This Can't Be Life

By Robert Shorty

Raw and uncut, This Can’t Be Life is the shocking, brutal, and at times, comical story of a young man coming of age in a tumultuous household amid a family of colorful characters. Raised by a single mother wrestling with her own personal demons, Rock finds himself struggling to resist the allure of fast money, easy women, and mind-numbing substances. His journey is a roller-coaster ride of amazing highs and abysmal lows, filled with uncontrollable urges and heartbreaking truths

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640963221

Book preview

Chapter 1

Picture Perfect

My name is Roland Little, but everyone used to call me Rock. Still can’t remember where the nickname came from. Perhaps it was because I was so hardheaded. I was born in 1971 in Peoria, Illinois, the hometown of Richard Pryor, the foul-mouthed comedian. It is a small city, with a population just under 125,000. Apollo 14 was just landing on the moon at the time, and some geeks had just discovered a new way for us to communicate through this thing called an Internet chat room. My mom, Stella, was born on the West side of Chicago. My dad, James, was born in Mississippi somewhere. How did we end up stuck in Peoria? Who knows? Maybe they liked Rich.

My dad was a military man, fresh from Germany when they bumped into each other at a grocery store and exchanged numbers. That was back in ’69. The old man is short in stature, only standing around five feet six inches tall, but with his barrel chest and huge arms, he was like a giant to me. I remember watching him from our living-room window, with his starched shirt and suit on, climbing into that big blue Cadillac every morning. Sadly, I can’t remember very much about my mother in those early days. They say she was a long-distance operator before marrying my dad. I don’t know. All I remember is her being very pretty and small, with the sweetest laugh that one can imagine.

We lived in a red brick house in a predominantly white neighborhood, one of only four black families living on Fremont Street. Every house had a manicured lawn with a tiny garage in the back. There is an old picture somewhere of me in front of a Christmas tree. Could have been a movie poster for life back then—I was wearing red-and-white pajamas, banging away on a five-piece drum set. I could not have been more than five or six years old at the time. My mom is sitting on the couch with both hands covering my little brother’s ears. My older brother is pushing his new Schwinn bike out the front door while my dad is snapping away with his Polaroid camera, shaking the pictures dry

Other not-so-picture-perfect memories include me storming up the stairs, fighting mad, after being denied pool lessons by my father because he was teaching my older brother, Lonnie, who is not even his son. I can still smell the fresh-cut grass from the neighbors’ yard and feel the warm summer breeze coming through the billowing curtains. I cried myself to sleep that night, smoldering with anger, and woke up on fire. Stealing a ring of keys and a couple sticks of Juicy Fruit out of my mother’s purse, I snuck out of the front door before anyone awoke and struggled to get the heavy Cadillac door open. Standing in the seat, leaning over the steering wheel, I tried key after key until the engine came to life beneath me. I pulled the handle down and scooted down to the floor to push on the gas pedal. Seconds into the ride, I was jolted into the dashboard and snatched my foot off the gas. Climbing back up on the seat, I looked over the steering wheel to see that my trip had landed me across the street right in the neighbors’ hedges. There was old Mrs. Dugan, in a tattered housecoat and pink rollers, screaming, James! Looking back over the seat, I saw my father on our porch wearing only his tighty-whities. Roland!

I draw a complete bland after that incident. I recall lying across the bed getting my first and only whooping from my dad (with his belt), but everything after that is totally washed away, as if I was in a deep sleep. All I know is, when the fog lifted, my dad was gone.

I would often sit on my dad’s workbench out in the tiny garage, staring teary-eyed at the spot where his orange Chevy race car used to sit, distant echoes of the noise and the rumbling when he would start it up still fresh in my mind. But Daddy was gone; he took all of his things and wasn’t coming back. The year was 1978, and our little brick house on Fremont Street would never be the same.

Chapter 2

The Divorce

There wasn’t any violence in our house before the divorce, no loud arguing or fights. There wasn’t even any of that between my two brothers and me. So it was heartbreaking to all of us when the old man left for work one morning and never came back. I can remember being broke up about it, yet still hoping that he was just working and would soon return. Though as the days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, it became apparent to me that he wasn’t coming back. In short order, our big blue Cadillac was replaced with a blue Cutlass; and our neat little brick house, filled with things and love, became a place of violence, misery, and unspeakable horrors. I still sometimes wonder if Ma was trying to trick us into thinking everything would still remain the same by keeping the car blue.

Prior to his departure, there may not have been any violence in the house, but there wasn’t a boatload of love either. I mean, sure we had a house full of stuff because the old man was consistently moving up in the company; but for the life of me, I can’t recall any I love you, son or hugs or anything like that from my mom or dad. It was more like as long as we had material possessions, then we were all right. I would take that mind-set into my adulthood, instilling it into my own family’s way of thinking, even when I tried not to.

What did become a daily part of our lives when our father left was the extension cord. Ma went from this quiet petite woman to a cord-, switch-, racetrack-, whatever-was-available-wielding tyrant. The law was that the house had to be orderly and clean at all times. Failure to comply with this law was dealt with rather swiftly and severely. My brothers always did a half-ass job with their chores, so I made it my business to have the kitchen, living room, and bathroom spotless by the time that she got home from work, and check their shit to make sure that it was done right.

Hi, Ma, I mumbled nervously, looking up from my homework on the kitchen table.

Did Lonnie take out that garbage? she asked, looking around as she dropped her purse and beer on the counter.

Yeah, I said, knowing that I was the one who took it out.

Where’s Nico? she asked, reaching into the cabinet for a glass. And who washed these fucking dishes! She turned on me, tossing her jacket on a chair.

I did, I said, rising from my chair. I know I dried ’em, I know I dried ’em, I thought to myself.

Smack! Right across the face.

What the fuck did I tell y’all about putting wet—smack!—dishes in my cabinet? That’s why we got so many fuckin’ roaches in here now.

I dried ’em, I said, cowering from her blows. Get downstairs and take off those clothes.

For what? They dry, Momma. But before she could swing again, I hit the stairs.

Down there, I sat on the couch crying, shivering in my underwear, listening to her as she paced the floor upstairs—cussing, fussing, drinking, and getting all worked up. Just as I anticipated, it was another long night of soaking in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water, trying to reduce the swelling and bleeding while listening to her crying and mumbling, Why y’all make me do this? Why y’all make me do this? as she rocked back and forth on the toilet seat. What! Do we control your arms? I would cut them both off if I was big enough. As usual, it ended with me trying to comfort her while blotting at the bloody welts rising all over me.

After a while, I became immune to the whoopings. I didn’t care about that; I just hated trying to hide my welts from my friends at school. They would ride me anytime they saw new ones on my arms or legs. Some days, Lonnie would get me and Nico after school and take us into the garage where we had this really old big-ass Bible. This thing was about a foot long and wide, about six inches thick, and all white with gold trim on every page. On the side of my mom’s broke-down Cutlass, on a floor littered with dead leaves, oil, and auto parts, we would kneel over the Good Book, palms together, eyes closed, praying.

God, Lonnie would begin, please don’t let Ma come home mad today. Go into her heart and keep her in a good mood, Lord. Please! Lord, please! Amen. Once in a while, we would get lucky, and the Big Guy (or Gal) would get our message. Most times, though, our prayers would get lost in traffic, and we would get a loud and clear message from the cord. Once, I was getting beat so badly that Wanita and Leo, the old white-haired couple from next door, came banging on the doors, screaming, Stella! Stella! You gotta stop it. You’re going to kill them boys.

Ma didn’t like anybody in her business, so after that, our hands were tied behind our backs and socks were stuffed into our mouths before the beatings began. I remember Lonnie telling me and Nico to cover him with our bodies, and then he would cover us. When the cord started flying, our dumb asses would try to maneuver our bodies to block some of his blows, but when it came time for him to block for us, he would mistime the cord, or Ma would have a moment of precision, and we would catch every intended blow.

We quickly abandoned the Bible routine and started hiding the cord from her, putting it in the back of the highest cabinets in the kitchen, over the stove or refrigerator where she couldn’t reach it, forcing her to use the thicker, heavier yellow utility cord. She was too small to swing it around for any length of time; plus, it was too thick to do any real damage. The three of us would sit there, praying that she wouldn’t find the cord while staring up at the ceiling, listening to her cussing. You motherfuckers want to hide the cords, huh! I got something for you bastards [ever since Dad left, we all turned into bastards]. I got something for y’all asses!

Oh, shit! the three of us mouthed as she stormed down the stairs with the skinny double-looped phone cord in her hand.

Other times, she would play mind games on us, sending us downstairs to get ready, then not show up. That shit used to stress us out more than the actual ass-whooping. Then after hours of sweating for us and drinking for her, she would call us upstairs. She would be all smiles, with a table full of food, like nothing ever happened. On those occasions, it was usually a toss-up. Sometimes, we would make it through; others, we would be awakened in the dead of night with the cord across our back. You bastards thought I forgot, didn’t you? she would scream, drunk, with her eyes all glazed over. One just never knew.

It all came to a head one early evening when Lonnie, who had to be twelve or thirteen at the time, grabbed the cord when she swung at him. We were in our room, which had bunk beds, an old blue wooden dresser with peeling paint, and a little black-and-white television sitting on two milk crates. The TV had a pair of vise grips locked on a knob to change the channel. Ma was only a child herself when she had Lonnie—fifteen years old, I think. She must have been really shocked when he finally stood up to her because for a minute she just stood there, frozen, looking at him like a third eye was growing out of his forehead. The only thing moving was her silky black hair falling back into place and her big night shirt swirling around her. Let go of this fuckin’ cord, Lonnie, she snarled, snapping out of it.

You not gonna keep beating us for nothing, Lonnie said in a low, unsteady voice. Lonnie didn’t let go.

Rock and Nico, get downstairs, she said, not breaking eye contact from Lonnie, still holding on to her end of the cord.

Neither one of us moved. We were riding this one out with Lonnie. Either it would stop right now, or she would kill us all right here. The whistling from a Clint Eastwood movie shot through my head—a standoff.

Oh, so you grown now, huh? she said, twirling her end of the cord like a jump rope. You grown! Let. Go. Of. This. Cord. Lonnie, she said again, pleading now, jerking the cord with all of her strength as she spat out each word.

Holding the cord firmly with one hand, staring her down, Lonnie replied in a calm voice, You’re not whooping me with no extension cord no more.

Okay, you bastards, she growled, glaring at each one of us as she dropped her end of the cord and ran from the room, crying loudly.

I guess that was when she finally realized that she was in over her head and losing control. An hour later, my grandfather showed up, and together they beat the dog shit out of Lonnie (he literally shit his pants), but that was the last time he got worked over with the extension cord—well, sort of.

The next morning, my grandmother showed up. She helped me pack my clothes and informed me that I was coming to live with her. Ma told her that I cried too much and that she just couldn’t handle all three of us on her own. So I was saved, temporarily anyway.

Before I continue this, I got to be fair. We were not angels, and the majority of the ass-whoopings, we probably had coming. But some of them were for nothing. Ma was just taking out her frustrations over the situation with the old man, the financial changes, and all that shit out on us. And all that drinking definitely wasn’t helping. I guess I can understand it a little bit, but that extension cord, stripping us down, tying us up, and all that—that was some bullshit!

Chapter 3

In the Arms of an Angel

My grandmother has to be the most peaceful and spiritual person that I have ever encountered in my life. Even years later, when I would take one of my friends or a girl that I was dating over to meet her, they would say that they came away feeling like they had just had some kind of religious experience.

Grandma was the spitting image of my mom, slightly aged but in very good health. You could usually find her doing some kind of yard work, jogging out at the chief’s stadium, or going door to door around the city delivering the word of Jehovah.

She and my grandfather had been together for over thirty years and lived in this tiny two-bedroom house with white siding on a quiet street right around the corner from Manual High School. The hedges in the front and backyard always stayed groomed to perfection. Their brand-new Cutlass Supreme (way newer than the one we had) could always be seen sitting in the carport next to the one-car garage that sat right off the alley.

My grandfather was around six feet with a solid build. Salt-and-pepper hair covered his round face and head. He was a smooth cat who favored sharp silk suits, apple hats, Kool cigarettes, good weed, and young women. I always thought them to be a really odd couple. Grandma, sitting in a kitchen chair right next to the stove in her nightgown with pink-and-green rollers in her hair, would sit there and pray and read scriptures for hours on end. Granddaddy, not ten feet away, would be lain all the way back in his brown leather recliner, crusty feet hanging in the air, watching The Three Stooges, laughing hysterically and blowing cigarette smoke out the window. (He wouldn’t smoke weed in the house, but there was no way he would have forgone his Kools.)

My aunt Samantha would sometimes come and stay for night or two. She still had a room upstairs in the attic. Samantha was beautiful, six feet tall with chocolate skin. I used to find some of her old modeling pictures in her room and trip on how pretty she used to be. Aunt Samantha was a prostitute and heroin addict. When she was there, Grandma would always tell me not to go up there because Aunt Samantha was sick. But on days when she felt good and Grandma was gone, she would turn on her little tape player and dance with me, letting me take a few sips of her bottle of Colt 45 and blowing big clouds of Mary Jane smoke into my mouth. It was a miracle that I never tumbled down those stairs after an afternoon with Auntie.

Every night after I got out of the tub, Grandma would make me a pallet on the couch in the living room and pray for me before she would go a few steps away to her bedroom to sleep. Some nights, I would sneak back into the sitting room and watch rated R movies on HBO while Granddaddy dozed in his chair. He wouldn’t say anything to Grandma if he woke up and caught me, as long as I would say nothing about him smoking those other cigarettes late in the night or about that big bag of grass that he kept way in the back of the closet. Living with Grandma wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have to worry about no ass-whoopings. The worst Grandma gave was a wooden spoon to the palm of the hand for taking something out of the refrigerator that I wasn’t supposed to, or if I got caught throwing rocks at cars.

I missed my brothers, not Lonnie so much, but I did miss Nico. It got pretty boring sometimes unless my cousin Terell (one of Samantha’s two sons) would come over. When he was there we would go up and down the alley looking for something to get into. To be more specific, we were looking for something to steal or break. Sometimes we would sit at the dining-room table poking and laughing at Granddaddy’s old crusty feet while he snored in his recliner.

Rock, Terell cut out all that snickering, he would say, popping up out of his sleep. After telling us for the second or third time, he would get up and kick us out. What I tell y’all about all that snickering. Get on outside somewhere.

Like my father, my grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness, so we would go out to field service with some of her sisters, spreading the work and passing out Watchtower magazines. Whenever we could get someone to open the door, one of the sisters would start, Good morning, are you aware that Jehovah—slam! The door would fly into our faces. Go away! It was a little embarrassing at first, but funny at the same time. Nobody was trying to hear about Jehovah, hungover early on a Saturday morning.

We went to the Kingdom Hall on Sundays and had Bible studies at different people’s homes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Burger King was right up the street from Granny’s house, so every Sunday after service, she would stop and get us cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes. That was always the highlight of the week for me. One Saturday after service, Grandma took me with her to the hall to clean before the next day’s meeting. The hall that she went to was a small one-story brick building on a tiny lot right in middle of the hood. There was a counter with shelves filled with literature right beyond the entrance, followed by a room filled with chairs grouped together and divided by an aisle in the middle. A small podium sat at the front, and that was the whole of the hall.

Rock, vacuum the aisles behind the counter and up front. I am going to pick up outside. Don’t touch nothing now, you hear?

Yeah, Grandma, I responded. After vacuuming the floor, I started snooping around behind the counter, pulling open drawers. I came upon one that was locked. A locked drawer was always a problem for me because I just had to know what was inside. Shaking the drawer, I heard coins rattling. Nah, I can’t steal from a church, I thought to myself, walking away only to come right back a moment later to shake the drawer again. It was like I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew that it was wrong on so many levels.

I looked out the front door to see where Grandma was at. Seeing her still stooped over picking up trash in the parking lot, I went out back and found a screwdriver in the shed. Back in front of the drawer with the screwdriver in hand, I paused only for a moment before prying the drawer open. I don’t even know how I knew to do this. Inside I found a few fives, a couple ones, and some change. Stuffing the money into my pockets, I pushed the drawer shut the best that I could, took the screwdriver back to the shed, put the vacuum cleaner away, and went out to help Grandma finish picking up. For the remainder of the day and night, I felt like shit, like I was a little monster or something. Maybe Ma was right. Maybe I was a no-good bastard. Bastard—what the hell was that anyway! Before saying our prayers that night, I wanted to tell her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Turned out that I wouldn’t have to.

The very next day, during service, one of the sisters called Grandma to the back. When she came back to her seat, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at me, but I could feel the change within her, something wrong. After service, we blew right past Burger King; and for the remainder of the night, she was really quiet, not speaking at all, just praying and humming old spirituals. Even the before-bed prayer was weird. She kept asking God to forgive her and me and to give her strength. I hoped she wasn’t talking about strength to swing a cord. I think that was when I knew that I was busted.

It all came crashing down on me the next morning when I woke up with Grandma standing over me, holding my pants in one hand and the money in the other. Why, Rock? she asked with tears streaming down her face. How could you do something like this? How could you steal from God?

I don’t know, Grandma, I mumbled, crying now myself. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t know what else to say. The next thing she did made me cry even more. She didn’t whip me or even holler at me. For the next hour, she just hugged me tight, rocking me back and forth while praying for me.

That very evening, I was deposited back into the living room that I had been plucked from not six months earlier, and the cycle of madness continued.

Chapter 4

Here We Go Again

My grandma must have kept the theft to herself because my mother never said anything about why I was back. She actually seemed a little calmer now and genuinely happy to have me back. The whippings were less frequent, yet still extreme. There were new faces in the house. Relatives we would normally only see on weekends or holidays were now consistently around. Barbeques and parties were a constant, and they were live.

My mom had two brothers and three sisters. Uncle Isaac was a police officer with the Chicago Police Department, so we only saw him and his family for big holidays and funerals. Uncle Kenny was one of the biggest pimps in the city, with a fleet of Cadillac cars and a string of girlfriends. I idolized him. Every time he came around, he would bring his bottom bitches: Big Titty Sandra and two white girls named Linda and Karen. They would fawn over him and cater to him like he was a king. I would study him like I had an exam—how he kept his long hair slicked back, his long nails glossy with clear polish, and his silk shirts open to show his gold jewelry. Everything about him was fly. The only thing I didn’t quite understand or like was why he would spend so much time in the bathroom every time he would come over. One day, Nico and I climbed up to the bathroom window on the outside and peeped through the curtain and saw him slumped on the toilet seat with his sleeve rolled up and something sticking out of his arm. He wasn’t dead because I could see him scratching his balls. He was fly, but I didn’t think that I wanted to be falling asleep on toilet seats like that.

Aunt Samantha and her kids were there the most. She would always be at the stove or the grill with full makeup, heavy jewelry, and big ole wigs on her head. Nico and I almost died laughing the first time we saw her and Sandra without those things on. Both of them were practically bald underneath. Samantha had three kids: Felicia, Jordan, and Terell. Felicia was the oldest. They were all four or five years older than me, around my oldest brother Lonnie’s age. All of them were skinny and tall as hell, with both boys eventually reaching almost six feet five inches tall.

Felicia and Terell were cool, but I hated Jordan, and quiet as it’s kept, I know that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. He was always stealing things from our house, and even broke into Grandma’s house once. I am sure he was looking for Granddaddy’s weed. Ma used to always tell him to stay out of our house, but he didn’t listen to her. Shit, Jordan didn’t listen to anybody.

Jordan was crazy. Every time he would walk past me and Nico, he would corner us and start punching us in our arms, legs, and chests, saying, What’s up, punk! Boom! Boom! As we would squirm and try to cover up, he would growl, Fight back, nigga. Boom! Boom! Boom! Fight back. I was nine years old and maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet, and here was this fifteen-year-old, six-foot-five psycho wailing on us. Imagine flinching for years every time the dude was in arm’s reach. It is surprising that I don’t have a nervous twitch to this day.

When I returned, Lonnie had gained a little independence within the house. He turned a little utility room right up under the kitchen into his bedroom. He had his own TV, stereo, and Atari game system. He had everything while Nico and I were still stuck in our little cramped room on the main floor. We did have new bunk beds, though, and every time Lonnie left, we went down there and played his games and listened to his tapes while arguing over who would get his room when he left for good.

Aunt June was the star of the family, the success story. She only came around on holidays too, even though she lived in Peoria. June looked a lot like my mother, only she was the exclusive edition—model pretty with perfect hair and makeup and really expensive clothes. Everyone was in awe of her whenever she came around. She was feminine and talked all nice and proper, never cursing. She and her husband worked at Caterpillar, just like my dad. They stayed in this really nice house way out in an upscale neighborhood with their only son, Chris. We still crack on Chris about how when we first met him, he was a white boy in talk and dress. The only thing black about him was his skin. They were the perfect family, like the Cosbys or something.

One year, June invited the whole family out to her house for Christmas, and all of us boys (all except Chris, of course) started wrestling down in her basement. We broke one of her expensive hanging lamps. She made us feel so uncivilized and barbaric by the way she chastised us, using those fancy words and that calm tone of voice. My mom and Samantha were so embarrassed. Needless to say, there was never another holiday get-together at her house, and she would never allow Chris to come visit any of us heathens down on the South end.

The last of my mom’s sisters was Brenda. Everyone called her Baby. I don’t know why because she was neither cute nor sweet. She didn’t look like any of her sisters. Matter of fact, she looked more like Granddaddy than anybody. Baby was short and dark-skinned with short hair that she always kept covered with colorful bandanas. Her face had fat pock-marked cheeks, and she was mean as hell. When my father left, she moved in with us and took over the living room. She would always make me and Nico pick up the floor, which consisted of us crawling around the living room among the furniture and tables, on our hands and knees, with ashtrays and picking lint and shit out of the carpet. We had a perfectly healthy vacuum cleaner sitting in the closet that she would never allow us to use. If the floor wasn’t picked up to her standards, then we got the two buck. That shit hurt and left a knot. The two buck was two hard fingers popped right across our forehead. I hated that, and her. All she ever did was sit in the living room all day, smoking weed and burning incense, with songs from Isaac Hayes or Marvin Gaye blasting from her huge sound system, reminding us all that things sho ain’t what they used to be.

Chapter 5

Better Days

While Lonnie was gaining his independence, Nico and I were gaining something more rewarding: a father. Initially, I had absolutely hated my dad for abandoning us like he did, but I could not sustain those feelings. After a year with only an occasional phone call, he resurfaced in the flesh. We soon learned that our mom wouldn’t allow him to see us during that time. He started to come by on one of his motorcycles and take us on long rides on the weekends and leave us with wads of cash. He would even give Lonnie money, and he wasn’t even his kid.

The first time my mom told us that he was coming to get us for the weekend, Nico and I flew home from school, packed a change of clothes, and sat by the window in the living room to wait. My mom and Baby badgered us to death until he arrived. His punk ass might not show up, Baby said, sitting on the couch, blowing weed smoke at us.

Ask him why he ain’t paid his fuckin’ child support in the last three months. Tell him to tell y’all where he got that horse-faced bitch from, my mom added, pacing back and forth in front of the living room window with a Virginia Slim cigarette in one hand and a Colt 45 in the other. She always claimed that my dad’s new wife was a former prostitute. Who knows where she got it from, but it went on and on and on.

The look on their faces when that long-ass blue-and-white Winnebago RV pulled up in front of the house, taking up what seemed like the whole block, is indescribable. When we got outside, our father stepped out of the camper to greet us, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, all stiff and uncertain as he led us inside to meet his new family. There was Deloris, his new wife, and her two teenage kids from a previous relationship, Shelton and