The Coldest Winter Ever (50 page)

Yet he never trained her to survive in the real world, the legitimate realm. There was no talk of managing savings and bank accounts. There was no talk of life insurance or trust funds. There was no talk of a cash reserve, property ownership, deed transfers, equity, godparents, a plan B, a plan C. He never prepared Winter for the legitimate business world. He knew that his “profession” was susceptible to collapse and seizure. Still, when he was incarcerated, in the absence of access to his team, he attempted to use an unprepared Winter to conduct business with his lawyer or at least to serve as his messenger girl.

I never got the sense that Santiaga knew that what he was not saying was so much more heavy than what he was saying. The everyday example he set was so loud. His style was so overwhelming. The words he shared with Winter could not counteract his actions. His words did not steer her away from wanting his lifestyle. In fact his everyday presence seduced her. It made everything else in the world look miniscule and unsuccessful. Him telling Winter, therefore, to forget about marrying someone like himself or Midnight, fell on deaf ears. In his last moments of freedom he tried to urge Winter toward “ ... one of these big-headed doctors, lawyers, engineer boys …” instead of desiring a man in the drug game. But, her definition, image, and understanding of manhood had already been cemented by the example his life choices had already set.

There is no sense in labeling Souljah the hater. The flimsiness of the foundation Santiaga built for his daughter was made obvious by Winter herself. When she dates Bullet and Midnight reveals to her that Bullet is from the other team—“While your daddy was being raided you were having drinks butt naked with the enemy”—Winter does not side with her father and refuse to have anything to do with the man who brought about her father’s downfall, according to his top lieutenant. We are not discussing here Winter’s words or her emotions. We are discussing her actual actions. She speaks of loving her father, being loyal to her father. When it comes right down to the bottom line, how deep is her love?

Love is a demonstrative word.
Webster’s
lists love as a noun. I believe
it is a verb, an action word. Love is supposed to make you do something. It is supposed to make you feel something deep and compelling that leads you to be unselfish, loyal, and protective. When someone violates the person you love, the least you can do is refuse to acknowledge, interact with, and support the enemy.

The fact of the matter is that Santiaga raised a daughter who was a hustler. A hustler’s first law is to get him or herself into a lucrative and sweet position. A hustler will trade anything for success, even people. A hustler will say anything, do anything, hurt anybody who stands in the way. Additionally, Winter’s criteria for choosing a man was based on what a man can do for her. Santiaga was down. Bullet was up. Therefore Winter chose Bullet, conveniently forgetting to support her father and ignoring the fact that Bullet was from the other team. “Family sticks together.”

The Mother-Daughter Relationship

“Momma didn’t work ’cause beauty, she said, was a full-time occupation.”

This is Winter’s description of her mother. All of the additional words and scenarios Winter spoke of were some version of the above quote. Winter’s mom gave Winter the tradition of women as physical, sexual beings, one-dimensional creatures. She taught Winter how to reach visual perfection. It was because of the mom that Winter knew how to dress and take care of her hair, skin, and nails. Her mom taught her what to be—“a bad bitch.” A bad bitch, according to the mother, is a woman who outshines every other woman. She is so alluring that she attracts the big fish, the man who is supposed to take care of her for the rest of her life. Winter’s mom taught Winter that “beautiful women are supposed to be taken care of.” They are supposed to shop, spend, and shop some more ’cause “like mom says, you can never have too much.” Although physical beauty and sexuality is one aspect of feminine power, what happened to the other 358 degrees of wisdom and understanding that should have transferred from mother to daughter? The absence of this information created a Winter Santiaga who was an emotional, mental, spiritual, and intellectual midget.

Moreover, the absence of a mother whose presence teaches love, compassion, intelligence, consideration, and consciousness leads to the creation of daughters and sons who cannot love anyone in a
wholesome way themselves. Consequently, the mother’s shortcomings become the daughter’s shortcomings.

Once Winter’s mother is shot in her face, her visual perfection is shattered. Since Winter was taught that this physical beauty was the essence of womanhood, and is in fact what makes you a “bad bitch,” the crooked face meant that her mother went from being a queen to becoming an irrelevant peasant.

We witnessed Winter’s lack of capacity for emotion in the treatment of her mom. When her mother returns from the hospital, she plots to gain control of her mother’s new red Mercedes Benz instead of having a genuine commitment to her mother’s healing. She’s thinking, well, I’m still beautiful, why waste too much time worrying about anything or anyone else?

After the takedown of her father and the seizure of his material possessions, Winter is forced to ride the New York City subway. She mentions being embarassed by her mom’s appearance. She turns her body away from her mother to pretend the two of them are not really sitting and riding together on the train.

Throughout the hard times Winter never sees her mother as an asset. The idea that two or three heads is better than one when attempting to solve a problem never crosses her mind. She does not respect her mother’s ability to think or hustle. Moreover, because her mother is now “ugly,” she looks at and treats her as if she’s useless.

Winter, as an emotional dwarf, lacks the awareness and intelligence to help her mom fight the mental illness and drug addiction that is quickly approaching. She thinks only of how her mother’s downfall will effect her friends’ image of herself.

In fact, after her Long Island home was raided, and all of the material possessions seized, Winter takes her mother’s last 700 dollars and selfishly hogs it to adorn herself with new clothes in the middle of a crisis situation. We could only wish that this was the worse of it. However, Winter Santiaga moves on to establish a life separate from her mother’s ruined life. She never once checks on her mother while she is living in the group home called The House of Success. Even after she gets the passes to go outside and move about freely. She never checks on her mother while living with Sister Souljah. In fact she uses her mother as a pawn in her game. She pretends that her mom is a cancer patient nearing death to manipulate the sympathy she knew would come from Souljah and Doc. Despite the fact that after the fall
of Santiaga thousands of dollars passed through the hands of Winter Santiaga at different time periods, she never gave, sent, or set aside money for her mother. Moreover, she never even intended to.

The only thing that Winter did ultimately give her mother was crack. She took it from the cookie jar in Bullet’s apartment and dropped it through the sliding slot in the door. She secretly watched as her mother groveled for it. She even listened as Bullet humiliated her mom, treating her like a common crackhead worthy of no kind of respect.

These attitudes and actions are what makes Winter the coldest Winter ever.

Winter and Her Sisters

While the Santiaga family is on top, Winter does the normal babysitting chores that an older sister would do in any family rich or poor. She takes Porsche to her dance lessons, the children to the mall. Winter’s all decked out in a T-shirt that reads, “These are not my fucking kids.” She is so perfect at always distinguishing herself as separate from and mostly above everyone else of any age. However, we never get a sense that the word
sister
has any deeper meaning in her mind and heart. We never hear her speak of them as more than an obligation, intrusion, or nuisance. In fact, in the presence of Midnight she views her sister Porsche as up and coming competition.

My eight-year-old sister wanted to fight me for the front seat of Midnight’s Acura. I told her to take her little ass in the back with the twins. I wondered what would make her think she could ride in the front seat with my man … Little girls start getting horny at a younger age every year.

While
Webster’s
dictionary offers a limited definition of the word sister, “a female having one or both parents in common with another individual,” I believe the word embodies so much more. As an older sister, Winter should have been her sister’s second most important teacher, after the mother. Whether a sister embraces the responsibility or not, the younger siblings, especially the girls, are using her everyday example and choices as a destination point. Most younger sisters aim to emulate their older sister whether or not she is a positive model.
They will be in a constant battle to seek the older sister’s attention, acknowledgment, and more importantly, approval.

When the Bureau of Child Welfare removes Winter’s sisters from her home, Winter has the appropriate outburst of anger at her housekeeper, Magdalena. However, if she actually loved her sisters is never made clear. Again, love is an action word. It’s supposed to make you feel something, do something compelling. It’s supposed to make you determined and powerful. Winter visits her sister Porsche once, along with the mother. At no point in the remaining months of her freedom does she pick up the phone to inquire about her three sisters. She does not send them a letter, card, clothes, toys, food, or cash. She does not ask anyone to check on them and report back or look after them for her. Nor does she ever visit them to offer a simple glance of solidarity and concern before her eventual incarceration.

Even in the novel’s final chapter Winter does not mention her sisters. It takes the jolt of her mother’s funeral for them to come into focus for her. We can assume they do, only because she can see them walking up to the gravesite. But couldn’t she feel them while they were gone? Why didn’t she wonder or care or cry or fight over them?

Winter, Friends, and Acquaintances

Winter romanticizes her friendships in the beginning of the novel. She believes that she and they are tight. However, the bond between Winter and anyone is only valid if Winter is in the higher and envied position. If her friends ever showed even a desire to reach for the place where Winter stands, she finds a way to cut them off, knock them down, put them in what she believed should be their permanent low position.

Winter betrays her best and lifelong friend Natalie. When Winter is forced to move back into her old Brooklyn neighborhood, she senses that Natalie has emerged as the new leader of her clique. When mutual friend Simone informs Winter that Natalie has a new man, a drug dealing hustler, Winter is not happy that Natalie has what she wants for herself. Instead, Winter becomes consumed by jealousy. The envy escalates as Winter feels challenged by the new clothes that Will has purchased for Natalie, which she wears to the concert. The idea that Natalie is seated in the box seats with her man Will, above the head of Winter who is seated below, is unacceptable to Winter. Upon
entering Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn after the show, Winter seethes as Natalie has all of their friends gathered at a table where she and her man Will are picking up the bill.

Innocently and conveniently Winter excuses herself and heads for the ladies room. Will follows under the guise of using a pay phone, despite the fact that he’s carrying his cell phone. In the hidden corridor he comes on to Winter, offering to drop Natalie and take good care of her. He feeds Winter’s ego, reminding her that she’s better than Natalie. Winter rejects him once, then yields to his charms and compliments. With her nipples fully erect, she gives Will her phone number and agrees to meet him later on that same night. The complete betrayal of her best friend of sixteen years takes less than sixteen minutes.

In business Winter betrays Lashay, the group home girl who served as the “middleman” in Winter’s clothing and hair business. The fact that LaShay helped Winter when she was confined in the group home did not make Winter treat her loyally. As soon as Winter received permission to come and go in the group home as she pleased, she dropped Lashay. She decided that the small piece of money she paid Lashay in a very profitable business, was better kept inside her own pocket.

When Winter receives a call from Simone, who got arrested while boosting clothes for Winter, she hangs up on her and refuses to use any of her personal money to get nine-months pregnant Simone out of the cold jail. Ultimately Simone, Winter’s girl from her Brooklyn block, and Lashay team up and attempt to attack Winter. In the pursuit of Winter, Simone falls, killing her unborn baby girl. At no point does Winter express regret, remorse, or even sympathy for Simone’s loss of her first child. Even in the final chapter of the novel Winter’s words concerning Simone are freezing; “She finally stopped blaming me for the death of her daughter. Or at least she puts up a good front.”

Winter moves on to betray Rashida, who was very helpful in Winter’s escape from the newly planned second group home attack. Rashida is also the girl who introduces Winter to Souljah. Rashida sets it up so Winter can safely reside at Souljah’s house, locate Midnight, and recover from the group home experience. Obviously Rashida had not done enough for Winter, who spoke against Rashida, assuring Souljah that she and Rashida were never even friends. Winter stops
communicating with Rashida, isolates her and focuses on robbing Doc and Sister Souljah, the two women who allowed her to stay in their New York home. Weeks later, Winter is successful in robbing both a church and an AIDS charity spearheaded by Sister Souljah.

Winter and Her Community

The most overlooked fact in
The Coldest Winter Ever
teaches us a lot about the character Winter and the readers who love her. In three years of touring after the publishing of
The Coldest Winter Ever,
no one has ever asked me about Chapter 16, where Winter fills a sock full of rocks then beats a female senior citizen with them. In describing her attack on the old lady, Winter says: