PEARL DIDN’T COME TO GET ME. MY UNCLE STOOD outside his Cadillac, which was all tricked out. It was drenched in more chrome than Cinderella’s slippers. He was a longtime hustler, the kind that didn’t take kindly to busters. I was confused. It wasn’t that I minded seeing him, but I expected my mother.
“What’s up, young blood?” he asked. “I see you’re holding down fort like a young G.” My father was locked up in federal prison on drug-trafficking charges, so my uncle pretended he was him to come get me. It hit me. I knew why Pearl didn’t come to get me. Remember what I said earlier about a person’s actions and the domino effect it caused? When we got to the Beans, Ms. Ridley was inside my apartment trying to console my mother. Pearl was on her knees sobbing.
In the projects if a kid caused trouble, the welfare folks could evict the family. The memo to single mothers was written in clear, straightforward language:
All you had to do was lie on your back all these years and get knocked up by deadbeat dudes. We covered the tab. The least you can do is keep those little niggers tame. Tie them with a leash if you have to. If you can’t manage to do that, we’re taking back the freebies and kicking your ass out.
Ms. Ridley looked up at me. “Maurice, I know you’ve been playing man of the house.”
“Bullshit! This is bullshit!” I shouted.
“Boy, I already told you about using foul language around me,” my mother warned.
Life is ironic, I guess. It brought me back to that desert, the one that hope dragged me out in the middle of. I couldn’t win for trying. I was on those streets hustling, trying to make home a happy place. I made sure my younger siblings wouldn’t have to take those risks. I chalked it up for what it was. My brothers had some change to go on a field trip. They wouldn’t have to be the subject of everyone’s jokes. If I ended up dead or in jail, they could use the couple dollars I had stashed up in the vent.
Now the system was telling me the means by which I used to escape the cage they put me in was close to uprooting my family. My uncle nodded. The inevitable was about to happen.
“You have to move,” said Ms. Ridley.
Reality hit me. I had grown used to stepping in the shoes left vacated by my father, but I was a child, no doubt. I couldn’t let my brothers and sisters be split up. That crummy apartment in the Beans wasn’t much, but it was Pearl’s home. I packed my things before heading south to stay at my father’s house. His dope slinging, pimping, and numbers running had already made him a household name in the hood. He was one of the OGs in Miami who had noticed early what was happening across the bridge on Miami Beach.
While we scraped by in Liberty City on petty hustling, high-rises were sprouting along Ocean Drive. Benzes and BMWs cruised the strip. Snowbirds flew south during the winter to soak it all in. I guess it was what people would call paradise. In the other Miami a couple of hustlers were getting rich off the white girl.