Chapter One
A Taste
The story of my life . . . While it's not so spectacular to me, when compared to the average person, I guess it is rather unique.
Like all little girls, I played with my dolls, rode my bike, and cried for my mommy when I skinned my knee. But somewhere along the way those similarities began to change and I became different from my peers. I think it all started with my insatiable desire to be someone special, someone famous, and my craving to be loved. And if you ask anybody who knows, craving to be loved is dangerous because you are willing to compromise everything else you may desire to attain it.
Like many young people, at age eighteen I thought I knew it all, including the specific direction in which I wanted my life to go, and I thought I knew everything I needed to know to get there. Nobody could tell me a damn thing. Not even my mother. And boy did she try! But my mother's way was not the fastest road to accomplish anything, never mind achieving stardom. And while my mom was relentless in her attempts to redirect my course, what she soon realized was that I was just as relentless in my passion to make it all the way to the top in the easiest and least time-consuming way possible. Unfortunately for me, tired from struggling, working, and probably just life itself, Mom eventually threw her hands up in the air and let me do my own thing, after warning me that I would have to learn the hard way.
A single, divorced mother of two, Francine Young worked three jobs to provide for my older sister, Regina, and me and to maintain the three-bedroom house left to her by our grandmother. When her marriage to our father was coming to an end, Mom decided that it was time for Dad to go, but it took everything out of her to maintain the lifestyle that we were used to living. Between paying for dance classes for me and living expenses, Mom was forced to give up her dream of owning her own hair salon in an effort to make ends meet and take care of us. Sometimes she was gone sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, which obviously didn't leave much time for her to spend with us. So we were pretty much forced to raise ourselves. By the time I'd turned thirteen, I began finding it difficult to focus. As puberty took over, I started feeling emotions and desires I had never felt before, and things like ballet class were no longer at the top of my priority list. Besides, since Mom was always working, it was up to me to get myself to class, and the streets were starting to call my name—loudly. I wanted to see what they had to offer. Ballet, music, and art just weren't as exciting as the local weed spot, and I eventually stopped going to class. When Mom caught wind of all my absences, relieved not to have to pay the bill anymore, she simply let me drop out. Of course, this only lead to trouble, because anybody who knows can tell you that boredom, lack of focus, and puberty are the three ingredients that make the most troublesome stew. With our dad MIA and Mom gone most of the time, Regina and I knew this recipe all too well. I started getting into trouble and doing plenty of shit I knew was wrong. Right around this time, hip-hop was born and I quickly became mesmerized by the culture. Rapping and graffiti art was far more interesting to me than anything I was learning in a classroom, and cutting school became my favorite pastime.
Since drawing was one of my passions, when I met Ding, one of the best graffiti taggers in my neighborhood, I would do any and everything to be around him. With his adventurous spirit, he quickly became my idol, and he was more than willing to teach me the art of tagging. The adrenaline rush I would get when we'd jump down onto the tracks in the subway station was indescribable. The distinct smell of old and new piss that permeated the dark, rat-infested tunnels made for a wild and creepy danger-filled experience. The police were also always on our heels, ready to arrest us for defacing New York City property, which made the thrill that much more exciting. I always knew that we had to get in and out quickly or risk being caught and jailed or worse—turned over to my mother. Still, on any given school-day afternoon, Ding and I would run through those scary tunnels to the train yard, where we'd find paradise. Clean, vacant trains seemed to rest there, just waiting to be tagged, and we happily obliged. My name was Tasty and I carried a knapsack filled to the brim with every color spray paint you could imagine, and the bulk of it sometimes made it difficult to run. On one occasion, I was forced to drop my bag as I heard the weighty footsteps of the cops approaching in the darkness. Ding went one way while I went another, knowing that if we separated, they'd never get us both. In an effort to save my own ass, I made the split-second decision to jump over the third rail onto the platform where I then ran up the stairs as if my life depended on it—which in a way it did. As I arrived on the uptown side, a D train was about to leave the station. In the nick of time, I forcefully thrust through the closing doors and dropped, panting, into a seat. When I looked up, all eyes were on my paint-covered face and clothes. But I was safe. I don't remember what happened to Ding that day; the only thing I cared about was that I had won the game.
When I wasn't cutting school and tagging my name all over the city, my other beloved pastime was hanging with my homegirls. They were my homies from around the way. We probably got along so well because we had much in common. It was like the blind leading the blind. They were pretty much in the same boat I was: clueless and searching. With her mom strung out on crack, Ebony had no choice but to live with her eighty-year-old grandmother, who did her best but who was definitely no match for this overly boy-crazy teen with low self-esteem and raging hormones. Jessie, on the other hand, lived with her mother, but Ms. Faye always found her much younger boyfriends far more interesting than her teenage daughter. Then there was my girl Carmen, who I'd met when I was fifteen during a ninety-day stint I was forced to do at the St. Rose Catholic Reform School after my mom got tired of reporting me to the cops for truancy. Now, Carmen was a ride-or-die chick to the bone—a five-foot-seven Puerto Rican beauty with pretty almond-shaped eyes and thick black lashes to complement them. Sexually frisky and mischievous, Carmen was known as the hot, freak-me-all-week girl, with long black curly hair that bounced seductively around her angelic face—a misleading feature since she was really a devil in disguise. Carm had perfected the art of using her assets to entice what she wanted out of anybody she set her sights upon, and both men and women lusted after the juiciness she had to offer. Just a few months from completing her sentence when I met her, she was in for being a chronic runaway. While on the surface it looked like she simply didn't want to abide by her mother's rules, she secretly told me that her stepfather had been molesting her since the age of eight, and on her thirteenth birthday she'd finally gotten the balls to take flight. She'd run away so many times that the local cops knew her by name. But each time they'd catch her and bring her home, the abuse would start all over again. Within days, she'd run again. By the time Carm turned fifteen, her mom had grown tired of having her brought home by the police and signed the papers for her to be admitted to St. Rose's. She refused to believe Carm's story about the molestation and just wanted her daughter out of her hair. St. Rose's was the easiest solution.
Carmen was tough and I looked up to her. In a way, she ran St. Rose's, garnering respect from the kids and adults alike. It was rumored that she possessed this incredibly freaky and promiscuous side, but truth be told, I never saw it. She got good grades and nobody fucked with her, and I wanted to align myself with that. Sure, her life was a never-ending saga, but my girl was a master at making the sweetest lemonade out of the most sour lemons. Connected through our dreams of becoming famous, Carmen and I became fast friends, watching each other's back and helping each other get through our stint any way we could.
Since my own sister and I didn't see eye to eye on too many things, I was elated to have some sister/friends who I could count on and call my own. They gave me the feeling that I belonged somewhere, because while I loved my older sister dearly, she was just too weak for me. Whenever I looked at her, I promised myself that I would never be anything like her. Even though we both started out with big dreams, Regina had given up all her power to a guy whose sole purpose in life was to use and abuse her. I, on the other hand, was determined to make my own happiness and my own money, and to maintain my own power. I had my own opinions and ideas about how things should go down in my life and had no intention of putting in work for which I did not reap the full benefits. What I saw in her was a scared woman with low self-esteem and even lower self-worth. I guess our father's absence had manifested itself that way for her, but that could never be me, I often told myself. I craved the good life—flyy clothes, blinding jewels, fast cars, and unlimited cash, and I wanted to be among those who craved the same things. But first, I knew, I had to get out of my momma's house and up from under her rules.
Hanging out was my way to escape. While I'd party every night if I could, Friday was the night that I always found my way into some underground spot hoping to meet someone who could help jump-start me toward my goal. Basement parties, house parties, block parties—if it was a party and there were lots of people, I was there. Like Lotto, ya gotta be in it to win it, and this particular Friday was no different.
Carmen, who I spoke with on the phone frequently but rarely saw these days, had called me the night before and invited me to hang out at a club called the Vision with her and a new group of friends she had recently made. Needless to say, I was more than excited. I was tired of coming up empty at the local spots in my neighborhood, and the Vision was one of the premier nightclubs in New York City. The club had a velvet rope so thick that it metaphorically resembled a steel wall that no one was permitted beyond without a special pass. The only way you could get in was to be invited by somebody who was somebody. And even then, the bouncers looked you up and down and made the decision on whether you were cool enough to walk beyond its privileged doors. So I figured that whoever Carmen was rolling with must have been somebody pretty big for her to invite me there, and I couldn't believe that little old me was going to be partying in one of the hottest celebrity hangouts in the city. And knowing Carm like I did, I knew I was in for a night filled with lessons and tests. School was always in session when I was with her and I was the anxious student, eager and willing to participate in an evening I would never forget.
Copyright © 2007 by Heather Hunter. All rights reserved.
