One time in fourth grade, I threatened to throw a chair at a girl who called me a gorilla. I was suspended, but I did not care about missing class, nor did I care about what my mother would think, but who she thought to punish me. Her ex-boyfriend, Harold, use to give me a choice
          Head or gut
every time my sister and I
          Head or gut
got in trouble
          Head or gut
but this time there was no choice
just gut, gut, head, gut, head, a throw, head.

Fifth grade gave me glimpses of joint custody. At the time, that just meant some summers with dad and a couple school years in Worcester. I won “Best Dressed” that year in my favorite pair of gray jeans. My father would drop me off with a Hispanic woman, Liz, who was just as beautiful on the outside as she was on the inside. Being around Liz, her sons and family was warming, increased my palette for Hispanic women, and showed me rice and bananas wasn’t a bad meal.

Sixth grade I returned to Philadelphia where the schools are primarily black. I knocked some light skin kid out on video for bullying my sister, only to realize later that she lied. His mother found me in front of the school later that day telling me that her older sons were about to come looking for me.

Notes:
• Mother’s drinking picked up; she offered to smoke with me on my 14th birthday.
• Linda and Aleijah sucked my dick in the alley beside my house while my mother looked for me all night.
• I made more money than my mother.
• We were evicted—– I lost that money under the green carpet in my room.

Seventh grade I experienced being homeless for three hours. My sister and I sat on the curb near the poppy store, where I almost was robbed for the EBT card, when we both noticed our Chihuahua that ran away the previous year. We moved into one of my mother’s baby daddy’s trap house, his name was Chris—– he looked out for us.

Notes:
• Heating up water on the stove, or in the microwave to wash school clothes and ourselves.
• My mother and I had our first physical fight; she sat on me.

This same year, Miss Brown pulled me out of class and told me I did not belong in that school. At the end of the school year, Dante sucker punched me, outside the poppy store I was jumped at, after I said I would kill him over a slinky in the schoolyard.

Notes:
• Maybe I just had bad luck.

Eighth grade my grandparents drove from Colorado in a minivan to take my two sisters, little brother, mother, turtle, Eric, and myself; back with them. Till this day I believe they saved my life. When we arrived, I was craving nacho cheese sunflower seeds and I asked my grandfather where the poppy store was
he responded,
“Here’s a bike, go down the hill, take a left at the roundabout, go down the next hill for a mile and you’ll see a 7-Eleven.”

by. Philip G. Steverson