Chapter 1: The Beginning of the Chaos
Alright, let me take y’all back to where it all started. Picture this: my mom, Elise, a beautiful brown-skinned woman with curves like a Coke bottle and a heart bigger than her brain when it came to picking men. She was about 5′5" and 145 pounds of pure beauty wrapped in questionable choices. Bless her heart, she had a knack for picking men that were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
She met my siblings’ dad, Gino, right after high school. Now, Gino was a real winner, y’all—a cocaine-selling, drug-addicted bad boy. The kind you should run from, but of course, Mama didn’t get that memo. They had my brother Lewis and my sister Teresa together. They got married in what must’ve been the shortest, most explosive marriage in history. Six months of wedded “bliss,” y’all. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion with a side of drugs and infidelity. If there was a way to screw it up, they did it twice for good measure.
And y’all, let me tell you something about getting married to fix a relationship: it’s like trying to fix a leaky roof with paper towels. Spoiler alert—it don’t work. Mama was out here thinking two wrongs make a right, cheating right back at Gino. Plot twist: they don’t.
But let me rewind a bit to the craziest part of this story. So, Mama was out there, you know, doing her thing in them streets. She was like a postman—delivering all sorts of packages. Mama didn’t even know who Teresa’s daddy was at first. And while she was still married to Gino, along came Substation, Gino’s best friend. Yup, you heard it right. My mama was getting cozy with the man’s best buddy. Substation ended up being my dad, or as I like to call him, my “sperm donor.”
That man dipped faster than you could say “child support” when he found out I was on the way. Poof! Gone like a magic trick. But hey, no hard feelings. Mama should’ve known better than to mess with a married man without protection. You live, you learn, you write a dramatic comedy about it.
Fast forward nine years later, and here I am: Kathy, your narrator and youngest child of this glorious mess. We were living in a new house courtesy of Section 8, which was like winning the lottery for us. My brother Lewis was 12 going on 30 with his grumpy self, and my sister Teresa was 11, already thinking she knew everything. And me? I was 9 and just happy to be here, figuring life out one day at a time.
Mama was working at a nursing home, doing laundry for about $5.15 an hour. We weren’t exactly rolling in dough, but we had a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and enough food to keep our bellies happy. Life was tough, but we were making it work.
One day, Mama went grocery shopping with her fresh batch of food stamps and bumped into Anthony. Now, Anthony was one of those guys who had charm oozing out of his pores—tall, light-skinned, with muscles for days. He looked like he walked straight out of a 90s R&B video, and Mama was sold faster than you could say “bad decision.”
Mama rolled up at home with not just groceries, but a whole new man. We were like, “Who this dude?” My brother Lewis sized him up like a pit bull, ready to pounce. Teresa stood there with her arms crossed, giving him the ultimate side-eye. Me? I was just happy to see a man who didn’t immediately look like a threat, so I hugged his leg like he was Santa Claus.
Mama cleared her throat and announced, “This is Anthony, my boyfriend.” Boyfriend? Boy, bye! We were all shocked, like, did she just pick him up from aisle three next to the canned beans?
