CHAPTER ONE - EXCERPT - All rights reserved @ 2010; Simon and Schuster. Any reproduction must received written consemt from publisher.

Hauling off and whacking your grandmother is downright wrong, felonious, and can be regretful; but my left hand twitched another opinion in response to her whining interrogation, forty-five seconds into my homecoming.

I wonder what it’s like to do felony prison time. The wrinkle-faced lifers would crane to get a glimpse of the new hard-ass as I swaggered, bopping along the corridor of the musty cellblock in handcuffs and returning the glares with my mock intimidating stare. What you in for, light-skin? they would ask, as I drag on a nauseating high tar cigarette. Hacking under the smoke, I would sneer, "Not dat iz any of yo biznesses, but dat old lady had it comin' . . . and if you hussies don't want what she got, you'll get off me, unless you know where I can get real dick." And there it was. My jailhouse reputation would be sealed. I would be dubbed “dat batty bitch.” Anyone who thought they were tough by calling career criminals “hussies” had to be batty.

I had already been assaulted today, first by the ninety-eight-degree heat and hundred percent humidity. And mosquitoes waited at the baggage terminal, holding placards with my name on them. By the time I entered the taxi, sweat was oozing down my pant legs. It felt as though a cow's tongue was lying on my face.

So I was in no mood for "Why you got to go around looking like Bob Marley fa?" Ms. Chickie ordered or asked, I forgot which, as I stretched my neck back out the front doorway to see if the pimpled-faced middle eastern cab driver could facilitate a rescue and return me to the airport. Though it was a sun-splashed, cloudless noon, it would have been prudent to instruct him to wait until I waved a white handkerchief, indicating it was safe to leave me with my eccentric family. Instead he was off chasing another fare, dreaming of less humidity and an upcoming Noori concert.

The wrinkles in my forehead mirrored the wrestling match my thoughts were experiencing, wondering how this high-cheek boned, olive-skinned octogenarian, wearing her beloved pink pearls, knee-high stockings, and nothing else under a flowered housedress, simultaneously blasting three Miami gospel radio stations and a television blathering The Wendy Williams Show, could have somehow found disdain for, or had intermingled with, Bob Marley.

I didn't have to be here. More attractive options were available, like undergoing a colonoscopy, listening to Indian sitar music, or perhaps remaining in Atlanta to join Tammy in returning, like breeding salmon, to Cisco’s—the headquarters of Atlanta’s decadent, elitist ritualistic nightlife—to spawn conflict, or attract love, however fleeting.

But destiny has placed me here.

In Opa Locka, Florida. A suburb of Cuba.nd about two and a half blocks away from the sun. Located in the northwest section of Miami, the name of this middle-class, African-American enclave was derived from the Seminole Indian word opa-tisha-wocka-locka. Ms. Chickie was notorious for amusing herself by telling white developers who relentlessly knocked on her door begging to purchase the house, that it meant "I’m snatching your land"

In Opa Locka, polite social interaction, foreign in many cities, still remains. Everyone waves when they pass your house, whether they know you or not. Though my little friends and I preferred giving passersby our middle finger when they waved, no one seemed to mind. My family has resided here for fifty years, segregated from but yet a part of Miami, successfully staving off rising crime. But to Ms. Chickie’s despair, citizens of Opa Locka citizens have not been able to escape the encroachment of a city dominated by Cuban culture and gentrification. She complained often, "Everybody speaks Spanish! If the English language is good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the Cubans!" Carmen Esperanza Beiro, my best friend from high school, cackled when I would tell her about Ms. Chickie's irreverence, over a late-night plate of chicken empanadas and media noche at her family's restaurant. Change in Opa Locka occurs in tiny ebbs; perhaps the family on the corner has added a patio or paved their driveway. Or somebody's sister joined the military or had a sex change. Or as my taxi turned the corner passing the pastel colored homes, onto my block, there was Ms. Janette, still hunched over with her ass up in the air, like a Red Kangaroo, picking up non-existent debris, under the guise of beautifying the neighborhood. In reality, her ass was poised in the air, so that she could catch an out of control penis from one of the sanitation workers who happened by on their truck at the same time each day. Ms. Janette graciously batted her fake eyelashes at their catcalls, and would constantly invite in them for breakfast. “Big men, like yew, must be hungry for some cheese and eggs, pancakes, sausage and grits…come on in and let me Ms. Janette feed your bellies.”

Ms. Chickie instructed Lee Artist to never let my father outside in the yard, without being chaperoned when Ms. Janette was performing her morning bend haunch. “That’s how she stole Sally’s drunkard husband. And he hasn’t been back home since.”