“Candence! . . . Candence! Get your high yellow ass in here and wash these damn dishes!”

Man, she get on my nerves. “Okay, ma!” I’m the only person in this house who does any work and my reward is more damn work. That’s all right, because as soon as I get a chance I will be outta this place.

As I piled the greasy dishes from yesterday’s fried chicken and this morning’s burnt-up grits, I wondered why I was blessed with such a jacked-up family.

My mother, Roberta, is a good person when she isn’t drunk. My dad, JB, left us when I was still in pampers. My older brother (by two years), Stanley, is gay as Liberace in boys town and damn proud of it. I’m not sure if my mom knows or just doesn’t care. Me? Well, I’m pretty ordinary, your typical square peg.

My first real memory is being embarrassed as hell as my kindergarten teacher led me by the arm to the dingy little toilet hidden in the corner of the room by an old shower curtain. I was a mess, panties full of shit and a face full of snot and tears. It’s funny now, but I can remember feeling like everyone in the world was looking at me and laughing. I think this was the beginning of my extreme shyness.

I somehow made it through that major embarrassment in kindergarten only to move on to the land of torture--six years of insults and mental abuse. Elementary school in Chicago was rough. The little nappy-headed niggas from the hood were ruthless. Despite the fact that they were the 3D’s--dirty, dumb and disgusting--they managed to tear you up with their razor tongues, and if you did happen to get a good one in on them they would kick your ass, so most people just sat back and took the verbal abuse. They loved me, I was so easy to rag on. I was taller than my six-year-old counterparts and rail thin. My mom really helped them by dressing me in swap-meet clothing that could have fit someone twice my size. My big nose was the only thing that held the oversized horn-rim glasses on my too skinny head. I looked like a walking Pez dispenser with hoot owl glasses. Every day they tore me up.

One boy in particular would bring tears to my eyes just by looking at me. His name was Darnell Washington and he was a pro at the dozens. He had to be the ugliest bastard I had ever seen. He was shorter than all of the boys but his arms were long. His hair was balled up in little tight knots all over his head. I bet you couldn’t straighten those bad boys out with a steel wire brush! He was always dirty and wore the same raggedy wore-out Wranglers everyday. His blackness was extreme, with very white eyes and yellow teeth. And, oh my God, his breath was potent; I bet he had full-course meals from last week inside his teeth. Despite all of this no one could take him out. He gave me my first nickname, Hooty the Foul. He used to call me that while waving a hand in front of his face and curling up his nose like I stank or something. He had a lot of nerve with his funky ass. Darnell would continue to be a pain in my ass for quite some time, but the reasons would change quite a bit.

I can’t say that I hated school because once class started I was able to hide in the books. I loved the coloring assignments and phonic lessons. My teacher never had to worry about me turning in my work, not because I was a kiss-ass but because I loved it.

Other than school, life was pretty shitty. My neighborhood was full of drug dealers and two-dollar prostitutes. Our brownstone was right in the middle of the block so we were like the center of the ghetto world. Next door to us was Ned, the neighborhood booster. That nigga had everything inside of that raggedy house. If my mom had spent half of the money on my brother and me as she did on Ned’s stolen Crown Royal and Newport cigarettes we would have been styling and profiling. Our other neighbors were a family of Puerto Ricans. I’ll be damned if they didn’t have twenty people in that house. I only talked to the two daughters, Hazel and Liz. Hazel was in class with me and Liz was her older sister by one year. I would eventually become very good friends with Liz.

The block was so crowded. The little street was filled with junk cars parked bumper to bumper. During the winter we would get tons of snow that would eventually turn into brown sludge. During the summer everyone, including my mother, would hang all of their laundry on the front porch. I hated the ’hood almost as much as I hated being in my house so I continued to find solace in my schoolwork.

The summer of 1985 was the beginning of change for me. I was a seventeen year old who had just completed her junior year of high school. My final grades were all A’s and my social life was nonexistent. Home life was worse. My brother was way out there and I was so worried about him. I had heard about this disease called AIDS that was starting to hit gay men pretty hard and his ass was a prime candidate. Mom hadn’t changed at all, she was still drinking and smoking for a living. Although my family didn’t change much, I did. Over the summer I became a new person, one who stopped being a puppet and started being a puppet master.