Free There Goes My Social Life by Stacey Dash

an affected English accent. He told us stories about history and science and how they applied to our real lives. Once he gave a talk on why maps are important, how science relates to nature, and how nature relates to our relationships. He allowed knowledge to encompass our entire lives and being. His passion for teaching gave me passion for learning. That year, I was an honor student and even won the Presidential Award in PE.
    When we left Long Island, we were told that we wouldn’t be going back to New York. Apparently Mom and Dad had gotten a divorce. In Dad’s place was a quiet man we’d never seen before, and Mom told us—without much fanfare—that they were getting married. My new stepfather’s name was Cecil Holmes, a tall, handsome black man from Guyana (formerly British Guiana). He was a good Catholic, went to mass every Sunday, and never did a drug in his life. In other words, he was a square compared to my father, and very successful as a record executive. In fact, his record label had KISS and Donna Summer. In 1986, he gave The New Kids on the Block their first contract. He seemed to love my mother, and I could tell he enjoyed having her on his arm.
    Suddenly, our family had more wealth and opportunities than we’d ever had. Cecil’s job was amazing, but it meant we had to move to California when I was in seventh grade. California was no New York. In my old neighborhood, my friends and I ran into each other naturally in the course of the day. Kids were everywhere—playing stickball in the street, jumping rope, and playing hopscotch. That was not happening in California, where everyone had yards and cars and whole acres to themselves.
    Mom immediately enrolled us in the local public school in a residential neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. It had a pretty playground surrounded by eucalyptus trees and big fields circling the school. Though I was going to miss my friends, maybe it was better than going back to New York, where the schools were so violent. Maybe I’d get along a lot better in this sunny, seemingly optimistic place.
    One day I came home and found my mom crying.
    â€œWhat’s wrong,” I asked, though I scarcely thought that anything truly was wrong. As an addict, her emotions were always up and down. “Are you okay?”
    â€œThey got Uncle Freddy,” she said.
    â€œWho did?” I asked. I’d never seen anyone even so much as glance sideways at the man. No one would dare cross him.
    â€œDidn’t you hear me,” she cried. “The cops. They arrested him.”
    That word hung in the air between us.
    â€œArrested?”
    Apparently Uncle Freddy—my mentor, my one true fan and advocate—went to jail because he was a pimp. The beautiful women he always had on his arms were not just legions of adoring women. They were prostitutes. His prostitutes.
    I felt like a ship in a storm when the line holding the anchor snaps. He was the one adult on whom I could lean when times got tough. The one person who represented honor and virtue. Without him, I felt untethered, like I could float away to who-knows-where and no one—not one soul—would care. Later, Uncle Freddy also confessed to killing a sixteen-year-old girl and burying her in the woods behind my grandparents’ house. He was put in jail for life, and I never saw him again. I never had a chance to tell him how much I loved him, how much he meant to me, or how much he affected my life. Later, my grandmother told me he had a prison conversion. In fact, his newfound faith was the reason he confessed to the unsolved murder.
    I missed him so much after he was taken away, and his words of advice always came to me during times of need. One recommendation would come back to me more than the others: when the Jesus train comes, make sure you’re on it.
    I think, in a weird way, that this was his way of making sure he was going to be on it too. He died in prison,