Harlem Heat
By Dean Turner
Chapter 5
It’s summer time in Harlem. The year is 1978. Hip-hop is taking form, and the streets are filled with hustlers, pimps and dopefiends. On this particular morning, the sun is shining bright, the morning air is fresh and I can even hear the birds chirping. It must be a good morning because my moms is up fixing breakfast. I can smell the bacon frying and the home fries cooking. Man, I can’t wait until I sink my teeth into it! While I’m in the bathroom getting myself together, I can taste the salt from the bacon and it’s making my mouth water, but reality kicks in from the toothpaste, so it’s time to make moves to the kitchen table. As I’m waiting for Moms to fix my plate, I dip over to the window to see if any of my buddies are outside. After I finish my meal, it’s a must that I clean up my room before I ask the warden if I can go outside to play. My friends nicknamed my mother that because they thought she was mean. But they only knew the half of it.
All his chicks used to pump me up because I was his son.
At the time, I really didn’t understand why me and my mother would clash a lot. She worked her ass off to provide for me when I was little. She made sure I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food on the table. I didn’t have hand-me-down clothes either. When it was time for me to go back to school, I had on the hot shit, plus all my school supplies and whatever else I needed. My mother tried to keep me grounded, but like any ordinary teenager at the time, I rebelled. My moms married a deadbeat, wanna be player-husband who didn’t know the meaning of a being a father. Dean, Sr. was addicted to heroin when I was a baby and before I was conceived. My pops was maybe 5'11, a little potbelly, dark brown complexion and about 200 lbs., but a real ladies man. He was “the man” in our projects, the leader to his brothers. My uncles were deadbeat fathers like him who abused their women both mentally and physically. They were abusing drugs and alcohol, too, trying to avoid life’s challenging dilemmas. Pops had mad respect and so did my family. All his chicks used to pump me up because I was his son. I would sometimes wait around for him to see if he wanted to go see a movie or have dinner, but if he was chasing skins—you know the rest of the story! I always kept a master plan in my back pocket for situations like that.
About Dean
Dean Turner was born and raised in Harlem in the family business of running numbers where he was ignored by his addict, womanizing father and beaten regularly by his mother, who had him when she was just sixteen. By middle school age he was running with a gang, “terrorizing shit” all over the five boroughs, keeping himself in the latest gear, smoking blunts, chasing girls, and crashing parties. Unable to control her wild son with extension cords, Dean’s mother one day tried to stab him with a pair of scissors.
Then she threw him out of the house. Hurt, confused, and homeless he sought the safety and comfort of his father, at his apartment, the man he idolized as a real player, only to be rejected. After foster care, he chose to go back to his mother, who gave him an ultimatum: find a job and make it on your own. That’s when he was recruited into the drug game.
Dean Turner was released from Richmond City Jail in 2006. He has worked off and on in the restaurant industry and is living with his grandmother in Richmond. He is the author of A Major Struggle, part one of his autobiography project, soon to be self-published.
