Chapter 2

Boss

To understand a nigga like me, you first have to understand my past. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. It was home to the Cardinals, the Rams, the Arch, and - just like any other modern day city - it was also home to several rundown, crime-infested ghettos. The Cochran Housing Projects was one of the grittiest and grimiest parts of our up-and-coming town. It was full of hustlers, hoes, pimps, dopemen, and even its fair share of dopewomen. It also happened to be the place I called home. I earned my stripes there. Me and my niggas did so much dirt up in the halls of that muthafucka that to this day I’m still shocked that we ever made it out. Shit was that deep. If I wasn’t eatin’, smokin’, or fuckin’, I was slangin’ dope. It wasn’t what I envisioned myself growing up and becoming back when I was just a little nigga, but dreams don’t always come true. I figured that shit out a long time ago. Dreams was for white boys living in big white houses with they rich white mamas and daddies. A nigga like me only dreamed when I was sleeping; the rest of the time, I held shit down. I had no other choice.

I was raised by a d sraised single mother and abandoned by a deadbeat father who didn’t give a fuck about me one way or the other. My moms gave birth to her first child when she was only thirteen-years-old. She wasn’t old enough to get a legal gig with hourly pay and medical benefits, so she did what her own mother had done and turned to the world’s oldest profession: my mother was a prostitute. She was degraded and humiliated on a daily basis, but she endured it all for the well-being of her child.

By the time she was fifteen, she was pregnant again - and by the time she was eighteen, she was the mother of four small children. We all had different daddies, but in the end it didn’t matter much. None of them stuck around. None of them even came to visit.

I was the youngest and the only boy, and being raised by women made me a better man. I understood the things women had to go through to survive. I wasn’t no stupid nigga; Real bitches had my utmost respect - but fake-ass gold diggin’ bitches got no love. I could fuck them, but I couldn’t fuck with them.

Single mothers were my Kryptonite; every time I saw one breaking her back to provide for her kids, that shit broke my heart. They reminded me of my own mother, who died when I was only eleven-years-old. Erika Clark was a strong-ass woman, but even she couldn’t deal with the pain and secrets that came along with her occupation. So one night, while my big sisters and I slept doubled up on two thin twin-size mattresses on the floor, she swallowed forty sleeping pills and went to bed as usual – but she never again regained consciousness. The next morning, I was the one who found my mother’s cold, lifeless body. If I live to be a hundred years old, I’ll never get that image out of my head; it fucked me up in ways I could never explain. The center of our family was gone...she left us...she had a choice, and she chose to leave us - how the fuck do you get over something like that?

My oldest sister Monica was a soldier. Even though she was only sixteen when our mother committed suicide, she did what she had to do; she was forced to play the role of mother. She dropped out of high school her junior year and took a factory job making seven dollars an hour in order to provide for us.

Shit was tough, to say the least. I turned to the streets and to my niggas for acceptance; instead, all I found was trouble. I became reckless, living every day as if it were my last. I was so fucking arrogant that I dared God to test me, then laughed at Him when he didn’t. Selling dope came easy to me. I even started robbing niggas just for the rush. Bitches were lining up behind their cousins and best friends to get dicked d r get didown; I thought I was untouchable - but I was wrong.

On the night of my fourteenth birthday, I was shot in the chest six times and left for dead - just like a dog in the middle of the street. Nobody ever told me how fucking hot slugs are when they’re ripping through your flesh. I thought I was going to die, but after three long, painful months in the hospital, I made a full recovery. The next week, I was right back on the block hustlin’; the streets were calling. When I found out just how much money I could make in the drug game full-time, I dropped out of school with the quickness. It was time for me to take some of the weight off my sister and start standing on my own two feet. Being a kid was over; I was the man of the family, and real men take care of theirs.

Following in my mother’s footsteps, I was set to be a parent before I was even legally able to drive. Gina was just a chick from the hood I used to fuck from time to time. She was a ghetto treat at five-foot-three inches tall and one hundred thirty pounds of pure thickness. Her round hips and tree trunk thighs were the first things that caught my eye. When she turned around and I got a full view of that ass - a nigga was hooked. She didn’t have much in the chest area, but that fat ghetto booty more than made up for it; I was a sucker for an ass like that. Her caramel skin, light brown eyes, and shoulder-length reddish brown hair didn’t hurt either. I suspected she got pregnant on purpose, but it was too late to go back and strap on one of those Magnums I kept in my top nightstand drawer.

We were both only fifteen-years-old and about to be parents, and our shorty was going to bond us for life - whether we liked it or not. Gina and I tried to live together. We got a small two-bedroom apartment, but that didn’t last long. I continued to fuck other chicks while Gina began demanding a commitment from me. Once she realized that shit wasn’t happening, she moved back in with her mother - but I stayed put; I’d gotten a taste of freedom, and I liked it. It felt good not to have to answer to anyone or live by their rules. I loved my big sisters, but if I wanted to sit on my couch butt-ass naked watching a porno and smoking a fat-ass blunt, that was my prerogative. I didn’t have to ask permission for a chick to spend the night, and I didn’t have to worry about making too much noise while we were fucking. That was the life: I was the king of my castle, and if anybody didn’t like it they could get the fuck out - my house, my rules.

A month after I moved out, my oldest sister Monica was shot and killed in a convenience store robbery. She always said that her pack-a-day smoking habit was going to kill her, but she had no idea it would h/spa it woappen like that. Once again, I was heartbroken. First I lost my mother, then I lost my second mother. I started getting high more often. Smoking blunt after blunt was the only way to ease the pain; it didn’t make it go away completely, but it did dull it enough for me to get shit done.

Even though I was the youngest, I took it upon myself to take care of my sisters. Monique was just a year older than me, and Michelle was just two older than her. They were both still in school, and that was where I wanted them to stay. They might not have liked the life I was living, but it kept a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs; nothing else mattered to me. I did the dirt so they wouldn’t have to. They didn’t have to like it, but they were damn sure going to respect it.