[pfcreed]

my grammar is to bad to post but i do have something

My birthday is in the beginning of December; amidst all the high hopes that Christmas brings and the long depression that the comes with winter. My presents had to contend with the hoards of gifts expected on Christmas day, and the unrelenting heating bill. After you through in the fact that my brothers birthday is 2 days after thanksgiving, and my ma was left to the generosity of the buffalo welfare program, the prospects of my gifts were slim and limited to what ever the corner store sold as toys. As a result of this, at a young age I learned to appreciate family gatherings. December 6th 1997 on a Saturday, I had my 15th birthday. My ma, my brother Damone and myself had just moved out of the apartment that emborided the marriage between her and my step father. My aunt saw the opportunity to get help with the rent so she offered for us to live with her not far from our old apartment. My aunt Cindy and her son Donnell lived in a two bedroom apartment, in which half the living room was dedicated to plants, and various other things that one finds stimulating when faced with the boredom of having nothing to do. That morning I woke up and counted what ever change I could find in my pockets from the day before, which amounted to something like 35 cents, and I went to the store to get a huggie juice so I could have it with my breakfast. On the way home I saw Tony, the little boy who lived downstairs from us walking home from the church on the corner. His parents was deep into the church thing, which I still find confusing to this day because early on in my adult life I would learn that while at a party Tony and two of his friends beat up a boy, drug him into the bathroom and sodomized him with a broom stick, I heard this on the news after the cops found a dumpster burning in back of a church and discovered the boys body. Me and Tony walked to the house engaged in conversations about nothing, and parted ways at the hall way. I went upstairs and into my house where my ma was sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the dining room. I stood over her for a moment allowing myself to be transfixed with how beautiful the notion of her was, lying there, silent with her hair exploding out of the covers. After breakfast me and Mone stood on the porch so he could sneak a cigarette. He started the conversation by making fun of how fat donnell was and how he ate almost all of the macaroni and cheese that we had for dinner the night before. So that set the tone for the day. later on my ma made a cake, my aunt made dinner and from 12:30 pm till around 10:30 pm it was just like any other birthday I had ever had before. I was in the living room lulled half to sleep by the orange tint of the street light outside the window and the boring rerun of living color when I heard my ma go downstairs which wasn't uncommon because we had a washing machine in the basement but when she came back up I heard two people coming up the stairs in place of just one. So naturally out of curiosity I started for the kitchen where I saw my ma escort tall man with a black scarf that draped over a black wool trench coat into the back room, where my aunt and herself had been sitting. Of course I thought this was strange because two single women living with their kids usually don't frequent with men at their homes, but being 15 was more of a status then it was a reality and I felt it would be more groan up for me to not say anything or beckon my ma's attention. So I went back to watch TV and after an hour or so had past I went to the bathroom which was adjacent to the room they were in. that's when I first heard the small tapping noise of my mother and aunt chopping crack, I had no ideal what it was. Soon after I went to sleep not knowing the milestone I had passed in my life. When I woke the next morning I went to the kitchen to get a drink and my ma sat at the table with the man that was a stranger to me at the time. She looked at me and said " Greg you hungry cause I was gunna make some eggs" and before I could answer the stranger looked at me and said " hey boy you don't speak" so embarrassed I gave a half hearted wave and accepted my ma's offer for breakfast. It was Sunday so in a big way I didn't want the day to end because I didn't want to go to school the next day.
For the first time in my childhood I started feeling the effects of being raised by a single parent. My mother suddenly had to adjust from relying on the over powering nature of my stepfather, to taking on the full responsibility of heading a family. I blamed my mother, in a very heated way, for the life we had to live. I felt she choose to live like this, she choose welfare over work, drugs and booze over food, I even felt that she made my step dad choose to leave us, but I was naive. She didn't choose her life any more then I choose mine. However, she did choose to accept the circumstances she was in and that's why things were how they were. She also choose to take on the role as an observer instead of a parent.
As a teenager I was calling my own shots, a free agent if you will, and the only thing that I had going for me was deciding that I was on the ground floor. Every morning I choose to go school, and it was choices like those that turned me into a man. I absolutely hated school, every day was a battle between my Kmart or hand me down jeans, and the other students crisp, clean, non faded name brand jeans. I went to Leonardo Davinci High school, which was tucked away on the fourth and fifth floor of Dyouville college. My high school was supposedly a college prep high school and my class size consisted of only 58 students. We didn't have our own cafeteria so we were bussed over to Grover Cleveland High School for Lunch, Gym and misc. classes. Grover was a district high school; so the difference would be equivalent to mixing the high-class society of the Hamptons with the rowdy more earthly class of people in the Bronx.
My first day back to school from Christmas vacation, I sat in home room amongst the empty minded ramblings of all my peers, and caught pieces of conversations. The main topic of course was all the great stuff every body got for Christmas. I was sitting next to my man Gerald and I could feel the question pulling away from his lungs, however, when faced with it, instead of telling to truth I choose to lie. I told him I got a play station, the new wyclef cd, a new TV for my room and a couple outfits. I didn't want to tell him how my ma went into my aunts closet and wrapped miscellaneous things, like shoeboxes, and old plaques that my aunt got from work, and put them under the tree hoping that by the big day she would be able to replace them with real gifts. I didn't want to tell him about how she spent every dime she had, drowning away the looks on me and my brothers face when my cuz opened his gifts, with booze. So as I sat their, eves dropping on every ones happiness, I quietly painted my face, and folded up my emotions and put them in my pocket.
The night before my ma had went to the corner store wearing my coat. She must have had it on for a while because I could still smell the parliament lights all over the sleeves. When the radiators came on and began to heat up I could smell the legions of bubble gum colonies that cloaked them. As the room started to heat up I stood and pulled of my coat and something fell out of my pockets. I could tell it was made of glass because when it hit the ground I heard another piece shoot off into the distance. Before I could look down and grab it mike roddam already had it in his hand examining it. " Taylor what's this", I looked at him confused and said "hell if I know let me see" he handed it to me for me to examine, but since others had heard It fall we all leeched on to the task of figuring out what it was. Then from the far left Jesse, a Rican from the west side, said " it's a ****in pipe" I said "what, get the **** out here". He said " no look this stuff near the top is where they put the brillow pad in and hold the flame to it and this clean part in the back is where they smoke it from". my life stopped, I took a brief reprieve from realty, because I needed to make something up quickly, I didn't have any time to hurt, but strangely enough the gravity of what it was sunk into me instantly. My eyes were soft and defeated. Without dignity, nor refrain I said as clear as I could " my cuz hustles so it must be from someone he hit off last night, cause he wore my coat ". Jesse must of seen the desperation in my face because he said " Greg c'mon we know you smoke crack" which caused every one to laugh, the first class bell rung and I was free to fall through the clouds, and past the trees that give breath to the world and into the **** hole life afforded to me by god himself. When I got home that day, I stood in the bathroom looking in the mirror. mentally I was there naked and raw. Silently crying, trading my dignity for tears.