District of Confetti

A Story by Socioloverboy

Life for a poor family in Washington D.C. A youth is faced with unfathomable hardship but does what is needed to survive.

DISTRICT of CONFETTI

I was fifteen and we were poor. Dirt poor. Mom was a base-head and my dad, well, that coward left around a year before. Guess I should have thanked him, one less mouth to feed. My baby brother, Lewis, was 4 and a half, he didn’t understand anything yet. He’d say, “Dinky, where’s my dad?” My answer was always the same, “Dad’s dead Lou, forget about him.” I didn’t know if it was true, though a small part of me hoped it were, but it didn’t matter. It was better if Lewis grew up thinking his dad was dead rather than knowing that he deserted him. The questions didn’t end there, “Why did my dad die?” My answers had become automatic, “He had a bad heart?”

“Why his heart was broked?”

“Broken, Lou, not broked. His heart was broken.”

“Why his heart was broken?”

“I dunno, it just was.”

Lewis, if he had been born in the 1700’s, would have been a poet, a real bleeding heart type. He had this sort of petrified innocence about him. He didn’t know why Dad was gone and he didn’t care, he just knew that he missed him. I don’t remember ever being that innocent.

I always made sure he ate right, even if I didn’t. By the time the government check came mom already had most of it spent. I’d have to steal the money from her purse just so she didn’t smoke it all. Sometime’s I’d go a few days or so without eating just so Lewis had enough to fill his belly. My stomach growled and I swore I could feel it knocking up against my spine, but I didn’t dare eat. I knew what it was like to starve and to be too young to do anything about it; I knew what it was like to lay on a cold floor crying and clutching an empty stomach. Lewis didn’t deserve that.

Growing up in the piss stained projects of Washington D.C was rough. Nation’s capitol my a*s. The world didn’t care if we existed. It seemed ironic to live so close, geographically speaking, to the government yet feel so alienated from the rest of America. President “blah blah” approves 10 billion in foreign aid to help third world countries while Lewis eats beef flavored Ramen, if anything, for the third day in a row. Hypocrites.

Anyway, living in D.C presented us with more problems than just an apathetic government. Namely winter. When I could, I’d take money off mom’s dresser or out of the pockets of the men sleeping next to her and, after I was sure Lewis was well fed, I’d stuff the rest under my mattress. I’d need it to pay the heating bill. I’d saved about four hundred dollars by early September, then Lewis got sick and I had to take him to the hospital. I pretended I was eighteen. I don’t know if they believed me, maybe they saw the sick desperation in my eyes or maybe it was the crumpled wad of money in my hand, I don’t know, but they didn’t ask too many questions. He had an upper respiratory infection, probably from the mold in our damp run down building, and needed medicine. The medicine was expensive but the choice to fill his prescription was not debatable. Until he got better I spent every last dime we had on his medicine, food, and blankets. It was getting cold and the drafty apartment did little to stifle the sharp wind. No sooner than Lewis got better did winter come in full force. It was so cold. We’d huddle together, me and Lewis, and talk. His mind was always on the same track�"Dad. “Dinky, where’s my dad?”

“Dad’s dead Lou, forget about him.”

“Oh yeah, I forgetted.”

“Forgot, Lou, you forgot, not forgetted.”

“Yeah, I forgot.”

“It’s ok. You miss him, huh?”

“Yeah. Don’t you?”

“Sometimes.” I lied. I missed him everyday. I hated him for leaving us there with her, but I missed him. I missed how he hugged me. The day he left he hugged me hard and told me he’d be back, back to take us away from all this. “Take care of your brother, you hear me?”

“Yes sir.” I replied. He lifted my chin with his finger and wiped a tear from my eye. Then he was gone.

Sometimes I’d find myself looking out the window into the distance hoping to see him walking up the hill. He never did.

“Dinky, I’m cold.”

I took the blanket from around my shoulders and wrapped him up until nothing but his little brown cheeks and red nose shown through. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Nah” I lied, “I’m fine. You hungry?”

He nodded enthusiastically from under his blanket cocoon and I headed to the kitchen to boil some water for his Ramen.

At some point in late November, mom turned “strawberry” and stopped taking money for her services and let her clients pay her in dope. We were in a bad way before long. The days that she was sober were an afterthought and she spent all of her time in her room, smoking and letting a steady stream of men defile her. I remembered when she had pride, when she was dignified. Not anymore. She was a stranger to us.

The money was gone, all of it. Lewis was down to his last packet of chicken flavored Ramen and the weather was showing no signs of improving. I had to do something. I stormed into my mom’s room, desperately squeezing a tacking hammer in my fist and crying. She was so out of it, based out of her mind and lying across her stained mattress. Naked. Condom wrappers and used rubbers littered her floor, as did broken pipes, burnt foil and other filth. I wanted to hit her. She lifted her head pathetically, her eyes rattling around in her head like loose change, “Who’s that? You got the stuff?” I gripped the hammer harder. Her eyes came to a stop and focused on me, “Lincoln?” I hid the hammer and my intent behind my back, “Yeah, Ma, it’s me.”

“What are you�"what time, ugh�"where’s umm, umm�"” she searched futilely for her youngest’s name.

“Lewis?”

“Uh huh, where’s he at?”

Disgusted, I turned and walked out. I wasn’t ready for that reality. I wasn’t ready to believe that she was that far gone. I tossed the hammer into the corner and leaned against the wall. “What am I gonna do?” I mumbled to myself hoping for some divine inspiration. It came. It came in the form of a little voice. “Why’s mom sick all’ time?”

I shook my head and tried to hide my tears, “I dunno Lou, she just is.”

“Is she gon’ get better?”

“I hope so.”

“The dockers gon’ come today?”

He believed everything I told him, even that the men that came by everyday were doctors and that they were trying to help his mom. Trying to explain the noises coming from her room at night made me feel sick. He was too young to understand.

“She needs her med’cin, huh Dinky?”

I nodded. Her medicine. Crack cocaine, hardly a medicine at all, somehow made her feel better. I was not deluded by the seemingly magical way the dope affected her, she was an addict and had forgotten how to function without it. Then an idea planted itself firmly into my head. An idea borne of desperation and ignorance, but an idea nonetheless. I shuffled Lewis off to bed and waited for mom to pass out again. After she had, I snuck back into her room and scooped up three or four pale yellowish “rocks” off the floor and shoved them in my pocket.

At around midnight I poked my head into our room to make sure Lewis was still asleep, he was. I left the drafty apartment and stepped out into the dark and cold city streets. Stars sparkled in the cloudless sky and the moon, reddish and pregnant, hung low over the horizon. I stood on an empty corner and waited. The D.C underbelly that nobody wanted to see or talk about came alive after midnight. The addicts crawled out of the woodwork, itching and scratching, and fiending for their next fix. I had it. Cars drove by slowly and questionable characters stared out from their passenger side windows, wondering if I was a cop or a snitch. They circled like sharks closing in for the kill. I kept my cool, I didn’t want to seem too eager and scare them off. Crack-heads are very paranoid and suspicious creatures. Nature of the beast I suppose.

A car stopped, an old rusted out Chevy Nova, and a tall, skinny addict stepped out from the driver side. He scratched at his neck and his bulging eyes darted around like excited hummingbirds. His lips were stained black from burns and white crust flaked from the sides of his mouth. My heart raced as he got closer. His skin clung tight to his bones and he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. A belt cinched tight around his waist held up his tattered jeans and a ragged, bleach stained “Tupac” t-shirt was all that covered his chest.

“Whatchu holdin’?” he rasped.

I froze. He looked around again, coughed, and started to walk back to the car. I felt my opportunity slipping away.

“Uh, umm, I, ugh, I got some crack...”

He stopped and turned towards me with a moonstruck look on his face. He shuffled back.

“You got some crack? You a cop, boy?”

My heart fluttered nervously, “No.”

He flicked his nose a few times and snorted. “What can I get for this?” He rustled a wrinkled ten-dollar bill out of his pocket. I had never sold crack before and didn’t know what a good price was, so I fished the four rocks out of my pocket and held them out. He nodded his head, “Aight.” He took them, climbed back into his rusty car, and drove off. Ten bucks bought a whole lot of Top Ramen, I even splurged the extra quarter or so on the shrimp flavored variety.

The next night was more of the same. I waited for mom to pass out before going in to collect what she hadn’t smoked. After a while I started to get a hang of being a crack dealer. “Base-heads” are surprisingly loyal and most of my customers were repeats. I priced my product to sell, what did it matter to me? Small rocks, “pebbles”, went for five bucks or three for twelve; medium rocks, sold for ten firm, and large ones, “boulders”, I sold for twenty. Boulders were rare but an obvious customer favorite. Before long I had earned enough money to pay the heating bill and buy Lewis some proper food, clothing, and shoes. I’d even bought a jacket for myself. Nothing too fancy, just something to shield me from the icy city winds.

The money was rolling in and things were going well, too well, I should’ve known that it wouldn’t last. The night it happened Lewis said something weird to me, I ignored it, I wish I hadn’t; he said, “I don’t wan’ you to go away.” I hugged him tight, “Don’t worry Lou, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” I stayed with him until he fell asleep, then, once I was sure he wouldn’t wake up, I headed out.

The moon was empty and new. I trudged through the fresh snow that had fallen during the day to my corner spot. Addicts are like mailmen, they show up no matter the weather, but that night they were oddly absent. I noticed a newer model car roaming the area; the driver eyed me through his passenger side window and passed several times before stopping. A well-dressed man; well dressed for the D.C projects anyway, stepped out and approached me. He looked around suspiciously and pulled a crisp, big-faced Franklin out of his jacket pocket. My naïve eyes widened with greed.

“How much crack can I get for this?”

“The whole bill?”

“Yeah.”

“I got three boulders left and some pebbles, but that’s it.”

“Can I see?”

A nagging little voice screeched in my head as I fished the rocks out of my pocket one by one. I ignored it and thought of all the things I could get for Lewis with that hundred-dollar bill. By the time I pulled the last rock out of my pocket and looked up, the cop had his badge out. My eyes emptied and I felt hollow. He pushed me up against the wall, patted me down, and cuffed me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the second story window, and Lewis, who had woken up and was staring out the window, watching me. My stomach knotted at the thought of leaving him there with her. I couldn’t.

“You’re under arrest.”

Just when I thought the law had forgotten about us, it had me cuffed and pressed against a wall.

“Do you have any other drugs on your person?”

“No, sir” I replied, “not on me, but I do at the house; 226B.”

I tilted my head in the direction of my apartment. The officer pointed to the decrepit row of buildings, “That one there?” I nodded. He radioed for backup and sat me in the back of his car, before long the entire block was bathed in flickering shades of red and blue. Ironically, the falling snow looked like confetti. The red, white, and blue party paper continued to fall as I sat in the undercover squad car and watched as they kicked down the door and disappeared inside. The first officer came out carrying Lewis in his arms; I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. The next dragged my mother out kicking and screaming and naked. She was all skin and bones.

Two years later, while I was in juvenile detention, someone came to visit. Dad. He’d come back. I’m not sure how he found me but I wasn’t as glad to see him as I thought I’d be. He wasn’t the man I remembered. His face held a sadly familiar “sunken in” quality and his eyes were heavy with guilt.

“Lincoln?”

I could feel the shame in his voice.

“Dad.”

“What happened to you, Junior? Huh? What happened?”

I didn’t answer. I owed him nothing.

“Where’s Lewis? Where’s your brother?”

I stared him down until he blinked and looked away. I’d heard that Lewis had been placed with a family outside of the D.C city limits. They wrote to me, telling me that he asked about me regularly. I never responded.

“Link, please, where’s Lewis?”

I stared at the shadow of the man I used to look up to through the scuffs in the glass separator and shook my head. My answer was automatic, “Lewis is dead, Dad. Forget about him.”