(Sample reading of my book “Stand For Something or Stand For Nothing, chapters 1-3, buy full story on Amazon Kindle… http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013UMYZWI?ie=UTF8&isInIframe=1&n=133140011&redirect=true&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=digital-text&showDetailProductDesc=1#iframe-wrapper)

INTRODUCTION

My earliest recollection is living with my mother and 21 year old half-brother in the Princess Apartments on Norton Avenue in mid-town Los Angeles. I was around four years old at the time. Life was good for us in those days. My mother was a professional hairstylist and owned her own salon, so we never wanted for anything. And, the middle-class neighborhood we lived in was culturally diverse and peaceful, so life was good. I truly believed that we were living the American dream.

I didn’t know much about my dad or his family, as the only common interest he and my mother had, apart from bringing me into this world, was their involvement with the Nation of Islam, where they’d met. He came around every once in a while, and that was okay; because, although mom, Chucky and I made a relatively small family, the three of us were happy together.

Notwithstanding the fact that most people thought Chucky was more like my father than my older sibling anyway, as he picked me up every day after school to hang out with him and get something to eat before bringing me home.

Charles, or Chucky as we called him, suffered terribly from Sickle Cell Anemia and needed to visit the hospital every other month for blood transfusions. He was constantly in pain. Nevertheless, he never let it stop him from making sure that I got up each morning, ate breakfast and made it to school on time. Chucky was the glue that held our family together and my mom and I adored him greatly.

Yet within a few short years, the life that I had come to know would come undone in ways we could have never imagined.

CHAPTER ONE

I was born in 1974 to Kandynce Griggs-Jones and Ernest Jones in Los Angeles, CA on a Tuesday in May. Now, at 41 years of age, the mother of a 21 year old college student, and a newlywed to one of the most wonderful men that I have ever encountered in my life, I am ready to share this story.

From the start, my childhood was unique, complex, challenging, fun and sad… all at the same time.

My family history is a bit convoluted, but as I understand it, my mother was originally from St. Ann, Jamaica and came to the United States with her father when she was in her pre-teen years; her mother having passed away when she was still very young. My grandfather was a tall man with strong African features and it was shared with me that my grandmother had been a beautiful fair-skinned West Indian woman who possessed high cheekbones. Once in the U.S., my grandfather married a woman named Mary Griggs, who was of mixed race; her parents being African-American and Choctaw Indian. As Mary already had two daughters, she didn’t make much room for another within her heart. Nevertheless, my mother instantly had two sisters; my Aunt Feda and Aunt Mary.

Therefore, my mother had grown up in Dallas, Texas, where eventually she had gotten married at 14, given birth to a son and a daughter, and been separated well before Chucky and I came along.

Mom was a small framed woman, standing at only 5’3 and weighing in at less than 130 pounds. And, though she had been living in Texas since before she became a teenager, she still possessed more than a hint of her Jamaican heritage with her deep brown skin, short stylish haircut, high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes, and cute Jamaican accent.

My mother was what some would call a homebody, her primary focus being her salon business and making a home for us. She was also a strict disciplinarian and didn’t play. When she gave you directions, you took heed, because you didn’t want her to have to tell you more than once!

So, after having had Chucky and being rejected by Mary, mom made her way to L.A.

Mom and Chucky were exceptionally close and it wasn’t surprising that they had a very strong bond with each other; considering that the two of them had struggled together for years prior to her marriage to my father, as my mom worked hard to build a decent life for the two of them. At one point, they were homeless and without anywhere else to turn or go, my mom joined the Nation of Islam, which is where she met and a short time later, married my father.

Dad was a very handsome dark skin man, who at just over six feet tall was strong and physically well-built. It was no secret that my father had been incarcerated when he was in his 20’s due to drugs and alcohol. But, once he found the Nation of Islam, he cleaned himself up and got an education. From what I understood, he was an Electrical Engineer who had his own electronic repair shop, which I can remember visiting as a young child.

To this day, I still don’t have the full story behind why he and mom separated, but I do know that he loved studying history and astrology and already had five daughters long before I was brought into this world.

At first, I lived with my parents in the home they owned on 54th and Western Avenue. Although I don’t personally remember living there, I have seen the pictures and heard stories. My elder brother lived there with us as well. Having been born in 1957, he was 17 years my senior and more of a father to me than my own.

I don’t know where Chucky was born, but that didn’t matter to me at the time. I just knew that he loved me and was always there for me and my mother.

Los Angeles in the 70’s was a time of great upheaval, with its racial and ethnic tensions and exploding urban expansion. With a population of almost 3 million people, L.A. was easily the third largest urban city in the United States; following behind New York and Chicago.

At the early part of the decade I was born into, Sam Yorty was mayor, taking credit for the city’s largest years of growth. Not surprisingly, he was quick to reject any claim that he was also responsible for the Watts riots of 1965 and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968.

In 1973, the year before I was born, Tom Bradley became the first African-American mayor of Los Angeles, and the second African-American mayor of a major city in the United States. He would go on to serve in that office for the next twenty years.

I don’t remember exactly when the three of us moved into the Princess apartments, though I do know that it was shortly after my parents separated and sold our home. It was a well-maintained building and many professional African-American, Africans and people from the Islands made the Princess their home. I loved it there because everyone knew each other. My first best friend was Ethiopian who lived in the apartments, whom we called Mimi. Mimi and her family always invited me over to eat injera, which was a large sourdough flatbread and beef wat which is similar to stew. It was a good place to be.

Unfortunately, one day when I was outdoors playing with one of my friends, an older neighbor, who happened to be a family friend, called to me to come over to his apartment; saying that he had a gift to give me.

Being six years old at the time, I didn’t think twice about it and excitedly went over to him.

As soon as I stepped into the doorway, he grabbed me and put his hand around my mouth to keep me from crying out and attracting the attention of other neighbors. He then began putting his hands all over my still prepubescent body. I struggled and fought against him with everything I had, eventually freeing myself long enough to get away and flee. As I was running up the stairs to my apartment, my screams could be easily heard by not only my mother, but also my brother, who promptly confronted the man and beat him up.

You have to remember, in the 70’s, child molestation wasn’t necessarily a huge concern for the police; at least not in the majority of black neighborhoods. Nevertheless, my mother called the police later that day and he was arrested.

This is the world I was brought into; a world of violence and confusion. Nothing was ever straight forward and neat. It seemed as if everything surrounding me was in a constant state of change or flux.

Nevertheless, I had my mother… and I had my brother, Chucky.

CHUCKY

Like my mother, my elder brother suffered from Sickle Cell Anemia and was constantly in severe pain, needing to visit the hospital for blood transfusions at least once every other month. This disorder affected him in many ways and though he was able to work a few hours here and there at a local food chain on Crenshaw Blvd and collect Social Security Disability, he wasn’t able to take on permanent or full-time work, as his anemia was extremely challenging physically. But, he never let it get him down or prevent him from being my protector and care-taker.

Although Sickle Cell Disease is hereditary, I did not inherit this gene; probably because we had different fathers.

At 6’1, very handsome with a beautiful brown complexion, and a smile that could light up a room, my big brother was a sharp dresser who laid out his clothes every night for the next day, and always maintained his hygiene.

Chucky had a lot of friends that respected him and who were always hanging out at our house. His best friend was named “Bookie”, who was loved by mother as well; just like he was her own son, and she would regularly have him stay over at the house and eat dinner.

Chucky also had girlfriends, but he really ever only loved this one girl, Charlene. Nevertheless, they would constantly fight and break up; they could never seem to get it together!

My brother was pretty much what we call today “street smart.” Despite his disability and all of the time spent moving around and being homeless before mom got married, Chucky was able to graduate from High School.

Afterwards, mom pushed him to get a trade, so he did enroll in vocational training at Trade Tech College; however, he soon dropped out.

So, for the most part, Chucky made his living as a hustler… a hustler who loved his family and a hustler who loved the streets.

The streets for my brother included being a member of one of the most notorious black gangs in Los Angeles; the Crips. Formally begun just a few years before I was born, by the mid-70’s it had increased greatly in number and my brother had found a home amongst its ranks of brotherhood. This, more than likely, due to his lack of a positive role model and consistent father-figure that he could look up to and depend upon. Originally known as the Avenue Cribs, the gang’s name had been transformed into the Crips by the time my brother became involved.

A few short years after the Crips were formed, the Bloods had been organized and an all-out rivalry between the two gangs was firmly in place across L.A., Compton and Inglewood; an area of less than 30 square miles.

Between 1978 and 1982, there would be an additional 101 new Black gangs in L.A., with 30,000 active gang members.

It was this environment that had my mother deeply concerned for Chucky. She loved him dearly and wanted him to leave the Crips and get out of the streets. Her biggest fear was that he would either end up in jail or in a grave.

So, she decided to make a change.

THE MOVE

In the summer of 1981, our lives were altered drastically, when my mother decided that our little 3-person family would be leaving Los Angeles and moving back to her childhood hometown of Dallas, Texas.

I shared before, that when my mother told us to do something, we did it! Just because my brother was now 24 years old, didn’t mean he was going to fight her about it. I mean sure, he could have stayed and not moved with us, but we were the only real family he had. So, he came with us.

Mom gave up ownership of her hair salon and sold everything we owned in order to make the move possible. But, we didn’t move on up, as the Jefferson’s did… Instead, when we got to Dallas, we moved into an apartment complex that was considered the projects. We left our Princess apartment in Los Angeles with its two bedrooms and two baths to live in a one bedroom, one bath, cramped apartment.

We were also surrounded by poverty, as this environment was a huge departure from where we were previously. Here, there were poor people on welfare and disability, single mothers, criminals, drug dealers, and gang members. It was almost as if we jumped out of the frying pan into the fire! We were now living off my mother’s savings and she needed to be careful of her spending if this money was going to last for the next two to three years, until she figured out a plan.

Dallas was so foreign and cold to me! The kids were different than what I was used to being around. Where I had been enrolled in private schools like, “Little Angels” in Angeles Vista, where all the kids were African-American and came from upper-middle class or middle-class homes; now I was being enrolled in public schools complete with all of the various issues that are inherently part of them. I had no clue about public schools or the severity of the problems I would encounter. I got picked on a lot because some kids thought I dressed too nice, I had homemade lunches versus school lunches, and I always had a couple of dollars on me. This had been normal for me in Los Angeles. I began to grow up fast in Dallas.

On the flipside, I was beginning to enjoy having other family around me, like siblings, aunts, cousins, and other nieces and nephews. I started understanding what holidays meant with big family gatherings, which were always cool!

Chucky was still finding trouble, or should we say trouble was finding him; quickly becoming involved with guys in the neighborhood who were interested in hearing about his experience with gangbanging in L.A.

Nothing could have prepared our little family for what was coming next.

CHAPTER TWO

Chucky and I spent the majority of our time together getting to know Dallas. We took buses and walked around downtown, looking into store windows and being amused by the local southern hospitality. We even had a local candy lady that sold my favorite candies for low prices… everyone knew and loved the candy lady; it was a highlight of my week.

I spent a lot of time at my Aunt Mary's house. Aunt Mary was my mother's stepsister. Aunt Mary was a fair-skin woman who was strict, yet loving. A few houses down the block was her other step-sister, my Aunt Feda, who rented out rooms. Aunt Feda was a brown-skin woman with long wavy hair, who was laid back, fun, and talkative. I really enjoyed being there and playing with all of our many cousins.

Everyone stayed over Aunt Mary's house; it was the family gathering place. She was a type of caretaker for all of us. She had even been taking care of my mom's step-mother, who had been very ill with diabetes and heart issues; passing away just a month earlier.

That's where I was that late summer day in August, 1982, playing on the tire swing they had put up in the backyard, when we first heard the gunshot and then a loud scream coming from down the street.

The sound was piercing. We had no idea what had just happened; the neighbor who had run over to get my mother wouldn't say. She just kept telling her that she needed to come. So, we all went.

There was already a huge crowd gathering in front of the porch at my Aunt Feda's house and as we got closer, we could see Chucky laying on his back in her flowerbed; shot in the abdomen. Thankfully, he was still alert and talking, so we were very hopeful. Scared… yet, hopeful.

We discovered later that apparently, he had been caught by one of my Aunt's tenants trying to steal a gun, which led to a big argument and a struggle. The shotgun accidentally went off and my brother was shot.

Although in shock, Chucky was still showing concern for me and begged my Aunts to remove me and my mother from the scene. Screaming, I asked him if he was going to be okay. He quickly replied "yes" and told me to stop crying.

Once the ambulance arrived, my mom and Aunt Mary rode with him to the hospital, while I remained behind with my Aunt Feda. I remember being so scared and feeling so alone. Even though everyone was crying, they kept trying to reassure me by telling me he would be okay and that he would be home soon!

Mom stayed at the hospital, while my Aunts brought her any personal items she needed. Though I did get to talk to my mom on the phone, I stayed behind and hung out with my cousins, never being given the opportunity to go visit my brother. She just said that he was going to be fine; the doctors were trying to combat issues with his sickle cell disease. So, I just kept looking forward to my brother walking through the door again.

Two days later, my brother died and our world changed forever!

REST IN LOVE

They said that there had been extensive problems compounded by his Sickle Cell Anemia. All I knew is that my brother never came home.

I was never given the chance to talk to him again, hug his neck or tell him goodbye.

In the days following, I stayed at my Aunt Feda’s with my cousins Chris, who was about ten years older than I was, and my half-sister Jackie’s five children, who ranged in age from seven to nineteen. One of them, Renee, about fourteen, acted like a big sister to me and Chris acted like a big brother. Everyone said that Renee and I resembled one another; that we looked like sisters.

But, nothing and no one could replace Chucky.

Even watching the adults coming in and out of the houses making preparations, while I played with friends in the neighborhood, there was a persistent pain in my heart that just would not go away. And I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. My mother, who already wasn’t one to express emotions freely, unless it was anger, was even more distant now. I can remember my mother not talking much at all and just being concerned for Chucky’s funeral and what he was going to wear.

Four days later, I was to see my brother one last time. Afterward, I wish I hadn’t.

My brother’s normally slim body was bloated beyond recognition. At 6’1 and only 150 pounds soaking wet in an overcoat, he had gained almost an additional 100 pounds due to fluid retention! I now fully understand my mother’s dilemma with finding something to fit him.

She had ended up needing to borrow clothes from other family members in order to dress and bury my brother properly. So, in the end, he was clothed in a plain shirt and pair of trousers; no suit.

We had the funeral in a small chapel at the Cedar Crest Funeral Home on Lancaster Road in Dallas. There was a total of around 40-45 people in attendance; with the register that held the signatures of guests fitting on one or two pages and mostly filled with names of family members, a few clergy on staff at the funeral home, and a single name or two, like “Boomer”… no last name.

And, there wasn’t a whole lot of fanfare. The entire program of services consisted of the hymn “What a Friend we have in Jesus” and three ministers on hand to provide prayer, a scripture and a word of comfort. And, the bio that outlined my brother’s life from birth to death took up less than 12 lines on a 5.5”x 8.5” sheet of paper.

My mother fainted two times throughout the short ceremony; once during the processional and then again when they closed his casket. It was the most emotion I had seen her exhibit the entire time.

The whole service lasted less than two hours.

On Wednesday, August 18, 1982 at 11:00 in the morning, I said goodbye to my brother, Charles Jose Clay.

THE AFTERMATH

My mother decided to have my brother’s body cremated, rather than burying him. She believed that although she (along with several other family members) had repeatedly begged him to slow down and realize the full reason why we even moved to Dallas in the first place was to keep him safe, it was her fault for not being able to convince him to stay out of trouble.

Therefore, because she blamed herself for bringing him down there, and ultimately his death, she felt that we could no longer stay in Dallas.

So, my mother contacted Irma, one of her best friend’s, asking for help to find another apartment for us in Los Angeles, which she did; gladly and quickly.

We moved back to L.A. around January of the next year. I didn’t really want to leave Dallas, because I now had cousins, Aunts and other family members that I had bonded with, as well as the friends I had made at the new school, where I was just beginning to adapt. Of course, I had absolutely no say in the move. And, like I said before, when mom told me to do something… I did it.

I only wished Chucky would have done the same.

Now my family was down to only two; me and mom. She carrying her sadness like a purse that you clutch close to your body when walking through a bad neighborhood at night, and me holding on to her free hand as tightly as I could, because I had nothing else to hold on to.

I hated being back in Los Angeles.

Yet, there we were. Back where we started; only this time, it was nothing like the Princess apartments where we had stayed when we lived in L.A. the last time. It wasn’t even like the cramped apartment we had in Dallas, with the one bedroom and one bath; it was much smaller!

This time, we were living in a one room guesthouse that was equipped with a small kitchen and bathroom on 7th Avenue near the 54th Street School in South Central. The neighborhood was bad; we had no car, walked everywhere or took the public bus.

And, things were rapidly declining as mom’s health was beginning to fail. Not only was she experiencing issues directly related to sickle cell, she was also suffering with heart disease and slowly losing her eyesight. My mother’s health had gotten so bad; she could no longer work or do hair professionally.

Although it wasn’t in her nature to be an overly affectionate person under normal circumstances, mom was never the same following Chucky’s death and our return to L.A. Now she seemed to completely shut down emotionally and physically, as she tried to deal with her own demons. At times, she would call me names or use an extension cord to discipline me, when I upset her.

I didn’t think twice of the way she treated me. I also was fully aware that she hadn’t received much love and after her father had died and all she had come to know was abuse. This was a woman who had endured much abuse from her stepmother, then her first husband; physically and mentally. Now, she was dealing with a debilitating sickness and still mourning the loss of a son who hadn’t been dead a full year.

I mean, it’s not like she didn’t still take really good care of me, because she did. She had always been an amazing provider; even before she had owned her own beauty salon, she had worked hard at jobs from babysitting and waitressing to cleaning other people’s home, my mother had always worked to keep food in the house and clothes on our backs.

It was just that she was broken and torn. She was a victim, but too prideful to seek the help she desperately needed!

Thankfully, we were able to get free milk, cheese and butter from local churches after standing in long lines on Saturday mornings, and we got our clothes from donation centers and community thrift stores. All of my shoes came from the Payless shoe store, which at the time was growing rapidly in Los Angeles. We used public transportation or cabs to get around and when we didn’t have the money we would take a cab to the market and then walk back with a grocery basket cart. I can remember us stopping every ten minutes or so in order for mom to rest. It was extremely hard for her, since she was regularly in great pain; nevertheless, she did what she felt needed to be done.

After a short time, this once highly productive and strong woman was left with no choice but to apply for disability and food stamps. It would take more than a year to get approval for disability benefits due to the long approval process and them needing to review her medical records.

In the late summer of 1983, my mother received an approval notice from the Los Angeles County Section 8 program, which provides supplemental rent assistance to poor families or people who are disabled. So, we moved into a larger second floor duplex apartment on 46th Street and Western Avenue, where mom quickly bonded with our next door neighbor, Bell. Here, we had a large one bedroom with a good-sized kitchen and bathroom. I thought we were living in a castle compared to the guesthouse on 7th Avenue.

My mother wanted to give us a better life and she did the best she could. She even managed to get a 1975 green Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme... which was a big deal in our neighborhood.