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CHAPTER 1

"I Made It."

April 15, 1981 Brooklyn, NY

I wish they'd all go to hell. Carmen felt the throbbing bass of her brother's stereo vibrate the steel fire door as she shoved her key in the last of four locks.

"How you gon' throw that card down? You's about a dumb mother —"

"Shut ya ass and pass the cheeba."

She knew Z and some of the fools he hung with were in there, playing pinochle or dirty hearts, eating greasy egg rolls and pork fried rice. That's why she went to the library every day after school, stayed there studying until it closed. She was never in a hurry to get home.

Carmen slipped into the dark hall, eased the door shut. Her stomach did its usual flip-flop, bracing for the crap that would greet her. A cloud of menthol and marijuana smoke hung in the air, stung her nose and eyes. She ducked into her room, eased the overstuffed backpack onto her beat-up desk and rubbed her shoulders. She hauled a big load of books, especially for someone her size. From the first day her parents brought her home her father called her Li'l Bit. At seventeen she still shopped for jeans and shirts in the children's department, and sometimes had to speak twice as loud to keep from getting stepped on.

Carmen's stomach growled, reminding her she hadn't eaten since the jelly doughnut and bottle of orange-flavored quarter water she grabbed for lunch. If I can just get the mail and some Spaghetti-O's it'll be fine.

Well, not exactly fine. Carmen Webb's life hadn't been fine for as long as she could remember. Two weeks before she started kindergarten her dad bought her that pine desk and painted it glossy white, so she'd have a place to study, he said. So she could get good grades and go to college. "You get to college Li'l Bit, you got it made," he said. Two weeks later police found Zachariah Webb Sr. near Lincoln Terrace Park, slumped over the steering wheel of his gypsy cab, killed for defending a grand total of twenty-three dollars in fares. Her mother, Geraldine, took to her bed, Z, a teenager by then, declared himself man of the house and Carmen learned to fend for herself.

And by the time she was ten, her mother was gone too. Carmen was ready for school that May morning. She came into the kitchen and found that Geraldine had pulled every jar, can and box out of the kitchen cabinets. Leopard-print nightgown stuffed into awning-striped bell bottoms, Geraldine balanced, one foot on the windowsill, the other on the edge of the sink, and scrubbed the shelves to the rhythm of a song she sang to herself.

"You're gonna fall," Carmen had said.

"Am not." Geraldine hopped down, light as a cat. "Can I get a hug from my Love Bug?" she'd asked and Carmen gave her a big one, even though she felt a little old for the "Love Bug" stuff. "I love you, Mommy." Then she was out the door, glad to see Geraldine so full of energy. Sometimes she sat in the dark, staring at the TV like a zombie for days, even weeks.

Geraldine wasn't around when Carmen got home, but she was glad her mother had gone out. That really meant she was in a good mood, one that might last for a while, except she didn't make it home that night, or the next. By the end of the week the rash that always broke out on Carmen's neck when she was worried itched like fire. She tried not to scratch, and to convince herself it would be all right; Geraldine had wandered off before. Sooner or later she'd show up wearing strange clothes and talking like she'd seen you just yesterday. The first time it happened Z had called the police, but then a social worker came and took Carmen away. Geraldine was back in a few days, but there was a court hearing and a lot of trouble before Carmen could come home. So they stopped calling when Geraldine disappeared on one of her walks, but this time six weeks passed without a sighting.

Carmen did her best to act normal in school, but she was scared. Her mother was flighty and confusing, but Carmen missed her chirpy voice, her good-night kisses, even her bad cooking. Besides, her father was gone; Geraldine was all she had.

One night Z appeared in her doorway, caught her sobbing into her pillow. "Look, I ain't your mama or your daddy. You need to stop that cryin' shit or I'ma call that social worker and have her carry your ass outta here." Z's tone turned Carmen's tears to dust — she knew he meant it. Once, when she was four and he was twelve, she drew a duck in yellow crayon on his basketball. He shook her until she got dizzy and threw up, and from that moment Carmen understood that her presence was not part of his program. And if he was blood, she figured strangers had to be worse, so she learned to keep out of his way.

After a year Geraldine still hadn't returned, and little by little Carmen gave up expecting her to unlock the door.

For the last six years Z had taken the Social Security check Carmen received every month toward her share of the rent. He drove a truck part time for a meat packing plant, and on the side he fenced hot steaks, or worked one of his other hustles — driving carloads of untaxed cigarettes up from North Carolina, stripping copper and aluminum from abandoned buildings — Carmen didn't stick her nose into the details. He managed to keep the lights on most of the time and gave her an allowance for food, toothpaste, personal stuff.

And since Carmen had no intention of following in her brother's footsteps, she concentrated on her grades. As far as her schools were concerned, Geraldine Webb still lived on Montgomery Street, so Carmen signed her mother's name on report cards and other official documents. She wasn't a problem kid, so nobody questioned it. Carmen kept classmates and teachers at a distance — less to explain that way. She excelled at her studies, always guided by her father's dream of college for her. He had died trying to make it come true.

It must have come today. Carmen peeled out of her peacoat. If I just ask him for the mail and go about my business what can he say? Most of the time Z got to the box before she did and usually it didn't matter. Nobody sent her birthday greetings or postcards from their vacations, but there was one letter she was waiting for.

"Oooh-wee! I'ma have to take you sucker's money again!"

"Nigga act like he can play some cards 'cause he got lucky."

By the end of a night with Z's posse in the house, Carmen always felt beat down and bruised, but they weren't going anywhere so she adopted her battle-ready stance and marched to the living room. "Hey."

At first they didn't hear her over the music, then Z saw her. "Whatchu lookin' at?" He was taller than Carmen, but just as slight, wiry. They were both the brown of spicy mustard, but where Carmen's big eyes looked sad behind the hard-edge she put on, Z's pierced you like a street-corner challenge.

"Nothin'." She crossed her arms over her chest, looked past him sitting at the card table in the middle of the room and let her gaze rest on the broken console TV stacked with stereo equipment. "Where's the mail?" She tried to sound like it didn't matter, tried not to scratch her neck.

"Shit, what difference it make?" Z's hair was already thin, and what was left he slicked back with the stocking cap he slept in. "You gon pay the bills?" His buddies laughed.

"I'm waitin' for somethin', all right?"

"Damn, ain't you heard all that college shit? You can't go to but one." Arm slung over the chair back, Z slouched in her direction, picked his tooth with a matchbook corner. "Look on top of the refrigerator."

That wasn't too bad. Carmen flipped on the kitchen light and held her breath as roaches scurried from counters, the stove and the sink full of dishes. She pulled one of the dingy yellow vinyl chairs from under the table and dragged it to the refrigerator, but before she could step up she heard the swish-swish of a nylon track suit and Randy was behind her.

"Can't reach that high Li'l Bit?" Grease from Randy's Jheri Curl had turned the collar of his jacket from red to a murky maroon.

It made her skin crawl when he called her what her daddy used to. "I'll get it myself." Carmen shoved the chair between them. She didn't feel safe with Randy in the same apartment, much less in the same room. Since that day in the elevator the sight of him made her want to vomit, but before she could stop him he grabbed the stack of mail.

"Here's the Mays sale paper, you want that?"

Carmen rolled her eyes.

He flipped through some other junk mail, then stopped. "Lookie here. Lookie here. A letter addressed to Miss Carmen Webb. This what you want?" He dangled it in her direction.

Carmen could see the pale blue crest at the top left corner. She reached for the envelope.

Randy snatched it away. "Must be important, huh?"

"No biggie." She leveled a bored look at him.

"So you don't want it?"

Carmen seethed inside, but she just shrugged.

Randy unzipped his jacket pocket, came up with a disposable lighter and flicked it. "So if I burnt it up you wouldn't care?" He held the envelope over the flame, grinning at her.

Don't beg. "I don't care what you do." Carmen's face hardened into a stony mask.

Randy eyed her and waved the envelope closer to the flame, but Carmen didn't budge. Then, one corner caught fire. "Ooops."

Fists balled at her sides, Carmen stared him down, didn't flinch as the creamy paper slowly blackened.

Finally Randy laughed, let it fall to the floor. "Damn, you one hard-headed bitch."

As soon as he turned away Carmen stomped on the envelope to put out the fire. She snatched it and headed for her room.

Door closed, Carmen sat on her bed, shaking. She'd already been accepted to Brooklyn College and Hunter, which her guidance counselor treated like some kind of miracle. But this was the wild card.

She'd never thought of going to Columbia until her chemistry teacher spent half a period gushing about his twenty-year college reunion. When she asked her counselor about applying he said Columbia didn't accept women. Barnard, their sister school did, "But I wouldn't encourage you to apply. You'll never be admitted." Carmen had scored higher on the SATs than anybody at her school in ten years, and she decided that if her science teacher had gone there, it couldn't be that hard to get in. She ate boxed macaroni and cheese and skipped lunch for two months to save enough for the application fee. She knew she'd need a ton of scholarship money, but if anybody fit the bill for a hardship handout, she did. She figured it was time for her to catch some kind of break.

As far as Z was concerned, college was a waste. "I been carrying you since I was nineteen. When the hell you gettin' up offa me?" he had asked.

Carmen didn't care what Z said, she was going, and to medical school after that. And when she became a doctor she'd work in a place that was antiseptically clean, live in a place where there were no roaches and no neighbors like Randy. People would respect her and she'd make enough money so she wouldn't need anybody — not ever again.

For the moment, Carmen's world narrowed to the contents of that one scorched envelope. She dusted off the burned flakes, gingerly opened the flap.

I made it! Carmen rolled onto her back, clutched the paper to her chest, thought of her dad. I'm on my way.

April 16, 1981 Franklin, NJ

"'There's a party goin' on right here. A celebration to last throughout the year.'" Regina sang and danced through the unlocked front door, letting it bang shut behind her. "How come it's so dark in here?" She ended her ode to Kool & the Gang, dropped her loose-leaf binder and shoulder bag on the flowered hall bench, flipped the light and checked the banister. No note so Mom's here somewhere, like I need to know where she is every freakin' minute of my life. Regina caught the savory aroma of dinner. Her world-famous lasagna again. Her mother had stopped teaching long before Regina came along, and was always there after school. Guess she can stop pretending to be mother of the year when I graduate.

Regina hit the living room light, yanked off her purple-and-gold school jacket and dumped it on the sofa. She checked her 'do in the mirror over the fireplace. "Foxy!" Then she fluffed the hair framing her face, satisfied she'd found the right setting lotion to keep it from drooping by third period. From kindergarten on Regina Foster was a ringleader. Hot-chocolate brown with sweet cheeks and a cute, round nose, her fast smile and eyes brimming with equal parts fun and mischief drew classmates to her and kept teachers from coming down too hard when she was a bit over the line.

Regina still wasn't used to how quiet it was at home, now that her brother Keith had finished grad school, vacated the holding cell, the apartment above the garage where each of her brothers had lived — summers, after college, between jobs or girlfriends. She was the only one left in the nest and she was counting the months until she would fly the coop and be free.

Her friends had always flocked to her house, but as far as Regina was concerned, life chez Foster was a bad fifties flashback, but so was the rest of her neighborhood. White, black, it didn't make any difference. Dads worked and moms mostly stayed home, except when they volunteered at the hospital or, worst of all, at school. Nobody even seemed embarrassed by the white picket fences that surrounded their well-tended colonials, like there could be a clearer stereotype. Her parents, Lonnie and Al were perpetually cheerful, responsible and solid, like King and Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, Vietnam never happened, Nixon hadn't been an accessory to burglary, or John Lennon hadn't been murdered right on the street by a maniac. Like they had been just thrilled about their midlife bundle of joy. It was all so fake as far as Regina was concerned.

"Regina, would you come in here honey?" her mother called from the kitchen.

Now what? Regina burst through the swinging door. "What are you all doing here?" Her parents, Keith, and the next-door neighbors who'd been like family her whole life all wore variations of the "I know something you don't know" grin.

"I heard you were crying yourself to sleep every night because you missed me, so I drove up." Keith, the youngest of Regina's three older brothers, and her favorite, was the only one still living at home while she was growing up.

"Hardly." She stuck her tongue out at him. "You got tired of Spam and Velveeta burgers and came home for some real food."

"Okay you two clowns." Lonnie, a round-faced butterball in a pink tennis shirt and chinos, came up behind her daughter, gripped her shoulders. "Let's go into the dining room."

"Dining room? It's Wednesday." Before Regina got an answer her mother steered her through the door and turned up the chandelier, revealing the table, set like Sunday dinner.

"Daddy get another promotion?" Regina asked, but when she looked up, all eyes beamed her way.

"Look at your place, Queenie." Keith had given her that nickname when she was ten and found out her name was Latin for queen. For weeks she reminded her family of her royal designation.

Regina zeroed in on the two envelopes beside her plate and her knees turned to rubber bands. She sent off college applications months ago, then put them out of her mind. She knew she'd get in someplace. In spite of her less than enthusiastic effort, she maintained a 3.8 average, had great SAT scores. She was class vice-president and yearbook editor — because she liked being out front, planning the fun and delegating the grunt work. The thought of four more years in school made her want to chew glass, but she applied to college anyway, because becoming the first Foster in three generations not to attend was not an option.

From the time she learned B followed A, Regina had heard the proud recitations. Her grandma and granddaddy Foster as well as both of her parents and her oldest brother, AJ, had graduated from Howard. Her dad earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from Columbia. AJ got his Ph.D. from Stanford. Her middle brother, Michael, completed his graduate work at Duke and Keith had just finished his master's at Rutgers. Regina was left to bring up the rear, although she couldn't see anything left for her to accomplish. Her parents never exactly said she had to follow the family academic legacy, but every time one of her mother's sorority sisters asked about her major, or a church member wanted to know what she was going to do when she finished college, she felt the pressure. "Be famous, or maybe infamous," she would answer, only half joking. Regina felt like her whole family was born knowing why they were put on the planet. She didn't have a clue what she wanted to be, except not like them.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Better Than I Know Myself"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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