Love/Fate

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I grew up in the eighties and nineties, decades when the crack epidemic destroyed families and communities. I witnessed the epidemic up close and personally, and I watched people fall prey to drug addiction. I've grieved with friends who lost loved ones to AIDS and other drug-related illnesses. At seventeen, I went to the first of several funerals for my peers, all gunned down in drug wars being waged in the streets where we lived. I watched helplessly as even more of my peers were hauled off to prison for crimes related to the game. The drug trade touched each of us in my generation profoundly. It affected our lives, our politics, the movies that we watched and the music that we listened to. And it destroyed our community piece by piece.

In telling the story in
White Lines,
I want to shed light on every aspect of the drug game to show that no one
ever
wins in this game. There are only losers. The hustlers, the drug addicts, the family members, the friends. Everybody loses in the game. We lose loved ones to addiction, young men and women to tragic early deaths, and we lose years of our lives to incarceration. We lose. In every possible way. Many times the game is glamourized in the entertainment industry. Movies glorify the game, as do music, magazines, and even books. In
White Lines,
my objective is not to glamourize the lifestyle, but instead to call your attention to the pain that the game inevitably causes those who are bold enough to play it.

This story is dedicated to the children of the drug game. To the lost little boys and little girls dealing with the pain of watching a loved one slip away a day at a time. To the husbands and wives forced to pick up the
pieces for a spouse who can't kick their habit. To the dealers, the pushers, the hustlers who supply the needs of these victims without realizing the destruction of families and communities taking place at their very own hands.

This story is dedicated to love, which conquers all and costs nothing. May it help heal all our wounds, past and present.

Thank you, God, for both the sun and the rain. Without the rain, the sunny days would be taken for granted. So thank you for the lessons and the joy in all things good and bad.

My children, you make every sleepless night, every stressful deadline, and every early morning flight worthwhile. I love you. You are my inspiration.

And, to the love of my life, you inspire me every single day. Thank you for all the ways you contributed to this story and for all the ways you've opened yourself up to me without fear. Your insight helped me to breathe life into these characters, and your honesty made me fall deeper in love with you than I ever imagined possible. Even though I have a way with words, your love leaves me speechless. It feels like my life was lived in black and white until you came and filled it with color. Each day together we write a new chapter of our love story—each one more beautiful than the last. I pray that our story never ends.

Born went to his mother's house after finding Jada high. That was his home away from home, and the one place where he knew he could be himself completely. He felt so many emotions at once, and at the forefront of all of those was rage. He was so angry that he walked right past his mother, as she stood washing dishes in the kitchen, and into his old bedroom, where he locked the door and turned his radio up.

The room still looked the same as when he'd been a young man living in his mother's house. There was always one guest or another—cousins, uncles, and sometimes Born's own friends—who found it necessary to stay at his mother's house from time to time. She was always willing to help out a friend in need, and this was one of the many reasons people loved Ingrid Graham. She knocked on his bedroom door twice, and called Marquis by name. But when he ignored her, she walked back into the kitchen and allowed him to have time to himself. She knew her son. She didn't have to see his face to tell that something was wrong. Marquis would never walk into his mother's house without giving her a hug or a kiss or saying something slick. Ingrid resumed washing the dishes, and sang along to the Al Green song playing from her portable radio on the counter. She knew that when he calmed down enough to talk, he would come to her.

Born paced his room angrily. He was sick to his stomach, and felt like he might actually throw up. Jada was smoking again. He laughed at himself.
How stupid and how blind he must have been not to notice! She was stealing from him. Born shook his head in amazement. He shook his head, because he had known all along. And that realization is what enraged him. Born punched the closet door in frustration, and didn't give any attention to his throbbing knuckles afterward. A large hole remained in the spot he had punched, and Born covered his face with his hands in exasperation. He was devastated.

Jada, his sweet baby girl. How could she do it? How long had she been doing it? Why did she do it? Why didn't he confront her sooner? The truth was, Born had noticed a change in Jada's behavior long ago. He had seen her moods change quickly. She would be sweet and sultry one moment, and then sad and withdrawn the next. In his head, he had wondered all along if she had gone back to cocaine. But his heart wouldn't let him believe she would hurt him like that, that she would throw away all that they had just so that she could suck on a glass dick. He couldn't believe that he had played the fool.

And
Jamari
knew. That meant that Wizz knew, too. In addition to all the emotions he was feeling, he was also terribly embarrassed. He wondered if everybody knew but him. He felt so stupid. They were probably laughing at what a fool he was, Born thought. He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he stood there, still wearing his jacket, and fuming. He just wanted the earth to swallow him up. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a ten-dollar crack rock. He looked at it in the light of his familiar bedroom. Countless times he had bagged this shit up, sold it, gone out of town to move it, gone uptown to get it, and made a living in the trade of it. He thought about his father, then about Jada. This rock, this little pebble-sized piece of cocaine, had ruined the relationship he had with two people he had truly loved. It had taken his father's life, directly or indirectly. And now, Jada was in its crossfire. He felt a tear fall, and quickly wiped it away. He had to man up, now. It wasn't time for him to crumble. Born felt in his heart like the game was trying to beat him.

He had always felt as though his father had had the game
half right.
He could have been a big deal, his pops. Leo Graham was the man, and everybody either feared him or loved him. He wasn't what one would
call a likable guy. He was a menace. But those he loved he took care of, and he had the game
almost
figured out. He thought he could beat it, thought he could conquer the golden rule of Hustling 101: You can't get high on the shit you're pushing. Leo thought he could handle it, and he was dead wrong. This rock Born held in his hand had beaten his father. Jada had thought she could play with fire without getting burned as well. She was stupid and weak, in Born's eyes at that moment. And to add insult to injury, she had stolen from him. He had given her an all-access pass to his life, his home, and his heart. He had allowed himself to trust her, and to believe in her. And she had repaid him by getting high and stealing from the one person who had ever loved her without boundaries. He still loved her, but he couldn't get past this, so it was time to let her go.

Born opened the door, and walked into the kitchen, looking for his mother. She wasn't there. He found her in the living room with her feet up, still listening to Al Green. She was reading a copy of
Essence
magazine while “I'm Still in Love with You” drifted from the radio's speakers. He loved coming home to the place where he'd spent his childhood. Ingrid still lived in the same apartment that she'd moved into when she came to New York from Georgia in the sixties. When she'd moved into Arlington Terrace, it was a high-rise development, where only the successful middle-class lived. It was a privilege to live there then. But as time went by and hardworking tenants had moved out, crime became commonplace. The exclusivity the development once boasted of was gone. And Arlington became as hood as any given project in Staten Island. But Ingrid had stayed through it all. She'd watched the neighborhood go from good to bad, and then from bad to worse. But she wasn't going anywhere.

His mother's presence gave him a comfort he couldn't explain. Few people in her apartment complex knew that his mother—one of the community's elders—was as well versed in the streets as she was. None of them knew that Ingrid had more money hidden in her humble apartment than some folks had in their life savings. Ingrid had money tucked in her kitchen, in her mattress, in a strongbox in her closet, and in a bevy
of other places. But she also had money in the bank, a retirement plan, and insurance. She was a hustler, his moms, a smart woman who had watched and learned a lot over the years. And she was down for her son no matter what.

Born sat down in the chair that his father used to love. It was a black recliner that no one really sat in because it was old and worn. But Born sat there every time he came by. It had been his father's chair. The king's throne. He sat there now, with the crack vial in his hand, and looked at his mother. He laid it in the center of the coffee table, and Ingrid looked at her son as if he had lost his mind.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Marquis?” She looked over the rim of her glasses at him, like a schoolteacher would. “Why'd you bring that shit in my house?”