The Faded Tears

By Lisa Brydson

Having been born into the world from drug-addicted parents. A young girl struggles with Love and affection starvation. Placed in foster care with her siblings she endures even more Trauma. Having been put in nine different homes by the time she turns fifteen she is already hooked on drugs and this led to a life of crime that turned into endless visits to jail and finally prison. Turning to the streets of New York almost caused her...., her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543965612

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© 2019 Lisa Brydson All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-54396-560-5 eBook 978-1-54396-561-2

I saw you before…but I never took heed. People seemed to enjoy you, sitting there with your uniquely glass-shaped body. Slowly filling up with smoke, and making all kinds of shapes only to evaporate into thin air, leaving your mark. And as I watched you fill, I wanted to be a part of that; I needed to suck up all that others had instilled in me. And then let it be evaporated like you did.

Not ever knowing how dangerous that pretty white smoke was, you tried to kill my soul; you tried to suck up all my life, and evaporate me. How did I end up in this land where obstruction, pain, blame, and shame were the plan? My Queen I would never see her as a DOPEFIEND.

From the womb I was to be doomed, in awkward places from the start. As a little girl I remembered being on 140th Street in Harlem. There were sights there that were scary to see, but after a while you get used to the junkie scene. The sounds would never escape my brain—children playing, police sirens, and people fighting…those were the sounds. The visions would haunt me for years to come. Momma with the needle in her arm. I remember the visions as if it were yesterday, and many times, I wish it was. Momma please stop, take my brother out of the bathroom. Momma, please, the crying is unbearable. My little brother cried nonstop. This was all he would do; now I’m sure that this was the consequence of heroin they call Blue. Understanding the sounds of the whispers and cries at night as a young girl, I lived in fear. One would say I was too young to remember. I remember my question to you was…why did you surrender, surrender to Blue?

I remember the streets were filled with laughter. Fire hydrants would run, and we just played. Who knew that three children were just too much? Our father was in jail. Just what could she do? And then came Blue. I can image how it all went down. We were left alone, as this was how we were often found. Many nights I played as if I were asleep; who knew these were visions I’d keep. My shoelaces tied around your arm and your face looked angelic to me; I was confused.

I remember the fear I felt. The trips to the store when you’d push me around and load up my stroller with stolen goods. I remembered it was candy for me every time. The apartment we lived in was so small that our bed was one that pulled out of the wall. This place in which we all slept—at this place silence was kept. No children allowed is what I remember being told; if the landlord heard us, we would be out in the cold.

My brother continued to cry. I felt sad. I didn’t understand why he had to stay in the bathroom or closet, but this is where he had to be. Momma was with Blue…. Shivering, I would wake at night because of strange noises. I can still hear them so faint, sounds of people coming through the window to visit Momma and Blue. My baby sister doesn’t speak a word; never has. I never understood why or was this just another sign of the abuse caused by Blue? I wanna scream. I hated that fire escape, but I’d been warned to keep my mouth closed, and that is what I did. Momma’s friends had a habit of sitting me on their laps, bump, bump, bump, bouncing me up and down. I hated this, hated the feeling of their rough skin touching me. I’d watch all Momma’s friends sit around nodding in and out of sleep. Truth was, my sister was afraid of this nodding they did. I remember in the street she’d take off running from them junkies, clean across the street she would run, never even checking for cars, that’s how afraid of them she was. But my mother nodded a lot. We ran and played well into the night. We played with the other kids; I had ice cream, no gives. No child asked to live this way. From this one to that one started out from day one; whoever would keep us had won.

Momma was so beautiful, she was every sista’s envy and every man’s target. Somebody showed her how to pump her veins full of a toxin she couldn’t have known would also end our chances of a normal life. Her children would pay a lifetime of pain because of her friend Blue. Born into this world, likely as a baby in withdrawal, my rate of success and survival were already pretty low, a product of Harlem’s 1960 heroin epidemic. Momma, where are you? The familiar places were now obsolete to me. Nothing made sense, with different faces and people, claiming they came to do a great deed. Really, why did they all intervene? My mother’s best interest was never in your heart; instead of helping, they’d just tear us apart. My mother kept this secret for far too long; no one knew, is what they claim. How could no one see that she needed help? She shot that dope in her feet so no one could see. No one did. Why didn’t someone stop her? Who was supposed to look out for her? Why had they let this happen? Where was my father?

Harlem’s heroin epidemic robbed many lives and left many children abandoned. The story started way before my mother was born into this world. I’d search for answers as I got older and discover that my grandmother, a Puerto Rican lady in the streets of Harlem, would birth a little girl she could not keep; foster care and drug addiction would run three generations deep. Remembering the late nights in the park, drug paraphilia and used syringes everywhere, we still played, we didn’t care. Who would know that this fun would soon come to an end, because Momma had done left us again? I can see and remember the buildings I played in front of as a child, and the apartments we frequented. There seemed to be a lot of us in this one apartment; it was nasty. My brother was screaming and crying, and no one could stop him, a cockroach had crawled into his ear. Momma was on the bathroom floor. I had no idea what to do. Lying beside her was her friend Blue. I can still remember all the commotion. Momma didn’t look so well.

Never knowing this meant Momma was caught, I’ll never forget that station wagon that came to get us. I know my mother never meant to leave us alone, I know this to be true; this was another consequence of Blue. Our lives were turned upside down. The fakest person would rear her face as a foster sister of Momma….who always looked at my mother with distaste and made all the threats and promises of taking us away. Today she got her say. A young girl couldn’t possible put all the pieces together. The truth was we were truly all alone, and everybody made choices for me. From pillar to post, coming from a child’s prospective this was scary, yet no one cared. We settled down and lived what seemed normal lives. I missed my mother and the florist shop where she worked; I missed smelling the fresh flowers. Big Mama had us for a while and we were fine. We would sit up late and wait for the Mr. Softee ice cream truck in our PJ’s. That’s the last time I remembered being happy.

Without warning we were moving again, this time to a man and a woman with a much older daughter. Cynthia was her name, and his was Mr. Chris. I remembered the room in which I stayed was very little, with just a bed and dresser with a chair. I used to watch the children outside play. It seemed like I was always being punished, and then the beatings began. I remember getting a beating for running my bike into a rosebush and scratching my face. I got slapped for saying cheese doodle at the table.

Getting beaten would become the story of my life. I never really understood why I would