𝐃𝐎 𝐈𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐆

38

I hated being in fuckin' hospitals. I ain't been here since my grandma passed away and that's been the absolute last time. Now I'm here to see my mama and the feeling is all the same. Cold. Quiet. Hospital staff running back and forth trying to figure out whats wrong with their 15 other patients. Nasty hospital food. Obnoxious doctors. I just hated all of it.

My brother agreed to meet me at the hospital and with Jamie by my side I didn't feel so nauseous or anxious to see him. Me and my brother wasn't beefing or no shit like that but we never really saw eye to eye when it came to me and my mama. I was 17 and my brother was 26 now, he left home fresh out of graduating from high school to go to the military and never batted an eye to come back home.

Apparently my mama did the same shit to a lesser extent when it was just her and my brother. My brother actually didn't know she was doing it until he was about 7-8 years old. He never told me how, but when he mentions it he got so fuckin' mad that I just learned to drop the conversation altogether. She and my brother dad were together all the way until he got shot in a drive-by. It wasn't until the funeral that my mama and my granda found out he was a former Blood. A high ranking one at that. He wanted to get out the game and move my mama and brother out the projects and up to the Carolinas, but it just didn't happen that way.

A month before they were supposed to move, some niggas came up in an all black Altima and shot him 6 times in the chest. They never found the people who did it either but it was assumed to be from a gang war or some shit. I don't really know. Luckily, my brother and mama was at our grandma house when all of it happened. But I can only imagine what happened when she got that phone call.

I think about a year later my daddy met my mom and then I came along. My daddy never made no big deal about taking my brother in. My daddy taught him how to ride a bike, how to tie a tie, even taught him basic cooking and ironing. After the first day that he found out my mama had a son he automatically called him his son and every day after it. One thing my daddy did differently than my brother daddy was that he moved us out the hood quick. When he found out my mama was pregnant with me, he didn't even mention it to her that he was moving the whole family. He just popped up to her house with a big ass U-haul and told her to pack.

They was so in love.. Even when my brother and my mama found out my daddy was a dope dealer. That's one thing that I can say about living in the projects, the catalog of careers niggas here actually have are kind of far and few between.

My mama stopped using coke the whole time that she was with my daddy. My daddy believed in her and showed her a love I guess she never felt with my brother daddy. She cleaned up, went to beauty school, learned how to do nails and lashes and everything. My daddy even gave her the money to open up a lil shop so her and her friend in beauty school could bring in business. She didn't Need To work, but she wanted to live that dream. And my daddy did it all. He made sure we never went without nor asked for shit.

What i'll never understand is, my grandma and granddaddy grew up in the projects that I know. But all of their children left and went to be something of themselves. My mama was the only one that stayed behind despite graduating from high school. She even had an offer to go to some college in Atlanta. But she never wanted to leave. She turned down going to college and just stayed with my grandma and granddaddy till she met my brother daddy. They moved out of the projects but not too far from it, and even then she found her way back there. She felt like because she didn't really have a job and the rent was dirt cheap, she didn't need to look for nowhere else. And I don't know how, but she convinced my brother daddy to let her keep staying there. So, from what my brother told me, they would spend some nights in the projects and some nights at his daddy house.

My brother suspected my mom having another nigga she was messing with that she couldn't shake there, and although it was never fully confirmed, I think it was true. See, my mama had a good chunk of family staying in the projects and they all had kids and grandkids staying there so we just adopted them all to be cousins. But my brother would tell me that there was always this 'cousin' that came to the house. And he believed this 'cousin' was the one who got mama hooked on drugs. My daddy never brought that shit home, my brother daddy never brought that shit home, my grandparents were strongly against that shit since they grew up in the crack era, so how else would she have gotten it?

Push come to shove, I think when I was 3 or 4 and my brother was 11-12, my mama would leave home at night a lot more. My daddy was out of town a lot more to "work" so besides the shop my mama didn't really have nothing but free time. She would leave in the day for work, my grandma would come and babysit till she came back home, but she would sneak off almost every night at 10-11 when she thought my brother was sleep. I don't really remember much, but my brother does. He wouldn't tell me the extent of it all himself, but he would just say Its fucked up how much she would leave. And it wasn't until I actually got old enough to understand what she was doing that made me start to dislike her.

When I was about 5-6, my brother decided to move up to South Carolina with my grandma. Of course she loved the idea of having her grandbaby be with her full-time, but I was so mad at my brother for leaving me. He was literally everything to me and he just up and left and at the time I didn't understand that he just didn't want to be around my mama and the drugs. At this time, my mama was starting to get real sloppy. She would leave some nights when my daddy was sleeping in the same bed and lie bout why she was leaving, she would come home late from the shop and some days my mama homegirl would call my daddy and ask where's my mama. Then, my daddy started to get suspicious of what my mama was up to, wouldn't any man?

So, with the connections my daddy had, he started to just keep an eye on her and when he found out the first time she was using, he sent her off to rehab on the conditions that they'll get married when she gets cleaned. Of course my daddy wanted to marry my mama more than anything, but with her recent activities he got more and more hesitant to do so. Still loved me and my brother the same, still made sure we all had, and still loved my mama till the very last drop.

My mama went off to Vermont till I was about 8.. Then she got hooked again. I- i- don't wanna re-tell that shit.. But I knew that same man she was with. It was the same 'cousin' that my brother said came around. Even after my mama pulled that foul shit, my daddy stayed for another 2 years till they had such a bad fight after my mama was using one day when I was home taking a nap from school that my daddy packed all of his things, took me to his mama house in Miramar, and drove back to get my mama and take her to rehab himself.

He rented out the house we were all staying in and stayed up in South Carolina with my mama and my grandma. It didn't take long for me to be moved up there with my daddy while my mama was getting clean. It all seemed to be working well until, well, my mama relapsed again. We still don't know how, but my mama was back down in Miami when all of us was up in South Carolina and got so high on coke she started to have a psychotic episode.

That same 'cousin' my mama was fuckin' with had gave her coke mixed with angel dust and it caused her to have a bad trip. But when he started to use his own shit, he ended up overdosing and died in the same traphouse my mama was in which made her episode that much worse. My daddy still stayed and helped through this too. She ended up in the hospital for about a month and shortly after my grandma had a stroke from the stress.

My mama still had her section 8 and we moved right back to the projects while my daddy stayed with his mom, looking for another place for us to stay. Tensions got high between my daddy and my mama but I still saw my daddy as much as I pleased. I even had a cellphone to call and text him freely. Everything was okay, but then my grandma passed away in the hospital. Shortly after that, my daddy stopped coming to pick me up. He stopped texting me back and all of my calls went to voicemail. I didn't know what happened and my mama slowly started to turn to using drugs from every few weeks to every other week to every other day to finally.. Everyday. And that's been my life since.

And seeing my mama back in the hospital just felt like we was back at square fucking one.

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We all love a character development chapter (:

discussion
Now that you've had a detailed glimpse of Ana's history, do you still feel the same way about her mama? What about her daddy?

Do you think there's some reason as to why Ana's mama wouldn't leave the hood and chose another life versus her other brothers and sisters?

How do you feel about this chapter?

The next few chapters are going to be answering the questions you may be having about Skooby and her daddy so we're changing the focus from Ana and Cut right now. But I hope you enjoy all the same. :)

Don't forget to vote, comment, and share. I love to hear y'all thoughts and they do help get my story around. Bye for now! ❤️