Weeks passed like that, me stayin’ in a room that didn’t feel like mine, wearin’ the same two hoodies ‘cause I ain’t have anyone to wash my clothes right. I kept everything to myself ‘cause I ain’t have nobody to tell. My grandma came by when she could, but it wasn’t often ‘cause she didn’t drive and the buses took forever. When she hugged me, I held on tight ‘cause she was the only person left who made me feel like I mattered. She kept sayin’ she was workin’ on gettin’ me out of Trevior’s house, but the days kept stretchin’ out and I still had to go back there every night.
I tried to act normal at school ‘cause that was the only place where people didn’t treat me like I was nothin’. I sat with my friends at lunch and they tried to make me laugh, but I couldn’t find my voice the same way no more. I didn’t rap on the playground like I used to. I didn’t twirl in circles or make up dumb jokes. I just sat around quiet and watched other kids run across the blacktop like their lives was the same as yesterday. They wasn’t walkin’ through hallways pretendin’ to be okay when they were fallin’ apart inside.
One mornin’, I came to school with a bruise on my arm that I tried to cover with my sleeve, but my teacher, Mrs. Lattimore, caught me pullin’ at the fabric. She had sharp eyes that didn’t miss nothin’. She asked what happened, and I told her I fell. She looked at me for a long time before kneelin’ in front of my desk and softly askin’ again. I stared at the lil’ unicorn sticker on her badge and whispered the same lie ‘cause I ain’t know what elseto say. She ain’t push me, but she touched my hand real gentle and said she needed to call somebody who could help me.
By lunchtime, a lady from Child Protective Services showed up. She sat with me in the counselor’s office askin’ questions in a soft voice. I kept my eyes on my shoes the whole time ‘cause I didn’t want her to see how scared I was. She asked about my mama, asked how things were at home, asked where the bruise came from. I swallowed hard and said I didn’t know. She didn’t believe me and she wasn’t supposed to. She asked if there was someone else in my family who could take me, and I felt my chest loosen a lil’ ‘cause I knew she was talkin’ about Grandma Glo.
They called her and she came as fast as she could. She hugged me right there in the office and told me pack my things ‘cause she wasn’t lettin’ me go back with Trevior. I held on to her so tight my fingers hurt, and she held me back like she was relieved to finally get me out of there. I ain’t know what would happen next, but I knew I didn’t have to sleep in that cold house no more. That was enough for me in that moment.
Later that day, my grandma took me to her house in the roughest part of Greystone City. Her house was small, just three bedrooms and a lil’ livin’ room that smelled like fried food and incense, and it was packed with people. Uncle Darnell and Uncle Reggie, her grown sons, lived there. They was in their early thirties and always had friends comin’ in and out the door, loud music playin’, card games goin’ into the night, and cigarette smoke driftin’ through the hallway. There was lil’ cousins runnin’ around, family friends sleepin’ on couches, and people laughin’ or arguin’ at all hours. It felt like a house that never rested.
I didn’t have my own room. Sometimes I slept on the couch, sometimes on a makeshift pallet in Uncle Darnell’s old room when he wasn’t home, and sometimes I slept at the footof my grandma’s bed. I tried to make myself small ‘cause I didn’t understand how dangerous it was to be a lil’ girl in a house full of grown men who didn’t follow rules or care about boundaries. I only knew I needed to listen to my grandma, help her with chores, and stay out the way.
Uncle Darnell and Uncle Reggie smiled at me in ways that ain’t feel right. They made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how to explain it. I didn’t have big words for that kind of fear. I only knew they was supposed to come in my space or touch me or whisper things that made my skin crawl. I kept quiet ‘cause I thought that was the only way to survive in the house. I thought if I didn’t complain or make noise, maybe they would leave me alone and stop raping me. But being quiet didn’t save me. They still crossed lines no grown man should ever cross with a child. They violated the trust I didn’t even know I was supposed to have.
I didn’t tell nobody. Not my grandma, not the teachers, not the other kids at school. I didn’t have the words, and I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I tried. I carried it inside, right next to the pain of losin’ my mama. I tucked everything deep so it wouldn’t spill out. I got quiet on purpose. I learned how to smile when I needed to, laugh when someone told a joke, and act normal so nobody could see what was really happenin’. I became good at pretendin’ ‘cause I ain’t have a choice.
Months passed and the house never stopped movin’. Kids yelled, babies cried, grown men laughed too loud, women argued in the kitchen, and music blasted through the walls until midnight. I lived in a storm and had to find my own quiet on the inside ‘cause nobody else was gonna give it to me. I did my homework on the floor with my back against the couch ‘cause that was the only spot that felt kinda mine. I kept my clothes folded in a lil’ bag under the bed ‘cause I ain’t have a dresser. I washed my face in the kitchen sink when the bathroom wastoo crowded. I hugged my pillow at night even though it was lumpy and thin ‘cause it was the only soft thing I owned.
One night, after everything had been goin’ on for too long and my head felt too heavy with secrets, I finally broke a lil’. There was chaos outside the bathroom door, people yellin’ about somethin’ in the livin’ room, kids runnin’ up and down the hall, and pots bangin’ in the kitchen. I climbed into the old moldy tub and pulled my knees up to my chest. The tub was cold and cracked, the water drippin’ slow from the rusted faucet, but it felt like the only place in the house where I could breathe by myself.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my face against my knees. My body shook even though I wasn’t cold. I ain’t wanna cry ‘cause I thought cryin’ meant I wasn’t strong, but the tears slipped out anyway. They fell warm and quiet down my face and landed on my knees while I tried to swallow the sobs. I cried ‘cause I missed my mama. I cried ‘cause I ain’t understand why nobody wanted to protect me. I cried ‘cause I was nine and the world felt too big and too mean and too heavy for me to carry.
I cried for a long time until my head hurt. And when the tears finally stopped, I wiped my face and told myself I had to get up and keep goin’. I had to keep everythin’ to myself ‘cause talkin’ didn’t fix nothin’ in my world. That night in the tub, I learned how to break quietly, and that was the night I realized I had to grow up quicker than any lil’ girl should ever have to.
Greystone City
A bitch couldn’t even lie… life was a real bitch and she was whoopin’ on my ass like I stole somethin’, and I used to sit up and wonder how a lil’ girl like me was supposed to fight back when every corner I turned felt like it had another hit waitin’. I got through elementary school on pure survival, movin’ through each day like I was learnin’ how to walk around with pain in my pockets so deep I couldn’t pull it out even if I tried. I laughed with my friends at recess, I played double dutch, and sometimes I still rapped silly lil’ bars ‘cause I didn’t know how else to feel normal, but the whole time I was carryin’ a world that should’ve crushed me.
Middle school came and shit didn’t magically get better. I grew taller, my voice got louder, and I learned how to starepeople down so they wouldn’t try me, yet I still felt like a kid walkin’ through fire with no shoes on. I ran away from home more times than anybody knew about. Sometimes I slept at a friend’s house, sometimes I hid at the park on the far side of Greystone until the sun came up, and sometimes I walked all night ‘cause walkin’ felt safer than bein’ inside a house where I was scared to breathe too loud. Each time I went back, I told myself maybe shit would change, but they never did. I was a lil’ girl with bruises on her arms and secrets in my mind, and nobody around me wanted to open they damn eyes long enough to see it.
By the time I hit eighth grade, I felt older than my classmates even though we was the same age. They cared about crushes and shoes and music videos while I cared about gettin’ through the week without somethin’ happenin’ to me. I knew how to fight already, I knew how to curse grown men out in my head even when I ain’t dare say that shit out loud, and I knew how to lie to teachers with a straight face when they asked if I was okay. I wasn’t okay, but the world around me didn’t care about lil’ Black girls who wasn’t okay. The world just expected me to keep movin’.
High school came and left real fast ‘cause I ain’t make it far enough to finish. I used to sit in class tryna pay attention to math, but half the time my mind was somewhere else wonderin’ how I was supposed to survive another day in my grandma’s house when Darnell and Reggie walked around like kings and everybody treated them bitches like they ain’t never done nothin’ wrong. People came in and out that house like it was a bus station. There was cousins sleepin’ on couches, aunties in the kitchen tryna stretch meals, and neighborhood kids runnin’ wild down the hallway. The house was small and loud and messy, and even though Grandma Glo loved me more thananybody else in the world, I could still feel the danger every time the sun went down.
The day one of my aunties walked in on Darnell layin’ on top me naked, I froze so hard my whole body felt numb. She stopped in the doorway with a confused look on her face, like she wasn’t sure what she was seein’, and before I could even breathe right, she pulled the door half-closed and walked away. She ain’t say a bitch ass thing. She ain’t yell for Grandma or try to pull me out that room. She just walked away, and that moment taught me somethin’ I wasn’t supposed to learn that young. It taught me that Black families will ignore abuse to protect the niggas they gave birth to. It taught me that love don’t always come with protection. It taught me that silence is more powerful than truth in houses where shame is stronger than honesty.
Grandma Glo found out eventually ‘cause secrets don’t stay buried in small houses, and when she looked at me with tears in her eyes, I ain’t know if she was cryin’ for me or cryin’ for the lil’ boys she pushed out her body who grew into grown-ass men doin’ shit they had no business doin’. She grabbed my face in her hands and told me she was sorry, but she also told me that sometimes men make mistakes and God wants us to forgive. She said the Bible teaches forgiveness, and family gotta stick together. She loved me, but she loved them too, and she ain’t know how to carry both truths in her heart. So she asked me to understand, but she didn’t understand what it felt like to be me.
I ain’t judge her ‘cause I was too tired to be mad. I been tired since I was nine. I wasn’t mad at her, I was mad at life, mad at God, mad at the world for bein’ so cruel to lil’ girls like me who didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I forgave her ‘cause she was all I had left, but I learned to keep my pain quiet. I learned how to smile even when my body felt like it wasn’t mine. I learned how toact tough even when I wanted to scream. I learned to become a version of myself that didn’t flinch at nothin’.
By sixteen, I had already lived three lives. I was in the streets more than I was in school. I dropped out ‘cause goin’ to class didn’t make sense when I needed to make money. Grandma Glo was older and tired and she did everything she could to hold the house together, but the bills ain’t care about her age. The gas company ain’t care. The rent ain’t care, so I started sellin’ lil’ bags of weed ‘cause that was the easiest thing to flip. Later I sold pills ‘cause they made me more money, and when the nights got too cold and my pockets got too empty, I did what I had to do with my body ‘cause I ain’t know any other way. I wasn’t proud of it, but pride don’t feed you, and shame don’t pay bills.
The whole time, my cousin Sha’Nelle rode for me like we shared blood twice. She was Grandma Glo’s granddaughter too, and she was just as wild as me. She had a mouth on her since elementary school, and by the time we hit our teens, she was the only person who really felt like home. We fought together, ran the streets together, and slept shoulder to shoulder when we ain’t have nowhere else to go. Sha’Nelle understood me without me havin’ to explain myself. She never judged me for how I made money or how I survived. She said the world was built wrong and we was just learnin’ how to live in it.
People said we was trouble, but they ain’t know our story. They didn’t know we wasn’t trouble; we was hurt. We was girls who grew up in chaos and learned to fight with our teeth, our fists, and our spirit. We laughed loud, cursed louder, and dared a muthafucka to tell us we wasn’t strong.
My hair was long and thick and beautiful, fallin’ all the way down my back, but I used to hide it under scarves or braids ‘cause I ain’t want nobody touchin’ me or complimentin’ me. Ididn’t want attention. I didn’t want nobody lookin’ at me like I was somethin’ they could take. My real hair felt too tied to the girl I used to be, the girl who cried in a moldy tub and prayed for someone to save her. I ain’t wanna be her no more. I wanted to switch up, and turn into somebody who couldn’t be touched. I wanted to be somebody who couldn’t be hurt, and couldn’t be broken.
One night when Sha’Nelle and I was sittin’ on the back porch, passin’ a blunt back and forth while we shared a bottle of cheap liquor, I felt myself shatterin’ inside. The smoke curled around us while the streetlights flickered, and the liquor warmed my chest, but it didn’t warm my soul. I stared at the cracked concrete and said I hated myself. Sha’Nelle blew out smoke and looked at me with this tired kind of love that only girls like us know how to give.
“If you hate her,” she said, “then stop been’ her. Switch it up, bitch. Be somebody else. Fuck it. Change your whole identity. Ain’t nobody stoppin’ you.”
I sat there real quiet ‘cause the words slid into me like truth. Maybe I ain’t have to stay this version of myself. Maybe I could build a new me. Maybe I could take control of somethin’ for once.
The next mornin’ we caught the bus to the hair store on Marbury Avenue. The store smelled like incense, cheap perfume, and plastic. The walls was covered in weaves, braiding hair, and synthetic wigs in bright colors that looked like they belonged to cartoon characters. The aisles was overcrowded with edge controls, hair grease, bonnets, gels, and jewelry that sparkled under the yellow lights.
When I walked past a row of wigs, a bright red one caught my eye. It was bold and loud and didn’t apologize for takin’ up space. The color was reckless, and it reminded me of fire, and for the first time in years I felt somethin’ spark inside me.Sha’Nelle nudged me toward it with her shoulder and grinned like she already knew this was the moment.
