She had to hustle and learn to survive these mean-old streets that would swallow her alive. She had to hustle one by one, hustling so hard until she had seen the sun. If getting knocked down she would take another stand and hustle even harder with a better game plan. This game of survival she would never be through with, until she threw in the towel or she threw in her boots.

This was the first day of the rest of my life. To be able to leave this place once and for all. This would be my fifth placement into a group home. Before that, in my younger years, I would go from foster home to foster home until one would decide that I was cute enough to keep. I was a funny-looking little thing. I had a narrow face with eye’s so wide it always looked as though I would search your soul if I were to stare too hard and small bird legs from not being fed my three square-meals a day.

It had happened again. My mother was a single parent so, she always out trying to make it do what it do in order for us to survive. Mama went out this time and was busted with cocaine while riding with her male companion who was not even man enough to own up to his own dope. So, off to the federal woman’s penitentiary she went. She had been sentenced to ten years. This would not be my first rodeo when I would be placed with the Mansfields, my new foster family.

They were an older couple with a little girl my same age and a son who was 14. I walked through in amazement over their fine Lebanese and Algum Wood throughout the home. I felt at home and I felt at peace… or so I thought. My new foster sister was a beautiful nutmeg color and had small tiny cinnamon freckles and sandy brown hair that she kept in long thick braids. She was spoiled and wanted to appear to be hip and cool. But really she was just as lonely as I was. She hardly ever got a chance to get close to anyone every time she would get use to anyone you could bet that something would go wrong the children being removed in the night for new placement.

As our bond grew we vowed and did our pinky swearing to always stick together. While we played around in the living room one evening my foster brother, Re’shaun, was in the living room watching television when he had asked Serena to come play a game he called “horse.” She walked over to him and he began bouncing up and down until she would burst into laughter. He asked that I join them and it did look fun. I climbed upon his knee and he began to bounce; before long I ended in his crotch and could feel that he had become erect. My sexual molestation began at the age of nine….

That would be the end of my peace….

To Be Continued…..