The Trials and Tribulations of a Ghetto Child

© 2021 Lady J. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/04/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4799-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4800-7 (e)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

First I want to acknowledge the God that I believe in Jehovah.

Without my Faith, I would not be able to share my story today.

As a child through trauma, I realized that there was something greater than myself and everyone around me.

To my Children and Grandchildren, I first want to say that I love each and every one of you the same!

Not just with my words, Wholeheartedly. My children, My Heartbeats of life. If it was not for all of you, I would not have a life.

My life before I was blessed to be A Mother, was filled with a lot of pain and empty spaces.

Our journey hasn’t been easy however, I’ve done my best to make sure it was filled with all of the things that money can’t buy.

Love And Tools Of Life.

To My Friend Timothy Douglas, Thank you for believing in me and my vision. THANK YOU!

To everyone that has purchased my books and supported me through this process, Thank you. To the little girl in me, Your life won’t be easy.

Things will happen that you’ll have no control over. You will have days in your life when your faith will be tested, Never Give Up!

I LOVE YOU! Lady J

CONTENTS

Acknowledgment

Chapter 1     The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 2     5th Street

Chapter 3     Fair Exchange Ain’t No Robbery

Chapter 4     My Life

Chapter 5     Same Drama Different City

Chapter 6     First Name Only

Chapter 7     Flag On The Field

Chapter 8     Play Action Fake

Chapter 9     Relocating To The Bottom

Chapter 10   Same Place Different Face

Chapter 11   Addicted To The Life

Chapter 12   Summer of 1987

Chapter 13   Going To Chicago

Chapter 14   7 months in Chicago

Chapter 15   God Bless The Child

Chapter 16   The House on The Hill

Chapter 17   Friend #1

Chapter 18   Dating In Chicago

Chapter 19   State Street

Chapter 20   December in the Chi

Chapter 21   Guess Who’s Back

Chapter 22   What Do The Lonely Do At Christmas

Chapter 23   Countdown To The New Year

Chapter 24   1989

Chapter 25   Too Big To Get Caught

Chapter 26   Our Last Weekend Together

Chapter 27   Home Sweet Home

Chapter 28   1st Husband

Chapter 29   2nd Husband 20 Years My Sr.

Chapter 30   Mama Gonna work it out

Chapter 31   The Day The Music Stopped

CHAPTER 1

The Beginning Of The End

And then he spat in my face and grabbed me by my neck.

This would be the first time that I blacked out and I couldn’t remember what happened.

I blacked out and when I came to, I had him by the collar of his shirt in the middle of my kitchen floor.

Hearing him screaming for his mother is what snapped me out of the daze.

The next thing I know, the three of us are in the kitchen fighting.

It was like I was standing outside of my body watching myself, as I was stabbing him with a knife.

To this day I don’t know where I got the knife from, he had taken them all out of the house.

When the reality set in that I was stabbing this man, I let him go and he ran out of the house.

He ran out of the house right past his car and jumped on his motorcycle.

After he left, I did the same. I locked the doors and went back to my sister’s house and spent the night.

We didn’t know if he was going to send the police to the house so we just left.

The next afternoon I went home and he was at the house with his mother.

As I was walking up to the house he was on his way out locking the door.

After we made eye contact he unlocked the door and opened it and started walking towards me.

He’s saying to me that he was sorry.

I’m looking at him and he’s all bandaged up.

I may have cut him four or five times, trying to defend myself from his abuse.

At the same time that he’s telling me that he’s sorry, his mother is yelling at him to leave that girl alone.

He left that day and went back to Cincinnati, however that wouldn’t be the last that I saw of him.

You would have thought that would have been the last of that situation with him, but it wasn’t because he didn’t have enough.

He wouldn’t leave me alone.

Come to find out, in the process of our breakup he went to the justice of the peace and Married his ex-girlfriend.

The girl he went to highschool with.

I mean I had to defend myself, and he hit me.

And him marrying her was a different kind of pain for me.

Maybe he was still with her the whole time.

The thing about when two people love each other no matter what happens, Good or bad, if they want to be together they will find a way.

When I learned that he had gotten married, Mr. Cincinnati came to see me.

I mentioned it to him.

He told me that it was true and he also apologized.

I left it at that.

There was nothing I could do.

He was already married and she was planning her wedding.

The fact that she was planning her wedding made me believe that he had been seeing her the whole time.

So maybe he planned to leave me anyway.

The week of the wedding, one of his friends contacted me about the bachelor party they were throwing for him.

He and his friends were close so they had discussed our situation.

I was asked to show up at his bachelor party, and I accepted the offer.

I knew that Mr. Cincinnati still cared about me and I wanted to go to the bachelor party.

So I went.

Mr. Cincinnati was caught off guard.

I guess he expected a stripper for his party, the surprise was on him!.

He stayed with me that night, and never left the whole weekend.

When it was time for him to go to his wedding that next morning, I told him how I felt about it.

I was hurt that he was married when I was the one that he said he loved.

And I also had to remind him that if he had not put his hands on me we would have never been in that situation.

He didn’t show up for the wedding.

That’s the least he could have done; they were already married.

So now we’re in Hamilton staying at a Sleep cheap because everyone is looking for us.

The relationship didn’t end right away.

For a few months, We snuck around.

After some time I ended up moving out of that apartment.

I took the kids and moved into my Aunt K’s house on Knightbridge.

Mentally I was messed up.

I went through a lot of changes.

I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep and all I thought about was him.

My first time being in love, or what I thought was love.

The pain was unreal and I couldn’t control it.

It got so bad that I just wanted it to end.

I couldn’t take it anymore and I made up my mind I was going to put an end to it.

This would be the only time that I contemplated suicide and made an attempt. I will never forget it.

The day God wouldn’t let me die.

After about two weeks of the pain and not being able to sleep or eat I decided I was just going to end it.

I knew a man that lived down the street from my Grandmother’s house, who sold pills.

So I went and bought 20 volumes.

I knew that I could take the pills and go to sleep. And it didn’t matter if I woke up.

So I get the pills and I go home and I take them.

It was really hot that day.

I remember taking the pills and sometime later something made me get up and walk to my Grandmother’s house.

Walking through the field with the kids in the heat.

Once I made it to my Grandmother’s house, she was at the door.

I went in and used the phone and tried to call Mr. Cincinnati.

His mother answered the phone and said he wasn’t there.

After the phone call, I talked to my Grandmother for a few minutes.

I’m pretty sure I was talking out of my head and not making any sense to her.

My Grandmother was standing on the porch and as I’m walking down the steps to leave, My Grandmother said to me, girl, you remind me so much of your mother right now.

I turned around and looked at her, it was the look on her face that let me know.

She wasn’t pleased with me.

I walked back to the house with the kids. On the way through the field, I just started throwing up and thinking about what she just said to me.

I made it back to the house and what I had done, started taking effect.

By the end of the day, I was admitted to the Hospital.

After having my stomach pumped, I became a resident of the psychiatric unit.

I was a resident of the unit, and I don’t remember how I got to the hospital.

For the next 5 to 10 day, I had a lot of time to think about my actions.

And one thing I felt for sure is that I didn’t want to die.

I found myself locked in a secured facility, sharing a room with a girl that snores loud.

The nurses came and checked our room every 15-30 minutes.

Each day we had a schedule that we had to follow with very strict rules.

No incoming or outgoing phone calls unless approved by the doctor.

Everyone had their meals at the same time, this is when you would see the other patients.

After the first few days and the drugs wore off I started thinking about my life and my kids.

Someone in the family stepped in so the focus was on me.

At this time I learned about Mental Health.

Group sessions were mandatory.

During the group session, I realized that I wasn’t the only one.

The only one going through something mental.

Trying to find an understanding makes it hard to talk about sometimes.

How can you speak about things that you don’t understand?

I couldn’t understand why I wanted to be with someone that caused me harm.

And for me to cause him physical harm and he still wanted to be with me.

I thought it was love.

The first session with my psychiatrist wasn’t easy.

Doctor Keezer.

Starting with the Doctor, he had to be in his 80s. And just like in the movies, it was he and I sitting in a room at a little table.

He on one side and me on the other.

The goal was to get me to open up, talk about what brought me to the Hospital.

How was I to open up to a stranger about the things that were going on in my life at that time when I had no understanding.

My stay at the hospital taught me how to make use of my time.

We had activities using our hands and relaxing our minds.

I had a chance to meet people from different backgrounds of life.

I realized that Mental Health doesn’t Discriminate.

It doesn’t matter if you are Black, White, Rich, or Poor.

Case and point.

In the short time that I was at the hospital, I made two friends. The first one was my roommate, and the second one I met at recreation.

She had a private room on the unit fixed up like her bedroom.

I’m thinking to myself why are you here? not only did I think so, I asked her.

Friend let me know that her family was rich and she would rather die than be at home. I’m thinking to myself that money would fix a lot of my problems.

I had to be open and honest with the doctor before I could go home. At our last session, the doctor let me know that I wasn’t crazy.

I needed some rest and I had to find a way to deal with the things that occur in my life mentally. and hurting or killing myself wasn’t the answer.

Once I was able to process my reality I was released from the hospital.

I had a lot to think about going forward.

I knew for sure that I couldn’t be with Mr. Cincinnati ever again.

I had to find a way to help myself when it came to him.

Once I got home I may have stayed in the house on Knightsbridge for 3 months and then it was time to move again. This time I would be moving into my Uncle’s apartment.

CHAPTER 2

5th Street

I was feeling better and it was time to move again.

The stay at my aunt’s house was temporary.

Now this time I was moving into my uncle’s apartment on 5th street.

He was moving out of that location to get his life together. It was either move there or go back to my Grandmother’s house.

When I was first asked, I didn’t want to move there because I had heard so many things about it.

Nevertheless, I moved into what was a crack house or should I say that people got high there.

Moving in I had very little, it was like starting over again.

My Grandmother gave me a picnic table that she had in the kitchen for my little cousins.

She worked at a leather shop so she was able to put a leather seat cover over the benches.

My uncle left a California king box spring and mattress in the apartment along with the TV that may have been a 1965 model.

It had a big bubble on the front of the screen and a lawn chair in the living room.

The first few weeks I was a little scared to stay there by myself, due to all the drug activity before I moved in.

There were four other apartments in the building.

Two upstairs and two down and my apartment was in the back on the side with One door entrance.

5th and Walnut Street was a quiet street believe it or not. My neighbors at that time were the kind of neighbors that you want to live around.

You know the kind of neighbors that Mind Their Business and stay out of yours and help you if you need help.

Love thy neighbors, I loved my neighbors on 5th Street.

It was a family across the street.

I knew them most of my life. The Matriarch of the family, Mrs. D. was my Godmother’s, mother’s sister.

Aunt Dot is what everyone called her, or Mother depending on what role she was serving in your life that day,

She had a daughter named Dar, she worked with the youth at the community center. I was no stranger to her.

In other words, I wasn’t a stranger to the family.

And over time I began to be close to this family. If I needed a babysitter or if I needed to borrow an egg, they were there for me.

Living on 5th Street there were a lot of first-time experiences.

I had no clue of what direction my life was headed in.

Minding my own business somehow always had me in some kind of controversy.

It’s like I was a magnet for that shit and all I was trying to do was live my life.

I was trying to figure my life out with two children.

Two children and no father in the picture, and let me say I was okay with that.

And I have to be honest, a man was something I never looked for.

Coming out of an abusive relationship I was okay with just my children. I had good days and bad days and for the most part, I tried to make the best of everything and every day.

Me trying to figure out this thing called life and being a mother. I wanted to be a good mother to my children. so I wanted to do things I didn’t remember doing with my mother.

I don’t ever remember taking a walk with my mother.

It was nothing like taking a walk in the summertime with my kids.

At that time walking through the hood in the summertime was like a fashion show.

And it was no telling what or who you would run into as you were walking.

I could never take a walk without someone stopping me.

It wasn’t always men, I knew a lot of people. I would walk to my Grandmother’s house every day or every other day.

Just to see her and talk with her, eat, whatever it was we would do when I would visit and that was often.

Living in Hamilton was never a dull moment. At any given time something could happen, something unexpected.

That’s just how it was living in the city.

And my life began to change.

The past year was more than enough for me mentally.

Now I’m finally where I need to be and I have a little peace.

I have my place and with that also comes responsibility.

I have two kids with no job.

When I was in the relationship with Mr. Cincinnati, I didn’t worry about the bills because he always helped now it was all on me.

I had to find a job and also had to find a babysitter.

I wasn’t talking to my mother much and I don’t think she would have helped me any.

I wanted to try and do it on my own and without my Grandmother’s help.

So now I had to find a babysitter so that I could work.

I was talking to ‘T1", the girl across the street, and she told me that she babysits when she’s not working and on the weekends.

I let her know that I wanted to get a job and that I needed a babysitter.

Once I found a job T1 and Mrs. D watched my kids for me.

Not only did they watch them when I went to work they would keep them if I wanted to go out on the weekends also.

Finding a decent job was hard without having a high school diploma.

There wasn’t a lot that I could do.

I tried working in a restaurant a few times, McDonald’s, Pedro’s.

I also did office cleaning in the evening.

It still wasn’t enough and this is when I started making sacrifices as they say.

The first time I sacrificed my body for money.

I can’t say I was naive to the game.

I can say that the hood was preparing me for what was about to be.

From the time I think I was 14 years old whenever I could and would go out and walk, it was always an older man saying something to me.

Telling me I was beautiful and offering me money. I always ignored the advances and now things have changed and I needed to survive.

CHAPTER 3

Fair Exchange Ain’t No Robbery

My first time wasn’t what I expected.

It was someone that I knew.

Money was a friend of my Father and that’s how he and I became friends.

When he would see me, He would stop and initiate the conversation.

The conversation would always start with a question about my Mother and Father.

After I had my first baby whenever I ran into him he would say to me, If you ever needed anything just to ask me. and the day has come that I needed to ask him.

The timing was everything because he had a full-time job and he was also married.

I knew where he hung out in the evenings, he liked to have a couple of cocktails with his friends.

At this time Hamilton had a few spots to hang out. so I knew where to go if I wanted to find him.

The day came and he was right where I knew he would be.

As I walked in the door of the establishment, he acknowledged me right away.

I walked in as if I was looking for someone. I spoke to him and I walked towards the bathroom.

When I came out of the bathroom he was standing in the hallway.

He stopped me and offered to buy me a drink, however at that time I wasn’t drinking then.

I ended up getting a glass of mixed juice and we sat at a table in the back of the bar and talked for a few minutes.

By the end of the conversation, he knew what I needed, and I knew what he wanted.

When he came to my house I was sitting in front.

I walked to the curb to meet him and he got out of the car with the obituary in his hand and handed it to me and said a few words and walked to the back of his car.

He opened the trunk and took out two brown bags of groceries.

Once we made it into the house he let me know that he had something for my kids.

We talked for a few minutes and then I got the kids settled and he and I went into the bathroom.

There were only four rooms in the apartment and my kids were in my bedroom.

The experience wasn’t what I expected.

I didn’t know what to expect.

It was my first time being with an older man.

I wasn’t naive to that part of the game and I needed this money.

So I put my feelings to the side and I did what I had to do.

It didn’t last long, but it was long enough.

Long enough for him to give me some words about the game, and how it’s to be played.

He let me know I had something good as he handed me $300.00 dollars. He went on to say, when it comes to dealing with a man in this game If he doesn’t come correct I shouldn’t f*** with him!.

And that gave me a lot to think about, It wasn’t something I was trying to make a career out of either.

Before he walked out of my house he turned to me and said, Call Me if you need anything, and kissed me on my forehead.

Once it was over I thought about it for a while. Going back and forth with myself in my mind, about what was wrong and what was right.

My reality was I needed the money and I didn’t have time to think about what was right or wrong.

I asked God to forgive me.

CHAPTER 4

My Life

Everyday life was something challenging for me.

Trying to find my way.

It was a challenge, however, it was never a dull moment.

I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends that I ran around with, but I knew of a lot of people in the neighborhood.

After a few months, I was feeling better and I started to go out.

Around this time I was going out downtown Cincinnati and to Covington Kentucky.

Skippers and Dominique’s,

Mr. Kelly’s were my hangout spots.

I love to dance and that’s what I went out to do.

Dance the pain away.

CHAPTER 5

Same Drama Different City

The first time I went out in Cincinnati it was something different, a new experience for me.

I was able to go out around people I didn’t know, and they didn’t know me.

Able to be free even if it was just for a few hours.

I would go out twice a week, and when I would run into people from my hometown, The Fake Love was just that, Fake!.

The same guys I would see in the city that would act like they were too good to talk to me, would see me at the club in Cincinnati, and would be all up in my face.

I like to dance.

It didn’t matter who was on the dance floor. I would dance by myself and men would walk up and ask if they could dance with me.

I could name a few from my hometown, but I won’t give them that much credit, they know who they are.

And the females from my hometown, let’s just say they always thought I was beneath them.

They didn’t speak to me pretty much at home so all I got were stares and eye rolls when I stepped out.

I would go out to have a good time not knowing that it was a competition with the other females. other females were gamed up!.

And what I mean by gamed up is, back in the day they called them Gold Diggers, and it was a lot of females that were Diggin. Today they call it, Securing the Bag.

There’s a big difference between when you have to do it and you want to do it.

I’ve always been a sucker for love so I was looking for love while the other females were looking for that MONEY.

Going out I would have a good time for the most part. I mostly went out alone, like I said I knew a lot of people but I didn’t have a lot of friends.

Let me rephrase that, I knew of a lot of people.

I started spending more time in Cincinnati, every chance that I got to go I would.

Meeting new people, dancing and having fun. Only met a few females but I met a lot of guys.

I had one Girlfriend I would go out with.

Her name was Jan.

She was Beautiful, someone I grew up with around the corner from my grandmother’s house.

Jan comes from a big family.

A very attractive, Church-going family.

Besides being from the same hometown the other thing we had in common was the fact that we had two children around the same age.

Spending time with our children and trying to figure this thing out called life was our mission.

We would spend a lot of time talking about our children’s fathers and the things that were going on around us.

Living on 5th Street I can say I experienced things that would change my life in ways at the time I didn’t understand.

All I was trying to do was raise my two children and find my way in this world.

It was always something going on and not that I was looking for it, it just happened that way.

I was thankful to have the neighbors that I had and live on the block that I was living on.

Fifth and Walnut was surrounded by big families and you could feel the love.

I always had someone to talk to when I felt the need to speak with someone older.

Between Mrs. D and Mrs. Ingram, I always had someone to talk to for advice.

I became close to Mrs. D’s daughter T1 and Miss Ingram’s daughter Mo.

Mo was a few years younger than me and T1 was a couple of years older than me.

T1 and her mother were my main babysitter’s and Mo would babysit sometimes and then she moved in with me, when she called herself running away from home.

What she didn’t know was that I let Mrs. Love know that she was at my house.

My house was close enough for Mrs. Love to spit on, so she didn’t have to worry about her Babygirl Mo. She could walk right out her back door and knock on my door if she wanted to get her daughter.

I made sure that I gave her updates on everything that was going on so that she didn’t have to worry.

I even got along with the other families that lived in my apartment building.

It was a little boy that lived upstairs.

I would always see him looking out the window, him and his little sister Tamika. Little Derrick. Derrick DB Brown was his name.

That was my little boyfriend on 5th Street.

One of my childhood friends also lived across the street.

C, at this time she had two children also.

Her oldest son DP is my godson and she also had a little girl that she nicknamed Mudda.

PD was tall for his age and Mudda looked like she was too little to be walking.

For the first time in my life, I felt like things were beginning to come together.

I started doing hair out of my apartment and I was in a good place.

CHAPTER 6

First Name Only

It’s every girl’s dream to fall in love.

To meet that one man.

Love at first sight, Sweep you off your feet kind of love.

This Ain’t That!.

Love was the last thing on my mind.

After dealing with my last relationship.

I made my mind up that I was going to be single.

I had two children and never had a Boyfriend.

And my 1st relationship was abusive.

My mother raised me without my Father. Our life wasn’t perfect but she did her best.

Because of the physical and