Fancy Girl

Jasen Boone's Sousa

Description

Fancy Girl by Jasen Sousa is a novel in poems which tells the coming of age story of Deanna Keight, a teenage single mom who is struggling to raise her daughter Madelyn inside of the Mystic Housing Developments in Somerville, Massachusetts. Deanna is a brash, but capable teen who is stuck at a point in her life where she doesn't know how to escape the world she has found herself living inside of. Deanna is a female Ponyboy, and Fancy Girl is a modern day version of The Outsiders, and is written in the same successful style as Jacqueline Woodson's Locomotion, and Patricia McCormick's Sold.

One day, Deanna is approached in the park by Alissa, a new breed of independent prostitute who offers to teach Deanna the tricks of the trade so she can save up enough money to move out of the projects. Without many options available, Deanna accepts Alissa's offer. Deanna is even more desperate to disappear from Somerville as she has recently found out that the father of her child, Machinegun Mike, who is doing time in jail, will be getting out earlier then expected. Machinegun Mike becomes enraged with jealously after learning that Deanna has been selling herself, and plans to come home and reunite with Deanna and Maddy so that they can be a family.

At night, Deanna leaves Maddy in the care of her elementary school crush, Johnny J, the only guy in her life that she trusts. Johnny J goes along with this plan at first as he sees it as a logical way for Deanna to save money, but over time, his feelings for Deanna grow, and he becomes disgusted with the idea of sitting at home while strangers feel up every inch of her body. Johnny J confronts Deanna's way of life, Machinegun Mike, and will let nothing get in his way of freeing Deanna and Maddy.

Fancy Girl is the story of a young teenage mother living in an unforgiving environment, and her journey to do whatever she has to in order to secure a new, and better life for herself, and her daughter. Deanna realizes that fast money is not the way of creating a better life for her family. Deanna is a courageous young girl who has to teach herself about the harsh realities of her projects. Deanna realizes this doesn't have to be her life. That she doesn't have to sell her body for money, and that just because generations of her family lived in poverty, doesn't mean that she does. She realizes she can leave, even if it means leaving with less than what she originally had. This book is important for all teens in general, but especially for young people in the inner city who will be able to look up to a young single mother as a new hero of young adult literature.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780971492684
• Langue: English

Extrait

Fancy Girl
 
 
Jasen
Sousa
 
 
Edited by Kimberly J. Kreines and KL Pereira
 


Text copyright © 2012 by Jasen Sousa
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address J-Rock Publishing, 45 Francesca Avenue, Somerville, MA 02144.
 
 
Published in eBook format by J-Rock Publishing
 
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
First Edition
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9714-9268-4
 
Visit: www.jasensousa.net-www.jrockpublishing.com-facebook.com/jasen.sousa
 


 
 
 
FOR SINGLE MOTHERS
PROLOGUE
THE PLAYGROUND
 
Madelyn bursts
like water out of a gutter;
down the slide, toes up
and I sit watching her
on a wooden bench.
That’s what good mothers do.
 
Some girl, her heels sinking
in soggy woodchucks, still strutting
and I see it’s Alissa,
the one girl every Somerville guy
has on speed dial.
 
“You be Deanna, right?” she asks.
 
“I be, different things, to different people,” I say.
 
She sits down next to me, and my wandering eyes.
Short,
short skirt, and stockings, careful
not to let splinters stab her thighs.
 
Maddy smiles and waves
from the top of the slide, our project
building standing behind her.
 
“She’s beautiful,” Alissa says.
 
Maddy crash lands and says
to the older boy who plays
without anyone watching him,
“Bet you can’t go down faster than me!”
 
“She has your eyes.”
 
I pause before I answer, think
about what my eyes have seen.
 
“She has my everything,” I say.
 
“She was lucky being born
with all of my beautiful genes,
not her father’s.”
 
“I heard things have been rough
for you lately with your mom dying
and all. If you’re looking for a way
to make some extra cash, I might be able to help
you out,” Alissa says.
“I know it’s not easy to make it on these streets.”
 
 
The buildings of the Mystic Projects draw a shadow
over Alissa’s face, she looks away from me, sparks a Newport,
and blows smoke towards a setting Somerville sun.


SOMERVILLE, MY HOOD
 
In my neighborhood nobody really knows who they are.
 
Like Phil Bailey:
a 40-something-year-old dude
with Coke bottle glasses and a backwards
Bruins cap who plays ball with the kids at the playground,
and then recruits them to sell drugs for him.
 
Like skinny-ass Sherri:
a twenty-something-year-old lady
who looks like she is fifty, but still
dresses like she’s a teenager. A straight-up
case of what living in Somerville does
to a person’s skin, and to their soul.
 
Like the Sledgehammer and Zoo-Nikki:
two old school Irish cats who pretend they’re mobsters
roughing people up in their scaly caps,
jean shorts, and white sneaks with no socks
that they wear no matter what season it is.
 
Like Megan:
a chick in her twenties
who doesn’t have a home of her own. Her
parents kicked her out for stealing the TV
and sofa and selling them for a hit. You
can still find her roaming around her crib,
trying to find new ways to break in.
 
Like Cadillac Chris:
A dude in his twenties covered
with the worst tats you have even seen! You know,
the ones that are done by a friend of a friend for cheap money
at a house party. They ain’t even black, they’re like green,
Cadillac Chris with his green Cadillac
logo tattooed over his heart. Everyone needs
to love something, right?
 
Like me:
Deanna. A single mother who will do anything
to get out of the projects, even
if it means taking off my top, pulling down my pants, and filling
up my pockets with dirty money.
 
In Somerville, sometimes you just become things
to be something.


LAST NIGHT’S DREAM
 
My apartment infested:
cockroaches.
 
Stained toilet seat cover hung
half-way off,
couldn’t see water in the bowl, toilet paper,
cigarettes, funky
combination of piss and shit.
 
Someone stabbed
outside my door, hallway
of the Mystic Projects.
 
Cops and paramedics left, couple
in the apartment next door cursed
for two hours, made-up
for longer.
 
Became nauseous, smell
of curry floating, Indian
couple down the hall.
 
Heard rats run
through walls
behind my headboard,
 
last night’s dream,
today’s reality.


I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES
 
I don’t know how many times
I have looked out my window and seen
a street lamp and mistaken it
for the sun.
 
I don’t know how many times
I have looked out my window and seen
red and blue flashing lights
and thought they were coming for me.
 
I don’t know how many times
I have looked out my window and seen
cigarette ashes disappear into the sidewalk
and thought it was magic.
 
I don’t know how many times
I have looked out my window and seen
the blinking lights of a departing plane
and wished I was on it.


LOOKING GLASS
 
A boy punched
Maddy in the face
at school today.
Gave her a black eye.
 
I feel like
I am looking
in a mirror.
 
A broken mirror.
 
A spotted mirror
that gets smudged,
spit on and fogged
 
up by boys
 
who are no longer able
to see their
 
own reflection.
 
At some point boys
look in mirrors
and don’t see themselves,
don’t see girls anymore.
 
They see objects. They see things
which they don’t think are human.
They think it’s cool
to draw their initials
on our foggy skin.
 
I try to wipe away
the fog, the bruise,
but it doesn’t go away.
It won’t go away.
 
I have to get Maddy
away from here before the skin
on her mirror is broken
like mine.


PLAYING WITH A PRINCESS
 
Maddy tells me about a friend’s house
she went to visit after school in Lexington.
 
“Mommy, you wouldn’t believe it,
it was like a palace! It had shiny floors,
a huge back yard,
a pool,
and even an awesome dog!
You should have seen her room!
She had a wicked awesome computer
and a closet full of princess clothes!”
 
I feel like a piece of shit mother
and immediately place
a copy of the Yellow Pages
under the broken leg post on her bed
so her dreams won’t slant.

REPLACEMENT DREAMS
 
When you have a kid
dreams are replaced
by dirty diapers.
 
When you do have time
to dream, you usually
get woken up by crying,
 
sometimes your own tears,
sometimes tears of your child.
 
All of my dreams got pushed
to the backseat, next
to the car seat.
 
Things like being the first
person in my family
to go to college.
 
To be the one who finally
gets off public housing and food stamps.
 
To be the one who doesn’t
grow up and be a burnout.
 
To be something,
or at least be seen
as something.
 
My dreams have the best
chance of coming true now
through Maddy.
 
I dream she can have a real life,
and not whatever this thing is that I’m living.

A NUMBER’S GAME
 
Money is not easy
to come by. I wonder
what having the lights
on for the entire month would be like.
 
How hard could it be?
Guys do it all the time right?
That hit and run stuff. I just
need to leave my feelings at home.
I just need to think more like a guy
 
like my father did
with me
 
and not have love be part of sex.
 
I could stack up the
money
faster, get Maddy
out of the projects, out of Somerville.
 
It’s just sex, right?
Jobs are hard to come by these days.
I would be stupid if I didn’t at least try.

I WON’T MISS YOU, SLUMERVILLE
 
I’m going to get
up out of this place, and I
don’t care how many
 
nasty men I have
to bang, and blow to save enough
cash and get out of
 
Somerville
for good.
 
CHAPTER 1
FREEDOM?
 
“Are you going to be my pimp?” I ask.
 
“No, honey. We are a new breed.
We don’t answer to nobody,
except ourselves,” Alissa says.
“All you have to do is post your ads
like I do on Backpage, and you just drive
yourself to the appointment. You keep all the money
you make. I’m just here to help
you out.
I mean, if you wanted to slip me some cash
for tutoring your ass, but trust me, I don’t expect
nothing.
I don’t own you,
and no one owns me.
True beauty
is being free.”
 

SNAP
 
SNAP
when you’re shook.
 
SNAP
when he stanks.
 
SNAP
when it hurts.
 
SNAP
when he’s out of breath.
 
SNAP
when it’s over.
 
I practice snapping
the elastic Alissa gave me
against my wrist..
 
SNAP
to remember you’re alive.
 

BECOMING A LADY
 
My eyes are open wide, can’t blink,
the rest of my body is frozen too. What
is this chick doing to my gear? She’s raiding
my closet and tossing my clothes onto the floor like junk.
 
“We’re going to have to get you into some
new clothes. Those Timberlands,
sweatpants, and wife beaters are going to
have to go,” Alissa says.
 
“No guys, especially the rich ones, are going
to pay top dollar for some female thug.
You need to become a lady,
and quick.
 
And stop sitting like a dude
with your legs all open.
The only time a girl should have
her legs open is when she’s on her back.
 
Making men wonder what you got under there
is what it’s all about.
Keep them crossed and closed
until you get your hands on those
money rolls.”
 

FIRST STEPS
 
A large set of stairs leads from the Mystics
up to the elementary school
where us project kids get educated.
 
Alissa says this will be the perfect place
to learn to walk
in heels. My feet fear the stairs,
the shaky railing, empty cupcake
wrappers, half-drunk bottles
spilling with the butts of urban role models.
 
I fall up the stairs a second time, blood
drips, not sure if it’s coming from my knee
or my mind. My toes are not used to being confined,
no room to wiggle. My feet are having the life
sucked out of them, but I continue the climb.
 
I reach the top of the stairs, down b