Chapter One

Mouse

Despite having an incarcerated and asshole baby father, he gave me the best thing a woman could ever want in her life: my daughter Eliza. She was my world of joy, the best thing ever to come into my life. I had no regrets in giving birth to her. She was my shining star, my angel, the joy of my life, and she was the only person I cared for. Everyone else could kiss my ass and stay the fuck away from me. I’d been through so much shit in my life, and been down and out so many times that there was no other way but to go up for me, and with Eliza to care for, I didn’t have a choice. I wanted better for me and for her.

Eliza was one year old, and it was hard to believe that a year already had passed since she was born. Time flies, but I wasn’t having fun. She started walking around eleven months and she was becoming good at it. Regardless of her falling down and crashing into things, my baby girl didn’t cry and she would continually pick herself up and try again. I was proud of her already, because she wasn’t a quitter; she mastered what life was about. You fall, but you don’t stay down. You continue to get up, dust yourself off, and try again. I emulated my daughter. I was down, but it wasn’t over for me. I’d been bruised, but I wasn’t broken. I’d been up and down like a rollercoaster ride. I’d been beaten and broke, but I was still standing and pushing forward, in spite of living in a Harlem shelter for women with kids. This wasn’t the end for me, but only the beginning.

My options were either living on the cold streets with my daughter or taking residence in a shelter that a friend told me about. Of course I chose to stay in a family shelter. If I was on my own, I could tolerate the streets of New York. I’d done it before when living with my crazy fuckin’ father became too unbearable and Sammy wasn’t able to take me in. But now that I was a mother, things were different; I had to think of my daughter’s well-being too.

The women’s Samaritan family shelter on 155th Street provided transitional housing for up to twenty-five women and their children. And comprehensive services included individualized treatment for those who suffered from substance abuse, domestic violence or HIV/AIDS, and more. And emergency services were also provided for up to five women each night.

The shelter I was temporarily staying in was comfortable to some extent, but it would never become my home. We had our own tiny apartment, a kitchenette, TV, no cable, twin beds, and a place to do our laundry. The women here had been through hell and back, some worse than others, and I shared some of their pain. The abusive boyfriend, or absent father, drug addiction, gangs, probation, STDs : we been through it all and were only trying to find our way in a world that had forgotten about us or considered us undesirables because of our circumstances or background. A few were living with the monster, and hearing their story reminded me of Sammy’s mom who was living with that sickness. I was thankful that I never caught it. I was healthy and my baby was too.

The staff in the women’s shelter was cool, working to prevent homelessness through programs that provided budget management counseling, housing referrals, rent and legal assistance to more than 300 families each year.

From where I was over a year ago, living the high life with Rico, experiencing the glamour and finer things in life, and for the first time in my life, living in a luxurious home, to becoming pregnant and ending up in a family shelter for battered and abused women, I would have never thought in a million years that it would come to this. At one time in my life, I was on my way to reaching stardom with my best friend Sammy. We were two talented bitches from out the hood with a growing reputation in the music world. We had great management via Search and great material that we were writing ourselves. But then it all fell apart by the seams, and Sammy and I became bitter rivals. How and why? Rico.

He was the master of destruction, fucking and deceiving us both, turning friends against each other, and us both having his babies. We were out here trying to survive while becoming new mothers. We were hungry, and trying to find our way back to the road paved with gold and wanting better for ourselves and our kids. But every day it seemed things got worse. Every day it felt like I was drifting further away from my dreams and losing touch with hope.

I hadn’t heard from Sammy in months; the last I heard about her was that she was stripping in some seedy club in the Bronx trying to make ends meet. And she was frequently taking her son upstate to visit Rico. It was her life and her son. I refused to visit Rico and take Eliza anywhere near him or a prison. She didn’t need to know her daddy. I was her mother and father. Rico was hell in my life. He was shit disguised as sugar, and he would never taste like sugar no matter how many flavors he tried to add, and I wanted to eradicate every thought of him, but his daughter was the only exception, and thank God she was looking more like her mother than her daddy. My genes were strong, like the woman I was, and my daughter was going to be stronger. I was going to raise Eliza to stay away from men like her father, muthafuckas who were only wolves in sheep’s clothing.

But dwelling on the past wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I had to focus on my future, and this shelter, the people in it, the condition I was in; it wasn’t going to be my future at all. This was not going to be forever. I had hope and was ready to scratch and crawl my way out of the ghetto like I almost did when Sammy and I were Vixen Chaos.

I sat in the family room in the shelter viewing an episode of Love & Hip Hop: New York. I sat among many female residents staring at the mounted TV in the room. It was the only place in the shelter where they had cable playing and Love & Hip Hop was the show to watch inside the shelter. It seemed like every bitch in the place would stop everything they was doing for that one hour and be glued to the TV show like it was some religious program on how to catapult your way into their world. These catty bitches on Love & Hip Hop were idolized by the majority of women in the shelter. They lived a life that we all dreamed of, and yearned to date and fuck the men they found attractive, and longed to wear the stylish outfits, shoes, and jewelry manifested on the show. I briefly lived that life, and I can’t lie, it was fun for a moment, especially when Rico took me on a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue, spent thousands of dollars on me, and had me dining in some of the finest restaurants. But I was never on the level that some of the women on the show were on. They had their own: their own money, owned homes, and ran successful businesses, and had some respect in the industry.

I lived that life briefly, but I never had my own. I wanted to have my own. It was a dream of mines, to become like Yandy or Chrissy. These bitches were beautiful, bad with attitudes and smart, and they had a man holding them down and vice versa. I thought I found that with Rico, but it was only a lie.

“Damn, Joe Budden look like he got a big dick,” Theresa said loudly, being the loud and obnoxious bitch she always was. “I know he can fuck a bitch right. That bitch Tahiry don’t know what do wit’ that dick, because she can’t even hold on to her man.”

The girls around her laughed at her blunt comment. I wasn’t amused.

“Yo, I can’t stand Erica trifling-ass. First off, that bitch can’t sing for shit, and she’s a fuckin’ slut,” Whitney chimed.

“True dat,” Melanie agreed, slapping Whitney a high five.

They talked reckless about the female characters on the show, but in true life, they envied them all because it wasn’t them living the life of luxury, having great sex, and going on lavish shopping sprees. Some of these ladies in the shelter were so broke down and battered that even a miracle couldn’t help them out.

I watched the show, but I was in my own world. Eliza was asleep in my arms. I had just fed and bathed her, and now it was time for a little “me” time. But me time was useless when a bitch was broke, homeless, and with a baby on her hip twenty-four/seven. So me time was watching cable quietly while everyone else talked loudly and ridiculed each and every bitch on the show they deemed not keeping it real or was a whore.

During a commercial break, one of the young girls in the shelter came into the TV room looking upset. I saw her wipe a few tears from her eyes as she went toward some friends seated in the room. My focus went from the television to them knowing something went down somewhere. I knew the girl with the tears streaming down her face. She was a teen mother with twin girls and she was from my part of town, Edenwald. She was known to run with some heavy hitters on the streets. Her parents had kicked her out for selling drugs in their apartment. She was fighting with her parents for custody of her twins.

I overheard her say, “They killed String; they killed my fuckin’ cousin!”

She was clearly upset and distraught. I knew String. He was part of a violent gang who called themselves the Young Gangster Crew, YGC, and they were at war with the Bronx Mafia Boys. That bit of news became more important in the room than Love & Hip Hop. Majority of the girls in the Harlem shelter came from the Bronx and we all had boyfriends, brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, or baby fathers associated with the streets, drugs, or a violent gang, and murder wasn’t anything new to us.

They said the murders were on the news; three men were gunned down in cold blood while leaving a KFC late at night. But that was life in the Bronx and I felt immune to the news. My father was gunned down in the same fashion.

I didn’t have time to console anyone or get more information on what happened. I simply didn’t care. I figured my heart just grew colder in the past year. Not anyone gave a fuck about me or my daughter, so why should I give a fuck about another life being snatched from this cold, hard earth? It was life; you have a birthday and a death day. While a few girls shed tears for String and his friends, I removed myself from my chair with my daughter asleep in my arms and decided to head into my room for the night. I had enough troubles on my mind and I didn’t need anyone else’s problems coming my way.

However, as I was about to exit the TV room, I saw one of my headaches and continuing problems coming my way. Her name was Dietra; the bitch was walking hate. She was somewhat heavyset, black like tar and ugly like hell with a bad weave in her head and a constant attitude aimed my way. She didn’t like me and I didn’t like her. The main reason for her animosity toward me was she was Denise’s older cousin. I beat the bitch down in front of the whole projects last year, and then Sammy and my homegirls put that bitch in the hospital over a year ago. She wanted revenge for her cousin, and she wanted to take it out on me.

But there was one golden rule in the women’s family Samaritan shelter in Harlem: no fighting at all. If caught fighting in the shelter, it was immediate eviction, and being evicted was the last thing I needed in my life when I had my daughter. But despite that rule, there was constant friction between Dietra and me, hard glances thrown at each other, arguments and bickering, but physically we never laid hands on each other. But the pot was boiling between us and I knew it was inevitable that a fight was brewing. She was just itching to find a reason and try to fuck me up, and I was going to find a reason to fight back and knock that bitch’s teeth out.

As I passed Dietra in the hallway, she glared at me and uttered, “Fake-ass bitch.”

I was tempted to snap back, but I had Eliza in my arms and I couldn’t risk endangering my daughter for this stupid bitch. I had to be better than that. And the fact that she had the audacity to talk trash while I had my daughter in my arms goes to show the type of ignorance and stupidity she was about.

I frowned heavily, locked eyes with the bitch for a moment, and kept it moving. She didn’t want any part of me. Yeah, my name was Mouse, and I was small, but I was fierce like a tiger and my hands needed to be registered because I was lethal with them and Dietra was about to find out the hard way not to fuck with me. Because the bitches who used to underestimate me back in the days give me nothing but respect now when they saw me, because, like Dietra, they came at me for a fight and I held my own, tearing out many weaves, blacking eyes, breaking noses, and sending bitches to the emergency room when they came trying me.

I kept myself humble. It wasn’t the place or time for a fight. I had too much to lose. Dietra walked into the TV room and I simply stared in the face of my baby girl. Her beauty and innocence kept me calm.

The minute I walked into my room I put Eliza in her bed and then pulled out my pen and pad and started to write as I sat on my bed near the small window overlooking the block. I yearned to write. Expressing my love, pain, sorrows, grief, and much more through rhymes and poetry was always going to be my passion. When I had nothing else, I still had my writing, my soul to take, my heart to wake, and my mind to say. I didn’t want to ever give up on my dream, no matter what. Yes, I had a setback, a few over the years, but I had faith that success was going to happen to me.

I started with: “I’m my worse behavior, crime of the time, love of war, endless grind feeling gone, angry at time feeling time ain’t never on my side, father time absence like the biological in my life, it’s always dark on this side of town, sun don’t come around no more, eclipse was what I was born on, look up and stars seemed too distance from me, black is all I see, the black is on me. Who is I, me and mines, turning my black into some success in me.”