Hope: Based on a True Story

By Tiyhise Huddleston

Jonathan Williams, a straight A twelve-year-old, has grown up witnessing his mother be physically abused by her pimp. Seeking to escape the abuse, Joyce Williams moves the two of them from the outskirts of town into the inner city where Jonathans life becomes a living hell and he is dismissed as another statistic. But while searching for a job to meet his parole requirements, Jonathan meets a highly educated supervisor that encourages him to pursue an Ivy League education. Here, we follow him on a journey of honorable triumph against the odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9781469173092

Tiyhise Huddleston

TIYHISE M. HUDDLESTON is an author, screenwriter, poet, and scholar. Growing up in the housing projects on Syracuse, New York’s south side, Tiyhise didn’t have the opportunity to attend private schools or college prep classes. Like most young Black men being raised in the projects by a single mother, Tiyhise gave in to the pitfalls of the illegal drug trade. This eventually landed him in and out of different jails for the majority of his adolescent and young adult years of his life, ultimately, resulting in a life parole sentence under the infamous New York State Rockefeller Drug Laws. Statistically, Tiyhise was supposed to be killed or jailed for a long time, both of which he came very close to. He refused to accept that that was his destiny and instead he chose to educate himself. In June of 2007 he received a merit discharge from life parole for good conduct. He put himself though Bryant & Stratton College, LeMoyne College, Morehouse College, and plans to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in screen writing from Yale School of Drama. He appeared in the centerfold of The Wall Street Journal for “Best in Class”. He is a member of two prestigious honor societies and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Tiyhise Huddleston.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010905148

ISBN: Hardcover     978-1-4691-7308-5

Softcover     978-1-4691-7307-8

eBook     978-1-4691-7309-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/17/2017

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

To our beautiful black youth and for the projects everywhere.

The Projects

I’m 96-B-0967.

I am an experiment for the system.

I was born and raised in the projects.

The controllers built the projects in laboratories, using bricks and cement.

They wore white lab jackets and blue rubber gloves.

They put white mice in the projects and watched the mice chase the cheese.

Experiments have killed over the projects after being fed so many Kee’s.

The controllers are smart though.

They’re smarter than their own good, aren’t they?

They fed the experiments cocaine, heroin, and AIDS.

Experiments don’t know their genetic makeup, blood type, nor their age.

As of Twenty Ten, experiments are being controlled with wave/leak, and narcotics.

They have been divided into groups of haves and have nots.

The system has never failed in the projects experiment,

But there is a new breed of experiments coming of age.

The controllers believe it has something to do with centuries of using the cage.

New breeds are self-disciplined, fast learners, and they move with stamina.

But to defy the system, they must first learn their way through the maze.

By: Tiyhise Huddleston

CHAPTER 1

As far as I could remember, I was always cherished and loved by my mother. My mom and my dad never really had a serious relationship, so I grew up not knowing who he was and witnessing her get the shit beat out of her by her pimp. I don’t know why I was always so smart. I knew she was a prostitute ever since I could remember, but I don’t care. She takes really good care of me and I know that she loves me. And I love her too. I always wondered how such pretty women like my mom got involved in prostitution. She buys me all kinds of material shit with the money she keeps for herself. Everyone tells me that I’m tall for my age. I weigh 87 pounds and some of my friends in school call me Bones because I’m so skinny. But I still dress fresh every day and I still get all A’s in my classes. My Grandma named me Jonathan. I’m twelve years old and I’m in the 8th grade. I skipped the 6th grade because I was so smart. That’s rare for young black boys in inner-city schools. I have a story to tell. People are always telling stories.

I met this pretty lady at the library that taught me a priceless lesson about telling stories. Her name tag read, Ms. Ottis. I asked her, Why are so many stories written by people that the story never happened to? She told me that it didn’t matter who told the story if there was hope in the story. She is so pretty and nice. I think she is one of god’s angels. Grandma always said that god made some people to be his angels and some people to be the devil’s helpers. Well, alright, it’s fall of 1988. Our two-bedroom apartment is a two-family colonial style house with dark-red-trimming and white paint that has seen better days. But it’s all we need though. It keeps us warm and safe from some of them crazy ass niggas in the projects where we just moved from. But it hasn’t stopped my mother from getting physically abused by her pimp.

He is a tall skinny nigga that wears a lot of jewelry and has long sideburns named Slim. I hate that skinny ass nigga. He comes around to collect his money every night around the same time. She makes sure that she is here to pay him his money or he comes looking for her with a long wooden stick. And he would damn sure use it on her too. He has already given her countless black eyes, busted noses, fractured bones, and bruised up faces on many occasions. The doorbell rings and its, Lisa, our neighbor. Lisa enters the apartment and says, Hi Jonathan.

I say, Hi Lisa.

She says, Where is your mom.

I say, In her room getting dressed.

My mom come from her room smiling when she sees Lisa and says, Wus up girl? I thought you already moved.

In a serious voice Lisa says, We’re moving today and I think you and Jonathan should come with us.

Lisa I can’t just up and leave like that.

Why can’t you?

I promise we’ll meet you down there when I’m ready.

You better or I’m gonna come back lookin for yall.

She gives me a hug and then my mom. And then she gives my mom her new number and tells her to keep in touch before leaving. Lisa and my mom have been best friends since grade school. She helped my mom get us the apartment here because she knows the landlord. Lisa is a chunky brown-skinned lady in her late 20’s that has a short haircut and dresses like a tom-boy. She played basketball and chess when she was in college. She even taught me how to play chess. I would always hear Lisa trying to talk my mom into leaving the illegal life of prostitution. Every Christmas there was a gift and some books under our tree for me from Lisa. Yesterday she gave me a book written by Plato. Lisa would always take me to the library with her and Ms. Ottis would help me pick out books to read.

My mom doesn’t want to move to California with Lisa and her girlfriend Amber because she think it’s too slow for her in California and plus she has this wealthy trick that she doesn’t want to lose. She has this white trick named William. He’s in his mid-50’s with lots of gray hair. A blind man knows that he has a shit load of money. Whenever he comes around, he would give me $50 for spelling easy ass words like DICTIONARY. He brings me books sometimes as well. I don’t know if he’s genuine in trying to help me become a better reader. Whatever the case is, I always end up with a few hundred in my pocket when my mom and the mothafucka leave. My mom always ends up using the money to pay bills or she gives it to Slim. My mom has been seeing William since I was a little boy. He is an industrial consultant. He had taken my mother along with him on one of his business trips to Africa. She told me all about the trip when they returned. She also had some pictures of her and three African women. I stayed in the projects with Grandma and Grandpa when they went to Africa. I hated staying down there because the other kids would always pick on me because they knew my mom was a prostitute.

Before their trip, William had taken her to receive a series of different shots. The doctor had also given her a huge jar of pills that he told her to use for her drinking water because the water wasn’t as purified as the water in the United States. William had known about her pimp, and for some reason he didn’t care. He had given her $10,000 cash to give to Slim so that she could have permission to accompany him on his business trip to Africa. He paid her good as well. William had brought along twelve older white men that all held executive level positions for companies ranging from telecommunications to diamonds. They accompanied my mother and William on their trip to Africa with hopes of adding to their fortune.

William had prearranged meetings set up between him, the twelve U.S. executives, and some of the top officials and executives in Africa. His goal was to form joint-ventures between the U.S. executives and the African executives and officials that controlled the companies over in Africa. They all met in New York City and departed from the John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was the longest flight my mom had ever experienced. Their first stop was Nigeria. When they arrived in Nigeria the first thing she noticed were the big African military men carrying machine guns over their shoulders as they walked through customs. The Nigerian people were very dark and most of them appeared to be tall. The Nigerian people in customs were friendly and didn’t keep them long. They were then introduced to their interpreter and caught a huge bus to their hotel. They called the huge bus a jewl. When they arrived at their hotel it wasn’t what any one expected. It was one of the most expensive hotels in Nigeria and it looked more like one of those cheaper hotels in New York. When they pulled in front of the hotel it brought back memories of when her and Slim was working in New York City. She noticed all the people and prostitutes on the main strip just like Manhattan. The young prostitutes were working the hotels and strips as they did in New York.

After checking into their hotel, she told William that she wanted to call to check on me. He agreed, and they went to a place down the street from the hotel and put their names on the list to make an out of country telephone call. During this time, Nigeria didn’t have the technology to make a call to another country from your hotel room. The rooms didn’t even allow people to call one another’s hotel room at the time. One of the executives that joined William on the trip was going to present a joint-venture opportunity that would enable all of the Nigerian hotels the technology to call room to room. The following morning, my mom, William, and one of the twelve U.S. executives had a business meeting with one of the Nigerian company presidents. They conducted these meetings every day. Sometimes they did two in a day over the course of nine days. When the Nigerian executives arrived my mom noticed that most of them had brought their wives with them. Some of them had two wives that they had brought to the meeting with them.

The following day they were scheduled to meet with their last African executive in Nigeria and then head to Liberia for other business meetings. She told William that she wasn’t going to sit in on the last meeting because she wanted to do a little sight seeing before they headed to Liberia. He agreed and thought that it would be a good idea. After William headed to the morning meeting she packed her camera and headed for the door. She smelled something burning near the window that faced the back alley. She looked out the window and saw a family of four that appeared to be living out of a cardboard box. What she smelled was something the lady was cooking in a huge pot just outside the box. My mom was nearly in tears after seeing that so she walked around to the alley and gave the lady a bunch of African money that William had given her that morning to buy souvenirs. She then headed back around to the main strip to get her interpreter and they started walking. After walking a couple blocks she noticed that almost every women she saw was either pregnant, or carrying a child on their back, or both. The woman she had just seen in the alley was pregnant. She saw one woman carrying a sewing machine on her head, a child on her back, and she appeared to be at least eight months pregnant. She admired how they were able to do all of that and thought that she was taking her life for granted.

She was buying all types of clothing and just about everything she saw to bring back home. She stopped walking around