I've never been in a hot tub before, but it's one of the most relaxing things ever! There are these bubble jets all over and Manny is massaging my feet. Wow, it feels amazing, no one has ever massaged me before, although I have given Grammy many back and neck massages before, I have never gotten one. He says I have good circulation in my feet, whatever that means. "Do you know that every part of your body is in your feet?" he told me. I shook my head, "No, I didn't know that at all." He nods, "Yep, watch this.." and he touched a part of my feet and I felt it in my arm, he touched another part and I felt it in my leg! It's so cool how the body is connected like that.
"Wow, this is like, so freaking cool!" I giggled. And felt his thing hit my leg.. 'gasp' oh man, "I'm sorry, Manny", he half grinned at me saying, "It's okay sweetie we're home now, its all good." You can giggle all night long if you want to, for all I care sweetie. "Do you know that if I really wanted to, I could give you an orgasm just by a foot massage?" I started rubbing the parts of her feet I knew would get her off, I wanted to taste her again.. He is looking at me like he wants to eat me again, this guy is never satisfied smh. I started feeling something weird and was gonna take my feet away from him. I need to change the subject.. "Did you see how my mom looked at you today? She's just horrible!" I told him, shaking my head. "Yeah, I seen that, but don't want her, I want you.." and he quickly put my feet on either side of him, and slids in between my legs, again! He puts his hands on the tub on either side of me and is inches away from my face, looking at mouth.. I want to taste her so damn bad, but.. I want her to want it, to need it, to need me.. she's so beautiful, glistening in the water with her curly ass hair and plump lips.. "Mmmm, My Keya..", "Manny, you promised!" she said looking scared, her lips quivering slightly and I remembered my promise to her and it calmed me down.
I took some deep breaths and said, "Sorry baby you just look so damn good in this tub!" I chuckled, sitting back down across from her and massaging her feet again. "So, tell me about your mom" "My mom?" Why does he want to know about her for? "Yes baby, tell me why you don't like her." Oh man, hmm where do I start.., "Well, as long as I've known her, she has always loved to drink and smoke every day, and she has never been too long without a man. She drinks to get drunk and can smoke a pack of Newport 100's a day! You know what, when I was 3 years old, she had taught me how to light her cigarette on the stove!" "Are you fucking serious?!" "Yes Manny I'm dead serious." "That's crazy, Mami!" "Yup, but that's not the worst part, so she told me to go light one for her one day, she's very lazy you see, and I did. But I was a child and I was curious. Curious what these things tasted like, so I go to eat it!" "You Ate It?! Why would you do that?!" I sighed, "Manny, like I said I was 3. But she caught me before I got a chance to do it and she made me smoke the whole pack of cigarettes! Every time I stopped, because I didn't want to do it or I coughed, she whupped me!" "Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry you had to go through that", that is terrible, I see why she didn't like her. "Well I know not to smoke now, so it was a good lesson to learn, I try to learn something new everyday." she said confidently, smiling.
"She used to leave us alone in the apartment a lot too. I remember being around 4 or 5 years old and having to change my sisters diaper and feed her bottles of milk." "Where was your mom?", she shrugged her shoulders, "Your guess is as good as mine, Papi. She never told me, but if I had to guess probably smoking crack, she is a crackhead. And she does Dope as well" "Damn, babygirl, that's fucked up." He looked sad, but I continued, "She looked so weird afterwards, like she was still smoking a pipe or something, and her eyes were really wide. She reminded me of a zombie." I made the face for him that she had wore. He looked disgusted by it. "That's horrible sweetie", "Yeah? Imagine seeing that face all the time, it creeped me out!" I shook my head remembering it.
"When she would leave sometimes it was for a few hours, but sometimes she was gone for days. And if we ran out of food or milk for bottles, I would go down the ramp to my Grammys apartment and tell her we didn't have any food and that my mom was gone." "What's a ramp babe?" "Oh, its like a hall, we lived in the ABLA Projects on the south side of the city, near Roosevelt and Racine. There were these 3, L shaped buildings, about 200 feet away from each other, they are 16 floors high, have 10 apartments on each floor and between 1 and 4 bedrooms in each apartment. They had stairwells on each end and an elevator in the center. There was a fence from the floor to the ceiling that protected us from falling to our deaths on one side and the apartments on the other side of the hall or ramp." I explained to him.
"That's a whole lot of people in one small area and it sounds dangerous", he said. "Yes it was! Especially the stairwells or hallways, I've seen sooo much stuff happen in there." I shivered. "Like what babe?" "Like people living in them, getting robbed, getting drunk or high, having fights, some people were dead in there too. Also getting raped, we always had a Raperman going around raping girls in the hallways!" "Are you fucking serious!?" "Yes, Manny! It was insane growing up there just plain crazy!" "Damn babygirl, I would never have imagined that you had been through all of this!" "Oh, you just wait, it gets worse. Our school was across the street. And there was always someone shooting at the school. I don't know if they were shooting at the students or parents or teachers!" he looked shocked and speechless. "But I grabbed Trell and Phats hand and ran across the street, dodging cars trying not to get shot! Anyway it had a public library next to it on Blue Island and Roosevelt. I loved going there and reading books or hearing people read to me. I love reading, I've learned a lot from books."
"But yeah my Grammy lived only 2 apartments from us. And my mom told me to stay inside and don't open the door for anyone. But if it was my Grammy or my aunt Shenita, I opened the door because I knew them and I loved them!" "Well, I understand that, Mami, they are your family." "Yes but my mom didn't like that and would give me a whupping for leaving home or letting them in." I said sadly. "What the fuck, that's crazy!" I'm starting not to like this mom of hers at all! I see why she don't like her even more now. "I know right! But it gets worse, at least we were still near family. She moved farther away from everyone, and didn't tell them where we lived, and I didn't know anyone around us. It was scary, not seeing my family anymore because we always lived so close together. My moms family lived in one building and my dads family lived in the building next to it. So I got to see them all the time, but now we were in a whole new area, and I didn't know anyone. We moved to some more project buildings called the Robert Taylor homes on 51st & State street."
"Damn babe, I'm sorry you had to go through this stuff, I would never have imagined that you been through all that." I told her sincerely. She looked sad, "It gets worse, Manny. She would have these parties when she got paid each month and it would be drugs and alcohol everywhere. She even let us drink stuff! And they had lots of drinks 40oz, vodka, bourbon, whiskey, gin you name it, I bet you it was there! Also cigarettes, cigars, marijuana, crack cocaine, dope, pills, etc it was horrible! I would write my dad and tell him what was going on, and he told what to do. He said to 'take my siblings in my room and make sure I had enough food and water and diapers and milk formula for everyone of us.' And he had sent me money for a TV and radio so we can watch cartoons and listen to music. I had a big queen size bed that was for me and my sister. He said that when she had those parties to take all the stuff I needed and put it in my room and push my bed up to the door and not to let anyone in! And that's what I did."
"Well that's good that your dad was there for you even though he was not around." "Yeah, I love my dad, I want you to meet him once he is out of prison. He is huge like you, but much darker and has really long hair." I smiled. "I look forward to meeting him as well." "Awesome, but like I was telling you, my mom would have these parties and one time, someone tried to break into my room, it was so scary, my brothers and sister was crying because, the person was banging on my door like crazy! Lucky I had locked the door and pushed my bed up against it! I don't know what would have happened if they got in!" I was shaking my head. "Man I wish I was there, I would have beat their ass, trying to come fuck with y'all, but I'm grateful y'all are okay."
"Yeah me too! This was in 1993, I was 8, and Qwan had just been born in March, we moved out there in June. It was a 3 bedroom apartment, my mom and Qwan's dad shared a room, my brothers shared a room and me & Phat shared a room. That's also when I started drawing. I wished that I had my own room, so I started drawing what I wanted my room to look like. I've drawn many different styles of rooms and one day I wondered, what would the house around my room would be like and that's when I started drawing full houses. A teacher saw me drawing one day and said that its called a blueprint and it's in birdseye view. I had no idea what it was called, I was just tryna draw how I saw it in my head." "Damn baby you are so creative, to just be able to draw like that, that's fucking awesome!" I'm proud of her. And she is beaming, I go kiss her lightly, she is still so shy around me, I gotta do something about that..
I'm blushing again, "Thanks, Papi. Well, I just wanted to be anywhere but where I was. My mom's really lazy and never works. She got public aid from the state for us. They sent like $2000 in cash and the same in food stamps each month, she showed me. I used to get $50 a month in allowance and a book of food stamps. And I would just buy stuff that I needed like, pencils and notebooks, crayons and coloring books, stuff like that. I loved playing school with my siblings too, I've taught almost all of them how to count, write and read." "Wow babe, did you really do that?"
"Yes I couldn't go to school sometimes because my mom wasn't home and I was the oldest person in the apartment. And I wasn't gonna leave my siblings there by themselves while I was in school. So I started buying stuff like workbooks from the dollar store and teaching them their colors, days of the week, months of the year and things like that. I hated not going to school because that's where I learned new stuff and I was in gymnastics too!" He looked surprised and happy. "So you know how to do splits and things like that?" "Yes I do, but yeah I learned how to cook full meals, by reading the food packaging. And I wanted to go play on the playground but we lived on the 13th floor in apartment 1306, and most of the time the elevator didn't work and I was NOT about to take the stairs, NO WAY JOSE!!" "No they are not safe at all sweetie." "Nope so we just played with toys on the ramp in front of our apartment."
"Sometimes we didn't have money to wash our clothes and I had to wash them in the tub and hang them up in the closet to dry", he just shook his head sadly. If I had known she was going through all this shit.. smh, I wish I was there to help her.. she continued explaining. "I also had to really watch my siblings too, they were always getting into stuff. I don't know how many times I've had to get pennies outta their throats and crayons outta their noses, or q-tips outta their ears! Stopping them from sticking forks in outlets and falling out of the window! Ughhhh, it was so exhausting!" "I bet it was and all by yourself too, sweetie!"
I started massaging her legs, thinking she needed a full body massage from all the crazy shit she's been through, I think I'm gonna take her to the spa tomorrow, hell yeah. She totally deserves it! "But the worst part was that she started giving our furniture away for drugs, then our Christmas toys and things like that." Damn, this is just horrible, smh... "And one day I was in my room sleeping, I got up to go pee and on my way to the bathroom, I heard these weird noises, like someone was getting hit over and over again. I turned around and saw some guy beating up my mom, she was bleeding too and he said, 'Where's my fucking money at, bitch!' and she looked super scared and was shaking her head, then she turned and saw me and grabbed me and pushed me at the man saying, 'Here you can have her, I don't have your money, but here take her!'"
Oh hell no! I stood up, pissed the fuck off and yelled, "She tried to give you to that man! FUCKING BITCH, OH I WANT TO STRANGLE HER!" But My Keya grabbed my hand and looked up at me concerned and I calmed down, her hands were so soft. "It's okay, Papi he didn't want me, he told her 'he wasn't into shit like that and he just wanted his money and if she didn't have it soon he was gonna kill her!', he left after that. She was just sitting there on the floor and I was worried about my siblings, if she gave me away then who would take care of them! I decided that she wasn't a good mommy so I asked her what her name was she told me, Trina and that's what I call her. I didn't see her as a mom anymore and I still don't, I'm not sure if I ever will." "Well I don't blame you sweetie, not at all!" I smiled, I'm glad he understands me. "She used to not buy food and we went a few days without eating, but they had a free breakfast and free lunch program in our building, and that's how we ate sometimes. I loved that they helped us out, because it wasn't just us that were suffering but many children were just like us too, its crazy." I came and gave her a hug and kissed her forehead, she is strong to have survived that shit. I love her Grammy even more for taking them in. And know why she does so much for her siblings and her Abuela.
"What accident was Qwan in that got y'all taken away?" "Well after we moved or escaped from that apartment, we moved to the Cabrini Greens Project buildings over on Division. She had ran some bath water and the hot water in the projects are boiling hot, like literally, it comes from a furnace and if you don't mix it with cold water it's just waaaay too hot to get in. Well Qwan had learned how to walk and he jumped in feet first and the skin burned right off of his foot! I heard him screaming from the bathroom, I was in the kitchen doing homework, Manny it scared the living daylights out of me! I ran in the bathroom, saw him and grabbed him out of there. He was so upset and I was tryna calm him but looking at his feet, I knew that wasn't gonna happen. She came in and I told her we needed to take him to the hospital now! So we did and next thing I know some people came in asking me questions about her. And I didn't lie to them, I told them the truth, that she was a horrible mom! Then we started living with my aunt Katrice and her boyfriend Shawn. But that only lasted a few months, because he was very abusive to her and us, and then we moved with my Grammy and we been with her ever since!" "Wow, just wow! I would have never imagined that you had went through any of those situations babygirl, I love you and will never let anything like that happen to you ever, okay?!" I nod, "Okay, Papi!" And we get out of the hot tub and check on everyone.
My brothers are knocked out sleep with the game still on, lol smh. We wake them up to go pee and put them in the guestroom near the home theater. Phat is sleeping on the couch with the tv watching her, so we take her to go pee and bring her upstairs to the guest bedroom to sleep in the bed with Grammy, who was already in the bed. Then we go get in our bed and go to sleep it was like 2AM. I didn't have any pajamas and he didn't mind so we slept naked together, I was in his big arms. This bed is extremely comfortable and I go to sleep in seconds.. man, what a day!