16 on the block

Chapter one

As we sat in front of the judge I could feel my older sister,Trish, squeezing my hand tightly in anticipation. We waited to hear the judge decision. The fact that this old,wrinkled white man could make or break my future had my stomach in knots. I wondered if he knew that he held fate in his hands; that if he made the wrong decision he could ruin the rest of my life never mind the decision I made that had landed me here in the first place.

This judge, this man, this stranger, had the power to take away the little bit of hope that I managed to hold onto from my childhood. I needed him to be on our side.

he eyed us both suspiciously, pulling his silver wire framed glasses down to the bridge of his pointy nose. He had a nose like Ashley tisdale's, that white chick from high school musical, before she got a nose job, only the judge's was bigger as he looked condescendingly down at us from his high rise chair in which he sat.

I'd rehearsed in the mirror all morning long the facial expression that i was now trying to hold hold on to my brown, oval face. after practicing a look of desperation and sadness, I had a settled on a expression that was between weak and pitiful; although nothing about me was either of those. but I needed this man to fell sorry for me and not see me as some strong willed girl would could take whatever dished he out. I stood there still desperately trying to hold that expression on the outside even though I was heated on the inside. I hated the amount of power that he had over me again. How could he judge me? He hadn't seen the things I'd seen or survived through the situations I'd overcome. He didn't know my struggle or my heartache. Trish and I never had it easy; we were always what society calls underprivileged children.Ghetto babies from the westside of Detroit, we were expected to fail from the beginning, and I guess we didn't disapoint. But it wasn't our fault we were simply dealt a bad hand and on top of that the deck we were playing with a few cards short to began with we were raised by a single mother because daddy didn't want to claim what he called the biggest mistake of his life when our mother got with him he was a married man with a wife and kid at home already, so of course he had no room for us. It seems to me that after him being a deadbeat father for my sisters first five years in this world, my mama would have wiser up and kicked him to the curb instead of having another baby with him but then again, if she had then u would not be here. After discovering that he had a another baby on the way, he ditched us all, the born and the unborn, which left our mom with two girls to raise singlehandedly. So she did what a lot of black mothers do: she took on two, sometimes three jobs to make sure that we never wanted for the necessities. We always had clothes to wear on our backs and shoes on our feet. They may not have been covered in brand names, but we had something that was better then nothing. She made sure that Trish and I never went hungry, although sometimes she didn't get to eat herself. Mama never fixed her plate first, and she always pretended to keep busy by cleaning up the kitchen until she was certain that we'd had enough and didn't want seconds.

"Are you gonna eat, Mama?" Trish and I would often ask her.

"You girls go ahead. I'm not that hungry right now. If I get hungry after im finished cleaning up, I might eat something, " she'd say without looking up from the dishes in the sink.

she never looked at us wen she told us that. we got older and realized that might meant she'd eat only if there was any food left over. Might wasn't based upon her hunger. Of course she was hungry she worked two jobs. But hungry or not, she'd go to bed without if need be. Her only concern was that my sister and I go to bed with full bellies. Anything short of that and she never failed us!

Mama never failed us though. Our lights were never cut off, our water never ran dry, and our house was always clean. No, we didn't have a lot of money, but we had a great mother and we had each other. That was all we needed. You know what they say though: a good thing doesn't last forever, and our happiness ended wen I was only eight.

Trish would take care of me while our mother worked the cashier in a convenience store on the weekends. She still always tried not to put too much on Trish. She didn't want Trish to feel like I was her responsibility, so when Trish would ask to spend the night at one of her friends houses, Mama would automatically say yes, which meant I would have to go to work with her

DING! DING!

I hear that bell to this day in my dreams. It's a sound that I could never forget.

One day when Mama had to take me to work with her. I was lying behind the counter. drifting into a comfortable sleep when I heart the bell ring signal that a customer had walked into the store. Mama had already taught me to stay hidden so that she wouldn't lose her job. The last thing she needed was for customers to start reporting to her boss that she was bringing her little girl to work. But it was either that leave me home alone or stay in the car. That is a hard choice single moms all over the world still have to make on the daily basis.

It wasn't the first time I been to her job, so I knew to stay out of sight. I ran to the back storage room and peeked out from around some boxes as I watched the man that entered the store. Everything was normal for a minute, until I heard the harsh demand of a male voice.

"Give me all the money in the cash register! "