Chapter 13: I Use My Art To Protect Myself And My Neighborhood

I went to city schools when I was in kindergarten and first grade. I went to three schools before I came here. I didn’t finish the whole year of school in any of them. I got expelled for fighting and argue with teachers, and sometimes I fought them. People used to talk about my family. They said my mom was “fat” and I didn’t even know my dad. I told them I wasn’t in touch with him a lot, but that didn’t matter because they still did it. The last time I saw my dad wasn’t that long ago, like three or four months ago. The only time I ever really saw him was when I played for a football team. The last time I saw him, he was at a party. He just happened to see me because I was across the street. He didn’t even know I was there. Once he saw me playing basketball, he saw me. My brother called out our dad’s name and then he came over. My little brother’s dad passed away. They told him his heart stopped beating, but I don’t know how he really passed away. When my dad came over, he told me about my basketball skills and stuff. This is when we moved out of Euclid at that time. I was on Harvard. He heard a lot about me and N**** got jumped or almost jumped. I had beef with a lot of people. They didn’t like me because of an incident. They wanted to know where I was. He never told anyone that people were looking for me. He said people wanted me to go outside, but I wouldn’t go outside. They didn’t want to be my friends. They wanted to set me up and mess me up.