Low End or No End

By Sasha Shakita Samson

Author Sasha Shakita Samsons journey wasnt paved with silver or gold or love and self-respect. Instead, it was filled with sex, drugs, violence, and murder. In Low End or No End, she shares her life story, one that presented a roller coaster of both ups and downs.

In this memoir, she tells how she was born addicted to crack, her mother a drug addict. Although her mother tried to better herself and her family by moving from the west side of Chicago to the south side to give her kids a better life, drugs were her downfall. Samson and her brother, Julio, who was later murdered, were subjected to violence, poverty, homelessness, and hunger.

Low End or No End narrates how these misfortunes impacted her life and how her faith and trust in God helped her withdraw from a life of drugs, promiscuous sex, and bad relationships. The experiences taught Samson who she was and her purpose in life and how to believe in love, her faith, her family, and her existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480832978

Sasha Shakita Samson

Sasha Shakita Samson is an entrepreneur and is involved in a variety of volunteer positions including feeding the homeless, helping the elderly, and assisting with church functions. She has a daughter and two grandchildren.

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© 2016 Sasha Shakita Samson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-3296-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3297-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016909815

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/12/2016

Contents

Introduction

The West Side Of Chicago

The Outer Courts Projects

The Inner Courts Projects

The Broadway Gardens Projects

Dear Ju-Ju

INTRODUCTION

T he drive to become a successful businesswoman, a respected pillar of the community, and a strong single parent can sometimes come from the bad things that occur in our lives. The worst events often direct our path to the greatest things that’ll ever happen to us. It’s truly a blessing to be put in a position to help others, but the two people I most wanted to help died along the way.

Low End or No End is the true story of a young girl growing up in the Chicago housing projects facing countless trials and tribulations, including murder, prostitution, betrayal, and love. I want you to experience the world I grew up in, with a mother who was a drug addict and gave birth to two drug-addicted babies that the system allowed her to keep.

Although I do recall my mother, Ruby, turning her life over to God for a few years, I guess her illness was stronger than her will to stay sober. My mother’s addiction and failure to guide her children had consequences that took our family into a dark and destructive place. I was prostituting at a young age, facing different demons in my head, stealing, and giving birth at fifteen years old. Looking for love in the wrong places after the animalistic murder of my brother would make anyone question her faith in humanity. I don’t mean to sound like a cliché, but if I, Sasha Samson, could make it out, you can too.

THE WEST SIDE OF CHICAGO

O n June 20, 1974, a baby girl named Sasha Shakita Samson was born on the West Side of Chicago to Bethany Ruby Samson and Carl Denton. That little girl was me. Because of my mother’s drug abuse, I was born addicted to heroin. As a result, I was premature and weighed only three pounds. My older brother, Julio, was also born addicted to heroin. Julio and I were four years apart. Ruby continued to use heroin, and as a result, we endured some terrible struggles as babies. We were often in the hospital—sometimes for months at a time—because of our addiction. Because she couldn’t even stay off of drugs until her kids were born, we went through it all. We were dope-fiend babies.

My mother was born in the South, in Pineruff. My father, Carl Denton, was born down South and came to Chicago in the late sixties, and this is where he and my mother met. My mother wasn’t always a heroin addict. Before she became addicted, she was beautiful, short, and brown-skinned, with big, pretty dimples. She was known for dressing nice. She was a church lady who worshipped God.

Ruby was raised by her aunt because her mother died during childbirth. She went through a lot growing up. As a child, she suffered mistreatment by her aunt similar to what Cinderella endured in the fairy tale. Ruby wore raggedy clothes and had to clean and slave around the house. She even had to pick cotton. When Ruby had endured enough, she left Pineruff and moved to Chicago.

Carl was really handsome—tall and gorgeous with green eyes. She was in love with all of his bad habits. And she was in love with the thrill of getting high. It didn’t matter where she was. They didn’t mind sharing dirty needles, and they would shoot it anywhere there were veins—in their hands, feet, arms, legs, necks, or private parts. As a result, their hands looked like baseball gloves, with track marks and spots all over them.

Ruby and Carl went from being normal citizens to being well-known dope fiends. They robbed people when they needed money. All of Ruby’s welfare checks and food stamps went to the dope dealer, while we children waited at home hungry, struggling to get by day after day without any clothes on our backs. Our shoes were too little and had holes in them. We had bald spots in our hair. Yet our parents kept doing whatever it took to get high. They would break into stores to steal furniture, clothes, furs, and toys just to feed their habit.

I have an unusual mark on my back—a burn mark made by a hot heroin spoon that fell on my back one day while they were nodding off. My brother Julio’s eyes were crossed because of the drug abuse.

Ruby applied and was approved for a low-income apartment on the West Side. The buildings had about sixteen floors each. The hallways were pissy, and the walls had all kinds of names, slang words, and graffiti done by both young and grown gangbangers. The gangbangers sold drugs in the building hallways, which were long with a big open space by the elevators and big scary windows.

When my mother walked us to school, we passed by twelve buildings that looked just like ours. They each had a big parking lot with all the latest cars, including Cadillacs, Ninety-Eights, and some foreign models. We walked through playgrounds with tall silver slides, merry-go-rounds, tunnels to hide in, and swing sets, which were always broken. One day, we also walked past a dead cat. Someone had killed it with a brick, and that was our first time ever seeing a dead animal—or anything dead. We were terrified. We finally made it to school after walking through a big field by some railroad tracks.

We went to Makers Elementary School. It had two buildings, and kids from first through eighth grades went there. Before I was old enough to go to Makers, my mother put me in day care down the street, in the same low-income community. It was near a place called Few Town, which was famous for its Chicago-style Polish dogs and other foods as well as tailor-made