Every Little Step: My Story Read Online Free

Sometimes she would stay there far into the night. So I decided I would use the large block of flour I found in the freezer to make some fried chicken.
    I got the chicken parts out of the refrigerator and covered a bunch of pieces in the flour. Then I dropped them in a pan of sizzling oil. I was ten, so I didn’t recognize the strangely pungent smell emanating from the pan. When the chicken pieces were nice and brown, I figured I was done. After I had taken a few bites, feeling weirder with each bite, my mother walked in the door. At first she was smiling at the idea that her little Bobby had made dinner. Then her gaze swept across the kitchen and she got hit by the full brunt of the scene—the smell, the mess, the powder. With horror, she realized what I had done: I fried the chicken in her cocaine. A radical new addition to the family’s culinary offerings: cocaine chicken.
    “Bobby!” she yelled.
    Though she explained that the powder I had used was not flour, it wasn’t until months later that I truly understood what was going on in my home, what my mother was really selling through the heavy black door. A couple of the local thugs had been sleeping on our floor for a few days. These guys were very friendly with my mother. On this particular afternoon, police officers knocked on the door and said they were looking for the same guys who were staying with us. My mother told the cops they weren’t there. The cops left and went downstairs. My mother went downstairs as well. When I looked out the window, I saw my mother in an angry confrontation with the police. One of the officers lifted his billy club and hit her in the face with it. He busted her eye and she staggered back. I remember vividly that she was standing next to a green Cadillac that belonged to a guy who lived on the first floor. I started crying hysterically as I watched them put her in handcuffs and whisk her away in the back of a squad car. I was deeply upset by what I had witnessed. I mean, I was only ten and I had just seen the police beat my mother in the face. From that moment on, I would harbor a serious dislike of the police.
    The next few weeks were a blur of tears and confusion. It turned out my mother had been selling dope for several years and none of us kids knew anything about it. I don’t think my father knew either, but I can’t be sure about that. We thought her entrepreneurial endeavors began and ended at fried chicken dinners. I might add that she was still a loving woman, the Mother Teresa of the projects. We just discovered that she was Pablo Escobar as well.
    Because my father was at work and none of my older siblings were around when she got arrested, the authorities had to find somewhere to stash me and Carol. So they brought us to a local social services center that was somehow affiliated with the Catholic Church. The building had leering gargoyles on the outside and it wasn’t far from Orchard Park. I must have stayed there for at least a week, the whole time desperate to get away. After I had been there for several days, something horrible happened to me. One of the priests who worked with the children brought me into a room. To my utter shock, he tried to touch my privates and attempted to stick his finger in my ass. I punched him really hard in hishead and ran away from him. After that, they put me in a little room by myself and threw a blanket and pillow in there with me. I was so upset and aching to leave that place; it was all I could think about. I felt vulnerable and unprotected, wondering where my father was and how he and my siblings could let this man touch me.
    I don’t really know why it took so long for me to be released from the center. The drug charges against my mother were eventually dropped, so it wasn’t like she did any jail time. I heard her and my father arguing about the drugs, so I know he was upset about the whole scene. After I got back home, I really wanted to tell my mother what had happened to me,