later when I was a teen, I graduated to going with Raymond to meet with the supplier. Out there on those streets wasn’t a place for a kid, especially not a little girl. But, it was the only connection Raymond and I shared, and I was one of the most determined things walking. I got my ass beat so much that they eventually stopped fighting me when they figured it was useless. By the time I was eleven, carrying a gun had become a norm. Seeing people get shot, stabbed, and all manner of death and human destruction was a part of my daily routine.”
We may have grown up in different worlds, but the conditioning was similar.
“The longer I was in it, the more desensitized I became to violence and death. By the time I was twelve, I had a body on the gun that Raymond didn’t even know about. All of my friends were years older than me, teenagers between fourteen and nineteen years old. I ended up killing a twenty-three-year-old man who would have beaten my fourteen-year-old friend to death if I hadn’t killed him. He accused her of being a tease and became enraged when she wouldn’t have sex with him. She and I are still close friends, went to college together. I stopped after receiving my bachelor’s degree in business, but she continued and went to medical school studying pathology. Getting my doctorate on the streets was more beneficial for me anyway.”
The statement made me chuckle and there was a wide smile spreading across her lips also.
“None of us had any real rules, just kids taking on adult situations. I had no clear-cut goals in life other than wanting to be the best in the dope game and to someday become a boss. For a female, that was a tall order in that world, but I was never one to shy away from a challenge. I went on soaking up the streets like it was the air I breathed.
“At fourteen, I reached a turning point. I was robbed and beaten to within an inch of my life. The two guys that did it, assumed that they had killed me because they tossed my battered body in a dumpster behind their building. I don’t know how long I was in that dumpster, praying and hoping that someone would help me. I woke to day light and night fall and with barely enough strength to keep rats from eating me alive. It took people dumping their trash on me for me to scratch and claw my way out of there before I ended up buried alive.”
She had me so riveted in her world, that I was afraid to move or comment because I didn’t want her to stop. Knowing her past and how she had become so tough and fearless was a piece of history I’d wanted to know since the day I met her.
“I made my way out of the dumpster and then the alley. I begged for help, but people ignored me, passed by me, jumped over me, one even kicked me, mumbling that I was in his way. The streets were a savage beast that knew no mercy, and the people who grew up in it, absorbed that same savagery. One of my eyes was swollen shut, and the other was not far behind, so I had tunnel vision. I ended up crawling onto the highway where I was almost hit by a car before I received help.”
I couldn’t help squeezing her to me because the image was so brutally clear in my mind.
“The guy who was driving the car that almost killed me was who picked me up off the street, tossed me into the back of his car, and took me to the hospital. I had no idea how much damage was done to me until I was in recovery. My jaw was wired for weeks, cracked ribs, broken wrist, and a concussion. I was stabbed twice, once in my left side, and once in the lower back, but was lucky that nothing major was damaged.”
Like everything about her, I had noticed those scars and a few others, and the three tattoos she had, but had never commented, preferring that she tell me about them on her own. She tapped the top of her head at the back right side.
“Ended up with a piece of a metal plate in my head to help the bone heal where they had hit me with a