The Story of Fool and Hopeless

To find out how all this started, go here and scroll down to “The Beginning of a Nightmare.”

You know, I have learned that no matter how much you think it isn’t true, or how much someone tells you that it isn’t so, you never want to know what’s going on in someone else’s house. Not only is it none of your business, but it may just drive you insane.

Such is the story of Hopeless and Fool.

I’m going to take you on a journey that will cover time and space, and over a dozen children. A trip that I had to take, so bare with me, I’ll bring you along.

It’s around 1990 the best I can figure, and we’re in a project on the Southside of Atlanta. It’s a small housing project, with somewhere around 150 or 200 apartments. The grass is dying and brown, what little there is of it. Mostly there’s dirt for as far as the eyes can see. In the summer, when the wind picks up, the air is gritty, dusty and full of hatred and contempt.

This is where Hopeless and Fool meet. He was a maintenance man there, reported to be stealing stuff out of people’s apartments to support his drug habit. I guess she took one look at him and realized her Prince Charming had arrived.

Her mother, Mrs. Debra, said she warned her to “stay away from that man.” Fool was a short, “light-skinned” man, with three children of his own, who lived with his mother (yep, for those of you keeping count at home, that’s 14 children between the two of them). Of course, Hopeless herself had two children at this point, by two different men, who also stayed with her mother. Guess they were a match made…somewhere.

Fool wooed her, taking her into peoples homes, when they weren’t there, showing her the neighbor’s most private things. In fact, that was considered a night out for them. They would sit in his car and wait for someone to leave their apartment and the two would sneak into it, and watch movies and do other things—personal things—in their beds.

That’s when the fighting started. Fool has been known throw Hopeless down the stairs and kick her in the stomach. He’s pulled her down the road by her hair and punched her. Oh, don’t fret, it was never “that hard,” just ask him. But don’t you worry about Hopeless, she can hold her own. She has cut Fool’s face so hard, he’s needed stitches—with a spoon. And once she stabbed him in the back with a stake knife, and left it there for him to pull out.

Ah, a couple in love.

Sometime after this, Hopeless got pregnant—and she didn’t stop for another fifteen years. In fact, we aren’t sure that she’s stopped now. It’s rumored that she’s two months along.

Fool can’t read (M-O-O-N spells Fool). He can’t fill out a job application without having someone go with him, and he can’t even read his children a bed time story. He’s told them that real men don’t need to know how to read. That real men can get what they want.

Fool’s three older children haven’t faired well along the way with that advice. His daughter is the better of the three; she’s only been arrested once. However, she’s been known to shoot up with her father, and prostitutes herself for drug money. One son simply disappeared. No one has seen or heard from him in more than five years. I would congratulate him, but it’s rumored that he owed some drug dealers money when he went on the run. It’s said that they found him, and well, lets just say that…he’s paid in full.

His oldest son is in prison for murder. He shot a man during a robbery with a sawed-off shot gun, and walked away with a whopping fifty-five dollars. Afterward, he said that the man took too long to give him “his” money from the register.

What can you say about family? Can’t live with ‘em; can’t kill ‘em. Well, maybe you can. I wouldn’t put anything pass this family.

How Screwed Up Is Your Family: IV

I’m beginning to think that families are all the same, everywhere. Nuts. They screw you up and then let you loose on the world. It’s inevitable; families love you…to death.

This one’s from Crystal:


I have sister-cousins. Does that count as screwed up?

I can never answer the question "How many brothers and sisters do you have" without feeling like I'm dumping baggage. "Well, I have three older half-brothers whom I didn't grow up with because they were a product of my father's first marriage. I have one older sister who is autistic, one younger half-brother from my mother's second marriage, two ex-step-sister-cousins because when my father left my mother he ran off with his dead brother's widow and her two daughters, which was his third marriage, and then I have two step-sisters which are from his fourth marriage. ...beyond that, we're not really sure."

But we don't really have any terribly good stories, aside from the ones from my brother Wil's wedding, which included his crazy mother flirting with my father (who divorced her almost thirty years ago) in front of my current step-mother. And then there was of course the story that SHE (my brothers' mother) told me when I was fourteen about finding my Dad and Mom in bed together while he was still married to HER (which, oddly, I don't actually believe... I mean, the woman IS crazy. And I don't think my Mom would pull something like that. She's better than that. No words for my Dad though...), and then pulling out pictures of a man she thinks might have been my oldest brother's father.

She's not really sure, but since she couldn't find the other guy she settled for a shot-gun wedding (literally--her father actually brought a shotgun to the wedding) to my father. Sometimes my 80 year old grandma tells us stories about the effect of gravity on her boobs. That's a big hit at family reunions. And she pretends to forget people's names so that she doesn't have to talk to them. She always remembers mine though! =) I like my grandma.

And that's all just on my Dad's side. There's more redneck fun on my Mom's side.

And we can't wait to hear it, Crystal.

SUPERSTAR

As always, if you're just joining us, go here and scroll down to “The Beginning of a Nightmare.”

I have used this blog to talk about my life. As of late that just happens to be my husband and his family drama. But I just realized recently that this wasn’t fair. Hey, I have plenty of whack-jobs and religious zealots in my family too. Why haven’t I talked about them?

Ok, it may be because I never see them. All of them live in other states, and lets be honest, they aren’t nearly as entertaining as my husband’s. But I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I have many, many people I could talk about here, and I may do so later, but right now, I will confine it to one person: Star.

Star is my uncle. Have you ever heard the term ghetto-fabulous? Well Star made up the term. He’s a man who thinks every highly of himself, and isn’t afraid to tell the word. SUPERSTAR!

The first time I met my uncle, I was about ten years old. Everyone was at my grandmothers house waiting his return from (wanna guess…that’s right) prison. It seems that he had been in there for my entire life, and that’s why I had never met him.

He arrives there in grand style: loud and flamboyant. If you know my family, you know this is not strange. Hell, if you’ve ever met me, I think you can imagine. He started his act. I say it’s an act, but it’s really just Star being Star. He enjoys talking and likes when people are listening—though he doesn’t always wait for the latter.

Then he started telling his story, he doesn’t bother sitting down. No, he stands, using his arms and his obnoxious voice to spin the tell.

Here goes:

It seems Star was in Detroit (don’t all crooks go to Detroit?) and he and one of his buddies decided to rob a house. Well, they get the gear and stuff they need: guns and sky mask, and head into the house—forgetting to put on the mask.

All the lights are off, and Star gets a bad vibe (Ok, at this point I wish I could have named him Fool, but even after this, I think we have the right man in the role), but they go on in anyway. When they get into the house everything is going fine. They’re getting lots of expensive stuff, and even found some stashed cash. Everything is good.

Then something happens (doesn’t always?) and his partner either falls or drops something, and makes a loud ruckus. To Star everything seems to happen at once: his partner screams, several simultaneous light in the house come on—in several different rooms, and the owner comes out shooting. Star dives behind the couch while his partner gets shot in the gut. Star, in way over his head, shot back, misses and then runs out the door. He trips and falls, twice, but makes it out of the house and down the block before anyone can catch him.

He slows down only when he’s a good distance away and then he hears the police and ambulance sirens. For some reason, Fool, oh, sorry, Star decides to go back. By this time there is a whole slew of people outside in the street watching. He stands in the crowd as if this idiot (shit, this name is taken too) didn’t know what the hell was happening. Of course someone notices him and points him out to the cops and they arrest him right there. He’s charged with the murder of his own partner, because as it turns out, if someone dies during the commission of a crime, then that person is charged—even if they weren’t the shooter.

He laughed and made jokes about it then, in that humbly small living room in my grandmother’s house. My mother just stared at him. My grandmother, never one to suffer fools, told him to shut up and get on in the kitchen and eat some real food for a change.

Me and my sisters stared at each other wondering if this person could really be related to us. Little did we know…

…Oh, the tales I could tell you…