Back in Milwaukee, it doesn’t matter what was in your hair. You had one of the two types of hair: natural hair or natural weave. No one made a big joke if your weave was not done right either because the ones that said, ’I like your hair’, or, ‘‘where you get your weave done?’ probably had jacked up weave just like you did. Back in the streets, the real streets, it didn’t matter if you have the latest shoes in the store on your feet. Having holes in your shoes was the same as having little food in your lunch bag. No one could make fun of that because together, in a community of gangs and guns, garbage along the sidewalk and burnt-up houses, we had struggles, all the same, together that we understood. With those gangs and even with baby mom drama, we were all related, like a big mess-up family with deadbeat dads and useless Aunties and Uncles.

Everything was different back in Milwaukee. Maybe everything is different because my dad left when my mom relapsed back on crack and alcohol for the second time. It’s not just that. My mom was bulldog towards him to scramble more money out of him, and when he stopped, she cheated on him. When he said he was tired her, he was tired of me. The next morning, he was nowhere to be seen. Nothing got better though. Mom was then knocked up and killed the baby through drugs. Then she tried to kill me. Sometimes I look back at the good when my family was together, but those memories always connect to the worst.
Anyways, while my dad was away, I learned that he moved to Belmont, CA after hustling some money from his mother. He went back to school to be a secretary for a top notch business and got a pretty nice job at a cable company. Weird how that happened. For awhile I thought he actually left me. But...he didn’t. After my mom was sentenced for almost life in jail, my dad came back to take custody of me. I did some research about Belmont and found out that it was nearly the richest city in the state. Great.
Here in Belmont, CA, I’m fake because my hair is too different tones of black: natural black and natural weave black. I suppose to have the fancy-shmancy headbands that feel like it making your head into a Barbie cone face. It’s a super joke to make fun of me because sometimes my weave isn’t done right when people say, ‘look at your tracks! There are on the verge of falling out! Sometimes I ask myself, what happened to people understanding you and struggles? The only thing they’re use to is being popular, with their Barbie faces and expensive perfume. To them, it all about having Starbucks when you walk into class or having super-cool house parties at your big house.  Your family can’t have deadbeat dads; you have to have busy rich dads that really don’t want anything to do with you. Your family can’t have useless aunties and uncles unless they aren’t rich. One day in English, we had to create a seven word memoir that we had to present to the class. My memoir was, the same country; two very different places. Funny how it’s true to my life.