The War From Within (Memoirs of a Lost Soul)

This is the first three chapters of my manuscript. It is about a young African American male that is struggling with the pressures of sin. He is fighting an internal battle for his soul.

The War from Within (Memoirs of a Lost Soul)

Prelude

I am at war.

The war that I am fighting is one from within. I am battling for my own soul. Failure is to be damned and victory is glory for eternity. My enemy is already damned so he is determined that I accompany him. Good and evil are fighting each other for supremacy, inside my soul. Both pull and tug on my soul like it is a rope pulled by fifty strong men on both sides. Both sides are determined to win and like a poorly weaved rope, my soul slowly unravels in the process.

I no longer have the strength nor do I have the will to continue fighting. I am both my own greatest ally and my worst adversary. While I yearn to free myself from the bondage that accompanies this war, I am constantly providing the enemy with the tools to continue his relentless barrage of attacks.

It seems as though this war will never end. Even when I try my hardest to resist the enemy’s temptations, he ignores my attempts and attacks with more fury. Though I make a valiant effort, I am continuously back sliding. This causes me more grief than I can bear. Peace is an unknown emotion, while regret is a constant companion.

  While on the surface this looks like just a battle between what is right and what is wrong, when one investigates further they will find that it goes much deeper.  This is not only a battle for the life to come, but this is also a battle for my soul as I walk this earth. This battle is a search for fulfillment, a search for acceptance, a search for righteousness, and most importantly a search for one’s self. I yearn to find my worth or my purpose for being here at this point of time in history. I often pose the question, why was I created? My reason for being here has to be more than just to take up space or to create havoc, both of which I began my journey doing. This reason alone causes the war to become more strenuous. Fighting for my soul and questioning my being are why I crave peace and I cry out for solace.

While going through my daily toil, I often wonder if there are others that share my struggles. I am sure that there are, however, I am blind to their existence. Because when I look into others’ eyes and I don’t see the turmoil that I see when I look into the mirror and gaze through the windows of my own soul. I see people using others, robbing others, and desecrating others and themselves without any shame. I see fathers abandoning their children without a second thought of their seed that they themselves planted. I see mothers putting a stranger in front of the one which came from their own womb. I see people doing anything for a dollar, including neglecting and destroying their own families. I see people killing their own communities with a drug, a virus, or a gun. I see a government that cares only for those who have and dismisses those who have not, considering the latter as a hazard upon their lives. I see all this and much more but what I do not see is any remorse. They cannot be fighting the same war I am, for I still dream of the person I wronged ten years ago, let alone the person I might have mistreated today.

Still, I am no better than anyone of those people. I know what I do is wrong, I know that I hurt people with my actions, and yet I still continue to do what I know is wrong. What does that say about me?

This is why the enemy is winning the battle. Each time that I fall victim to his temptations, I think lesser of myself. This in turns leads me right back to the sin which caused my disesteem. It is a ridiculous cycle that I put myself through and I have no one but myself to blame. The funny thing is that I know that my enemy has no genuine power over me at all. Nevertheless I fight him daily, it is an interesting paradox.

                     ***

However, throughout it all there is hope. There is one weapon that is guaranteed to keep the enemy at bay. This weapon has never failed me but I, on more than one occasion, have failed to use it properly. Still, I can maintain a smile on the outside even though I am crying on the inside because of this weapon.

However before I can give you the solution, I must first give you the problem. I do this so that you will know why I am who I am and why I think the way that I do. This is not to place the blame on anyone else for my actions. We are all born with a seed of righteousness and a seed of evil dwelling inside our soul. We, ourselves, choose which seed we want to water, nurture, and grow. I know this to be a true statement, so to recall my past is to only give you an insight on my trials and my victories. If you are fighting you own battle, may you learn from my mistakes and gain from my triumphs. Hopefully you will be able to differentiate between the two.

With that being said, know that I am neither a scholar nor a psychologist. I am not a great theologian nor am I a saint. I am just a lost soul trying to follow the beacon of light through the fog, so it can lead me home.

This is my story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desolation

I was born desolate. I have always felt this way. Throughout my youth I felt as if no one knew me and no one wanted to know me. I was abandoned here alone and force to find my own way, on my own. I always felt like I was some unseen person’s sociological experiment that had gone wrong.

I had no guidance, parental that is, to lead me to the right path. No mother, though she was physically there, she never cared for me the way a mother cares from her child. I did not even know the term father until I was six years old. I had no older siblings to admire. I was all alone.  I was force to raise myself and teach myself the difference between right and wrong, or better yet I was force to come up with my own definition of right and wrong.

 I carried my own load, my heavy burdens rests on my shoulders alone. There was no one there to help lighten the load. This burden rode me and turned me into someone that I was not destined to be. It gave me responsibilities that were suited for someone far beyond my age and yet I had to shoulder them, because I knew that I was alone. It was a question of, if not me, then who?

That was a question that I can remember asking myself at the tender age of six. At six I knew the answer to this question was no one.  I was starved for attention, yet I had no one to nurture my hunger pains. I remember going to bed praying for my life to changed, for the better, and when I awoke to the same dreadful life I then realized that I controlled my own destiny. Again, at six I knew, or thought I knew, that I was alone in this world, left to fend for myself.

I digress though, for I am leaving out pieces of the puzzle that makes me who I am. Please I beg your pardon, because I sometimes like to omit the painful and/or regretful memories. However to paint the picture clearer I must start at the beginning.

 

Grant me the permission to say that most of this, the beginning of my life, will be guesswork. This is because, like most people, I do not have much recognition of my early years. Only flashes go through my mind’s eye when I tried to envision a peaceful time without the strain of reality. So most of the begin of my journey will be based off of other people’s perspectives or assumptions that I have made based off of later events in my life.

What I am sure of is that I was born on January 16th 1979. I was born to Miss Emma Watkins, an eighteen year old single mother. No father was there to witness the birth of his son, and I know this is so because on my birth certificate there is a blank line were the father’s name should be.

Despite the fact that she was raised in a strict Christian home, I was born out of wedlock thus making Emma and I immediate outcasts of the family. I guess my grandparents and my aunts and uncles viewed me as a demon spawn, because the only reason that they had to hate me was my birth.

Emma was the youngest of seven children, four boys and three girls. There was a six year gap between her and the next sibling. I often thought, but never asked, if my mother was an accident much like myself.

I am told, from others and from her own mouth, that Emma did not want any kids. She had no intentions of staying in our small town and becoming a house wife. Her aspirations were for bigger and better things. Emma felt that children and a husband, from this town, would only trap her here when she was destined for bigger things. So I can imagine her dismay when she found out that she was pregnant with me.

She yearned to rid herself of me as soon as she realized my existence. She wanted to try a virtually new, at the time, process called abortion. I say this was a new process because previously abortion was only use to save the birth mother’s life or it was illegal and you had to know someone evil enough to do it, and you needed to have a great deal of money to get it done. Around my conception abortion had been legal for about nine years and the cost to have the procedure done was reasonable. Thus, allowing more women to rid themselves of their “mistakes” without having to wait nine months. Emma wanted an abortion, but she was under age, she was just seventeen at the time. So she would have had to get my grandparents permission, which she knew that she would not receive. I was told that abortion was the same as murder in my grandparent’s eyes and they would risk the shame of having an unwed teen daughter before committing murder. Though they still later kicked her out and disowned her anyway.

This may sound like nonsense, but I feel that Emma and I lost whatever, if any, connection we had when she was carrying me and thinking about having an abortion. She was my incubator for my growth between egg to embryo onto fetus and my soul was also inside of her. I am certain that I had to receive the message that I was not even wanted before I was born. I may be wrong, but because of this fact, as well as others, in my eyes she has always been the woman that gave birth to me, never my mother.

 Nevertheless, Emma kept me while she could have given me up for adoption or left me on someone doorstep or in the garbage. Or she could have given me to the state leaving me to grow up completely lost and confused in the system. However, I do not store too much stock into this act being an act of love. I know that Emma resented me from birth, so I feel that she kept me to keep me from any hopes of having a prosperous life, since I deprived her of that she figured that she would try and do the same thing to me. Nonetheless and even if that was the case, the first twelve years of my life was spent with Emma.

To be clear I want you to know that I hate writing such harsh words about the woman who gave me life. However, you have to understand this is how I viewed her. I would hope that she was a loving parent and care for my every need when I was an infant, but again I have no recognition of these years. I from time to time try to imagine a loving, kindhearted, and unselfish mother but my imagination is clouded by reality. The woman that I knew could at times display all or more of those traits, but more times than not she was the exact opposite.

Thus, one could say that Emma and I had a very complex relationship. While she was my guardian, she was not my parent. Other than her so-called discipline, she gave no other form of guidance. I viewed our relationship based on the Emma I would see that day. The sober, drug free, Emma was a joy to be around and while again we were never close like mother and son, we were at the least friends. It would be all about her and me, nobody else. She would be attentive to me letting me talk to her like a person not a child. Though she never answered none of my hard questions, she would at least listen, I would cherish these moments with Emma, because even if I said that I did not want anyone to be there, I needed her to be there. However, it was hard for me to fully enjoy these moments because in the back of my mind I knew that the other side of Emma was coming out soon.

This Emma was abusive, both physically and verbally; she was loud, irate, and even to a child she was sad. She was short and curt with me, wanting nothing to do with me. The only time that she would interact with me was when she was chastising me, or if the conversation somehow benefited her. As in if I was making a run for her because she was too tired, or too inebriated to move. Other than that I was nothing more than a thorn that continuously stuck her in her side.  And that was only in my younger years. Now that I look back she was not half has bad during this times, it was when she put the alcohol down, to move on to bigger and worst things, did she really show her hatred for me.

Shortly after I was old enough to look after myself, wanting to live life to the fullest and enjoy every minute, Emma tried a new drug that had just hit the street called Crack. This is basically powder cocaine cook to a form of rock. Then it is smoked, rather than snorted, through a glass pipe. Now this crack was cheaper than its brother cocaine, because it is cheaper to make and more product could be distributed faster. So this became the drug of choice for most poor people trying to escape the harshness of reality. Sadly, Emma fell into this class of people. Crack started in the bigger cities and just like an uncontrollable wildfire it spread nationwide.

 Crack destroyed Emma’s mind, body, and spirit, I remember wanting to kill the inventor of it. What mind was capable of such evil? I despised anything or anyone who had anything to do with crack. I was not going to allow myself to have anything to do with any drug even alcohol, because I saw what both did to Emma and I did not want anything controlling my brain. It’s sad that only example that Emma ever gave me was one of what not to do, though it was a strong one because it has stuck with me to this very day.

I can remember seeing her one day, crying while looking in the mirror. When I asked her what was wrong, she did not reply. Instead she cried harder while beckoning me to her. She hugged me and cried while she continued to look in the mirror. In my young mind I thought that she was crying because she thought that she was ugly.

“Don’t cry mama, you are very pretty.” I told her as her tears hit my face.

My statement was true, my mother was very beautiful.

She smiled at my attempt to comfort her and kissed me on my forehead.

“You know you are doing the wrong things when you look in the mirror and you don’t recognize the person staring back at you.” She simply replied.

I was too young to understand the power that those words held, but in time I would come to realize their truth.

With that she told me that she had some errands to run and that she would be back later. She kissed me again and told me that she loved me. That is the last time, and one of the only times, that I can remember her saying those words

Later that same day I cried as tried to wake her from some Drug induce stupor, something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The image of your mother scrawled out on the floor lying in a pool of her own vomit, never leaves one’s mind. These memories outweighs any of the good times that we shared together, just as nightmares are more vivid than regular dreams.

This was my life. There were times when I thought about escaping, wanting to run away but what laid outside the house frighten me enough to make me stay. I was trapped in this purgatory call my life, with nowhere to go and none to hear my cries.

I hated myself and I hated my life. I cursed God for allowing me to be born, because I thought that surely nonexistence had to be better than my life at the moment. Though I curse God, I knew very little about him at the time. Only thing that I knew was the bits and pieces that I learned when Emma and I would visit the Church. This was during one of her clean stints, which usually did not last long. She would vow to get her life right and she would tell me that it meant that we must first get right with God. She would drag me to Sunday school and church for a couple of weeks, if that, but she would go back to doing her own thing sooner than later.

It did not bother me one bit when we would stop going to church because I did not like the people that attended the church anyway. They would always look down their nose whenever we came to their church. They whispered behind our backs talking about our rags that we call clothes, while they were dressed in their finest linens. Just because of this they thought that they were better than us. They dislike us coming to their church, viewing us like a stain on a previously unblemished piece of fabric. Whatever hatred they held for me I returned it tenfold. And they had the audacity to say that they were made from the image of God. I was sorry to say that they made God look extremely unattractive.

Still the only part that I would missed about our church outings, was the fact that we actually got to go somewhere together. Other than the occasional church trips and school I was stuck at home, mostly by myself. Again I hated myself and I hated our lives.

I hated everything about myself. From my unusual size, I was always much taller and bigger than the other kids my age, to my looks. My nose was too big, as were my ears as well. My bottom lip was large also, so large that kids would tease me by saying that it looked like I was always pouting. My skin was much too dark and ashy, I just could not believe that someone that looked like I looked and lived where I lived could be beautiful.  This internal hate lasted for years and years.

Though I hated my looks, there was something that I hated more and that was my name. I use to think that I hated my name because it sounded like it belonged to someone five times my age. Or the fact that I had to correct everyone when they would say it because they would leave off the first letter because they thought it was silent. However, I came to realized that I hated my name because it connected me to Emma, being that she was the one that name me.

I once asked her, during one of her sober times, why she had given me my name. She just smile and told me that it was because she thought my name was beautiful. When I asked her what it meant she replied, “It means you have something greater than this world inside of you.”

When she spoke she held a look of love in her eyes that I rarely saw. I wanted to ask her what she meant but that look alone made me forget to ask my question. For that moment we lived a regular life, unfortunately moments are just that, a moment in time. Reality is not only the time that we live in, but it also the times we remember the most. Moments are store in the back of our memory and use to cope with the cruelty of reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enter Guilt

Though, I hated my life I had no choice but to live it, I could have cry about it but my cries would have fallen upon deaf ears. So rather than sit and sulk about my misfortune, I kept on pushing hoping that the next day would be better than the last. However where we lived it was hard to decipher the good days from the bad ones. 

We lived in an apartment complex called Prince Hall Village, or the Hall, as the tenants simply call it. Living where we live you somehow become immune to the violence, drugs, and crime even when it’s happening in your own home. Survival is all that is important, this again was something I learned early.

We lived in a two bed apartment that was paid for by the government. Our apartment complex was our city’s answer to the bigger cities’ projects. They were three separate sections and each housed five building. The buildings in each section were placed tightly together. They were so tightly place that you could watch, and hear, what the person in the adjacent building was watching on their Television. The sections were identified with the letters A, B, and C. Sections A and B, we lived in B, housed almost all of the complex’s residents. While section C housed what was known as the crack houses. This was where the drugs where sold and used. Even though there were some actually resident in these buildings, everyone knew that you did not go into section C unless you were selling or looking to buy some drugs.

The apartment complex was in the “black” part of our city, which meant it was the most neglected part of town. Our apartment complex was also caged in; the entire complex was surrounded by a ten foot tall metal gate. At the front of the complex we had security entrance point where you had to check in with your apartment issued id. If you had any visitors their names had to be on an approved list or they were not allowed to enter. Entering and exiting our apartments was like going to a border of another country.

This was no matter though, because if someone wanted to get in they could. This was mostly just to show us that we were separated from a world that we did not belong to. We might be allowed to visit that world but we had to remember that our place was behind that gate. We were in prison, literally, the laws inside of the gates were different for the laws outside of the gates.

The management treated us like we were inmates also. Each year every resident would have to provide an updated list, with photos, of every man, woman, and child that lived in the apartment. Every six months some unlucky soul would have to come out, usually escorted by the police, and checked that only the people listed were only ones that were living in your apartment. If they found out that you were housing someone not approved, then you would get kicked out immediately. They said this was for health reason, but I knew it was because of how most residents took advantage of the free rent. Believe it or not, there was a long waiting list to get an apartment in our complex. So most people just shacked up with someone that they knew that was already approved. Sometimes there would be two families of four living in a two bedroom apartment.

The apartment checks did not stop people from coming in neither. Most knew when they were coming and they would just move out and lay low in Section C, which they never checked, and come back when the coast had cleared.

This may sound abnormal to some but this was my home and to me living this way was my concept of normality. I thought that everyone had to show their id’s to get into their apartments. I thought that everyone had three chains and a dead bolt lock on their doors. I thought that everyone had to check in their visitors with security before they came, or they wouldn’t be allowed in the complex. I was not naïve enough to think that we were living well, but I just thought this was the way of the world because it was how I live.

 

The government also supplied my food. Emma being a jobless single mother was on what they call food stamps. Later in life I learned that I should had been embarrassed about buying food with colored money, but back then everyone I know use them so I had no need to be embarrassed. Emma would send me to the store with the “stamps” as she called them, to buy what the little groceries that the “stamps” could buy.

At first I was hesitant thinking that she would beat me if I made a mistake but by the time I was eight years old I was more fluent in food stamps than I was in “real” money. I could calculate the items in my head and know just how much change I would receive back. I always kept the change when I went to the store for Emma. Sometimes she was too high to care and the other times, when she was coherent, I just made the price of the food equal the amount that she gave me. Math wasn’t her best subject to say the least and she never asked for a receipt. Plus, she trusted me because she thought that I feared her; her being the parent and me being the child. Only problem was that I did not view her as a parent, but I played my role.

I could not be cheated by anyone because I could count faster and higher than your average eight year old, this did not hinder crooked people from trying to cheat me though. People would try to get over on me just because of my age. They would try to take advantage of my innocence, what they did not know was that I had lost that before I even realized that I had it. Because of the behavior of some people that I had to associate with, I taught myself to always try to be one step ahead of the next person. Because I thought that they were trying to cheat me, I had to get them first.

An example that comes to mind is one day when I was eight, I was literally starving. Emma hadn’t been home for a couple of days and we didn’t have any food in the house to eat. Now I didn’t worry when Emma disappeared because she pulled this act quite frequently. I would just lock all of the locks and just wait until I heard her beating on door. I normally would not leave the house, but on that day I was hungry. I decided to get my stash of food stamps that I kept, just in case something like this happened, and go to the corner store for some beef weenies and hot dog buns. My favorite meal at the time and also the only meal I knew how to make.

I decided to go to the corner store instead of the farther away supermarket for two reasons; one I didn’t have a key to our house and leaving your house unlocked and unattended for a long period of time was the same as inviting someone into your home to steal your possessions. The fact that we possessed little did not matter, because thieves would steal anything that was not nailed down. Two, was that I knew that it would be dark soon and our neighborhood was not one that you wanted to walk in during nightfall. The criminals were like vampires they would sleep all day and stalk their prey at night. A child was no safer than an adult.

Bearing these things in mind it was an easy choice to go to the corner. The only problem was that I hated the owner. His name was Mr. Pearson and he was a middle aged black man who thought that he was living the American dream. He hated black people, though these were his only customers, barring the occasionally white person who had made a wrong turn or one that just didn’t know any better. 

Now I had experience this kind of hatred before but he was the first, but sadly not the last, person I knew that looked like me and had these feelings.

He was a big burly man that looked like at one point of time he might have been in good shape. His large round bald head always had beams of sweat hanging from it no matter what the temperature. His large and rotund stomach poked out in front of him, when he walked it looked like his belly would lead the way while the rest of his body followed. He, or maybe it was his store, also smelt bad, like collard greens that had been sitting out for a couple of weeks.

He also was a cheat, on several visits he cheated Emma out of some of her change, or he charge more for an item than what was right. I would try to inform Emma of this but she would scream at me and tell me to keep my a*s out of grown folks business. He would just smile and give me an knowing eye.

So my hunger forced me to ignore the fact that I disliked him and the fact the he was probably going to try and cheat me, because I had no choice but to go. So I threw on my clothes and headed up to his store.

It was a beautiful summer day and almost everyone was outside. The sun shined at it brightest and flowers seemed to be at the height of their bloom. The younger girls were out jumping rope, and some of the younger boys were playing touch football in the parking lot. The older teenagers were all out too and some, rather most of them, were openly smoking weed like it was legal. The older girls were rocking the newest hairdos and skimpy clothes all for a little attention that they most likely didn’t get at home. The boys were hanging out sporting their new or use Jordans, some slap boxing or ragging on each other and some giving the girls the attention that they sought. While the grownups sat around with each other, the men drinking beers and playing dominoes and the women gossiping about who was sleeping with whom and who is cheating on whom.

I looked around and thought to myself that this was a community, not the ghetto. If a stranger came in to the apartment complex he would not suspect that a person had just got gunned down last week for his new Jordans in the parking lot where the boys were playing football. He wouldn’t know that the building close by where the girls jumped rope was a known crack house, also where Emma was probably residing at the time. He wouldn’t know that three out of six of these playful teenage boys would either be dead or in jail and four out six of the teenage girls would get impregnate by one of those dead or incarnated men, thus continuing the cycle in which we call poverty. No, he would not know this he would just see people having fun and enjoy life. He would see a loving community all together. Which was what I saw, but of course the sun had yet to begin its descent down the western horizon.

 

 

After a short uneventful walk I arrived at the store. As soon as I opened the store’s door the repulsive odor laid siege to the inside of my nostrils. The odor was so bad that I would have turned and left if not for my stomach’s constant complaining growls. So I forced myself into the store.

 The bell hanging over the door alerted all of my presence. Mr. Pearson jumped up hard out of his seat from behind the counter as if I was the police coming to arrest him. I walked in to get a clearer view of Mr. Pearson, who now was standing behind the counter wearing his patent dirty white shirt and overalls except they were not strapped and hanging barely above his waist line. He was trying, not succeeding, to hastily pull his pants up when a woman came for under the counter smiling, and without saying a word she smoothly walked to the back of the store.

Amazed I just stood there, now I didn’t have any idea what they were doing. All I knew was that I had walked in on Emma and a male friend while they were engaging in a similar activity and she had beaten me like she was trying to kill me. I brace myself for a similar beating from Mr. Pearson or the woman, but I was not going to run. Not because I was fearless, I was just hungry and I was willing to go through hell just to get some food.

“Boy what the hell you doing in here? Ya know that I don’t want no damn kids in here.” Mr. Pearson shouted out furiously.

“I thought I locked that damn door.” he added, mostly talking to himself rather than me.

“I am hungry and I came to buy some food.” I said as innocent as I could.

As I spoke I looked at the ground as if I was scare to look him in the eye. I knew that most grownups liked it when a child made themselves inferior to them, especially an inferior grown up. I also thought that it would hurt the heart of all adults for an innocent child to go without.

“Yeah right, you little ghetto b******s ain’t trying to buy nothing, you just here to steal.  Nah, I’m not buying it. Now get your little black a*s out of here and tell ya mama to come back and buy some food “cuz” I ain’t letting ya in my sto’.” He replied waving his hands like a maniac as he talked.

Though he was inferior, I didn’t factor in the fact that Mr. Pearson did not have a heart.

One thing I could remember thinking was that I sure that he did not remember me from the few times that I was in his store, so why did he say tell my mother instead of my father or my parents plural. I thought to myself, did I have the look of a fatherless child? Or was it branded on me where others could see but I could not? Or was this just him presuming the obvious?

Mr. Pearson, saw that I was not moving so he picked up something and started to come around from his counter. I again readied myself for whatever he was going to bring. I was scared but I willed myself to stand still. It became must easier to stand my ground as I saw what it was that he picked up, a belt. I almost busted out laughing, but I knew that would not make the situation any better, which in turn would leave me hungry for the night.

I loosen my stance and looked up to him and lied, “My mama is sick that’s the only reason I came here alone. I never have been shopping alone before.”

Stubbornly he just stood there shaking his head.

“Sick my a*s, she probably somewhere with a pipe in her hands.” He retorted

What he said did not hurt me, the truth rarely did, but I was taken aback by the fact that he said that she was on crack. Granted half of the neighborhood, at that time, was hooked on it, but still was I also branded by my crack head mother? Or again, did I look like I didn’t have a father and that I was a son of a crack head?

“I don’t know what wrong with these n****s today… Mr. Pearson started in on one of his self-hatred rants.

Luckily the woman had return and spoke up, “Damnit Willie, let the boy get some food. You can see he is hungry and s**t he even got the money in his hand.”

As she spoke she put a basket’s worth of groceries into some paper sacks. I remember thinking that she had already paid, because she never pulled out any money.

I had pulled out the food stamps in my last attempt to show Mr. Pearson that I was not going to try and steal anything.

“Who asked ya a*s anyway. Don’t tell me how to run my damn business. Get you food and get the hell out of here.” He exclaimed with his arms waving wildly again.

She did not move a muscle, she just gave him look that could have been exchange for a thousand words and then she turned her back on him and faced me. I had no explanation for it but it look like Mr. Pearson was truly intimidated by just her looked. This puzzled me because it was obvious that the woman could not harm him. He was twice her size but he shrunk in her present when she gave him a look. It was baffling because she clearly had some kind of power over him because he changed his tone faster than someone singing off pitch.

“Aw… come on now Nikki, you know I was just playing with the little n***a, he can gon’ head and get whatever he needs.”  He said in the nicest voice I had ever heard from him, as he rush to her side and started to rub her shoulders with his ancient looking ashy hands.

He continued, “Now you just go on home and I’ll see you next week.”

 She eased her glare, smiled at me and turned back to him. She gave him a quick kiss and grabbed her groceries and headed to the door. I was in her path and she was staring right at me. Though she was not glaring at me angrily like she did to Mr. Pearson, her stare was still intimidating. Her smile tightened the hunger knot in my stomach and my legs almost buckle as if someone had kicked me in the back of my knees. She had some form of power because I had never felt like that before.

“You Emma’s Boy Right?” She said to me in a voice just above a whisper.

The mention of Emma’s name brought me back to reality and I merely just nodded my head.

“I live in the Hall too, in fact I live in the apartment building right next yours. I’ve seen you outside a couple of times.” She said as I admired her golden brown complexion and the bright red freckles that adorned her face.

I wanted to respond but I could not, I just stood there like I was in a trance. I was the deer and she was the oncoming headlights.

“Well what’s your name?” she asked

 Reluctantly, I told her.

“How old are you?”

I told her eight and began to wonder why she was asking all of these questions?

“Eight my a*s boy you look like you about to be a teenager.” She replied with this silly laugh.

 I heard this many times before, usually it made me angry. However, I laughed with her like she had just told the world’s funniest joke, for reasons that I could not explain.

After laughing a couple of seconds too long I felt that it was my turn to say something so I said the first thing that came to my mind, “What’s your name?”

She looked relieved, like she thought that I would never ask.

“Nicole, baby, but you can call me Miss Nikki.”

“Huh… yes Ma’am.”, was all that I could choked out.

“You gonna have to come and see Miss Nikki when you get a little older. Ain’t that right?”

Even if I wanted to reply, no word would have form. My mouth was as dry as a neglected well, and I couldn’t understand why.

She smiled again and rubbed her hand down the left side of my face. And with that she was gone. I could still smell her perfume after she left. He scent hung on me slaying the foulness of the store. I was stuck in a trance unable to move and unaware of my surroundings. These feelings that I felt were foreign to me. My blood was rushing like it was going to leap out of my skin and my heart was pounding as if it was working double time to keep me alive, for my brain had totally shut down. Sweat hung onto my brow as if my body was overheated. Just as I started to panic it all went away. Hunger pains forced itself back into my now functional mind and into my empty stomach.

“Boy hurry yo a*s up!” Mr. Pearson grunted as he made his way back around the counter, “And I got my eye on yo little black a*s.”

Back to my senses I hurry to the get the items that I and came here for. Miss Nikki was still in the back of my mind.

 After only shopping for just over two minutes, all under the watchful eye of Mr. Pearson, I reached the counter. I laid my items down one by one, so he could see that it was all that I had in my hands, and pulled out my money. I noticed large glass jar of blow pop suckers to the left. I wanted my favorite, watermelon, so bad that I could taste the gum that was inside the sucker. Unfortunately, food stamps could not buy candy and I didn’t have any “real” money on me. Still the food on the counter looked like a feast for a king, though it was only hot dog buns, a bottle of ketchup, and some weenies. I sat the money on the counter and I had counted it out to exact change, and began to collect my items again.

“Wait a minute”, He said as he counted the money, “Lil’ n***a you shor’!”

This Dirty old b*****d, I thought to myself. I knew that was enough money just like I knew that he was going to try and cheat me. However, I calmed myself down as I weighed my options. I could have acted like a fool, but I knew that would get me nowhere, he wouldn’t be scare of a kid. I could snatch the food and run but I never had stolen anything before, so I didn’t know the proper techniques to use. Lastly I could resort back to my earlier tactics, even though they hadn’t work earlier. As I contemplated, I wished that Miss Nikki was there.  I thought maybe she could loan me some of her power.

“Sir, I don’t have any more money, that’s all I have.” I went with the only thing that was familiar to me.

He laugh and said, “Boy get yo a*s outta here, and don’t come back.”

It was clear that he never intended to let me buy anything. Letting me shop just to appease Miss Nikki, but he was never going to allow me to buy anything at least without cheating me. I was not going to be cheated.

He was still laughing at his apparent joke, “Crack heads send their babies down here trying to get hands out, this ain’t no damn soup line.”

 The more he laughed the more my anger grew. The hatred for this man blossom in my soul and for the first time in my life I wanted to physically harm someone. The hate consumed my body and it felt like I was having an outer body appearance. I could see the angry look that plastered my face and I could see my chest rising up and down. I was not leaving there empty handed.

“Oh, you mad now boy?”

I didn’t move and I remained silent.

“What you gonna do?” He replied through his laughter.

I didn’t move and I remained silent. I stared intensely into his eyes. Giving him a look that said give me my food or else.

His laughing stop and now he was either scared or annoyed, probably both.

“I said get ya nappy headed a*s out of my sto’!”

Still I stood there motionlessness and mute.

He was now definitely mad now. He began to sweat, even more than before. His chest began to heave up and down like he had just finished running a marathon. Seeing that I still was not moving he tighten his stance, balled up his fist, and he raised his voice.

“GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!” He yelled.

I continued to stand still, while returning the scowl that he had upon his face.

Noticing that I was not going to back down he decided to push the issue. “Ok, I got something for ya! Yea, you getting yo lil a*s out of here.”

He bended down to get something that I could only assume was the belt that he had earlier.

It was his first and last mistake.

As soon as he bent down I grabbed the jar of blow pops and without thinking hurled them right onto his bald head. To my surprise the glass did not even break like it would have in the movies, though his head immediately started to swell up. He grabbed for his head and let out a terrifying scream and fell to the floor.

 I was on the move before his body even had a chance to hit the floor.  In one fluent motion I grabbed my Food stamps and the food and ran out of the store. I was running for my life and I was scared out of my mind. Not once did I turn to see if he, Mr. Pearson, or anyone else was giving chase.

Once I reached my apartment complex I slowed down to not draw any attention to myself. My fear had now subsided and now I was exhilarated. I could not believe that I had done what I had done. It made me feel powerful; I had taken down I grown man. I felt as if I could take on the world and win.

All feeling of pleasure ended as soon as I open the door. Emma was laying on the couch with one leg propped up on the top of the couch the other on the floor.

“Boy where the hell have you been?” she said with a sloppy slur.

Before I could answer her eyes rolled back into her head and she was out cold again. I ignored her and went to the kitchen to fix my victory dinner.

Victory didn’t taste so sweet. Guilt, an unknown emotion at the time, set in and I began to wonder if Mr. Pearson was alright. I knew that I didn’t kill him but I also knew that I might have really injured him. I almost thought about going back to check and see if he was okay, but I wasn’t feeling that guilty or crazy. Still the issue kept eating away at my head and I started to feel sorry for him even though he was the one that cheated me.

I could not even eat my hot dogs in peace. They didn’t taste right. They tasted kind of funny, like they were tainted. I don’t know if it was my conscience or if the food had passed its expiration date, which happens regularly at Mr. Pearson store, but I only made it through one hot dog. And that was only to satisfy my hunger pain.

I fought myself all night that night. One side said that I only did what I had to do while the other side said that my actions were wrong no matter what. I tossed and turned all night and I did not go to sleep until thoughts of Miss Nikki enter my mind.

The internal battle had begun in more ways than I could have ever known.

Author's Note

Sample of my manuscript, so I would like to know what you feel about the story. Is it something that you would read?

Reviews

[Emma Olsen]

You should try to organize this more into a couple chapters rather than one long piece. This was a lot to read at once.

So, I think you have a really powerful story here. I'm not sure if it's autobiographical or not (if it is, I'm sorry), but you managed to really make me empathize with the character, which is excellent because that's one of the most common critiques I give on this site. I became invested in the character and his life and that has been a relatively rare thing for me in my critiques here (unfortunately.) I would definitely read this. That being said, I think there's a lot you can do to tighten this up. You get very verbose, but that verbosity conflicts often with word choice. You have a number of subject/verb agreement errors and other grammatical errors that I don't think are intentional. You should go through this again and read it out loud to yourself and see where you struggle with reading it. This definitely seems like a first draft to me, so you have some work to do. By the time you get to the last sections you seem to have gotten into a good writing flow, and I was drawn into that chapter with very few hitches. The prologue and first chapter were a bit rougher to me, but I'll touch on that a bit later.

I don't think you need the extensive explanations of abortion and crack. I want to know how both of these affect the narrator and his mother, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a reader that doesn't know what either of those are. I don't need to know why a general person would get an abortion - I need to know why his mother wanted to and that it didn't work out. Does that make sense?

Watch for repetition. Either do it purposefully (and if so, make it obvious - like repeat clauses or repeat a word a ridiculous amount. You should never repeat twice, it should always be more, but you might need a lot of repetitions for a single word to get the point across) or look for synonyms that convey the same meaning.
On that note, a LOT of your prologue is repetitious. I think your prologue could easily be cut down to half its size and still convey the same gist. Honestly, I think that you should probably get rid of it entirely. It's not adding anything and I was having a hard time getting into it. Once I got to the first chapter I got hooked, but your prologue was just not doing anything for me. I think it's a good study of the character for YOU to understand him, but I'm not sure that it's adding much for me as a reader. Sometimes that happens. That being said, I know it can be painful to part with a long piece like that, so if you choose to keep it, I have a few suggestions: 1. Include more imagery. If possible give me a setting and some memories or examples to sink my teeth into so that I'm not floating blind. Even if you don't want to place him in a setting, some rich metaphors will help. 2. Define your general terms more. Give me less of a general understanding of this narrator's struggle, give me more actual examples. I don't know who the 'enemy' is or any of that. I get a sense of what he considers amoral (and that part's good - if a bit long), but I don't know what or who has made him feel this way or why. 3. Try to build his character a bit more. Give me background, memories, personal details (age, socioeconomic status, where he lives, etc.) If I have some of those details, it helps me to build a frame of reference for his complaints and whether or not you, as the author, want me to trust him. You do this well in the first chapter, which is why I think it's a better starting point. 4. As a general rule, eliminate as much 'telling' as you can. Try to show the reader the conclusions the narrator's come through by incorporating more scenes and action. This is why I was suggesting memories. This is a problem for you throughout this piece, as I'm fairly consistently told how things are, rather than shown. Even if the narrator doesn't remember, you could try to have the narrator show a scene where he remembers how he learned that. You steadily improve this as you go, but try to keep it in mind. If you write: "I felt nervous." Consider other ways to convey that by giving the reader an image, such as: "I swallowed, hard, staring at the piece of paper in front of me."
You might want to place the narrator in the future by writing a short scene in the present and then relaying back to the past. As a literary device, this usually works well to establish a pivotal moment in the character's future and also slide back into an explanation. A lot of films and novels use this. Fight Club, for instance, came to mind. American Beauty has a kind of partial flashback because Kevin Spacey's character opens with the revelation that he'll be dead in under a year. For some reason I can only think of movies (not sure if Fight Club the novel opens the same way as the movie) that came out around 2000, but it's a VERY prevalent storytelling tactic and it might be something to consider here as a way to drive the plot and set up some sense of foreboding or foreshadowing. Clearly this is already a story where bad things happen to the narrator, but I think it might behoove you to consider where you want to end this and on what note. It could affect your tone, too, and give readers a hint of what to expect.

At any rate, I think you have something very compelling here. Your last chapter is good (though it needs some tightening, still) and should serve as an example for you as to how to write the rest of this. I think you need to go through a few edits, here, to really shape this, but I did get caught up in it and was rooting for the main character. I'd suggest you attempt to build up your critiquing skills by looking at other peoples' work. Often, I find it helpful when I go back and edit my own pieces to have looked over other peoples' writing and can see what is and isn't working for them. I think it would be beneficial to your story to trim a lot of the fat out and just relay important actions and points. I'm not sure I have the time and it would be good for you to figure out how to on your own. I think this has a lot of promise. Let me know if you would like to have me look at a rewrite or anything. Good luck with this!