La La by Kim Lenor (ap literature book list txt) 📕

far back as I can remember. However I never doubted that she loved us but I knew that she just loved drugs more.

Sunny and Niecee were raised in an extremely strict household. They grew up in a big beautiful house in an upper middle class really nice neighborhood. Though my grandparents were strict, I heard that my grandfather used to preach to his church all the time about how he used to be a pimp and he changed his life, and from the pictures I’ve seen it appears that grandma was one of his hoes. My mom even told me that my grandmother was strung out on drugs before “grandpa saved her,” whatever the hell that means.

It makes sense that they were strict if that’s the kind of lifestyle grandma and grandpa was into because most of the time when grown ups are fucked up they usually do everything in their power to make sure their kids turn out right, well at least the good parents. I get that whole idea of wanting your children to turn out better than you but it seems like they were crazy with it. For example, Niecee and Sunny could only play with each other or church kids, they couldn't go to any school functions, they dressed like some goddamn Amish kids and they couldn't even listen to any kind of music other than gospel. This was particularly hard for Sunny because Niecee said that my mother had a naughty little song bird in her throat that she desperately wanted to get out. Being the overly obedient child that Sunny was, she tolerated singing in the church choir until she could write and sing her own music without grandpa breathing down her neck.

Niecee’s theory is that Grandma and Grandpa were so strict because they were too old when they started having children, and by the time Niecee and Sunny were born their patience had long run out for dealing with kids. Grandma was forty seven when she had Niecee and my grandfather was sixty two and then two and half years later Sunny came along. I don't remember my grandparents that well but to imagine two old bags like that getting busy is disgusting!
From what I heard there was a time when my mother was a force to be reckoned with. Not only was she cute and sassy but she could sing her ass off. Sunny told me that all her life she felt like she was busting at the seams and couldn't wait to get away from home. Then finally on her eightieth birthday before the sun went down and her birthday party was over, Sunny was all packed and moving into a real nice apartment in a trendy neighborhood far from the neighborhood she grew up in but still in Washington, D.C.

She had tons of boyfriends because she was so beautiful but she stayed a virgin until she was twenty. She told me that all she did was go to school, come home and write music. Even though she was on her own she still wasn’t wild, she said that she wanted to be but she just didn’t know how. That was until she met Raymond, Daisha’s father, one look between them and it was history, she said. He had his own band and he played at a jazz club she always went to. Sunny said she was amazed that he was able to stare at her all night while never missing a beat on the drums.

Sunny only told me and Daisha the good things about Raymond, like it was some kind of damn beautiful love story but I found her dairies and I read a totally different story in them. Yeah they met at a jazz club, they had dinner the following night and their food wasn’t even digested before he was banging holes in her.

Then one day Raymond heard Sunny singing while she was cooking and right after that he fired his lead singer and put my mother to work. People packed the club to hear her sing because she was astounding and even now all beat up and drugged out, hearing my mother sing gives me goose bumps and brings tears to my eyes. She was sharp and captivating on stage at that time in her life. She also had a lot of class and style and therefore she never needed a stylist because she was the one in charge of dressing the whole band.

I would look at the pictures of Sunny from back then and I found it hard to even believe it was the same woman. However, my mother never stopped taking up time in front of the mirror. I can honestly say that she was the most stylish and prettiest crackheads that ran around our neighborhood. She makes it a point to go shopping, even if she spends $50 on herself so I can only imagine how she was back then when she had her head together.

Eventually their band got so popular that a record company took notice of them and ended up offering them a record deal that they didn’t hesitate to accept. Sunny, Raymond and their band traveled all over the world, they made a lot of money and had everything from popularity, expensive clothes, to nice cars and houses and eventually Sunny and Raymond got married.

Sunny was so in love with him that she found herself doing things that she could have never even dreamed of growing up a church girl, he truly turned her ass out. He would talk her into doing threesomes, watch her have sex with women, they would have wild parties and would drink and smoke weed all the time. She even got arrested a couple of times for fighting. She would beat the ass of any female that tried to take her man but there were a few times that she would fight females at his request, after he claimed that some woman had disrespected him. Sunny said in her dairy that she thought he got off on seeing her fight and even more so fight for him. Finally of course he introduced her to cocaine, and with the drug and him by her side she wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

Then staying true to what goes up must come down life changed. With all of the trouble Sunny and Raymond was getting into, their music suffered and they lost their deal after only two and a half years. They were so strung out that they couldn't make records if they wanted to. In fact, they got so down and out that Raymond ended up committing suicide and Sunny was left ass out with nothing, so she started to get more into drugs until she found out she was pregnant with Daisha. As soon as she dropped that load, my mother lost her damn mind. All she wanted to do was get high and since she couldn’t easily get her hands on the good powder cocaine anymore she started doing crack.

At some point Sunny got the bright idea to fake being crazy so that she could get a crazy check and not have to get a real job. So one afternoon she decided to get butt-ass naked, put on a trench coat and go into a nursing home where she then tried to sell old beat up wigs to old men and women, all while sobbing. Then by the time the police arrived she was sitting in a corner naked with a knife to her own throat and slightly bleeding. So without hesitation she was committed for a little while to a mental institution. She laughed about beating the system for the longest time. Her scheme worked because she started to get a nice crazy check every month. However, I guess she didn't realize what she might have to sacrifice because as a result of Sunny’s secret prank the courts took Daisha from her and gave legal custody to Niecee.

With money in her pocket and no responsibilities she boiled down to the average crackhead on the corner itching and moving fast. She eventually couldn’t even maintain her home so before Sunny ended up homeless and living on the street, Niecee found Sunny and brought her to live in the big beautiful side by side duplex house their parents had left them in their will. It was good that Sunny was now living next door to Niecee but bad that now she only had to worry about keeping the lights and gas on. Niecee hoped living there would help her to remember a better way of life or standard of living but unfortunately it just gave her a nice, clean and comfortable place to enjoy her highs.

Unfortunately by the time Sunny moved next door to Niecee the neighborhood had gone from upper middle class to almost ghetto. One end of the street where their house was, was nice and quiet and the majority of their neighbors were older white people. On the other hand, starting just at the corner were drug dealers and fiends hanging out in front of the old abounded penny candy store. Even the houses from the corner on down seemed to be old, dingy and falling apart or just totally abandoned and boarded up. If that wasn't bad enough there was a crack house for every two that wasn't one. So if a person stood facing one end of the street they would think they were in a nice suburban neighborhood but facing the other way they would think they were in hell. The scene reminded me of a spreading disease that hadn’t yet passed the corner but surely in time it would. Therefore, Sunny was in the right place for her addictions to grow.

I arrived a year after Daisha was born and Sunny said that when she looked at me for the very first time a melody came to her and her mind raced with music and all she wanted to do was write and sing because I inspired her. I still repeat a song to myself that Sunny made up for me and has been singing to me since I was a baby. I would have to hear the story over and over again at family reunions or family birthday parties about how whenever she sang this little song to me I would stop crying immediately. Sunny calls it our courage song and said that when we sing it everything will be better for the both of us. The words are; Who makes the Sunshine bright? La La... Who makes my heart skip a beat? La La... Who makes my life complete... La La… Who’s as precious as a golden pearl, La La! Who’s going to conquer the world…? La La...” This little song meant everything to me and my mother and it always made us feel close and reminded us that no matter what we loved one another.

Of course I hated that my mother was on drugs but I didn’t hate her because even though most of the time Sunny was high, she still tried to show us love and she had the type of personality that wouldn’t allow a person to hate or even stay mad at her. She was always making us laugh by being silly or saying or doing funny off the wall things whether she was high or not. Sunny was always the life of the party even when no one wanted one. Besides that, she's the only biological parent that I have and know. No one really knows who my father is but Sunny believes that he was an old Italian man that had a heart