The Last Black Unicorn - Tiffany Haddish Page 0,10

I turned eighteen, my grandma sat me down.

Grandma: “Since I ain’t getting paid for you now, you need to go to school. You grown. Go on, get out there. You got friends. You’ll make it.”

I had gotten accepted into NYU, but they weren’t paying my way. I didn’t have no money, and my grandma was still taking care of my brothers and sisters. I was like, What if something happens to her? Who’s gonna be here for them?

So I decided I’m gonna go to Santa Monica Community College, and I’m gonna get a job.

I was basically couch surfing then. I was just going to all my friends’ houses. Homeless as hell, just traveling around with my plastic bins. The ones with wheels on them and stuff.

At that point, I had to stop doing comedy. I was only making $10 or $15 a show. I couldn’t live off of that. I was emancipated, and I needed a roof over my head. Getting paid $10 or $15 wasn’t gonna cut it. I could not find time to go to college, and work, and then also take a bus to do comedy. It just didn’t work.

I was eighteen. To survive, I had to quit comedy.

Family and Foster Care

The Car Wreck

Where do I even start with my family?

I should probably start with the car accident. That’s when everything changed.

Before the car accident, my mom had it together. She had two small businesses going, she was a manager at a U.S. post office, and she owned two houses on the same street.

At that point, she was married to my stepfather. I’ll call him Step-Father. He sucked. He was always cheating on her, but it didn’t matter to her. She worshiped the ground he walked on. Whatever mistakes he made, she didn’t care. He knocked up one of the employees of her businesses. She argued with him, but she didn’t leave him. She just loved that man. He could never do wrong, even when he did a lot of wrong.

She had three kids by him, all younger than me. I was the oldest. I felt like she loved them way more because she loved their dad. She didn’t love my dad. He left when I was real young.

I was around seven when Step-Father knocked up my mom’s employee, so he and my mom moved us all out to Pomona, and then to Colton. She was still trying to work in Marina del Rey after she had my sister. It was like she was working the graveyard shift. She had to drop us off at my grandmother’s every day. This one day when I was eight I told her she didn’t have to do it.

Tiffany: “Mom, let me babysit. I know how to make bottles. I know how to change diapers. We’re going to go to bed in about two hours. I know how to make hot dogs, rice. I know how to cook everything. We’re about to go to bed, and when you get home we’ll be waking up.”

Mom: “I’m running late. Okay.”

She never came back.

Two days went by. She did not come home. Step-Father didn’t come home, either. No one came home. Step-Father used to come home every night, but he didn’t come home at all.

I called my grandma, and my grandma said she hadn’t heard from my mom. By the third day, my grandma came out to where we were. She called Step-Father’s auntie and his auntie said:

Auntie: “Oh, she’s in the hospital in Pomona. She had a car accident on the 10 Freeway. You didn’t know?”

Grandma: “Why didn’t nobody tell me? How do you know and I don’t know?”

Auntie: “Well, Step-Father knew.”

Step-Father knew, and he didn’t do nothing.

They wouldn’t let me see my mom for two months. The accident was real bad. Her head was open and all this stuff. They didn’t tell me the details, they just looked at me and told me my mama would be fine. I would always think, If she’s gonna be fine, why can’t I see her?

When we finally got to see her, I was not prepared. She looked like a monster. Her eyes were black, and she had bandages across her head. She was swollen. Her whole body was swollen.

She didn’t look like my mama.

She had to learn to walk again. And talk, and eat, and everything. She did not remember any of my brothers and sisters. She just remembered me, and she was saying things like:

Mom: “You look just like my daughter, Tiffany. You should