Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [15]
Sure, certain memories of her floated through my mind—the times I met her in the park, the time she locked me in the closet. I thought about her beauty. And how she died the death I’d seen my whole life on the street. Her highs took her to an early grave. I didn’t even go to her grave. I don’t know where it is.
You’d think her death would have scared me or set me straight. But hell, I wasn’t no junkie. I wasn’t about to blow coke up my nose and shoot dope in my veins. I wasn’t interested in the crack pipe. That shit was for fools.
What interested me was danger.
Going to the edge.
And then over the edge.
I can’t tell you why, but at a time when other thirteen-year-olds were buying frilly dresses and training bras, I was buying guns.
I was leaving the LMP crew to hang more and more with the boys.
I was running wild.
Mama saw what was happening. She saw me skipping school for days at a time and coming home late or not at all.
One morning I got home just as Mama was making breakfast. She stopped cooking her oatmeal and gave me a look. Wasn’t a hard look and it wasn’t a mean look. Mama don’t got no mean in her. It was a look that said, Girl, you breaking my heart.
“Can we talk, child?” she asked me.
“Sure, Mama.”
“You been out there on those streets,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I assured her. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m afraid for you, baby.”
“Mama,” I said, “you don’t gotta be afraid.”
“I’m afraid I’m losing you.”
“That ain’t ever gonna happen,” I told her.
“I pray for you every night, Felicia. When you ain’t home, I pray that angels be watching over you. I pray for your protection, honey.”
“I know you do,” I said, “and I love you for it.”
“I fear those people out there, baby. I fear they turning you the wrong way.”
I hated when Mama talked this way ’cause I had no answers. She was right. I was being turned the wrong way. I saw it, but I wasn’t about to stop it. Something like a fever had come over me. But it wasn’t no twenty-four-hour fever. The fever felt permanent. The fever provided chills and thrills. Even when Mama was talking good sense to me, I felt the fever. The fever had more power over me than Mama’s warnings.
“When you gonna stop this nonsense, Felicia?” she asked.
“Soon, Mama,” I lied. “Real soon.”
BONKERS
Mama wasn’t the only one who warned me.
Uncle did the same. Fact is, Uncle was always preaching to me.
I remember one afternoon when the streets were slick with rain. We were riding in his Cadillac, going from one of his shops to another. He was making sure his business was straight.
“You gotta get out of this business,” he said. “You gotta just think about school.”
“I’m thinking about school,” I said. “I’m doing good in school.”
“You doing good in this business,” he said. “See, that’s the problem, Snoop. You do good at something you got no business doing.”
“Same as you.”
“No, ain’t the same as me. I’m a man and I know what I’m doing. I got kids. I got money to make. You don’t gotta do nothing but study.”
“I am studying,” I said.
“You ain’t studying nothing but these here streets.”
He wasn’t wrong. And he wasn’t convincing. Neither was Father. Fact is, my street shit was getting bigger. I was doing more than just working the corners. I was doing little jobs for operators who needed someone they could count on.
For example, nigga came up to and said, “See that bitch over there, she stole my dope. I want you to beat her ass.”
“I ain’t killing no one,” I said.
“Don’t want her killed, Snoop. Just hurt real bad.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Fifty now. Fifty when it’s done.”
I waited a day, followed her down the street, and pulled her in the alley. Pistol-whipped her hard, then beat her with a table leg. Broke her leg and shoulder.
“Satisfied?” I asked the nigga.
He handed me the other fifty, no questions asked.
I was in the back of a stolen car. We pulled up to a gas station. My partner, the driver, started pumping gas. Cops pulled up next to us. The driver got scared and started looking all paranoid. When we saw the cops running our plates,