She sued them and got a little settlement, but her plan was to do what she called “washin’ the check.” That’s when they use some kind of chemicals to erase the amount on the check, and then they put in a new amount. She got a fake ID and setup an account to run the checks through, and went for it. Good plan and it worked, except for the fact that the insurance company knew who they’d sent that check number to. So, it was easy for them to match her work ID with the bank’s surveillance video. Now moms is doin’ fed time in Illinois. If daddy were alive, he would have never let her make a mistake like that.

I had just celebrated my eighteenth birthday when they took my moms away. With only a court appointed lawyer at her side, the judge gave her ten years. Now I was alone and broke. All they left me was a seventy-seven Monte Carlo. That bitch was beat down, but it ran like a champ. I had to get somethin’ goin’ and quick. Since I had barely graduated from high school, I knew college wasn’t in my future. I was determined not to turn out the way my people did, but I had absolutely no clue about how I was gonna do it. I had to learn from what they did and from their mistakes.

I remembered what my moms told me about what a woman gotta do, but all the lyin’ and fakin’ you gotta do just wasn’t for me. See, when you gettin’ money from men like that, they think they own you. That’s the mistake daddy made. That woman was givin’ him her money for that dick, and that made him hers. No, no-not a life for me.

For the first couple of months after they took moms away, I wrote to her once a week. You know, keepin’ her up on what was goin’ on with me. I remember writing her and sayin’ how I stayed in our old apartment for three months before they finally put me out. I had moved in with a friend of mine from high school named Love. She worked at a tattoo parlor. She let me sleep on her floor until I got myself together. I survived those days on whatever money daddy’s old friends gave me.