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  My mom never cooked.

  Sometimes, she didn't even shop, so there was nothing around to eat unless I was at Mama Rita's.

  The biggest blow in my young, sad little life was when I came out in the morning to have my mom walk me to Mama Rita's before she did... whatever she did during the day and she told me to go back to my room.

  "Rita croaked," she told me with a shrug. "As if I needed this shit in my life right now. The fuck am I supposed to do with you now?" she asked, but I knew she didn't want an answer. She liked to talk at me, not to me. "Know what, never mind. I will drop you off with my mother," she declared, grabbing my arm, dragging me along with her, still in my clothes from the day before.

  "I raised my kids. I'm not raisin' yours." Those were the first words I heard out of my grandmother.

  She looked nothing like my mom who was tall and skinny - all arms and legs like I was at the time as well. My grandmother was short and round all over with perfectly curled hair, small, angry eyes, and a dress that was too tight around the chest, making the buttons pull apart, create little holes between them that you could stick fingers through, making her dark brown bra visible from certain angles.

  "Raised me," my mom scoffed. "That's a joke. Watch him. You have nothing else to do. I'll pick him up later."

  Except she didn't.

  My mom always came home right when the sun was going down.

  But the sun went down.

  The streetlights outside went on.

  And she didn't come back for me.

  My grandmother's house wasn't bare like my mom's house, but not comfortable and cozy like Mama Rita's either. The furniture in the living room had slippery, uncomfortable plastic on it. The TV was there, but my grandmother sat on the slippery couch drinking something out of a big bottle as she watched her shows on it - all angry grown-ups or grown-ups kissing. Sometimes both. Yelling and kissing. Kissing and yelling.

  There was no cinnamon toast.

  Or tuna on rye bread with mayonnaise and hot sauce and maybe, if I was super lucky, pickles.

  There was no food at all.

  Or milk.

  But there were orders.

  To not speak unless I was spoken to.

  To always say 'ma'am' when I answered her.

  To move the heavy, wet clothes from the washer into the dryer.

  To sweep the floors.

  To empty the trash bin in the kitchen. Then, when I had trouble getting the overfilled bag out and spilled some of the slimy garbage all over, she'd slapped me hard across the face, then made me clean it up. Then scrub the floor on my hands and knees.

  Later, hungry and exhausted, I fell asleep on the linoleum floor under the table that night, more scared than I remembered ever being at the idea of having to live here, wishing my mom would come and pick me up, promising myself that if she did, I would be good. I wouldn't annoy her or get in her hair. I would do whatever she wanted me to do.

  If she would just come and get me.

  Take me home.

  "What the fuck is this?" My mom's voice demanded, shocking me awake, my body trying to shoot up, but my shoulder hurt from laying on the hard floor ,and my leg was asleep, all tingling and overrun with pinpricks.

  "Don't be coming in my house at seven in the morning hollering," my grandmother demanded, slapping a hand on the counter.

  "You made him sleep on the floor."

  "I didn't make him do anything."

  "So he chose to sleep on the kitchen floor like a dog?"

  "How should I know? He disappeared when my shows were on."

  "Get up," my mom demanded, reaching under the table, dragging me up until I found my knees, pushing myself up, trying to ignore the churning, grumbling feeling in my empty belly. "You're a real piece of work, you know that? Piece of fucking work, Mom. The fuck am I supposed to do with you?" she asked herself out loud as she dragged me out of the house. "You know what? I can't do it anymore. I'm done. Done done done. Come on. Get your ass in the car," she demanded, ripping open the door, barely letting me climb in before slamming it shut.

  We drove for a long time.

  I sat silently in the back, listening to her talk to herself about things that made no sense.

  One-night-stands.

  Low hormone birth control not working like the original one.

  Deadbeat dads.

  Child support.

  How she was supposed to get a man with a baby hanging on her all the time.

  I didn't know what baby she was talking about.

  I wasn't a baby anymore.

  I had fallen asleep by the time we made it to wherever we were going.

  "Get up," she demanded before climbing out, slamming her door, coming around the car to yank open mine, grabbing my arm, half dragging me down the walkway to a long, squat building with blacked out windows.

  Music and voices were coming from inside, loud, loud enough that the sounds vibrated through my little body even as my mom wrenched the door open and stormed inside.

  Like she'd been there before.

  Maybe a lot of times.

  Some heads turned.

  Then some men whistled, yelled things at my mom that I didn't understand, but made me move closer to her, wanting to be further from them and their ugly sounding words.

  "There you are!" my mom yelled suddenly, dragging me toward a group of men.

  "Sherry? The fuck you doing here?" the man she had been looking at demanded.

  I didn't know much about giants, but I was pretty sure at the time that he was a giant. To me, my mom was larger than life, always towering over me, refusing to get down on my level, making me look up at her until my neck ached. But this man made my mom crane her neck up. I wondered as we stood there if her neck hurt too.

  "What am I doing here? This is what I am doing here," she declared, yanking me up off my feet under one arm, settling me on her hip. "He look familiar?"

  "He looks all gangly. Like you," the giant added to a chorus of chuckles from his friends, making me think that whatever gangly was, it wasn't nice.

  "He's yours, Dwayne," she told him with a flick of her neck.

  "Not for nothing, Sher, but I once saw you take three dicks at once. So excuse me if I'm not sold on the paternity thing based only on your word."

  "Well, you can go ahead and get him tested on your time then, because I am done. He's all yours," she declared, dropping me down onto my feet hard, making me fall back on my butt, having to blink away a couple tears that started in my eyes.

  My mom didn't say sorry.

  Or try to help me up.

  She was too busy yelling at the giant, slapping his chest and arms.

  I didn't ask for her help, getting back onto my feet by myself because I didn't want her slapping me like she was slapping him.

  It was then that I felt a hand press down on my shoulder.

  But not the hand of a grown-up.

  A hand of someone who was about my size.

  He pulled me slowly away from my yelling mom.

  "You're a man now," he told me, pulling me along with him. "So we can't cry," he added, nodding his head reassuringly. "But don't worry. I have toys."

  I didn't have a lot of toys.

  I had an action figure man who was missing a leg, a T-rex, and a yo-yo that Mama Rita gave me for Christmas. And I didn't have any of those things now. At this strange place full of so many men.

  That was what hit me first. I'd been around a lot of women in my life. My mom. Mama Rita, her friends that stopped over, my grandmother.

  The only men I knew of were the revolving door of them my mother had over.

  This place was mostly men.

  There were three women around.

  One, my mom.

  Another, a lady in a short skirt that had slipped up to show her whole butt, sitting on the lap of a man in a corner, rocking up and down.

  And a third was coming out of a room with two men, wiping her runny makeup out of her mouth and eyes.
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br />   But there were dozens of men. All of them were watching me and this boy who was leading me away from all of them and into a back room where there was a bed and a box piled with toys in a corner.

  All I knew for the next few hours was this boy, Sean, his toys, and the sounds outside the room that got louder, scarier as the night went on.

  I never saw my mom again.

  It wasn't until both Sean and me had both fallen asleep on the floor by his toys that we finally had company.

  Two men came into the room. One was the giant. The other was another giant.

  "That's my dad," Sean told me proudly, straightening up, getting to his feet.

  "So, you're with me, kid," the first giant told me, extending a hand toward me.

  "It's okay," Sean told me, reaching down in his toy pile to find the Army man I had been playing with. "Here, you can take this with you," he told me. And, not having much of a choice, I followed the giant down a hallway, clutching the toy to my chest like he could protect me from whatever might come my way.

  "Alright. So. Your mama left you here with me. I would give you my sympathy, but that woman was a fucking lunatic. Think you might be better off here in all honesty. Look at you," he added, waving a hand. "When's the last time you had a shower? And your clothes don't even fit right. Maybe if she wasn't so busy whoring around and blowing her money on who-knows-what, she could have gotten you some shit that doesn't look like it's cutting off circulation. Anyway, I'm Dwayne. Your mama says I'm your father, so I guess we are going with that. You do kinda have my eyes," he added, softening a little.

  I didn't know what to say.

  The concept of a father was as foreign to me as having a pile of toys like Sean. But maybe his father got him those. Maybe my father would get me some of my own.

  And some food.

  My belly was grumbling so loud.

  "Gotta be honest with you, don't know a fucking thing about raising a kid. Barely got a chance to be one myself. So you're gonna have to grow up fast, little homie. Can't promise you all that soft shit women can give you. But at least you can have clothes that fit and some food. You're all fucking bones. And we can show you how to be a man. That's what I can give you. Sound good?"

  Honestly, I didn't know.

  All I knew was he would give me food.

  And I needed food.

  "Sounds good," I agreed.

  That night, he got me a shower, borrowed clothes from Sean for me. Clean clothes that fit. And then he got me two giant pieces of cold pizza and a bottle of soda.

  Then he dragged in a squeaky cot from a closet, unfolded it, put a pillow and extra blankets on it, turned on the TV to some old black and white TV show, then left me to, I figured, go talk to his friends.

  Alone in a strange place, I had a full belly, new clothes, a comfortable bed, a toy on the mattress next to me, a TV, and, it seemed, a new friend.

  And a father.

  Things, I figured, could be a lot worse.

  I wouldn't claim it was easy at first. All the men around me were loud, violent with one another, teasing toward me. But I had Dwayne. And Sean. And Sean's dad Phil.

  Eventually, I got a whole drawer full of clothes that fit. I got a box of my own full of toys that were mine, though I shared them with Sean.

  Within a few months, the fear of the men lessened, finding instead that while they did so with a lot of yelling and cursing, they were kind of amused by the presence of two small boys in the club, making us fetch them things, do basic cleaning tasks, sometimes tossing balls with us outside the way they all wished their own fathers had done with them when they were young.

  By the time we were in school, we realized how unique our world was. Maybe we didn't have moms around, didn't have soft and sweet things. No home cooked meals. No nighttime kisses. No one to wipe our brows with cold compresses when we were sick.

  But we had freedom all our classmates envied.

  We had no rules except to stay out of the club member's way when they were trying to work. We could run free all day, shirk our homework without getting in trouble, bring home solid Cs every semester without anyone getting on our case about our wasted potential, get into fights in or out of school without getting lectures.

  We were inseparable.

  Brothers in every way we possibly could be.

  And then one day, Sean's dad went to jail, and his mom showed back up again.

  And ripped him away from me.

  The days after that were long and lonely, feeling oddly left behind, left out, knowing that Sean was getting things I never would. All the softer things in life.

  It didn't last long, though.

  Three months later, Phil was out, and he brought Sean back with him. Back to me.

  Unfortunately for me, every once in a while when Dwayne got locked up or was gone for any stretch of time, I was - for some unknown reason - shipped back to my grandmother. I didn't even know how they knew about her, where they found her, why they couldn't just let me stay there with Sean and Phil. But it wasn't my place to question. What the president wanted, he got. And that meant my banishment when my father was gone.

  As an adult, I figured maybe it was a law thing. Maybe the president didn't want child services sniffing around when they got word that my dad was locked up, that it was safer for them to ship me off to my next of kin since they couldn't have the law in their clubhouse around all the guns and drugs and fugitives.

  All I knew at the time though was the feeling of being unwanted, the rejection, the aloneness as I found myself at a doorstep I had seen years before in a house with plastic covers on the furniture and a table I once slept under.

  And that the woman who owned it was no longer just a chain-smoking, soap-opera-addicted, mean woman.

  No.

  She was a fucking lunatic.

  Made that way by too much booze and maybe some kind of dementia, making her meaner than a rabid cat, coming at me with rolled up magazines, frying pans, a belt that once belonged to her late husband. Not for any real reason. Just because I was there. Or because I wasn't there - as in at school - when she wanted me to do some menial task. Then, as time went on, for no actual reason at all except the warped voices in her head claimed I was guilty of something I had no part of.

  Just when I was sure I couldn't take another beating, another screaming match, another incident of full-blown insanity, Dwayne would get out, and I would be brought back to my club, back to my people.

  When we changed clubs a few times over the next few years due to massive incarcerations or lousy leadership, Dwayne, Phil, and Sean were the only constants in my life.

  In the next clubs, we weren't seen as the club's kids, everyone imparting their fucked up little life wisdom on us, treating us like the kids they all actually hoped they didn't have, not wanting the actual responsibility of having one of us show up at their doors, just liking the idea from a hands-off distance.

  The new club didn't want us around, didn't try to make it seem like they did. We endured. We did the dirty work. Took their taunts without argument.

  It was there that I got my road name, a couple years after Sugar got his with that whole raid incident.

  After some asshole taunted me about my 'slut mother,' my 'whack job grandmother,' my 'gay' friendship with Sugar relentlessly, trying to get a rise out of me.

  But I had long since learned to lock all that shit down.

  It all started that first night when my mom dropped me off at the club, and Sean told me we were men now. Then every single visit back to my grandmother's where any reaction on my part brought about worse treatment on hers.

  And, hell, once you learned to lock those emotions down for long enough, they stopped really coming up at all. That calm you used to fake became your new normal.

  "He doesn't give a single fuck," the brother declared, smirking. "Maybe we can call him Virgin."

  It wasn't until a couple years later that I realized the name could be seen in a negative way, that I
would have to keep explaining it for the rest of my criminal career. But it was mine. I kept it.

  "How did you and Sugar end up in Navesink Bank?" Freddie asked, ripping me out of my memories for a moment, realizing for the first time that it had been a long time since I thought of those things. My mom, the room I lived in, the neighbor who had been my only sliver of warm and soft, my crazy grandmother, meeting my dad for the first time, finding my best friend in the world.

  Heroin gang to cocaine gang to enforcing.

  It was the third club when we finally grew up, got bigger, stronger, meaner looking. We got licenses that allowed us to run more errands, to become useful to the older members of the MC.

  The inevitable happened around then too. Phil got locked up on a two-year stretch, leaving Sean fatherless. My father was in and out of jail more than he was around, taking the fall for the men who were actually at fault for the things he went down for. But that was what you did. Whatever the president wanted you to do. Even if it meant giving up some of your freedom.

  It was then that it all changed for us.

  We were allowed to do something we had never been able to do when our fathers were around. We got to prospect, work our way into being actual club members, not just annoyances hanging around.

  By the time our fathers were back, we each had cuts, had patches.

  We weren't technically adults yet, but according to the club, we were.

  There was no more of our fathers protecting us from things, shielding us from some aspects of the club.

  We were given drinks, access to the clubwhores, did jobs.

  In fact, we were given more jobs than our own fathers were. Not because of their age, but because of our own. Because we were underage. Because if we got caught, we would merely go to juvie for a short spell, not a couple years upstate. It was a smart move to risk us instead of the more established members of the club.

  And, inadvertently, it also pushed Sugar and I closer than ever. We were part of a brotherhood, sure, but he and I, we were our own sort of brotherhood. All we had was each other when we were out on jobs, taking on enforcing all by ourselves. Often outnumbered. Expected to do the damage, get the money, keep the club afloat.