Family lies

By Stasi McQueen

"Family lies" is a memoir written by Stasi McQueen that tells her story of overcoming a rough upbringing, her struggles with overcoming lies and enduring physical and emotional trauma, foster care and abusive relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: anastasia smiith
• Release date: Oct 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735658117

Book preview

Table of Contents

Planted Seed

Foster care

School

Homelessness

New Beginnings

Thank you to anyone who’s ever loved me, attempted to love me, supported me and to anyone who has ever planted the seeds in me to flourish. Your support doesn’t go unnoticed and I thank you

For my parents James and Andrea, who weren’t there to protect me, I love you and forgive you. Sip Daddy

I’m scared

Tryna be brave

Feeling like a slave

A slave to my past

A slave to love that wasn’t meant to last

Keep my soul

Let the pain unfold

Let it release, set me free

Make me who I’m supposed to be

Please, I beg of thee

Help me to use my talents

Healthily—

Join me in making this world a better place

These scars remain on my face but these dreams I will chase

You put a song in my heart

And I won’t let it go till death do us part

But just don’t let it die

Lord please, keep me as I try

--Stasi

Chapter 1

Planted Seed

Never been the type for long drawn out introductions but yet here we are. Anyways, Stasi’s the name, pronounced stah-see . And don’t be side eyeing the name either for you shady hoes, because I know you all too well. Sade Fatima is the name that my mother gave me or whatever, but I prefer stasi, . I can’t tell you what was going on in my mother’s head when she had me because she already had three of my siblings prior to me who all had been already committed to the state. Nevertheless, my ass entered the world October 27, 1990 in manhattan, new york. Apparently, my mother had mental health- issues or she was crazy or whatever the fuck they wanna say about her. My daddy wasn’t any better because apparently, he breezed when my mom said she was pregnant with me. Sometime, after that he ended up in jail convicted on murder charges. I lived anyway but just like with my other three siblings, I ended up right in the hands of the state.

You know, the state got a funny way of functioning sometimes. They will look for anybody to drop kids off to, due to case managers being overworked or some of them I guess, simply not giving a fuck. You see what happened with me is that they looked for a relative to take me in. The relative they stumbled across happened to be an older half -sister of mine off of my daddy side’s. Kira was 19, on her own and after leaving her alcoholic mothers house and raising her brothers. She was excited to take me in. Or so the fuck they thought. After a year of my mother having me in her custody, and her being accused of allegedly leaving me alone in the house with the gas on, I was sent to the pits of hell. Not figuratively either, literally. I wouldn’t see my biological mother again until 22-24 years later.

So yea you know the 90’s were different, families were still hit by the crack epidemic from the 80’s and wasn’t nobody really checking for whether kids were really being treated right in these homes they were placed in. It was a lot worse then; than what it is right now at least in my opinion. So, shorty had me and dressed me up cute as shit as a kid and made it seem like she was so happy to have me. But from my earliest memory of this hoe, she was wicked. She was one way with me in private and completely different outside of the house or in front of others. She used to take me places and straight up snatch shit out my hand and just talk to me like I wasn’t shit. She compared me to my mother saying that my mother was crazy and she let me know that although I was her sister, she was my mother now. Kira took me lots of places with her close friends’ daughter who I grew to call my cousin. And nothing was ever really fun unless Kira was completely out of sight because it seemed like everything that I did warranted some kind of punishment or an excuse for her to have me sit out. There were some good moments like I said as long as she was in a good mood and I was far the fuck away from her. She knew though how to make it look good though for the workers that needed to come every now and again and the family members she wanted to impress with her having me in her possession.

So, as time went on and the years passed, Kira would have me with her daily and on the weekends, I would go to her mother’s house. Lowkey, high key, although her mother was a functioning alcoholic, she never treated me badly. She would just leave me in her room with my little doll or whatever for hours watching tv or have me watching sci- fi movies with her and cooking and what not. The only time she was ever mean to me was when she was drunk and in her feelings which I expected. I would just be on the couch while she listened to her oldies but goodies, not really knowing what to do because there wasn’t anything really to do. There weren’t no kids to play with, and like I said I would probably have a doll, if that at the most. Sometimes I would be looking out of the window waiting for my uncle, her son, to come back inside to come get me to take me outside as promised. I can’t tell you if that ever happened because I really just remember all the times, I would sit at that window from midafternoon to sunset waiting for him to bust through the door to tell me he was coming to take me outside, and it just didn’t happen. I do know that he was young and a gang member and he probably just wanted to be outside and escape his own hell. Meanwhile, sis was sipping on her Budweiser, after feeding me some egg foo young or some good ass food she would whip up and just jam out to Aaron Hall’s I miss You, thinking about her husband who had passed. Shit would be cool until she would catch me looking at her or some shit cuz I ain’t really have no other place to look and she’d spazz and maybe send me to her room. Still in all, that was better than being with Kira.

A lot of those weekends spent at Kira’s mothers house, I remember going out with her for her errands and going on long rides up to jails and stuff to visit my uncles because both of them ended up locked up. So, she would take me with her on the bus rides up to Attica, Greene and Coxsakie where we would be sitting on a bus filled with other women going to see their husbands and sons. We would be dropping off packages filled with jack mack, octopus and lil Debbie cakes and going on visits buying frozen burgers and chicken patties from the vending machines. I liked those times and hated those times at the same time because I would be able to wear my little suede skirt and turtleneck that I ain’t wear for no occasions other than to show that I was put together, and the visits were cool up until we had to stick our hands under the blue light for the c.o’s behind the glass to know we weren’t inmates to exit the facility. It was at this point I realized my uncles weren’t coming back home with us. I cried every time.

The visits to the prisons made my grandmothers weekends worthwhile I guess but she barely went anywhere else but to the store and maybe across the street to hang out with her other drunk friends Dianne and Arthur. We were in the heart of Brownsville, where the blocks were divided by the bloods and crips and just people living life. It was nothing to hear of a shooting on the block or someone getting killed right up the block on Sutter ave or Mother Gaston. As a kid I don’t even remember my grandmother being phased by it and neither was I really as I grew and went to the store and supermarket alone sometimes to get her stuff. I didn’t understand it then, nor was I really phased. Guess it was kinda an unwritten code to not fear shit, and if you did as the phrase goes never ran, never will.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, after going on my seemingly lit vacations to grandmas, life was different with Kira. At least at grandmas, I could sense freedom, with her it was like I was on 23 hour lock down or some shit. 23 hours in, 1 hour out. I never got to go outside, but I also barely got to play inside as well. I was confined to the floor or maybe a chair where I would be reading and the tv would be put on anything for