Preface

Preface

Jenesis

It wasn't what I thought it would be, suddenly going from riches to rags. I thought it would be this horrible experience, where I would end up somewhere selling my body for chump change and addicted to crack. The funny thing or the truth of the matter is that it’s so much worse. Having this life that everyone envied, being Atlanta royalty and then just losing everything so suddenly should have killed me.  The fact that it doesn't kill you is a crime against nature. It just irks me that my dad would leave us like this. He’s so f-in irresponsible. Did he never think well, maybe just maybe something might happen to me someday and that he should set some money aside for his wife and kids. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s dead; he was a poor excuse for a father but what I’m not happy about is living in poverty because he decided to have a massive heart attack on his romantic getaway with a hooker. So now I’m stuck in Buckhead along with my mother and my twin brother, Jarell, living like a Katrina victim with my grandparents, my Aunt Jen and her 4 kids in a single-wide trailer.  And they say I’m the selfish one.             

There are two things I am certain of: That my life is now split into two different realties before and after. The second is that this life won’t do. I lay in the puddle of my morning tears trying to force myself to put my feet to the ground and face this life. I head to the shower and let the cold cascading waterfall my skin. During my final rinse cycle my flip flop slips and a piece of the black mold gets caught between my toe and I immediately know that I’m going to die. After the initial shock wears off I throw on my clothes and head down stairs to the pitiful faces of those people. Today things become even more real as we sign up for a new school.  I don’t get why we can’t just home school at this point. It’s the middle of the semester and we are either going to be ahead of everyone or behind. My mom has been gone since my dad died so I can’t be surprised when she disregards what I want again. The bus roared to a stop 3 blocks from our house. The wind whipped through my Gucci coat as each hood rat that waited next to me glanced up from there jungle music to bear witness to my misfortune. My new school is  my parents’ Alma mater, and I can only be impressed that they found some class in these slums and got away from here. I will find the same strength somewhere and we will get out of this situation, even if it means it getting worse before it gets better.

Jarell

The cold chill of the morning dew only made me shiver. I stepped outside knowing immediately that something was wrong here; that while I spent those few indolent hours trying to sleep away all the horror that somehow the world had reset and become a slightly different reality than what I was used to. To me the sun would never set the same way again and I will always be a dramatically different from the person I was yesterday.  My father’s death altered our views of the world in many different ways. Jenesis seems not affected. She seems more worried about who she is going to get to sponsor her couture lifestyle, than how her family is going to stay intact after this.  Her selfishness only pushes her forward while I’ll always be stuck on pause, bearing the burden of the truth of what really happened to our father and our money and trying to fix what our father could not.

My grandmothers handshakes as she rations out enough cereal to feed all ten of us. I feel incredibly sad that my grandparents and my aunt have always lived like this. They have always lived is this condemned house with mold, no hot water, or working stove. They live in poverty and have never once complained or asked for a handout. They must think of us as horrible people because for the longest time we took everything for granted. Money, having a roof over our head, even our father, we took it all for granted and it only left us all worse off than when we started. So now, I must find a way to make this world right for me and my family again; all of my family. My father did some real jacked up stuff with his life and I will do all I can to undo all his evils and make the Washington name right again. The first step towards making things right again lies along a line I swore long ago I would never cross but it seems now I have no choice but to jump across that line and never look back.