When he was six years old, 'Bloods' (as he was later to be known) won a spelling competition in school. His mummy couldn't come to the prize-giving because she was sick. When he was seven, Bloods' teacher sent a note home asking for a meeting. Bloods brought back a polite note from his father on the day saying that his mother was sick and they couldn't come. One day when he was eight, Bloods was supporting his mother going down the street after work because she was sick again. He caught sight of two girls from his class on the other side of the road, staring at his mother with curiosity and a growing distaste. Something flared in Bloods' head and he stooped quickly for a stone and pelted it hard at one of the girls. There was a shriek and they ran off. That night, one of the girl's parents came to complain about this unprovoked attack and Bloods got a cut-tail from his father. He couldn't explain why he had done it, but he just knew that he didn't want people looking at his mother that way. Bloods' father was gone one day when he was ten.
His mother couldn't tell Bloods and his younger siblings where he was. Shortly after that, Bloods had to pack up the whole house because they had to move and his mother was too sick to help. He took the opportunity to leave behind all her hidden liquor. They moved to a much smaller house in a meaner, poorer neighbourhood. Soon Bloods' mother lost her job because she was so sick all the time. Around this time, she began having uncontrollable rages and screaming irrational things. And she slept very odd hours. Bloods stayed out a lot. He hustled his younger siblings straight home from school so they arrived home before his mother woke up for the day. They would eat, Bloods would throw out any liquor he could find and then leave again before his mother woke up. He stayed out until late, when she would have raged herself into sleep again.
Their home was at the end of a dirt track leading off the road. At the entrance to the track, there was a small open space shaded by mango trees and the young men of the area had taken it as their 'club house' for smoking and drinking. The smoking was something new for Bloods and smelt sharp and strange. After he had hung around the club and watched for a while, he found out it was cocaine. So that was what made his mother so strange sometimes! Bloods became a cocaine expert on those evenings by the roadside. Strangely, he never thought of it as a financial enterprise until one of the young men called him over to take a package to a certain house on another street. When he came back from the delivery, the man handed him $20. Bloods didn't ask any questions, he just muttered thanks and took the money. This became a pattern. Every couple of nights he would do a delivery, always for the same man, and collect a twenty. He was curious as to why he had been chosen and soon discovered that it was because he was known as a quiet child who didn't get into trouble, so no-one would suspect him of carrying drugs. He also didn't talk a lot and didn't ask about peoples' 'business'. Eventually he found out what his delivery packages were worth. Even that discovery did not change things. But when that local pusher moved on up, a step closer to legitimacy, Bloods, at the ripe old age of 14, was the one he left to handle the neighbourhood market. By now, virtually all his time was spent out there. He was learning so much more than he ever could in school
