Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [33]
I’m walking down the hallways, on my way to the rec room, with the shit just getting louder and louder, when I see a girl on the phone. I know her from the neighborhood.
She puts down the phone and says to me, “Snoop, I just heard about Uncle. I suppose you know already.”
“Know what?”
“He dead.”
“What you mean dead?”
“What part of ‘dead’ don’t you understand? The motherfucker ain’t breathing no more.”
“He ain’t dead,” I say. “He was just here visiting me.”
“He dead all right. Drug deal went bad. The word is that he went to drop off two bricks and some nigga turned on him. Shot him up real bad.”
I look this bitch in her eyes. I see she ain’t lying. But I also know that I can’t deal with the truth.
I go through something strange.
I tell myself this ain’t happening.
I haven’t walked down the hallway.
I haven’t seen homegirl talking on the phone.
She didn’t look at me.
I didn’t look at her.
She didn’t open her mouth.
She didn’t tell me nothing.
She didn’t say Uncle’s dead.
Uncle’s not dead.
Uncle’s alive.
None of this happening.
Uncle was just here visiting me. Uncle gave me good encouragement. Uncle gave me the word I needed.
He’ll be back to visit. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after.
Everything’s cool.
When I get out of here, first thing I’ll do is run over to Uncle’s crib. He’ll be there with his wife and kids. He’ll greet me with that big smile of his. We’ll hug. We’ll sit down to lunch and he’ll tell me how proud he is of me.
It’ll be beautiful.
Uncle’s beautiful.
Uncle’s not dead.
He can’t be.
It didn’t happen.
LOSING IT
It did happen.
It took me a few minutes, and I was back to reality. Homegirl had told me that Uncle was dead. Her words were true, and just like that, I snapped.
I ripped the pay phone from the wall and threw it on the cement floor. Then I threw myself on the floor and started screaming.
Never in my life had I ever gone into this kind of rage: hitting my head on the floor, hitting again and again until I passed out.
Later they told me that the Turtles—the armed guards who worked at Grandma’s House—had to haul me off. It took four of them to contain me. When I woke up, I was in the mental ward. The way I was acting, they were scared I’d kill myself. And they weren’t wrong to be scared.
If it weren’t for the good-hearted guards that stayed by my side and saw me through, I might have done just that. But those guards were like the doctors who saved me when I was a cross-eyed crack baby. They got me through some of the worst days and nights of my life.
I can’t remember everything that was going through my mind during those long hours. I know it was despair, and depression, and anger, and confusion, and heartbreak, and fear. I was afraid that I couldn’t make it without Uncle. Uncle had been the rock. Uncle had been my biggest believer.
Despair said that nothing was right in this world. Depression said that nothing would ever get better. Anger said that the world was fucked. Anger cursed a world that would kill Uncle in cold blood. Confusion said nothing made sense. Heartbreak said something sweet and good was gone and would never be back. Fear said that what happened to Uncle could happen to me. Would happen to me.
CO tried to comfort me. She came to the mental ward and, when no one was looking, she held me. CO told me I’d get through it. CO was cool.
I was anything but cool. I was sweating at night and freezing in the morning. I had the chills. The killer headaches came back. The nightmares got worse. I kept thinking—If Uncle’s dead, why should I be alive?
You can only stay in the mental ward so long. You can only take sleeping pills and tranquilizers for so long. After a while, the pills turn on you and the