It's My Time: Based on the True Story of Life, the Way Chamone Adams Lived It.

By Kaci Winslow

Chamone Adams is not just a walking inspiration, but she is a young lady who managed to beat the odds and the weight of the world. Challenged with the realities of life…

 

Judgment…She was spoiled, materialistic, and of course, loud. I figured she wasn’t going anywhere. She was spoiled. As a little girl, she wanted what she wanted and would get mad if she could not get the things that she wanted.

 

Sex…He turned me over and put his face between my legs. For a second, I thought that he was having Thanksgiving dinner. He came up about ten minutes later to take a deep breath before he went for more, but I was ready for the real action.

 

Love…When I saw Victor, I was happy. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. For the next couple of days, we hung out, then I figured there wasn’t a better time than then to have sex with him. That night, I went to pursue a fantasy that I had held on to since the seventh grade.

 

War…I heard about five shots, and three of those were our unit’s 50-caliber weapon. When I saw the Iraqis shooting from the buildings, I had to put my gear back on and get ready to rock and roll. Once I got myself together, I did a Rambo combat roll onto the hood of the Humvee and started firing.

 

 

…She picked up her cross and took on the world head on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2006
• ISBN: 9781425934538

Kaci Winslow

Kaci Winslow is a twenty-three-year-old female who has not only seen life’s roller coasters, but has also experienced many as well. She invites you to take this ride while she helps people, both young and young at heart, find themselves by allowing them to see their lives in this book as well as in a series of books to come.   Kaci’s goal with this book is to show the challenges of being a girl from the hood who has dreams of seeing the world and to let people know you can conquer this world, regardless of what people say.

Book preview

It’s My Time

Based on the true story of life, the way Chamone Adams lived it.

Kaci Winslow

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© 2006 Kaci Winslow. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/20/2006

ISBN: 1-4259-3453-6 (ebk)

ISBN: 1-4259-3500-1 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006903698

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Cover art by Brian C. Poole.

Contents

Matthew 16:24–25

In the Beginning, There Was Life

The Hands of Time

That’s What Friends Are For

On My Own

Lost and Found

Spirit of Rebellion

Spoiled Rotten

Do Something

Family Ain’t Never Been Family

Can’t Get Right

What Now?

Speak to Me

Is It Obedience?

Wild Out

Against the Odds

I’m Gone

Section II

Life after Dayton

Training

KOREA

KANSAS, WHAT LUCK!

IRAQ, A TWO-SIDED WAR

WELCOME BACK

HOTLANTA

S.A.N.E. (DECEMBER 5th MY NEW BEGINNING)

Resurrection

MY AFTERTHOUGHTS AND THANKS

The Best Pain Reliever in the World

Why It Hurts So Bad

About the Author

Matthew 16:24–25

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, ‘If any man (or woman) will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose it for my name sake shall find it (life).

Zack’s Response

Author: When did you first encounter Chamone?

Zack: I first met Chamone at birth; she is the daughter of my first cousin, which makes her my second cousin. I don’t remember the year, but it was a long time ago.

Author: What was your first reaction to her personality?

Zack: She was a smart child for her age as a toddler.

Author: If there was one thing that stood out about her, what was it?

Zack: One thing that stood out about Chamone was and still is her deep voice. She was the quietest baby I’d ever seen, oh, and her touching eyebrows.

Author: How did you meet her?

Zack: I began to babysit her and Caleb back in the eighties.

Author: What were you expecting her to achieve in life?

Zack: I didn’t know what Chamone was going to be when she got older, because she was really smart and talented. She was able to learn at a faster pace than most children at her age.

Author: When she was younger/little, what did you think she was going to be when she grew up (if applicable)?

Zack: I don’t know, but I definitely didn’t think she was going to be a soldier.

Author: Would you let her give you advice, or would you ask for it? Why?

Zack: Yes, both. Because I believe that she knows right from wrong and that she had bad and good experiences throughout her life. Now, she’s making good decisions.

Author: Give one word to describe Chamone?

Zack: Blessed.

Author: When she was a teenager or when you met her, did you consider her as being bad or troubled? Why?

Zack: During Chamone’s teenage years, I was not around.

Author: Did you have any memorable moments with her? If so, please explain one (regardless of what the case was).

Zack: I remember when it was about three families living in a three-bedroom house on Tampa Avenue. I used to hang out in this one room lying down rocking myself to sleep, and anytime someone would come in the room, they wouldn’t close the door back whether they was young or old. However, Chamone, who could hardly reach the doorknob, always stretched to make sure she closed the door.

Author: Are you surprised at where she is now in life? Why?

Zack: Yes, because I look at her cousins, her mother, and brother; and to know that she hung out with her cousins and looked up to them, that lets me know that just because we grew up with a certain group of people doesn’t mean that we will turn out like that crowd.

In the Beginning, There Was Life

November 30, 1982 was the day Chamone Adams was born in Dayton, Ohio. However, this story starts way before then. The beginning months of my mother’s pregnancy were difficult, and there was a time when she wasn’t sure if she wanted me or not. She dealt with the emotional stress of being pregnant, not knowing if my father would be around, and already having a young child. So, on the way to the abortion clinic, she made a life-changing decision. Instead of ending my life, she turned around with a big change of heart. Now, that is the story that I was told which has given me the opportunity to share this story with you. After hearing the many stories and wondering why I’m here, the question still runs through my mind daily. It feels like I’ve been to hell and back, but through it all, I’ve found that what doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

Now, at twenty-three, I can remember being in an apartment at the age of three. Now, I know this sounds ridiculous, and it’s just a vague memory, but it’s there. The best time of my childhood was at 264 Huron Avenue, which was the only childhood I was able to have. At four, my brother, Caleb, who was ten, and I attended Residence Park Elementary School. I was in kindergarten while he was in elementary school.

I remember getting good grades from day one. I remember the days when I would stand in the school gym and wait for my mom to pick me up from school. That was the first school I attended, and I was an outstanding student.

I tell you what, if nothing else, I remember my old neighborhood the best. I can remember when my mom first started working at General Motors. She would sleep all day after working third shift while I would sit around the house watching TV, until one day, I was bored and decided I wanted some company. I called the police and told them I was home alone. When the police got there, my mom answered the door, and they told her what happened, so of course, I got in trouble, but I was in trouble on a regular basis. On one adventure, I had snuck out of the house and had all my friends over in my back yard swimming.

Let us just say I was kind of on my own at a young age, and I didn’t like being locked up in the house all the time. I always seemed to find a way to get out of the house in the summertime when it felt impossible for me to sit in the house all day. So, after the incident with the police, I started staying with my great-grandma, Olivia, and it was fun. We would play backgammon and all types of card games. Granny used to always have me reading the Bible with her.

When I wasn’t with my grandma, Olivia, I was with my uncle, Jack. My uncle was, and will always be, one of the most outstanding people in my life. He was always with the kids, despite his bad habits. It was like clockwork; every holiday, he was around doing something, and when it wasn’t a holiday, he and all my cousins were known for watching movies or going on some kind of walking adventure. Halloween was the best. Every year, we would all go out to Trotwood (the good part of town) to trick or treat, and I’m not talking four or five blocks, I mean the whole community, but back to the story.

Back then, I learned a lot about God, values, and how to present myself. Older people surrounded me, so it was inevitable. I guess that’s how I got my seriousness at such a young age. The older I got, the more questions I asked, and the more talkative I became. That was only because I was eager to learn whatever I could as fast as I could.

Lincoln Elementary School was the beginning of me being bad, fighting, liking boys, and being mischievous. I remember one of the first days of school, I was in class, and we were talking about our parents. I told all my classmates that my mother was a white; after class, all of the school kids came out to our car to see if I was telling the truth. My mother was so surprised by the crowd, and she wondered why I had told them that she was white, but she was as light as a dove, and I wasn’t sure myself.

Not too long after that, I met some of my best friends, whom I consider family now. Madison was one of my first friends, and then there were Natalie, Teasha, and Anthony just to name a few. In second grade, I learned to let people fight their own battles, because a girl was messing with Madison, and I decided to jump in and protect my friend. When I did that, the girl hit me in the face with a metal lunch box. That was the first time someone hit me in school, and it left a scar out of this world. I tried to find a time to fight her for years, but never found myself in the same place at the same time without teachers around.

In elementary, I hung around many older kids on the school bus, so they influenced me in many different things. Like most other kids, we played house during school with mothers and fathers as well as siblings. Every day, house went on as if we were real families, and families break up. We reflected many of the things that we saw within our own houses.

I took to a girl that lived around the corner, and she would make sure that I got home safely off the bus. Well, one day, I got smart with her, and she decided to slap me. When I went home and told my mom, she went around to the girl’s house to tell her that she was in the sixth grade, and she should not be hitting me. After that, I wasn’t allowed to hang with her anymore.

The older the kids were that I hung around, the worse I got. At this time, my brother and I were inseparable. There were times when we would wrestle around the house. There was one time when Caleb and I were in the basement playing, and I hit him and his nose started bleeding. I ran like hell to my mother, and she yelled downstairs and told him that he had better not touch me, because we shouldn’t have been playing.

I began to think that I couldn’t fight, so I started training myself to fight. I used to sit the pillow of a chair up in the seat, talk trash to it, and beat it up. The only thing about that pillow was that I would never let anybody see me training myself, and it never hit back. We had almost everything we wanted growing up. My mom would even order pay-per-view wrestling and have the kids come over and watch for a quarter, but we had all-you-can-eat with hot dogs and chips. Man, we were spoiled. It didn’t end there.

I would go across the street to my neighbor’s house and listen to them rehearse for shows because they had a group kind of like the Jackson Five, but their name was Strictly Business.

The Larks were the best and the first extended family that I experienced. I could go over there any time and play with the dog or even help with the fruit trees in the back yard. My old babysitter lived next door to them, and she was about thirty when she would watch me. I recall her breastfeeding her son one day when she was watching me, and he was about three or four years old. Although I was young, I knew that there was something wrong with that picture, but I’ll tell you more about her later.

There was a point when my grandmother helped manage an apartment building on James H. McGee Boulevard. I used to go there to be watched by my cousins, Zack, Lauren, Ashley, and Debbie. Now, Debbie had two kids, Tay and David, who are my favorite relatives because they were like having another mother and two brothers. Zack was Debbie’s brother, and when he watched me, I would listen to Keith Sweat for days on out, as well as go on long extended walks in the sun. Lauren just had me watching soaps all the time. David and I used to fight like cats and dogs; I used to kick his butt all the time. No matter what we were fighting about, I would beat him down. Until this one time, he kicked my tail, and I never fought him again.

Tay and David were the brothers that I never had. My brother was so much older that he started always hanging out with his friends. My cousins and I had fun doing everything from going to Putt-putt to shooting BB guns. There was this one time, David dared me to shoot this boy with the BB gun. I shot the boy in the butt and got into big trouble.

During the time living on Huron, I used to go over my brother’s friend’s house which was behind our house. As I look back on it, I can remember so much about what went on. Well, first off, Lily, my brother’s girlfriend, had a little brother named Reggie who was handicapped. I had gone over one day after school, and Reggie was in the house by himself. He jumped out of the second-story window trying to leave with me.

Now, this next part might hit you hard. Lily used to have me touching on her breast when I was a little girl. Moreover, she wasn’t the only one; there was a family friend’s house that I used to stay at, and her daughter, Terry, encouraged me to do the same thing, which is really where it started. It had gotten so bad that I thought it was okay. Those people had to be pulled out of my life for those things to be uprooted out of me. After a while, I just would not be around those people, but that didn’t stop things that others tried to do to me.

There was this dream that I used to have on a regular basis. I would wake up at my Grandma Isabella’s house, and I would always see my cousin’s penis in my face, and he would always tell me to go back to sleep. Now, I used to have this dream on a regular basis. In my dream, I was always in the same room sleeping on the floor, and it would always be the same cousin. This happened with him telling me to go back to sleep. That dream or memory is something I never understood.

I was about eight or nine when I fought my first adult, and I was so wrong, but not as wrong as she was for acting like she wanted to fight me. A boy I went to school with was outside playing one day, the same day I was going to California for a family vacation. (What a vacation for a family, and my brother stayed home!) I promise, out of all days, this boy picked the wrong day to play with that water gun. He was squirting me with water on the day of my first plane ride. This was the most exciting day of my life, and this dude was playing. I asked him to stop playing, but you know how little boys are, right? He kept on playing, so I politely got off my bike, punched him in his stomach, and then rode off. Man, I was a bully. He told his mom, of course, and me being the bad kid that I was, I got smart when she tried to ask me what happened. I kept riding my bike, and she kept harassing me about beating up her little boy. Do you know, after a half of a day, I was in my front lawn, and this thirty-six-year-old woman was actually holding an argument with me? The same woman used to babysit me when I was little. I went in the house, got a small-sized bat, and told her that if her son tried to do it again, I would break his legs with that bat. Boy, did she get mad after that; she really wanted to fight me. With my brother sitting on the porch, she was the last person I was worried about.

You know how, back in the day, you used to tell somebody to step if they want to fight? Well, I told her that, and she came off her porch. I told her to come across the street if she really wanted some, and she came all the way across that street to fight a fourth-grader. I went down to the street to ask her what she wanted to do. She threw her hands up, and I hit her so hard with that bat. She grabbed her leg, then I hit her in the face and busted her nose. By that time, one of our neighbors came out and grabbed her and told her that’s what she got for coming out in the street to fight me like I was a grown woman. About five people wanted to fight her after that, because I beat her up.

When my mom got home, she called the police. My mom was so mad she tried to fight her while the police were standing right there. The police told her that they couldn’t let her fight her while they were standing there, but whatever happened when they were gone was none of their business. About two hours later, we were off to California.

Caleb’s response

Author: When did you first encounter Chamone?

Caleb: November 30, 1982.

Author: What was your first reaction to her personality?

Caleb: Mean, stubborn, and very feisty.

Author: If there was one thing that stood out about her, what was it?

Caleb: Her attitude.

Author: How did you meet her?

Caleb: Sometime around February 15, 1982, our mother and her father did the nasty, and you know the birds and the bees story then, BAM!!

Author: What were you expecting her to achieve in life?

Caleb: There was a time she was talking about being a tap dancer, doctor, or a ballerina, so any of the above was achievable.

Author: Would you let her give you advice, or would you ask for it? Why?

Caleb: Yes, both. Somewhere over the years, she has really grown very wise, and she has always been very smart.

Author: Give one word to describe Chamone?

Caleb: Well-rounded, or three words: Crazy, sexy, cool.

Author: When she was a teenager or when you met her, did you consider her as being bad or troubled? Why?

Caleb: No more than anyone else.

Author: Are you surprised at where she is now in life? Why?

Caleb: No

The Hands of Time

Earlier, I said my brother was seven years older than I, which made my mother about seventeen years old when she had him. When she got pregnant with my brother, his father left her. With saying that, you will understand that she probably didn’t get a chance to live out her teenage years. Therefore, when I was born, it put more of a burden on her, especially with my dad leaving her. He didn’t want any more kids and wouldn’t claim me until a blood test. From my understanding, he already had a few that he wasn’t really claiming to be his kids.

But, at this point, I was about seven or eight years old, and my brother was old enough to watch me sometimes, so my mom started going out drinking. She didn’t know that he used to leave me by myself when she would leave. My cousin, Andrew, moved in while I was in elementary. He started randomly whooping me for nothing. One time, I got a whooping because my tire on my bike busted, and he had to fix it, so he locked me in my room. What nobody knew was that I could hear him from my room having sex with the neighbors.

He lived in the basement, and he had hooked it up very nicely; unexpectedly, he was gone. After he moved out, I was a happier and more rebellious kid. I used to get up at eight in the morning to go outside and play until school started.

After school started, a friend from school, Teasha, was out of school for about eight days. As soon as she got back, I asked her why she wasn’t at school. She told me that she had the chicken pox, so me being a kid, I wanted to get out of school for a little while, too. I rubbed our arms together so I could get sick, and the next day, I was at home covered in red spots. My mom worked so much that she wasn’t up to looking after me, so my uncle, Jack, took care of me the entire time. I’ll never forget, all I wore was my day-of-the-week panties, the ones that had Monday through Sunday on them. He put the calamine lotion on me every day until I was better.

There were days that I had to go to school, and my mother would have gotten so drunk the night before that she would not wake up for the world. I would shake her, and she would not respond, or she would respond with one of those drunken answers, talking gibberish. I took advantage of that all the time. It was the best time to ask for something that she would normally say no to. When she was sober, she was amazing. We had wrestling parties, sleepovers, and every other event made for kids.

As a kid, my mom let my do it all. I tried everything, from ballet, playing instruments, and even flag football. I sometimes felt that my mom didn’t love me as much as she loved my brother, which influenced my first suicide letter and my running away from home. I only went to the next-door neighbors’ house. They let me stay over there for a couple of hours, then they called my mom. I had hidden the letter under my brother’s dresser. About three weeks later, they moved the dresser, and he found the letter then gave it to my mom. She flipped out and asked me a million questions about how I was feeling. I just needed some attention.

When I was about ten years old, my brother began to get rebellious. I remember one day, my mother and brother got into it, and she wanted to hit him over the head with a frying pan. He was gone in the blink of an eye and in the streets more than ever. I hardly ever saw him after that. I used to send myself off to school in the morning, because my mom wouldn’t be home when it was time for me to go. When I would come home from school, I would be at home alone. I would come home and watch Yogi Bear and the Jetsons every day. I would also fix myself a cold-cut sandwich with lots of Miracle Whip. I would sit in the house until the cartoon went off, and then I would go outside and play with the kids in the hood.

I was always friends with everybody, especially when someone new moved into the area. Everybody liked me. There were always older girls that I would hang around. I hung out with this one girl across the street, Ronda; she took me everywhere that she went. One day, I was over at her house chilling after going swimming, and this girl named Asia from down the street came over and was trying to fight me. I was clever, so tried to burn her with the curling iron. Now, unlike last time, my mom wasn’t going to threaten her, so she figured that she would call somebody to fight Asia. My second cousin, Jada, came over and wanted to know where she lived. We walked down to her house, and my cousin was ready to beat her down, but Asia stayed in the house. From that day forward, she tried to be my best friend.

After that girl moved, I befriended a girl named Brooke who lived about four houses down the street. She was like the big sister that I never had; she liked to dance and was even on drill team, something that I always wanted to do. We started hanging out every day, and we would go riding bikes all over the city. There was this one time when we rode bikes all over town, from ten in the morning until about six in the evening; man, I got in trouble when I got home. Everybody had told my mom about me riding bikes all over town. We would hang out at the mall to go shopping. Then she started liking my brother, but by that time, our families were already in the mix with each other.

See, my cousin Andrew was dating her sister, and his sister, Paige, dated her brother. However, when Brooke started liking my brother, she started shying away from me. It got so bad I tried to fight her, and my brother had to break it up. That same night, they had sex. There it was again, my brother had taken the attention away from me. Their relationship didn’t last long, because Brooke and her brother started stealing stuff out of my house. First, Brooke’s brother stole a pair of shoes from my brother. The situation was so funny because he climbed in the back window and got the shoes and wore them to my house. About two months later, Brooke was in the house and stole my mother’s diamond ring. That was crazy because Brooke had helped us look around the house for it when my mom just thought that she lost it. It turned out that Brooke had it that whole time; her sister found it in her room. From that point on, she wasn’t allowed in the house again, but I used to sneak her over occasionally. As I look back on it, everybody at one time or another pulled the whammy on my mom. However, it wasn’t anything to her because if she had it once, then she could have it again, as she taught me.

A short while after that, Caleb was totally gone. He just got up and left one day. After he left, I was always at home alone. I would stay out to the wee hours of the night over at friends’ houses, until after the streetlights came on.

I even had a little boyfriend, Landon, that I would talk to on the phone all of the time. He lived down the street, which was around the corner from the store that I shopped at.