“Friday night.”
“Damn.”
My mom hated the hood. She
didn’t like my friends there. If I
brought them back to the house,
she didn’t even want them coming
inside. “I don’t like those boys,”
she’d say. She didn’t hate them
personally; she hated what they
represented. “You and those boys
get into so much shit,” she’d say.
“You must be careful who you
surround yourself with because
where you are can determine who
you are.”
She said the thing she hated
most about the hood was that it