{"product_id":"slipping-isbn-9780345475947","title":"Slipping","description":"Growing up in a Chicago ghetto, seventeen-year-old Donald “Don-Don” Haskill has nothing but time on his hands–time he rarely spends in school, choosing instead to smoke weed and hang out with friends. As a child, he witnessed his father’s suicide, and today Don-Don’s relationship with his mother, a worn-down cop trying to keep the family together is tenuous at best. Then Don-Don meets a girl with a taste for crack–and his delinquent life turns violently criminal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConsumed with chasing his next hit, alienating even his best friends, Don-Don works the streets like a pro. In pursuit of the demon, no deal is too shady. But when a huge drug transaction goes terribly awry, a bloody chain of events is set off, as Don-Don becomes a moving target, not just for the Chicago police force but for the ghetto’s most hardened thugs. . . .Y. Blak Moore is a poet, mentor, motivational speaker, and former gang member who grew up in the Chicago housing projects. He lives in Chicago.“Donald Haskill, get yo lazy butt up and get ready for school! Don-Don,  you heard me, get yo raggedy, nappy-head butt up!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I’m up, I’m up. Quit hollering like a fool!” Don answered grumpily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No you ain’t, yo lazy butt! Don’t make me come up there and throw some  cold water on yo funky butt!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ignoring his sister’s last remark, he asked, “Ay, girl, is Momma gone?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Boy, yeah. Momma been gone since six o’clock this morning. She waited for  you to come in till one o’clock last night. She said to tell you to start  bringing yo butt in this house at a decent hour. Just because she be  spending time over her boyfriend house, she said to let you know that you  only seventeen and you better start coming in this doggone house at a  decent time on school nights.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Don cut her off. “Did she leave me some money?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His sister left the bathroom and climbed the few stairs to Don’s bedroom  door, opened the door wide, and leaned on the door jamb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She gloated, “She left me some money, but she didn’t leave you any. She  would have, but you weren’t here. She said that she would have had to stop  at the cash station and get some out and she wasn’t going to go through  all of that trouble for you and you weren’t even here. If you stopped  hanging out in the streets with them no-good friends of yours and got you  a little part-time job or something after school then you wouldn’t have to  wait on Momma to give you money all the time. I got to get ready for  school. Something you should be concerning yourself about.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As Rhonda retreated to finish preparing to leave, Don chuckled at his  sister’s short speech. He loved Rhonda and he knew that she loved him, but  she seemed to hate all of his friends and told him so at every available  opportunity. She was nineteen, two years his senior, but she thought she  was thirty. Because their mother worked long, hard hours as   a Chicago policewoman, attended college, and still tried   to have some semblance of a love life, Rhonda stepped up to play the role  of surrogate mother to the hilt. He had to admit, she did manage to take  pretty good care of home base with his mother being gone so much. She even  looked like their mother, especially when she was fussing at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Don couldn’t remember much of his father, outside of his death, but his  aunts and uncles claimed that he was the spitting image of the man.  Whenever the subject of his old man arose his mother became tight-lipped.  From what information he had been able to piece together about his father,  his story was the same as too many Black men in America. Systematically  raped and dehumanized by the unholy caste system in America, his father  turned to the bottle. After four years of diligent service in the army,  then as a glorified janitor at city hall, he grew tired of being  overlooked for promotions. He thought no one at work noticed his deepening  depression. The last day of his life he appeared to be happier than he had  been in years. He whistled a cheery tune all day as he completed his daily  tasks. When his coworkers noticed his obvious attitude adjustment and  questioned him about the change, his only reply was a smile that seemed to  signify that he had a secret—a secret that tickled him pink. At quitting  time he cheerfully bid everyone farewell. At home he ate the dinner his  wife had thoughtfully prepared in between her job as a loss-prevention  specialist at Marshall Field’s downtown on State Street and her classes at  Kennedy King Junior College. He drank two beers as he watched the evening  news and then he took his .38 caliber handgun out of the closet, climbed  to the roof of their apartment building, sat on a milk crate placed  against the brick chimney, and ate a bullet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On the roof, with a large portion of his head missing, is where Don-Don  found his father. He had done his best to make several airplanes from  notebook paper and took them to the roof to launch them with his dad. His  four-year-old mind couldn’t contemplate the blood and brain matter  splattered on the bricks behind his dad, so he shook his father’s shoulder  to tell him to get up and help him fly his airplanes. His father’s  lifeless body sprawled forward and pinned Don to the rooftop. As blood and  goo oozed from his father’s mouth and head onto Don’s face, he began  screaming, and when help finally came, that was how they found them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At first Don’s mother didn’t think she could live without his father.  After all, he was her first love and the father of both of her children.  When she first found out that she was pregnant with Rhonda, she thought  that he would back out on her, but he married her and put his dream of  becoming a musician on hold. Instead he did the honorable thing and went  off to join the army to support his family. On one of his home passes he  planted Donald in his wife, when Rhonda was eighteen months old. During  his years in the service he appeared to be reasonably faithful and after  his honorable discharge he returned home and got a job. For a while he  tried to hang out with his musician buddies, but their drug abuse,  womanizing ways, and general lack of responsibility made him, a faithfully  married, employed father of two, a stranger among them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After her husband’s suicide, it almost made Hazel want to take her own  life, just knowing that the man she loved with all her heart was going  through enough mental anguish to make him take his own life, but he hadn’t  confided in her. The thought of their two kids allowed her to draw from   the reserve strength all Black mothers seem to have to continue on with  her life. Using the money from her husband’s meager life-insurance policy,  she purchased a small house   in Chicago’s West Woodlawn area, at the time a middle-working-class  neighborhood, and an old jalopy to get back and forth to her job. A few  years later she took the city   policeman’s test and passed it with flying colors and joined the force.  Over the years she found herself increasingly overprotective of Don. She  would scrutinize his every mood and give in to his every need. She hadn’t  dated seriously for close to a decade of her children’s lives, and even  now that she had a new boyfriend, a Cook County sheriff’s deputy, she  wouldn’t really allow him around her children. She had recently returned  to school to earn her master’s degree so she could take the lieutenant’s  exam. With the hours Don kept, he rarely seemed to see his mother except  on her days off. Whenever he did manage to bump into her, their  face-to-face encounters usually ended up in shouting matches spanning  everything from his grades to his street life to his blatant disregard for  house rules.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Damn, I needed a few dollars too,” Don said as he put his feet on the  floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He flinched at the cool wood on his bare soles. His young bones creaked as  he bent over to pick up the pair of pants he’d worn the previous day. Out  of the hip pocket he fished half of a blunt. He straightened up and looked  in the large mirror on top of his dresser. He saw a brown-skinned boy just  a shade away from being a man; standing at five foot ten and weighing 173  pounds he wasn’t really skinny, but he wasn’t heavy either. He didn’t have  six-pack abs, but there wasn’t any flab around his middle. His short fade  sported a few waves on the top, but they weren’t really defined because he  didn’t have the patience to sit and brush his hair hour after hour. Strong  peach fuzz was evident around his mouth and under his chin, complementing  his strong facial features. With a heavy sigh he lit the tip of the blunt  with his lighter and took a long pull. He held the smoke in his lungs  until he choked. For his efforts he was rewarded by the instant euphoric  effects of the weed on his system. With his sister in mind he walked down  the short hallway to the top of the staircase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He called, “Rhonda! You want to hit this shit! It might mellow yo  high-strung ass out some!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I don’t think so. You don’t even need to be smoking that stuff in the  house! I don’t even see how you smoke that mess so early in the damn  morning! That’s all you little dummies spend every cent you get your hands  on! I’m leaving you ten dollars on the table. I’ve got to go. I can’t be  late for humanities because of you. Make sure you take your behind to  school too!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The front door slammed as he headed for the bathroom. He pulled his boxers  down and perched on the white porcelain toilet. Leisurely he thumbed  through a Sports Illustrated magazine while he smoked and obeyed nature’s  order to put out the garbage. He wondered what was on the agenda for the  day. He had to laugh at that thought. He already knew the answer—the same  as every other day. Ditching school, hanging out, dodging the police,  trying to come upon money for weed and alcohol, and trying to talk some  young girl out of her panties. Even though it was a school day, attending  was definitely out of the question. He hadn’t been to school in two  months. School was for the winter time. It was spring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After showering and dressing, he devoured half of a box of Cap’n Crunch  and left the house. His first stop was Momma Taylor’s weed spot on Vernon,  the best weed in the neighborhood. Momma Taylor had the biggest bags and  the best green that could be bought for ten dollars. After his purchase he  ducked into the first unlocked hallway he came to and rolled two blunts.  He dumped the contents of the cheap cigars on the carpeted steps of the  hallway. He slid one of the blunts into the top of his sock and pulled his  pant leg back down. He lit the other as he relaxed on the stairs. He  smoked about half of the blunt before putting it out and sliding it into  the band of his Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He then headed to the pool hall. Confidently he pushed open the door and  stepped inside. He began to greet his boys.One hit is all it takes. . . . Author of The Apostles and Triple Take","brand":"One World","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302749819109,"sku":"NP9780345475947","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345475947.jpg?v=1767736766","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/slipping-isbn-9780345475947","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}