The Coldest Winter Ever (45 page)

Momi pointed out what route to take and which ones to avoid. How to walk foward and watch behind you at the same time. She told me never to eat or drink from anyone else’s house or hand, not even a so-called friend. She told me to never go into anyone’s house without her permission no matter what. She told me if she granted her permission for me to visit a friend, I was never to go into their bedroom. I was never to allow anyone to take me into a room alone and close the door. She told me not to talk to strangers, especially men with their drugs, teenagers with their tricks, or fast little girls or women. At the end of this lesson in bravery, my greatest fears were born.

I was afraid of drugs, needles, smoking, the people who used them, the people who sold them. I was afraid of the way the drugs caused the people to act. I was afraid of the way drugs caused the drug taker to look. I was afraid of what the drugs “made” people do. I was afraid of the drug dealers too. I did not fear the boogey man or monsters. There was no evil green or red guy with horns under my bed. There was only the men who were described as “the pushers,” who might slip something into the punch bowl at the block party and make the minds and hearts of all of us children and adults change forever.

In my deepest thoughts, drugs were responsible for changing love to “I don’t give a fuck.” They were responsible for turning beautiful girls into ugly old hoes in a matter of weeks. They were responsible for turning good men—fathers, brothers, and sons—into enemies to be feared and despised. I was afraid of a thing so powerful it could make a child not love her own mother. Or a father not love his sons and daughters.

So I buried myself in books. I separated myself from people who I deemed were not in their right minds. I even slept on top of my arms at night, so no one could inject them with heroin while I slept. I did not eat or drink from others. I did not accept even the gas mask at the dentist’s office, for fear the gas would make me high, ignorant, broke down, and most of all out of control of my mind, and separated from my true feelings, the ones God gave me at birth.

So I guess it’s not so suprising that as a grown woman, I would write about the effects and impact of drugs, the topic that troubled, frightened, and disturbed me so much as a child.

2. Is
The Coldest Winter Ever
a true story?

No. My novel is not based on a true story. However, it is based on real events that happen every day. That’s why it feels so real. After all, drugs are real. Drug dealers are real. Drug wars are real. The ghetto is real. Jail is real. The state is real. The consequences of drugs are the most real; the shootings, disappearances, kidnappings, murders, the slow death, the quick spurts of wealth, shopping sprees, then shocking downfalls into poverty. All of that is real.

So many people have felt
The Coldest Winter Ever
so deeply. They believe that it is their own story. The incredible thing to me is the idea that anyone thinks a drug tale can be their own private or personal story when everyone in the drug “game,” thousands and thousands of people, have all experienced the same exact thing: material wealth, spiritual poverty, shootings, killings, fear, pain, loss, incarceration, and devastated families and friends.

I felt that in weaving this tale in an attractive and dynamic way, I was bringing forth a gift that would free thousands of youth and families who believed these horrible and crazy things were only happening to them. I believed I could place into the minds of the young certain universal truths about drugs, growing up, family, sex, and life. I was certain that it was needed.

The focus of the modern drug tales needed to switch, I thought. So many writers had taken time to write books and screenplays about the rise of drug kingpins and their empires. I thought the effect of
The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas,
and
New Jack City,
had been to cause poor young black and Latino boys and men to identify heavily with the real poverty and truly emasculating conditions that created the drug dealer in the first place. Of course, they then accepted that the drug dealing business was a justifiable, suitable, and acceptable way to rise out of poverty. It would elevate them from the underclass, not into the working class, but into tremendous wealth and power. They loved the way the characters in these books and films went from being boldly disrespected to being respected, served, and feared. They loved the way the characters beat the system, the same one that had them
trapped. These books and films became the
Black Boys’ Guide to Business.
In the ghetto, barrios, and favelas, the actor Al Pacino, star of
Scarface,
the movie, became more well-known, impactful, and heroic than Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, and Bob Johnson.

The effect of these books and movies was swift. It swept through our community like an airborne infection. The message was loud and clear. Only the men who were willing to become killers and enemies to their own people could make it to the top. Only the men willing to become ruthless would become respected. Only the men with real money could become substantial providers and receive the admiration of their women and children.

But who was going to tell the story that focused on the fall of a drug kingpin, and of how he descends back into poverty and slavery? How the state places him back in chains naked and pinned in, chained to another slave just like him? How he loses everything he ever loved? How he murdered his own friends and family? How the world pimps his unprotected daughters and dwarfs then devours his sons? I wanted to suck the romanticism out of those blockbuster books and films, all of which I had read and seen, like most ghetto youth.

My decision to tell my tale through the voice of a teenage ghetto female quenched another desire I had for a long time, the desire to write and show an authentic version of black girls, teens, and women. I felt that Hollywood had completely missed the real story of black girls and women. They had created female images that for me were simply figments of their imagination. They were not authentic. The sound of their voices, the depth of their thoughts, their manner of speech, their style of dress, the gravity of their hearts, the varying levels of love, the challenges they faced, and their attitudes had been all wrong. Writing
The Coldest Winter Ever
for me was to set it straight, to capture an array of black female personalities, to explore the many psychoses, the real strengths and weaknesses. To allow female characters to speak free from cultural domination or projections of how others thought we are. To get it right, finally.

It was also an opportunity for me to set a new blueprint and criteria for depicting accurate ghetto girls, teens, and women. Hopefully this one book will help to free black actors from having to fit themselves into the strangely written roles and characters that have been misrepresenting them for years, yet may have paid the bills. Additionally, I hope it will
help girls living in and outside the hood to understand that there are many women who you may model yourself after, as you attempt to come into your womanhood. You can be Winter or you can be Sister Souljah. You can be Mrs. Santiaga, or you could be Doc, the medical doctor who owned the building in which Sister Souljah lived. You could become Natalie, famous for blow jobs, or you could become Rashida, who took the help from concerned others and healed herself. I wanted to show all of these different girls and women and the consequences of their choices. This way a young female can pick up the book and decide which one she really wants to be.
Which reality and consequence can she really handle?

After I wrote the novel and it became popular, I was invited to speak at Danbury Federal Prison. I was invited by Kemba Smith, a young lady who was incarcerated for being the girlfriend of a drug dealer. I was amazed as I stood in the room with about three hundred young female inmates. First of all, they looked familiar, although I did not know any of them personally. They rocked the same hairstyles, had the same bodies and faces you would see anywhere in our hood. The group was made up of hundreds of mostly black and Latino women who had all been convicted and locked down for long periods of time because they were in love with a drug dealer, letting him bag up and cook up in their apartment, carrying a package from one location to another, or doing something simple like answering his phone calls, standing beside him at the wrong moment, riding in his car, or receiving and spending his money.

I thought about how incredibly important my novel was at that moment. I thought about how
The Coldest Winter Ever
could become responsible for thousands of teenagers, women and men, staying out of prison because they read the book and now understood the truth of the drug deathstyle, the truth that had been for so many years either shrouded in secrecy or glamorized by Hollywood. I became proud of myself, standing there. I became hopeful that I was on the right path in fulfilling my purpose in this short life. I thought about how this was only one women’s prison in America. There were several more. I had already made the rounds as an activist and speaker in various male prisons. I knew those were stuffed to the breaking point with our boys and men, fathers, brothers, and sons.

I had already been to a women’s prison where the incarcerated thirty- to fortyfiveyearold women who were HIV positive were
secluded in one particular wing. But at Danbury, the young females looked strong and healthy. You could be walking down the street or taking a class seated right beside them and not tell the difference between them and anyone else. They did not appear to be drug addicted, sick, or crazy. They appeared to have been ignorant of their reality, the consequences and losses that the “drug game” would create. They were unaware of the specific laws of the United States of America. They were unfamiliar with the intricacies of a conspiracy charge, what it meant and the long extreme punishment it would carry. They had never thought that the men whom they loved and held down (some of them) would receive lesser sentences or none at all. They had never thought that during their incarceration in an unbreakable female prison, their man, or baby’s daddy, would never even write them a letter, pay into their commissary, give them a visit, or take care of his children whom the newly imprisoned mother left out in the world.

I imagined that most of them had seen or personally experienced the majority of things I had written about in my book. I knew that they knew, that Sister Souljah had not been a street girl and had not participated in the drug game. I understood then why they felt they owned the story, that it was them and theirs, that they were Winter Santiaga. I now accept that the novel that I wrote has a life of its own beyond me, the author.

3. How did you write the story so authentically when you said that since your early childhood, you separated yourself from people who used and/or sold drugs?

Yes, great question. As a child, I was engulfed by fear. As I grew, I made a point to learn. I came into knowledge. Knowledge frees you from fear. It brings about complete understanding. It offers each of us the opportunity to explain and develop solutions to the problems we once ran away from.

At age ten my mother moved us out of the New York projects. We were now officially homeless. We moved in with my grandmother who lived in a small house in the half black, half white suburbs of Northern New Jersey. She accepted us, but we were not welcomed. True, I was out of the ghetto, but my ghetto upbringing was within me. People say “Hey, Souljah, you only did six years in the projects,”
from age four through ten. I say so what? How many years do you have to be in Vietnam, or Korea, or Iraq, or Afghanistan to know your ass is at war, or at least under attack? Can those ghetto feelings, observations, the intensity of them, can that ever leave you? Impossible.

Besides, the black suburbs had problems too. There were still drugs, drug dealers, cultural confusion, and even murders. There was no peace in the souls of the humans who surrounded me. Yet everything looked better, was dressed up and nicely secured behind closed doors framed by manicured lawns. The coverup was much more orchestrated.

I was a hard worker on every aspect of my life. I worked hard at my studies. I worked hard at maintaining and improving my body. I worked hard at balancing my emotional self. I worked hard at praying, staying sincere in word and deed, and remaining spiritually connected. I worked hard to combat my poverty and the suffering of my family members. I came to be someone who respected work intensely. I never ran away from it.

I emerged from high school, therefore, a quiet but well-known young lady with a reputation for having a sharp mind, quick wit, and for being a fierce debater. I was the president of my freshman and sophomore classes. I was a thespian, lead actress in all of the school plays. I ran track, played volleyball and basketball. I was captain of the high school rifle team. I played the clarinet. I wrote for the school newspaper,
The Oracle.
I wrote for the literary magazine,
The Eagle.
I was the student liaison to the Board of Education. I had lunch with the principals, the mayor, and the head of the Board of Education. I won several oratorical contests on the U.S. Constitution. At sixteen years old, I went to Washington, D.C., as a legislative intern. I wrote a book of poetry and recited a few pieces on a New York–based television show. I attended Cornell University as preparatory, earning six college credits while still a high school student. Still I worked at McDonald’s, delivered the town newspaper to local homes on foot, and worked telemarketing jobs. I was the girl who had never smoked weed. I never did a drug. I never took an alcoholic drink. I was still in love with the human soul. I was still in love with black people, our unique experience, challenges, and lives. I was still in love with love. Yes, I was separate, urgent, intense and “deep.”

Upon entering Rutgers University, I learned concisely and precisely the history of the United States. I was introduced to books,
facts, and ideas that were never accessible to me in my local library or in public school. I read
The Mis-education of the Negro, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Assata, Institutional Racism in America, A People’s History of the United States, One Hundred Years of Lynching, When and Where I Enter, The Soledad Brother, Blood in My Eye, The Wretched of the Earth, Before the Mayflower, The Choice, Native Son,
and
American Hunger,
among a host of other books. Reading became my way of having the conversations that desperately needed to happen between people but were not. Reading kept me more than well informed. Reading became my means of mind travel.