Trouble

We were all settled into our new house in Taylorsville. I was in the Third grade I attended Plymouth Elementary School. The housing projects we lived in were really cheap and the neighborhood was very scary. Every house in this small and desperate neighborhood was a town home. Our neighbors had two older sons around 21. They were in a gang along with the rest of the guys in this neighborhood. They always had their blue bandannas and flashed their WEST SIDE sign every chance they got. I had one close friend, her name was Jackie. She was a year older than me but we were best friends. There was an older black man that was a retired gang member that lived in our neighborhood. He had been shot in a drive by and was paralyzed from his waist down. Jackie and I always liked to visit him. He'd always give us money to go get a treat at the Conico up the street. The neighborhood was full of drug addicts, alcoholics (Jackie's mom was) dead beats and trouble. This is what i lived in for the next year.

Mark started staying the night every night. My mom worked at Cottonwood Hospital at the time and usually worked at night. Mark would always come to our house and take a long bath. Afterwards he'd go to my mom's room and smoke weed. He barely talked to us and if we tried to talk to him all we would do is annoy him! We all kept our distance. My older sisters who were 15 and 14 at the time began to spend a lot of time with kids that weren't so great for them. Both ended up getting pregnant by older guys and old three months apart. Brandy (15) told my mom and that was drama for about two weeks. But soon everyone was excited to have this baby and we all started to prepare. Belinda (14) was also pregnant but didn't tell anyone about it until the day she went into labor. During the 9 months of Brandy's pregnancy things got kind of hectic at home. My mom was smoking weed with Mark all the time, Belinda was always getting into trouble with my mom and was always being beat up for one reason or another. Mark started to get more upset with me and Michaela and nothing seemed to please him. My home life had really started to scare me. One night while Brandy, Belinda and Michaela were down stairs I went into my mom's room to take Mark's weed. I was terrified but couldn't stand who my mom was anymore and only saw this as the reason for it. I went outside to the backyard, climbed the fence and dug a hole. I barred Mark's weed and pipe. I made sure to mark the spot with some toys I had from Burger King or some place like that. I went back inside and watched TV with my sisters... Then all hell broke lose.

Mark had gotten out of the bath and as usual went the room and went to go for his weed. It only took him about 5 to 10 minutes to come down stairs and he instantly started to scream at me! He always knew it was me that hated what they did the most. Michaela was too young to notice or understand and my older sisters just stayed out of it. He took me upstairs to watch him tear apart my room. He tore my dresser apart and with his knife ripped holes in my bed and continued this for about 10 minutes trying to scare me into telling him. I was so scared!! I could barely move but I had enough strength in me that that I never said where it was and I continued to deny taking it. When my mom got home she talked to me and I lied to her too. They gave up on me and wouldn't you know it Mark just ended up getting a new bag of weed and a new pipe. My little stunt got me no where but a ripped up bed and a torn apart room.