My first memory of the place was of me unpacking some of my boxes. I was taking a break because it was hot and stuffy in the little two-bedroom apartment we were now supposed to call home.

Today, it would be called a townhome, but then, it was just an apartment that we didn’t want to be in.

I remember stepping outside of our building and looking at the row of former Army barracks.

Most projects in Brockton used to be used as farms or military barracks. I walk out onto the concrete porch, and the first thing I see is Mrs. Williams. She’s our nosey neighbor that lives directly across from us. I would find that for many years to come, Mrs. Williams would be staring at our front door.

I decide to go to The Corner Store. I couldn’t believe that someone had been so lazy that they couldn’t come up with a better name than that. So I asked my mother would it be OK to walk to the store at the mouth of the circular projects and she said.

“Yes, but hurry up. Go straight there and come back, and DON”T talk to anyone!”

Great. Now I was second guessing the trip. But it sure was hot outside and I had forty cents burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted a twenty-five cent lemon icy, a ten cent peach lollipop and five cents worth of Swedish fish. I hurried out the door and started power walking up the street.

I’m halfway between my house and the store when when I hear, “Hey child, wait for me!”

Mind you, I don’t know any of these people yet, so I keep on stepping. I soon felt someone coming up on me and I spin around to see this person wearing two dollar navy blue flip-flops with red & white striped basketball socks, black shorts with a white stripe down the side that are so far from his knees they look like underwear, and a white t-shirt that looked to be from my baby doll collection.

What in the world was this mess??

That my good people, was Pookie.

The neighborhood fruitcake. And he was all of 11-years-old.

I had never seen anything - or anyone like him before. I couldn’t do anything but stare. When he caught up to me I just fell in step with him and kept it moving toward the store.

This boy had more twitch in his step than I could EVER hope to have when I grew up. He talked with a lisp and calls everyone he sees “child”.

He must have asked me a hundred questions in the three minutes it took us to get to the store.

What I didn’t know at the time was Pookie is the neighborhood gossip. He’d been sent to find out about my family since we were the new people in the neighborhood who kept to ourselves.

I was unexperienced in the gossip area so I just told the truth. I learned two lessons very quickly.

One, never to tell Pookie anything and two, keep your business to yourself when you live in the projects.

Those two lessons quickly became my golden rules.

Here’s a little history for you:

Roosevelt Heights is a city-owned affordable housing complex on the north side of Brockton.

The city really isn’t all that big, but in order to navigate, it is broken up in sides of a compass, the North Side (typically a decent side of town to live on), the West Side (people relate this side with the more affluent residents), The South Side (which was pretty suburban but kind of slower than the rest of the city) and the East Side (unfortunately, I don’t know many people who really wanted to live on the East Side) - in layman’s terms… it’s ghetto.

To make a long story short, we were on a perfectly good side of town and were moving from a family environment with good neighbors, to a side of town that wasn’t that bad whose only blemish at the time was… Richmond Street.

Which was of course, was right where we were headed.

Roosevelt Heights was the “official” name of the neighborhood. I guess the city wanted to make it seem like we weren’t living in the projects.

It didn’t work.

We protested. We were scared, nervous and very pissed. None of us wanted to live there. We were good kids. We had never been in trouble, had never been arrested, our grades were good; heck I had been on the honor roll for each of my five years in grade school!

How could I move to the projects?? I would never survive! It was all so unfair.

My mother calmly listened to all of our protests, and after a lot of crying and carrying on, we realized that the decision had already been made.

At the time, I had no idea that my family was actually considered poor. We had always had what we needed and often got what we wanted.

But in reality, my mother was having a hard time supporting three children, one of whom, although was legally an adult, she was attempting to assist him paying for community college.

My brother is an artist. For as long as I can remember, he’s drawn sketches, painted with water colors or pastels, he’s even done those crazy glow-in-the-dark velvet things you see on the walls of freaky old men.

You know, the ones with naked women who’s eyes, jewelry and nipples glow in the dark? I feel guilty for even talking about it, so don’t tell nobody OK?

But all that aside, my brother could make the best landscape paintings. So, he was going to community college for art and in order to help him pay for that, off to Roosevelt Heights we were going. *sigh*

* * * * *

Now originally, I had no idea who lived upstairs from us. But after about six months or so, Dacia and Wanda Silva moved upstairs.

Dacia and Wanda were very different from us. My family was a church-going, God-fearing family. From as far back as I could remember we’d always gone to church. As a matter of fact, my mother was somewhat of a church celebrity. OK, not quite a celebrity, but her voice made her well known throughout our little community.

Many people said we were soft-spoken and generally quiet kids. I guess our Southern roots had something to do with that. Most of my family was born in Georgia. We moved north when my grandmother had a bout with illness. Luckily, by the time I was five-years-old, her health was in tact.

So when I befriended these two foul-mouthed loud talking girls, I had no idea what I was in for. Over the next year, I was caught in a few minor infractions. My mother found a note that Dacia and I had written about one of our English teachers. We were practicing our curse words and had written every cuss word we could think of in that book. My mother threatened to show it to the teacher and make me apologize. Thank God she came to her senses and was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it.

Another incident we barely escaped when Dacia, Wanda and I had decided to steal grapes and rhubarb from our neighbor Ray’s yard. He was growing rhubarb and green grapes and we’d turn over the garbage cans and pluck the branches clean on our side of the fence. After being caught by Ray on more than one occasion, he marched right over and caused a huge scene in front of our house until my mother and Dacia’s mom came out to chastise us.

So on it went, and for four more years we lived on Montello Street and became a tighter knit family. My friendships with Nancy, Dacia and Wanda grew. For an eleven-year-old, my life was actually pretty darned good.

And then, one day my mother came home tight-lipped and somber. She sat us down in a row and told us we were moving to Richmond Street, a.k.a. – the projects.

It was the summer of 1977. We were living on the South side of Brockton - Campello, it was called. My mother, my brother, my sister and I were a close-knit family. We lived in a two-story house on the first floor.

There were two fathers amongst the three of us, and neither was around to raise us. My mother worked in Boston, which was about 25 miles away. We spent a lot of time together watching out for each other and taking care of the household while my mother was at work.

By the time I was seven-years-old, I could do my own laundry, clean the house and cook basic dishes like rice, grits, eggs, make sandwiches, etc. Basically, I wouldn’t starve to death.

Now I must admit, at this age, I don’t remember much about my brother. He’s eleven years older then I am, so he would be off doing whatever eighteen-year-old boys did back then. My sister though, is only three years older than me. I’m sure in her mind those three years may as well have been thirteen years.

My best friend was Nancy Martinez. She was a very quiet and well-mannered Portuguese girl whose grandparents lived next door. They took care of her after school until her parents arrived, so I had someone to hang out with pretty much all the time. Even on weekends, Nancy and I would find a way to get our parents to let either her or myself visit the other’s home. We were inseparable.

We spent our summers playing with our vast collection of Barbies. I had the Barbie Camper; she had the Barbie Dream Boat. I had the SuperStar Stage Show and Nancy had the Barbie Town Home. Whatever one had, the other would have something else just as fabulous.

Other than our minor obsession with Barbie, Nancy and I loved to be active. We rode our bikes all over the neighborhood, we played hop scotch wherever there was an empty slap of sidewalk to write on, we played double-dutch jump rope, roller skated, had relay races, spent half our summer at the playground and only rain or snow would keep us indoors where we’d play board games. Back then, there was no cable, no video games, no CDs, mp3s, iPods or DVD players, no MTV… we entertained ourselves by staying active.

We would do little things as a family that were actually pretty minor things but meant a lot to us. For instance, we would shop for dream houses.’ We’d ride up by the local country club and point and say, “That’s my house!” When the holidays rolled around we’d claim the houses with the most lights and decorations. We’d claim the best cars or bicycles. We had no idea back then how far we were stretching our dreams. I am so glad my mother never squashed those childhood dreams with the grim reality.

I used to live in Roosevelt Heights. The name is so deceiving. To people who are not familiar to the area, it sounds like some rich gated-community. But in reality, it’s a city-owned affordable housing project.

What I really should have said was; we lived at 432 Richmond Street in Brockton, Massachusetts… better known as… BrokeTown.

It is often said that in order to know where you are going, you must know where you come from. I agree. Let’s start from the beginning shall we?