her birthday. She was ridiculously happy. They claimed the only reason they bought it was because Claudette played some old fucked up Christian radio station with gospel music and a loud whacky screaming preacher on the AM dial. They couldn’t take hearing it no more so they got her the radio with the headphones.

Lashay was a trip. She was kind of chubby with a big cute face. She was one of those girls who decided that she didn’t care if her body was a size 16. She was still gonna wear size 11 clothing. She had big hips, a big booty, and a waist that was small compared to the rest of her butt. You couldn’t tell her she was fat, though. The way she figured it, if the hips are forty-eight inches and the waist thirty-six and the titties forty, that’s a perfect hourglass shape!!! She wore halter tops when it obviously should have been a crime. She wore Daisy Duke shorts, and shoes with laid-to-the-side heels that were begging for forgiveness with every step she took. Her thing was “the boys” who, if you let her tell it,
all
were in love with
her.
She had damn near every issue of
Word Up!
magazine with all her favorite pictures of rap stars glued to the wall in a raggedy collage. She was the show-off type. It was more like she was a comedian to me ’cause how you gonna show off in busted shoes and clothes you bought from some Indian at a candy stand in the train station?

Rashida was into her own little world. She was pretty, but it didn’t count. She never made it work for her. She wore her hair back in a ponytail all the time, every day. She had no flavor about cuts, wraps, twists, nothing—no style. She had a cute little figure, but kept it covered up like it was on punishment or something. She had the nerve to,
in this day and time, wear dingy no-name kicks on her feet. You know the ones they sell in the supermarket for four dollars. She didn’t decorate her side of the room at all. If you looked over there it was plain, period. She was extra clean and tidy. All she did was read. She didn’t even watch television unless it was the gloomy-ass news.

Noni was the girl whose bed I got. She was transferred to another room. The girls said Noni smoked cigarettes like a smokestack even though there was no smoking allowed. She had taken a roll of string, made a line and a curtain around her bed out of a sheet. It didn’t matter, they said, ’cause the smoke kept stinking up the room anyway. They said she had a nervous problem, was molested by her stepdad and beaten by her mother. Smoking made her feel good and she would kick any ass who tried to take her cigarettes or report her. They said the counselors who did the overnight just let her keep smoking ’cause it was easier to be Noni’s friend than her enemy. As a consequence, other girls just followed her lead and lit up, too. When one girl in the other room turned eighteen she was released and had to go and make it on her own. When her bed got free they put Noni in there ’cause there were three more smokers in that room. I got her bed and ended up with Claudette, Lashay, and Rashida.

My first week was crazy. They took me into the office for an interview with my newly assigned social worker. Her name was Kathy Johnson. As soon as I got in the room, I peeped her. She had her hair pulled back in a neat sweep. Her perm needed a serious touch-up. I could see she tried hard to lay the naps down with some gel that was turning white and flaking. She did her own nails, but believe me she was the type who was too lazy to take off the old layer of polish, so she just piled the new layer on top so it didn’t lay smooth on her nails. On her feet were some pleather knockoffs. The kind that when you flipped them over, had a stamp on the bottom that read “man-made uppers.” Her pantsuit was JCPenney’s or Sears, definitely polyester or rayon.

“Come in, Winter. Have a seat,” she said, like I needed her help. She pushed the manila file open and flipped through some papers. I checked her left hand. No engagement ring, no wedding ring, nothing. On the wall she had some kind of degree from Fordham University.

“Winter, where do you go to school?” she asked.

“I use to go to Half Hollow High in Long Island.”

“Then what happened?” she asked.

I sucked my teeth and said, “What’s the sense in having all those papers in the folder about me if you gonna ask me what you already know?”

“OK, Winter. Did you drop out, did you reregister at another school after Long Island, and how do you plan to finish your education? These are the type of things I need to find out from you.”

I gave her answers, short ones. No sense in getting all involved when she was a walking, talking example of what education amounted to. What was I supposed to do? Struggle to be like her? Pay some big school big, big money so I could get a little job in some little place making an iddy biddy bit of cash. What do I get? To hang a stupid-ass degree up in my little office where I don’t make enough dough to get a regular manicure, pedicure, or perm. I should be interviewing her, asking her what’s
her
problem.

She asked me about my sisters, who, for the most part, I had put out of my mind. She asked me about my mother and father and every nosy thing she could nose around in, at which time I gave her any answer that popped in my head. She asked me could I read and write. I told her, “Of course, and I can talk too.”

After two hours I was leaving her office. I asked how do I get money in here? As she explained it, I got sixty dollars a week. The institution got eight hundred per month, per child. The sixty dollars a week represented my spending money after the institution paid its expenses.

“What expenses?” I asked. “We take care of everything else you would need, Winter. We purchase the food, clothes, shelter, etcetera.”

“You mean to tell me you bought those clothes all them girls is wearing?”

“No, not exactly. There’s a voucher system. Your social worker, that’s me,” she said proudly, “will accompany you once every two months or three months to get what you need.”

“You’re
gonna help
me
shop?” I repeated and laughed.

Ms. Johnson said, “You know, if you don’t follow the rules in here you forfeit all of your privileges. That includes nights out, weekend passes, and your weekly stipend.”

“Stipend?” I asked.

“Your money. You know, Winter, you’re one of the older girls
around here. Most of the sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds get after-school jobs. You’re not going to be here long. I suggest you focus on making specific plans for your future. I’m here to help you in any way I can.”

After a box lunch, I saw the institutional psychiatrist. She was a nut. She asked me all kinds of questions about my mother and father. Did my father touch me, did I ever want to have sex with him, did my mother ever beat me. No matter how many times I told her ass no she would put the question another way but still be asking me the same shit. She asked me dumb things like how did I feel when they took my sisters away. She might as well of asked me is a burning building hot! She asked me about my relationship with my friends and men. I looked at her like, lady, do you really think me and your old ass is gonna sit here and have girl talk? To entertain myself, I started making things up—I break out in a rash when I’m in the room with more than two people. I’m a virgin and would like to be one until I’m thirty. I masturbate to the sound of the washing machine—I was cracking myself up. She was sitting there with a long yellow pad actually trying to come up with an explanation for all the gobbledygook I was giving her.

More tests. Reading and math. If they found out anything, it’s that I can read, write, and count. As Santiaga would say, everything else is just extra unnecessary. I met with the birth control lady who really wanted to get personal. I wouldn’t tell her nothing, but I did take sample foam sponges and those free condoms even though there were no men in the house. I figured when they loosen up on me I can have them just in case.

At night most of the girls were gone. They got evening passes, which allowed you to leave until 11 P.M. Some had jobs to go to, others had free time. If you came in after 11 P.M. and missed curfew, you forfeited your passes for the rest of the week. If you were late three times in thirty days, you permanently lost your evening “opportunities.” I was stuck inside with the girls on punishment, the newcomers who had to be evaluated like me, and the uniformed ladies who guarded the door, registering girls in and out.

Laying on my bed, I put together a list of things I needed. Top of my list was a lock. I needed to lock up my suitcase before somebody pulled one of Aunt B’s capers and tried to lift some of my clothes. I had already decided if anybody put their hands on my stuff we’d go
head up. After I got my list together, I sat and thought. The challenge for me now would be making something out of nothing. How to make money when I had no money to start with.

Then I was hit by a brilliant idea. I jumped up from my cot and walked into the bedroom across the hall. “Noni, let me borrow a dollar. I need to make a couple of calls.”

“When am I gonna get it back?”

“Friday.”

“Alright, I’ll lend you one dollar, one time. If Friday comes and I don’t see you or my dollar, your credit is dead and don’t ask me for shit no more.”

“Cool,” I responded, got four quarters, and waited on this chick Jinja to get off the pay phone.

“Simone. What’s up girl, I got a deal for you. You got any money?”

“Yeah, I got a little something. Heard you were in some trouble.”

“Nah, I ain’t in no trouble, at least nothing I can’t handle. Listen, I got a list of shit I want you to pick up for me. It will run you about two hundred.”

Simone laughed. “It ain’t going to cost me nothing.”

“All the better,” I said. I read the list, told her to pack everything in a box. “I’ll call you back Friday morning. You’ll meet my girl, give the box to her. I’ll pay you for the stuff on Sunday night.”

I figured there were forty girls in here including me. Every one of us had sixty dollars a week, at least. Some had jobs. That meant altogether the girls in the House of Success took in a minimum of twenty-four hundred per week. There was no way I was gonna be standing around in some polyester McDonald’s suit saying May I help you, sir? Would you like a Coke with your fries? I would set up shop in here and provide everybody with what they needed. I would even help them to
understand
what they needed. I was locked in for three more weeks. That was three Fridays, which meant at best there was a maximum intake of seventy-two hundred. All I need is five thousand for myself. When I got my evening “privileges,” I’d invest my money in the streets, triple it at least, and get my own place, loot, and life. I might as well have Simone for a partner ’cause she understood business and wasn’t a gossip like Natalie. She was gonna have a baby soon and would need my help as well. We’d get paid together.

I spent every day up until Friday getting to know the girls in the
house. It wasn’t hard. Everyday I would get up, do my hair in a different fly style and rock my clothes like I was going out on a real special date. Only thing was, I really wasn’t going anywhere and everybody knew it. The girls watched me and asked me how I did my hair in a certain style, how I manicured my own hands, pedicured my own toes, and where I got my clothes and shoes from. I gave them answers. After a while they started asking questions about me, who am I, my background.

Eventually they started telling me about their lives. They liked my stories better, though, ’cause theirs were mostly hard-luck stories. I told them about the big birthday party Santiaga gave me on my fifth birthday. It was in the ballroom at a local hotel. Santiaga filled the room up with five hundred balloons, a hundred for every year I had been alive. All the little kids from the block came. I got my first party dress, the kind you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in when you’re thirteen but are delighted with when you’re five. I had Gucci patent leather loafers and white lace stockings. We took family photos together and Santiaga gave me a charm bracelet with a 24-karat gold elephant. Every year until I was twelve he gave me a new gold animal. When I turn thirteen, I turned the charm bracelet into a necklace. I didn’t wear it because by that time I had even better stuff, but I treasured it. Of course they asked where all my stuff was and I lied and told them in storage until my parents worked out their situation.