KITTY KAT TALKS

“I tell you how people like me an’ Archie Chunk come up, maybe you get the picture. My mama worked as a aide in a nursin’ home, cleanin’ after old folks’ dirt. Had me an’ my two brothers to care for herself after our daddy disappeared. Mama out cleanin’ up piss, shit, vomit, wipin’ drool off they half-dead faces, proppin’ ’em in they wheelchairs for next to no money an’ no benefits. She was too proud to take the welfare, she wanted to work. Wouldn’t let the state take her kids for no foster homes. She was for keepin’ the fam’ly together, even when Daddy gone.

“Mama made us go to school long as we’d mind. We lived in a closed-down motel without no runnin’ water or heat. Had us a wood stove but no ice box. Mama got up four ev’ry mornin’ fix our clothes, breakfast. She an’ me sleep together in one bed, Yusef an’ Malcolm in another. We walk with Mama five miles each mornin’ in rain an’ dark to school. I get sick an’ tired walkin’ in rain an’ dark.

“When Yusef break his arm, fall through a hole in the floor, Mama had to pay cash to fix it, but after his cast come off he never had no pin put in keep the shape, like he suppose to, ’cause Mama ain’t had enough money. His arm bent wrong and dangle weird.

“I was twelve a drug dealer hung out around the motel got me pregnant. After I had the baby, I leave it with Mama and go. Malcolm, he drown. Mama, Yusef and my baby, girl name Serpentina, burn to death when the motel catch fire one night.

“Ain’t was no diff’rent for Archie. Black or white don’t make no diff’rence you down so far. He be on the street since he six, chil’ alcoholic. Stealin’ all he know, or lettin’ some ol’ sick fool pinch his peepee fo’ a meal at Mickey D.

“I know you scared, lady. Maybe this work out. It don’t, least you know there tougher roads than one you been on.”