Snow White:

by Anna J.

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Anna J. is back with a riveting novel depicting the devastation caused by cocaine use in a Southwest Philadelphia community.

You have to use what you got to get what you want. For Journey Clayton, this statement rings more than true as she struggles under the weight of her mother’s cocaine addiction. She learns from a very young age that family doesn’t offer as much help as she hoped they would. It’s not until she befriends Khalid, the son of a neighborhood drug dealer, who is trying to stay above the struggle himself, that she starts to believe there might just be hope … even for little girls in the ghetto.

Snow White is a story of survival, betrayal, strength, and courage. It will pull you in from the very beginning and won’t let you go until the last word. As seen through the eyes of a young girl coming of age, observe how Journey struggles to survive amidst the deception, violence, and murder that surround her.

Release date: January 10, 2013

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

I barely know how I had survived since my mom died. I mean, so much had happened since then. Vince moved in for a little while so that I wouldn’t be forced into foster care, and it was like having the devil himself residing under this roof. The only thing that came out of it that was any good was that since he stayed here most nights, he kept food in the house. That was only because his simple ass had to eat too.

Surprisingly, he was a little more lenient as I got older, though. Like, where before he would drive me to Toya’s house to get my hair done, now he would let me walk over to the projects by myself, as long as I got my hair done early in the day and Toya didn’t take forever doing my hair. I was cool with that, though.

The only thing I hated was how the guys out there looked at me, like I was a piece of meat they were just waiting to pounce on. Especially this guy named Bunz. His look made my skin crawl, and not in a good way. He would always flick his tongue at me and blow me kisses. Yuck! All that did was make me walk faster.

I was starting to blossom as well, and my once boy-shaped body was turning into a round booty that jiggled in my sweat pants when I walked. My days of wearing a training bra were gone, going right into cute little pushup bras from La Perla.

I overheard my uncle and Mr. Joey talking out on the stoop one night about how they were going to kill Bunz from some beef they had back in the day. They had been on to Bunz for years, and a part of me thought Mr. Joey was just scared to do it. He was supposed to be so spectacular at his “job,” so I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t put Bunz in the ground by now. Or maybe Bunz was even better at not getting caught.

I cried and cried for what seemed like years after my mom passed, but never in front of Vince. If he saw me crying, he would go straight the hell off for hours, and I eventually learned to control my emotions around him. At first he would let me get off and cry and scream, but pretty soon, if I even looked like I might think about shedding a tear, he was on my neck. I can remember one time when I cried, he made me squat down in the corner and hold three Yellow Pages phone books out in front of me. Every time I dropped the books, he added five minutes onto my time. It wasn’t until I could barely stand and only really had an hour to get rest before I had to get up for school that he let me lie down.

What pissed me off the most was when he punished me in that way and his friends were over at the house. They would be loud and obnoxious, and I could barely breathe through all the weed smoke. I was just a child, though, so there wasn’t really much I could do except what I was told.

Khalid helped me tremendously throughout everything I’d gone through, and he drilled in me all those Bible verses to help me stay strong and look forward to the day when I would be on my own and away from Vince. He was going to be the first black president and I’d be his wife, the first lady.

Our friendship grew and matured over the years, and we told each other everything—except what Vince did to me sometimes. I still couldn’t say it out loud to anyone. The only person I talked to about it was God, and more often than not, I wondered if He heard my prayers.

I learned in school that everything we did in life was a lesson learned, and we were supposed to grow from it and learn how to better deal with recurring situations. Nothing could be worse than this, though.

I did have another secret I couldn’t tell Khalid, only because that person swore me to secrecy. Also because I knew it would hurt him too bad, and I didn’t want him to feel the kind of pain I felt on a daily basis. To know that no one in your family loves you was heavy. Not one single person on my mother’s side or my dad’s. I was literally in the world by myself. Wow, I didn’t think it was possible, but this was the life I lived every single day.

So I did my job. I got up and went to school, came home, and cooked and bagged the coke, made sure Vince and whoever was over ate dinner; then, if I was allowed to go to sleep, I did that until the next day, when I started from scratch all over again.

I missed my mom. Every day I wondered what my life would have been like had she not gotten hooked on drugs and later contracted AIDS. Would I have had a loving family where I was invited to my cousin’s birthday parties, or had parties of my own? I couldn’t remember one time receiving a hug from my mom or dad, or either one of them telling me they loved me. I had vague memories of my mother’s mom, and even that memory wasn’t a pleasant one. I blocked out a lot of my earlier years, so even if one of my family members walked up and slapped me in the face, I wouldn’t know who they were.

I often dreamed about running away, but where would I go? Anywhere would be better than here, but I wasn’t so sure sometimes when I saw the nightly news and heard the stories of kids in foster care. The world just seemed full of bad people, so I figured I’d be better off dealing with Vince. At least with him I knew what and whom I was dealing with.

Right now, I had to finish bagging up these tops so that I could go to sleep. I assumed Vince was out for the night, and most times, if I was already in bed, he would let me be; other times, he would invade my body. I wasn’t sure what tonight would bring, but like so many others, I just wanted to make it to the morning.

“I’ma need you to hold your fuckin’ head steady and stop all that gagging. You fuckin’ up my flow. Shit, didn’t you say you was a pro at this shit?”

I had this young trick over here sucking my dick for the past half hour, and I just couldn’t bust this nut. She was a little younger than I like, but she’d been sweatin’ me for a minute, so I decided to take the . . .