EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE, TITLED, "THE STAIRWELL"

I stood there looking at what had appeared to be Mommy, but now seemed like a totally different person. She took a long pull and then she stared at me. It didn’t seem like she was looking at me, instead she gazed straight through me. It was as if something or someone was in the hallway behind me. I looked around and saw no one. It was just Mommy and I. Her whole personality changed in a matter of seconds. She turned into a zombie right before my eyes. Her eyes were wide open and her pupils dilated. She became anxious and seemed focused on something nonexistent. The woman whom I loved as Mommy was deviant. She became a stranger to me. She didn’t even look like Mommy anymore. I was a skinny kid, but she appeared to be just as skinny as me. She weighed around eighty-five pounds. Her skin was dry and discolored. Her face was so sunken that her eyes looked as though they were going to jump right out of her skull. As the long seconds passed by, I began to feel alone and afraid. After about a minute or two of staring at me, she offered me a hit.


“No thank you,” I said, shocked that my own mother was asking me, at nine years old, to smoke crack. I knew at that moment that her mind was really gone.

She tried again. "Come on, take a hit, smoke it.”

I looked her straight in the eyes. "No, Mommy, I don't want to.”

She looked into my eyes and moved the homemade pipe towards me. “Are you sure? It’s good.”

I looked down at the steps and whispered, “No, thank you.”

Suddenly, I realized our roles had reversed. I no longer could make excuses for Mommy or depend on her to protect me. I had to become an adult. I had to discover a means to guard my life, and to protect Mommy from herself. I turned to the streets, and the neighborhood was my dwelling.