NYC-Feature Story

Movin' On Up
I Won't Let the Ghetto Hold Me Back

By Hattie Rice

As a kid, I believed that I lived a regular life with a normal standard of living. The truth was, I was born in a homeless shelter in New Jersey and then moved on up to the East Side—to a rat-infested city-owned building inhabited mostly by the elderly.

Inside you had your common street pharmacist selling drugs to the elderly (they were not for arthritis) and a guy who threw his wife out the window for not buying cigarettes. The crazy part was that after she busted her ass, she ran right back upstairs to him.

One day I walked into the kitchen and saw a rat the size of a cat (I call it a crat). I’m still traumatized to this day. There were so many roaches our white wall looked black. Eventually, conditions became so bad that the floor started to cave in and the building got closed down.

By then I had figured out I was living in poverty. When my family got evicted, I had high expectations that we’d move to a more appropriate place to raise children.

This Was the Ghetto

My first reaction to our next apartment was, “At least it looks better and bigger—three rooms instead of two for my father, mother, brother and me.” Then I took a look at my environment and realized: this was the ghetto.

The block had more than enough drug dealers (it’s been featured in three rappers’ videos, which is definitely not a good look). This time, instead of drug dealers selling to the elderly, the elderly were the drug dealers. They were known as OGs and that’s who the young up and comers got their game from.

This was also where my mom progressed from an occasional crack user to a straight-up Whitney Houston kind of fiend. The drugs were heavy all around us, from the corner store to the barbershop.

Our place was marked by special holes designed by the artist known as Mr. Rodent—with the assistance of his 20 or so kids. They marked our clothes, doors and even walls with their smelly signature. I woke up to a rat in the tub, one in the fish tank, or one chewing at my door to start my day.

I thought the rats were normal because, being a sheltered child, I never got to see how life was on the other side of the fence. I didn’t question it.

But when I was 14, I was placed in foster care, one of the best things that ever happened to me. I moved to a group home in a better neighborhood: St. Albans, Queens. This community was beautiful (although the hair braider up the block sold both weed and weave).

‘You’d Be an Ass to Come Home’

The streets were as clean as if somebody had licked them, and the neighbors were friendly as could be. On Halloween kids actually dressed up to receive candy. On Christmas, families decorated their front porches (hell, they had porches).

I vividly remember my brother’s amazed expression when he came to visit. He had his mouth gaping wide enough to fit three pairs of Jay-Z’s lips. My brother said it was the best neighborhood he’d ever seen.

Then my cousin shocked me. While everybody in my family was telling me to get out of foster care and come home, my cousin pulled me aside and said, “Look at this place and look at where we live. You would be an ass to come home.”

A Better Picture of Life

Seeing that happy neighborhood pissed me off. How could I have grown up thinking every home has a large population of rats when other people lived in homes where the closest thing to a rat was a pet hamster?

It was painfully obvious to me that living in private houses and enjoying larger incomes gave the people of St. Albans a more positive outlook. Parents who are well-to-do don’t have four kids and only $100 for food for a whole month, so they aren’t as stressed and the kids are calmer, too.

Seeing how people lived in St. Albans had a profound effect on me. I realized I was unsatisfied with my life and I progressed from being a girl too scared and withdrawn to go to school to being an A student determined to reach a high standard of living as an adult.

When I was little, teachers and classmates called me retarded and told me I wasn’t capable of amounting to anything, so I had made it my goal to read many books and prove them wrong. Still, I’d never believed my life would be much better or different once I got to be an adult. I needed a picture of a better life to realize that my books could take me somewhere I wanted to go.

Back on the Block

Unfortunately, six months after I came into care, I moved to another group home—one in the Bronx, positioned right next to the projects. One block above us was the Crips, and one below was the Bloods. This, of course, brought on gang violence and the shootings that sounded like fire crackers on the 4th of July.
I lived across from a park infested with rats the size of rottweilers (I call them ratweilers) and saw little kids on the street, no shoes, with just popcorn for dinner. I knew what their mom and pops were on. I know all about having to stand outside of churches, waiting and praying for a meal (and I don’t even believe in God).

Every day I saw how the neighborhood affected kids’ dreams. I asked one boy what he wanted to be in the future and he replied, “Nothing.” I asked another, “What’s your hobby?” He said, “Standing on the corner making money.”

I understand why they’re selling. The drug dealers are the ones with money, and if someone has a beautiful house, car and boyfriend or girlfriend, wouldn’t you admire that person? The only problem is that, in the ’hood, the respected idol is a drug dealer, and people in the ’hood die over respect because they feel they have nothing else.

Fighting Like Hell

In theory, schools are supposed to help kids move beyond the life they know, but at my school, at least, that’s not happening. Recently my guidance counselor showed me that the number of freshmen coming into my high school is staggering compared to the low number of seniors who graduate.

Your environment molds your expectations. If you see everybody around you failing, you’ll likely fail too, unless you fight like hell against it. If your dad and mom met while he was selling drugs and she was buying, it’s more likely their baby will turn out to be a lookout for 5-O than a Yale graduate.

But I believe that it’s possible for me to block out everything around me and all the painful, negative things I’ve grown up with. I’m sure that if I stay focused and succeed in school, I can make it out of the ghetto.

Since I came into foster care, I’ve maintained my grades no matter what was happening in my life. And last year, when I got the chance to move to a foster home, I demanded to move to a good neighborhood and to live with a foster parent who could help me get into college.

A Picture of My Future

That foster home wasn’t the greatest (I’ve moved yet again, to a foster mom who cares as much as I do about my college education). But at least it was in a nice area downtown, a serene environment with no gun shots and no kids screaming from a beating. I felt safe walking home because I didn’t hear “Yo, Shorty!” on every corner or see a bunch of broke-ass hustlers. Instead I saw businessmen talking on their cell phones.

The neighborhood inspired me and I felt like I could calm down. Nights when I didn’t feel like doing my homework I’d look outside and realize that one measly homework assignment wasn’t going to keep me from my dream of being successful enough to live in a nice place as an adult. Of course, I also kept a 90 average.

In school, I’d often analyze what went wrong in some of the other kids’ lives. In my new neighborhood, I had a chance to see how people went right.

Walking down the street I saw role models—business people on their way to work, heading into beautiful buildings. It was such a moving experience for me to walk among them, imagining myself one day working in one of those buildings or going into one of those homes, too.