Random Family

Jessica’s first date, on the evening of January 23, 1988, with Boy George was actually a double date with Elaine and Angel. George pulls up “in a car that was like the ocean,” according to Lourdes (19). It is a Mercedes-Benz 190. He is very handsome. Lourdes shrewdly claims that she cannot babysit after all once he arrives, in a bid to get George to pay her off. He does, with high-quality cocaine and $1000, which is more than enough to appease her. The money is nothing to him, as his drug trade yields $500,000 a week, but he does express some indignation at Lourdes’s ready willingness to essentially sell her daughter to him. Lourdes’s recollection of that night conveniently leaves off the financial tradeoff, although she does recall having a vision that Jessica should not stay with Boy George if she cannot accept and keep up with his “high, tight, dangerous road” (19).

George takes Jessica, Lourdes, and Jessica’s children to see the movie Eddie Murphy: Raw and treats them to dinner. When he suggests they then go clubbing, Jessica, who has dressed conservatively for the evening, asks to be taken back to Lourdes’s for an outfit change. When she re-emerges in spandex leggings and a low-cut body blouse, George is impressed by her ready adaptability. He takes her to Club 371, his employees’ haunt. The party of four bypasses the line outside and is seated in the VIP section, and the club as a whole is much posher than what Jessica is accustomed to. Everyone in the club is black except them. George, a PuertoRican, prefers not to hire fellow Puerto Ricans, as he believes they are more prone to betray him.

The night ends in$500 suitesat the Loews Glenpoint Hotel. Unlike her other dates, George actually asks Jessica questions and listens to her. He feeds her strawberries in a king-size bed. She confides in him about the years-long sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Cesar’s father. She feels as if her romantic fantasies are coming true: she feels loved. She is most impressed by the fact that George does not try to have sex with her that night: he simply holds her, instead.

When George drops them all back off at Lourdes’s place, Jessica lingers in the car. She feels exhilarated by the gaze of her neighbors as they watch the two of them. George then tells her that he will return in an hour to take Lourdes, Jessica, and Jessica’s children out to eat. He tells Jessica to get everyone ready, and that he does not like to be kept waiting. While Jessica showers, Lourdes puts on a clean t-shirt and puts the children in the clean clothes that she can find, assuming that George will take them to a local place. George then arrives an hour later, in a BMW this time. He surprises them all by taking them to an expensive Cuban restaurant in Manhattan named Victor’s Café. He tells his guests to spare no expense. He buys a street vendor’s entire supply of roses on the way home, and they cascade across Jessica’s lap and at the feet of her daughters, who lay sleeping with full bellies.

Not long after their first date, Jessica pages Boy George from a payphone. When a worker calls her back, Jessica begins an appeal for money, a hackneyed refrain that she has grown accustomed to. George takes the receiver and sternly tells her not to call asking for money. He then sends a car for her. When his worker pulls up to Grande Billiards with Jessica in tow, George comes into the car. Jessica repeats her request for money, and George sharply repeats his command that she not ask him for money. Jessica snaps back with a “fuck you.” Although George recollects that he should have beaten her, he instead orders the driver to return both of them to Lourdes’s place. He notices that Jessica is wearing the same jeans that Lourdes was when they went out to Victor’s Café. Amazed by their poverty, he gives Jessica a polo shirt from the Gap.

On George’s next visit, he is disgusted by the squalor in which Jessica lives. He then has his workers deliver so much food and supplies to the apartment that it will not fit in the cupboards or the refrigerator. Nothing, not even a flea collar for their dog, Scruffy, is overlooked. 

This chapter introduces an important character: Rocco. Rocco is half-Italian, nine years older than Cesar, and with thick eyebrows and a repertoire of animated expressions. The first time that Cesar and Rocco met, Cesar is twelve years old and crying on the stoopdue to a toothache. This surprises Rocco, because Cesar has a rough-and-tumble reputation. Throughout their years-long friendship, however, Rocco never sees Cesar cry again.

The friendship between the two young men takes a while to blossom, as Rocco is training as a boxer, busy with a girlfriend, and running with a crew of young men. On a summer night during the summer after Cesar’s graduation from sixth grade, Rocco is going to a night pool with a group of young men who are carrying gunsbecause they are a group of Puerto Ricans heading to a predominantly-Dominican neighborhood. Cesar asks to come along, lying and telling Rocco that he is sixteen. By the spring of 1987, as things are disintegrating in Lourdes’s home, the young men are steadily hanging out: undertaking juvenile pranks and petty crimes, eating meals together, and going to Rocco’s boxing gym together.

Rocco’s role model is his uncle Vinny, a longtime heroin user, and a fairly successful career criminal with throat cancer. Rocco credits Vinny with raising him to be streetwise, while Cesar credits Rocco with raising him to be a criminal. By the time that Big Daddy leaves Lourdes, Cesar and Rocco have christened themselves 2DOWN and have begun committing more serious crimes. Cesar, therefore, does not make it to junior high.

2DOWN begins hanging out with other boys in crews named Showtime and ABC. While 2DOWNare in Echo Park one fall afternoon, an argument devolves into a shooting spree, and a two-year-old child is grazed by a bullet. When the police begin questioning neighborhood boys, Lourdes moves the boys to Cesar’s father’s place in Spanish Harlem. However, Rocco and Cesar soon return because Rocco fears that Cesar’s father, who has an outstanding warrant himself, might turn them in in exchange for getting his warrant cleared. Rocco then talks to the police and convinces Cesar to do the same.

When two Showtime boys are later arrested, Rocco gains a reputation for being a snitch. This results in Cesar and Roccohaving a falling out. Cesar, however, continues hanging out with Showtime and ABC. For a brief time, he carries a snub-nose .38mm gun, but when the police confiscate it, the older boys deem him a less worthy companion.

By that winter, Boy George’s gifts to the family have dwindled. Jessica, refusing to give up on her fantasy of being rescued, pages Boy George constantly. By the spring of 1988, George finally calls her back and gives her a job as a millworker, processing shipments of heroin. Cesar helps Elaine bag groceries at C-Town in exchange for a portion of her wages, and her boyfriend, Angel, goes to work at George’s mill after being arrested on a drug charge. Milagros works for George as well. George refuses to hire Cesar because he is too young.

Cesar begins to wander from his block, which is full of troubles and hassles for him. Sometimes, he rides his bike to visit Hype, a boy he met at a party. Hype is a member of The Andrews Posse (TAP), whose territory is at the other end of Tremont. Cesar is also on the lookout for new girls. Unlike boys who are much more relatively free to wander, girls tend to stay tethered to their blocks.

One afternoon that fall, Cesar rides his bike to the west side of Tremont. Wearing a red leather jacket with a fur-trimmed collar, he catches the eye of Coco, who sits in her best friend Dorcas’s mother’s third-floor apartment, looking out the window. Like Cesar, Coco is looking for distraction. Not a church girl nor a schoolgirl, she was not raised by the street, either. She fancies herself tougher than she actually is. She is a friendly, talkative girl nicknamed Shorty because she is short, or Lollipop, because she tucks lollipops in the topknot of her ponytail. Here, LeBlanc intimates that, in other apartment windows, there are grown women—mothers in their twenties, grandmothers in their thirties, and still older women who are weary due to poverty and close their curtains. Unlike these older women, Coco “courts consequence” and vies for what she wants—the light-skinned, well-dressed, handsome and sexually-appealing Cesar (28).

After a few failed attempts at making contact, including an instance in which Coco’s boyfriend, Wishman, whisks her away, Coco happens upon Cesar as he bursts out of a neighborhood pool hall, in pursuit of a man who has pistol-whipped him. Coco, a member of TAP’s auxiliary, knows that boys need girls to serve as decoys at times like this: police are less likely to stop a boy who is accompanied by a girl. Coco then grabs the arm of a boy her sister used to like, and Cesar notices her. While the pistol-whipper gets away, the incident nonetheless relieves frustration, gives the teens something new to talk about, and opens up a connection between Coco and Cesar. This small flare of hope causes Coco to break up with Wishman.

Although Coco lives in the heart of the inner city, her surroundings feel more like a village to her, with her mother’s apartment as its emotional center. Foxy, her mother, works full-time, and her stepfather,Richie, is a heroin addict. Coco loves the street, while her older sister, Iris, is a homebody. Iris, as a result, gets stuck with the majority of the housework, as Foxy manages a clothing store and doesn’t get home until 10:00 or 11:00PM.That fall, however, Foxy is being more lenient with Coco because Iris, who is pregnant at fifteen, is threatening to move out and thereby leave Foxy unable to work as many hours. Iris, longing to get away from the chaos and fighting at her mother’s, and the unemployed and drug-addicted Richie, is eager to find respite. Iris resents and dislikes both her biological father and Richie.

Coco, on the other hand, is favored by both her biological father and Richie, and is more prone to emphasize what she perceives as Richie’s positive aspects: his handsomeness, his light skin, his blue eyes, the way that his appearance matches with Foxy’s green eyes and platinum-blond hair, and the pleasure and happiness that he brings to Foxy. Richie, in turn, acts as a surrogate father to Coco, counseling her against getting pregnant the way Iris has.

At this point, LeBlanc provides some insights about the psychology of mobility within Coco’s community. LeBlanc asserts that Coco understands that “success [is] less about climbing than about not falling down” (32). Because of the lack of viable options for mobility, Coco and those around her measure improvement in “microscopic increments of better-than-whatever-was-worse” (32). For example, fighting with family inside the home is better than fighting on the street, for everyone to hear. Heroin is bad, but crack is worse. Although hackneyed and vacuous truisms about self-improvement abound, it is these tangible gradations of improvement and relative merit that assume primacy. Within this context, Richie constantly pumps Coco with vague, inconsequential advice for self-improvement, while executing ill-fated and unsuccessful ruses to obtain money. Ultimately, he relies on Foxy for money. Sometimes, Coco hands over her allowance to him to stop witnessing any fights between Foxy and Riche about money, and/or Richie’s heroin addiction. That summer, her plan for surpassing her circumstance consists totally and solely of a relationship with Cesar.

Here, LeBlanc parses more details of the neighborhood’s sexual economy. Coco, being known as a virgin (despite the fact that she once slept with a boy named Kodak), is a hot commodity within the sexual economy of her community. Her perceived virginity makes her appealing to Cesar. Her reputation as a virgin, her curvy figure and sassy attitude, as well as her pubescent age, make her a highly sought-after target among the men and boys in her neighborhood. The flirtations and catcalls that she receives on the street posit her as an object to satisfy the virility of the men around her, whose lasciviousness is readily received and accepted as the masculine norm. Older women, however, and police, demean the sexuality of Coco and other young women like her. Coco notices that the older women’s warnings and meddling consist of condescension and jealous repression, instead of sensitive counsel. Within this context, Cesar bets his friend B.J. $100 that he can take Coco’s virginity within two weeks.

Coco and Cesar finally make definitive contact at a bodega on Adams Avenue. Their exchange is flirtatiously contentious. Coco soon begins to cut school. After developing genuine feelings for Coco, Cesar defaults on his bet with B.J. His relationship with Coco takes him away from robbing and mugging, although Coco is not explicitly trying to reform or rescue him. Their flirtation progresses into kissing, and then sex. Cesar enjoys Coco’s consistently light, silly, adventurous, and happy disposition, and unabashedly introduces her to his friends. He even finds a befitting male companion for Coco’s best friend, Dorcas.

Soon, Cesar takes the plunge of introducing Coco to his mother, Lourdes. One day, he brings her to the family apartment. Lourdes can tell that Cesar truly cares for Coco. During their first conversation, Lourdes criticizes Coco’s eyeliner as a gesture of inclusion. After a slightly gruffbut ultimately welcoming exchange, Lourdes takes Coco under her wing. The two women become “coconspirators on the subject of Cesar, whom they both [love]” (36-37). In their relationship, Lourdes finds a fresh audience for her stories, while Coco finds a seasoned advisor to help her through the baffling turns that her life is about to take.

Additionally, Coco meets Jessica on that day. Coco thinks that Jessica—with her light skin, perfect body, expensive perfume, sexy smile, and thigh-high boots—is the most beautiful girl she has ever seen. She admires Jessica’s down-to-earth attitude, because she knows that a girl with all of Jessica’s assets could easily and understandably be a snob. At this point, Jessica has become one of Boy George’s girlfriends. She regularly disappears with George for days at a time. George has already taken her to Puerto Rico and Disney World. No longer traveling by foot, she comes and goes by cab. Cesar, intuitively sensing that Jessica’s lifestyle, should she become an influence on Coco, could change and ruin Coco, tells Coco that he doesn’t want her to hang out with Jessica. 

This chapter focuses on Boy George’s rough-and-tumble origins. His earliest memories include being burned by hot water during a kitchen-sink bath, watching his cat get hit and killed by a car, and, with his brother Enrique, watching his apartment burn due to an electrical fire.

George’s father left when George was six months old. His mother moved the family from apartment to apartment frequently. He therefore remembers no childhood friends. While Enrique was sickly and timid, George was solid and decisive. Not emotionally fragile nor prone to heartbreak like both his mother and Enrique, George was instead stoic and steely. Tough and masculine, George quickly grasped the high stakes inherent to life in the ghetto, and counseled Enrique to toughen up, be street-smart, and “stop being a little faggot boy” (38). George also taught Enrique how to read.

Rita, prone to unpredictable fits of rage, would beat her sons—sometimes with an extension cord. George was ten when he ran away for the first time. Enrique dropped blankets and clean clothes through the window to the sidewalk for him, and George wandered around Hunts Point and St. Mary’s Park, sleeping in abandoned cars and a bus. Although he must have been terrified, George recounts this time as an opportunity to grow up and become responsible.

When George was twelve, Rita requested a PINS (Parent in Need of Supervision) from family court. A PINS gives a judge the final say in regard to a child’s care and discipline, and is one of the early markers of a child bound for trouble. As a result of this request, George was sent to a diagnostic center called Pleasantville for three months. He was then transferred to St. Cabrini’s, a group home in New Rochelle, New York. He stayed there for three years. He remembers those three years as the most important years of his life. He welcomed the home’s regimented routine, which was a sharp contrast against his mother’s mood swings and unpredictable violence, as well as the male counselor’s companionship. He credits the home with turning him into a man. It was there that he internalized the codes of masculinity, such as not showing weakness or emotion to other men. While there, he attended local schools. Instead of remaining in the shadows, like the other poor and of-color young men he was housed with, “he deployed his sharp sense of humor to make himself a place in his class, and he became known as a practical joker” (39). He joined the New Rochelle High School football team. When his notoriety in the area grew, he would always bring his St. Cabrini friends out to the exclusive parties that he got invited to. A counselor remembered him for this displayed loyalty.

When George returned to his mother’s place, he briefly attended the local high school, but quickly dropped out. This, however, did not indicate a lack of ambition: by his own reckoning, George was born with a surplus of irrepressible ambition to obtain exactly what he had set his sights upon. His first real opportunity, however, was a result of both happenstance and luck: he asked the local, flamboyantly-eccentric cocaine dealer for a job. That dealer was named Joey Navedo. Joey, with his flashy cars, plenitude of money, and free-wheeling savvy, captivated George. It was Joey Navedo who christened him Boy George. George was able to jockey within this first jobfor various, higher-ranking positions, and soon switched from dealing coke to dealing dope (heroin). Dealing heroin yielded greater monetary returns in less timeand incurred lesser jail time for those who were caught. He began his heroin trade with a position as a lookout in an operation managed by the Torres brothers, who had a monopoly on the South Bronx market. Soon, he was a manager who oversaw the sale of a brand of heroin called Blue Thunder at a lucrative yet desolate and dangerous spot on 166th and Washington.

Disciplined, focused, shrewd, and sober, George soon built himself a reputation of reliability and trustworthiness. By the time he was only seventeen, a turf war which resulted in an innocent bystander being killed cemented George’s reputation as a formidable kingpin. He soon brought some of his old St. Cabrini friends in on the business. Ricocheting between a series of girlfriends and fathering two children with two different girls—Vada and Isabel—George eventually settled in with Vada—designating her as his wife. Meanwhile, Joey Navedo continued to school George on the extravagances of their lifestyle, taking him to a New Jersey Theme Park, introducing him to Victor’s Café (the upscale Cuban restaurant to which he would later bring Jessica on their first date), introducing him to his jeweler, and initiating him into the world of luxury cars.

When the D.E.A., in conjunction with the New York Police Drug Task Force, took down the Torres brothers in June 1987, Boy George moved shrewdly and quickly to fill the void in the market that they left. He set up a processing mill, staffed it with one of his girlfriends named Miranda, a friend named Rascal, one of Rascal’s girlfriends, and an older Jamaican man named 10-4. Within a day, 166th and Washington re-opened for business under Boy George’s new brand: Obsession. 10-4 quickly became the operation’s right-hand man. Boy George remained close with Joey Navedo, and they became entrepreneurial allies. However, unbeknownst to George, Joey was also serving as a double-agent informant for the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force and the DEA. While Obsession boomed and George’s horde of money and luxury cars grew, Joey steadily fed the DEA information on George and his illegal dealings.

At this point, LeBlanc reveals some key features of the field within which Boy George works. During the 1980s, the bosses of Chinese social associations dominated a large share of the New York heroin market. Their social associations were known as tongs. Dealers at George’s business normally purchased their supply through middlemen, as relationships with direct sources were rare. In contrast to popular imagery around the drug trade, many dealers scraped by, blew their meager earnings on frivolities or the drug product itself, and regularly failed to make livable money. Boy George was an anomaly in this world: for a time, he possessed the shrewdness, ruthlessness, and luck needed in order to attain huge amounts of money and the lifestyle that came with it.

In April 1988, George’s supply ran low. One of his Chinese sources, a man named Ryan, was also running low. Simultaneously, a young Puerto Rican man named Dave introduced George to a man named Pirate. Dave claimed that Pirate could help George with his supply. George invited the Chinese into the deal, and each contributed $300,000 to get more heroin. Although heavily-armed men from both drug outfits surrounded the building in which the deal was to go down, the deal soured: Pirate entered the building with the money, and then made off with it through a hidden exit. This situation could have easily devolved into a shootout with many casualties, but George handled it astutely. He reimbursed the Chinese their $300,000, to his own loss, and accepted that he should have cased the building more carefully.

According to George’s friend Rascal, George drove Dave to the Henry Hudson Parkway and shot him in the head. If George had not done this, the Chinese would have come after George. Rascal also claimed that George hired a man named Taz to get rid of Pirate, and that Pirate later went missing. George’s handling of this situation opened the doorway to direct dealings with the Chinese drug bosses. George and his Chinese association, which he privately called Fried Rice, quickly honed their operations into a well-oiled machine. Once their routines took root, George assigned the responsibility to Rascal and Rascal’s worker, named Danny. In turn, 10-4 supervised Rascal and Danny.

At this point, LeBlanc explains the day-to-day workings of the George’s operation, explaining the role of each type of worker as well as the elaborate set of both explicit and implicit codes of conduct that governed his drug trade and its evasion of both the police and potential robbers.She also tells us that the mills were mobile. George rented various apartments, or rooms of apartments, belonging to his acquaintances or workers, for anywhere from a week to several months. The mills would move locations when the apartments got “hot” and attracted too much human traffic, generated enough fumes to become detected by neighbors, or when the police stopped responding to bribery or threats.

By the spring of 1988, Boy George’s profits had increased by an extra $100,000 for every brick of heroin. It was at this point that George hired Jessica. Jessica, although desperate for money, truly had her eye on George. 

This chapter sheds more light on Jessica’s life as one of Boy George’s women. Her initial employment by George is as a millworker. The first apartment she works in impresses her with its carpeting, kitchen set, bedroom set, and large TV. In it, two large glass tables are pushed together for processing the heroin. The tables are flanked by garbage cans filled with lighter fluid in case of a police raid. A multitude of firearms—.357s, .38s, a .45, Uzis, an automatic shotgun, and a Mossberg—lie on the table, in case of robberies. LeBlanc reveals that many of the millworkers are women who are somehow connected to the male employees and have been hired by word of mouth. Accordingly, George holds the men accountable for any woman they might bring into the business. The millworkers work like an assembly line to crush the bricks, weigh out the mannitol (a substance with which the heroin is mixed), measure the heroin, grind it until it is sufficiently fine, mix it with mannitol, and then finally pour it into glassines stamped with the Obsession label. Because potent heroin is toxic, many of the workers clear out of the room during the final stages of its packaging, and many wear surgical masks. If the supply runs low, bags are made larger in order to jump-start sales. But when business picks up, the bags get smaller and the heroin gets weaker. However, Obsession enjoys popularity because of its exceptional purity—it’s 87 percent pure heroin.

When George isn’t around, the table feels intimate and cozy. The women play music and gossip. One woman might go into the kitchen and cook a meal for everyone. However, when George arrives, the ambience shifts dramatically. While some managers opt to keep themselves safe by remaining anonymous and shrouded in mystery, George hovers over his workers openly, and uses bribery and threats as a management style. He imposes a $300 penalty for tardiness, and fires workers after one absence, although he also often re-hires them. On the flipside, he uses incentives such as fully-paid vacations to Puerto Rico and Disneyland for the best workers and table managers.

On Jessica’s first day, George’s ex-girlfriend Miranda is managing the table. Miranda finds Jessica, with her slow pace and complaints about the smell of the heroin, to be a baffling hire and unremarkable person. However, Jessica soon gets Miranda temporarily fired by telling George that Miranda and some of the other women were making fun of George’s taste for silk shirts. When Miranda is re-hired, she resolves to keep a closer eye on Jessica.

Jessica’s stint as a millworker is short-lived, however; she lasts less than a week before being promoted to errand girl. George also starts to regularly see her romantically: she is attractive, attentive without being overly nosy, quick to bounce back from his disparagements, and astute enough to adjust to the wider contexts surrounding George’s life and work. George also provides Jessica with housing, moving her into apartments used as mills when they get too hot, so that she can cool them down. Jessica shops for groceries and picks up his dry cleaning. She is sometimes seen with him in publicbut is more often left alone, during which times she talks on the phone, cleans, waits for George, and watches television.

George often travels to Puerto Rico, where his wife, Vada, and his son live. Sometimes, he even brings Jessica along on his trips there. Vada, suspicious, snipes at Jessica.

George’s domestic rules are as strict as his business ones: there are to be absolutely no visitors. His phone or beeper numbers are never to be given out. He answers to no one about his whereabouts or his real name. Callers asking for him under his various pseudonyms (Tony, Manny, or John) are never to be given any information—messages are to be taken from them, and that’s it.

Jessica, familiar with the routines of deception, bluffing, and secrecy, is a natural as an errand girl. She is gregarious, polite with delivery boys, pleasing on the telephone, organized, and able to meet George’s stringent standards for cleanliness. For the first few weeks of her employment, she receives an allowance of $1,000 or more per week. George spoils her with customized gold and gemstone jewelry and a belt-buckle with Jessica spelled out in studded emeralds. In order to differentiate her from the impoverished hordes, who all look alike by dint of necessity and circumstance, George views Jessica as a customized object.

He takes her shopping and instructs her that nothing under $50 is to be purchased. He does not demand sex after buying her things. However, when he is in the mood for sex, he makes her meticulously act out the striptease scene from the movie 9 ½ Weeks, as well as certain scenes from hardcore porn films. His attentions are volatile: he could shop all day with her and spend all night with her at a club, and then expect her to stay locked down and alone for a week. He could play the role of doting husband in the morning and then be growling “Get out of here, I don’t want to see your ugly fucking face” by the afternoon (52). Jessica finds herself unable to both predict and appease him, and it is precisely this unpredictability to which George is training her to acquiesce.

Despite this unpredictability, Jessica sees her circumstances as improved. She has a place to live and her own space and things, and “being one of George’s girls was as good as being the wife of an ordinary boy” (52). All Jessica ever wanted was to be married and have a house with a yard that was full of children. The fathers of her children, however, have rejected her, and even her children cry for others when they come visit her: Britanny and Stephanie cry for Milagros, and Little Star cries for Lourdes.

George regularly beats Jessica and kicks her out. During these times, she often stays with Milagros, who is now living in an apartment rented by George in Riverdale. Milagros has quit her job at the check cashers to raise Britanny and Stephanie. She scrapes by on welfare and by working odd jobs for Puma or George. When Jessica is there, they load the girls into strollers and go to the nearby twenty-four-hour mall. Jessica indulges her love for makeup and perfumes, and splurges on outfits and ribbons for the girls. When Jessica flirts with Milagros, Milagros shoos her away, but is obviously pleased. But whenever George is ready to take Jessica back, she leaves, rationalizing that she is simply doing the same thing that her mother did to her. When Miranda spots Jessica—with her thickened thighs and breasts, beauty-parlor hair, and twenty-two-karat-gold Boy George nameplate—in a Manhattan club, she understands that Jessica has been promoted again: she is now one of Boy George’s mistresses.

During the summer of 1988, Rocco puts George in touch with Panama, a boxing trainer; George has just had a bloody run-in with a skilled fighter, and he wants to beef up his skills. George soon begins showering Panama with expensive gifts.

George’s new fitness regimen leaves him with even less time for Jessica, and he has Danny step in as his surrogate. He also does not hide his other women from her. Here, LeBlanc provides insights on the use of sex as currency. Girls give sex to men in exchange for things such as sneakers, a pack of Pampers, cigarettes, or a take-out meal. Sex is also a man’s right and his main girlfriend’s burden. It is also something that pits women against each other. Jessica regularly calls George’s other girls and tells them not to contact “her man” or “her husband,” even though George becomes infuriated with her when she does so. She steals women’s numbers off of his phone while he is in the shower and calls them, asking for “Georgie” in her sexiest voice, and telling them that he said she could call him there if she needed him.

Even though the penalty for breaking George’s rules is a beating, Jessica breaks his rules regularly. When he beats her seriously, he brings her to stay with Rita, his mother, and also brings her to a doctor, whom he pays in cash. “If I can trust you, I can kill you,” he is fond of saying (56). Taz becomes George’s full-time hitman/enforcer after Taz successfully kills a man named Todd who was planning to rob George’s old friend, Snuff.

At this point, Jessica’s friends are not allowed to call her, and George only comes to see Jessica late at night, if at all. George would have given Jessica more money if she asked, but Jessica was more interested in securing his love. LeBlanc then foreshadows with this statement: “It would be years before [George] understood that Jessica’s desire for attention had the strength of a weed pushing through cement” (56).

Late that summer, Jessica is staying in one of George’s apartments at the bottom of a flight of stairs at Henwood Place. The apartment is occasionally used as a drop-off for gun shipments. A gun runner named Wayne drives the guns to the Bronx. Wayne is scheduled to make a delivery while George is away in Puerto Rico, and Jessica has been instructed to stay and receive the shipment. However, Jessica goes clubbing with her thirteen-year-old cousin, Daisy. Daisy, coming into herself as an attractive young lady, is captivated by Jessica’s blend of charisma, beauty, and generosity. The two women go to the Herpes Triangle—a triad of clubs clustered beneath the subway tracks on Westchester Avenue.

When Jessica misses the delivery, Wayne pages George, who has just arrived at the airport. George hunts Jessica down and beats her severely. When he commands Danny to cut off Jessica’s hair, Danny lies and says that he does not have scissors. Danny gently pulls Jessica into the apartment and tells Jessica that George treats her very badly, and that he wishes he could take her and her children away from him.

Still, Jessica persists in breaking house rules. When a gold belt buckle, studded with diamonds that spell out Snuff’s name, goes missing, George pins the blame on Jessica’s friend Beatriz after interrogating all of the possible suspects. Dean, one of his workers, would later testify that George beat Jessica and decided to have Beatriz killed, using Dean as bait. Jessica is instructed to call Beatriz, while Dean is to take Beatriz out. It is never proven whether Jessica actually made the call or not. Ultimately, Dean picks up Beatriz in one of George’s company cabs. He gives her and the driver cocaine, and then shames her for sniffing too much in front of the driver. He persuades her to get out of the car in Ferry Point Park, where Taz waits in the shadows. Taz shoots her twice from behind, steadies her spasming body, and then shoots her again and again. She begs Dean not to leave her, but they abandon her in the park, and a man named Moby is later sent back to make sure that she has died.

Jessica falls into inconsolable hysterics and Danny fears that she will hurt herself. George visits, but soon tires of Jessica’s raw display of emotions. Danny tries to comfort her, and the two of them begin an affair that night. Jessica is soon questioned by homicide detectives, but nothing comes of it: drug-related deaths are not a police priority.

Years later, during his testimony at Taz’s trial, Rascal will remember the growing atmosphere of fear within the Obsession organization that arose after Beatriz’s murder. George routinely reminds workers that “a Taz special” can be easily arranged for anyone that falls short, and Rascal intimates that while almost everyone is subject to these threats, Jessica is targeted in particular. 

By December 1988, Lourdes is facing eviction from her apartment on Tremont. Robert has moved to Florida and become a Jehovah’s Witness, and Elaine and Angel have moved in with Angel’s mother. In a gesture of support, George gives Angel a brick of heroin on consignment. However, instead of diluting the heroin and bagging it for a 120% profit, the family immediately unloads it for $30,000 and goes on a spending spree. Lourdes marries Que-Que legally and spends part of the money on two gold bands. The two then move into a new tenement apartment on Vyse street. Although it isn’t much of an improvement, it boosts Lourdes’s morale. She then squanders the money on a weeklong engagement party and cocaine.

George, furious at the family’s wastefulness and short-sightedness, claims that he would have killed them all if they weren’t Jessica’s family. He avoids Lourdes’s place from then on, recognizing that if Lourdes was that reckless with Jessica’s connection to George, she wouldn’t think twice about setting George himself up. George also wants Jessica to stay away from Vyseand takes to occasionally locking her into the apartment on Henwood from the outside. He allows Jessica to sparingly visit Serena, but sees children, with their lack of filter and ability to unknowingly snitch, as a liability.

While Lourdes does not even know where Jessica lives, Jessica does entrust Cesar with her address. One day, Cesar visits her without notice, and he sees her bruises. Jessica plays it off, knowing that Cesar is reckless enough, and protective enough of Jessica, to try to challenge George.

By this time, Cesar has a reputation on the street. He has reunited with Roccoand has formed a crew with Rocco and two other boys, named Mighty and Tito. They call themselves FMP—Four Man Posse. Together, they play a game named Knock-Out: one boy would pick an oblivious passer-by and another boy would have to knock him out. Whichever boy succeeded would be crowned the winner. They commit robberies and heavily arm themselves.

One night, Boy George invites Cesar to play pool at Grande Billiards. Cesar feels that being in Boy George’s company is like being in the gangster movies that he loves. Cesar asks George for a job. George refuses, and counsels the boy to go to school instead.

Meanwhile, Coco spends a good amount of time with Lourdes, cooking and cleaning. Lourdes is still prone to dark moods and fits of anger, and both Coco and Little Star know how to navigate them. The best days, however, are when Lourdes is cooking. A gifted chef who doesn’t use shortcuts like others in the building, Lourdes prides herself on being able to feed her family and her neighbors. Her mortar and pestle, gifted to her by her mother when she was fifteen years old, is her most prized possession.

Coco, sexually assertive without being nasty, often spends whole mornings and afternoons in bed with Cesar, making love and playing Nintendo. Coco relishes rainy days because they keep Cesar inside, with her.

At this point, LeBlanc offers insights about the inner workings of FMP. While blood family comes with its own complex, inherited generational problems and allegiances, street crews have the advantage of being able to create and resolve their own conflicts with other crews and authoring their own internal rules. Girls are not allowed to impinge upon their brotherhood, and even if an FMP member falls in love, the crew comes first. They view women as expendable. Cesar’s favorite movie is Scarface, and he identifies with Al Pacino’s gangster character. He treats his FMP mates like Pacino’s character treats his gangster brothers: with absolute loyalty. While all of the boys profess this loyalty to each other, only Cesar and Mighty truly take it to heart.

Here, LeBlanc introduces a new character: Gladys. Gladys is a new girl that George has taken up with. She lives with her Catholic parents in a single-family home in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx: “a straight-up Little House on the Prairie neighborhood”, as George calls it (64). She works as a teller in a Manhattan bank, and George goads Jessica by saying that he enjoys Gladys’s ladylike company. Gladys believes that George’s money comes from his father, whom he claims works in construction.

After snubbing Jessica and taking Gladys on a trip to Hawaii, sweeping Gladys up on a trip to San Francisco to buy a pair of Nikes that aren’t in stock in New York, and taking Gladys out on the town, Jessica puts down her foot when George plans on taking Gladys to a black-tie company Christmas party, insisting that he must take Jessica instead. Jessica dolls herself up, slips into a white satin gown with matching gloves, and is heralded at the party as Mrs. Boy George, much to the chagrin of Gladys. The party is extremely extravagant, with raffle prizes including a tricked-out Mitsubishi Galant, $10,000, a trip to Hawaii, and a trip to Disney World. Door prizes include a home entertainment center, a Macy’s gift certificate, and a night on the town. The menu includes luxury foods and $12,000 worth of Moet champagne. Fights break out and Jessica fantasizes about throwing Gladys overboard, citing George’s violent influence on her. The seating is arranged by drug spot, with managers sitting next to their pitchers, dealers, and other workers. A professional photographer roams, and unwittingly collects photographic evidence that will be indispensable for piecing together the inner workings of the Obsession organization. The party, too, has its own calculated purpose for George: pleasure reinforces loyalty.

Later, George whisks Jessica, Coco, and Cesar away to the Poconos. There, they stay at a lavish resort. The men tackle the slopes together, while Jessica and Coco joyfully exhaust themselves on the bunny slope. Coco readily recognizes why Cesar bears such unflagging loyalty for Jessica, with her characteristic warmth and easy intimacy. Cesar and Coco enjoy the only honeymoon they will ever have in their luxury suite, staying up all night carousing and making love. LeBlanc intimates that they are only fourteen years old, at this point, and will stay in love for many years to come.

Cesar has returned to school as a condition of his probation, following his conviction for a robbery that he did not commit. Although he himself cannot drink because alcohol would disrupt his boxing regimen, George forces everyone to drink in the car on the way to the Poconos, in order to celebrate Cesar’s return to school. He tells them that whoever doesn’t drink will be kicked out on the side of the road. Jessica warns the others not to test George, as he has left Jessica on the side of the road before. Jessica can see that Cesar doesn’t like the champagne, so she drinks both his and hers, and then vomits out of the car window. 

It is early spring 1989. George has placed Jessica in his mother’s old apartment on Morris Avenue, in which his brother Enrique also lives.Jessica feels honored that George has let him join his family, and she has also reclaimed her twins from Milagros.

Enrique and Jessica become friends, and Enrique sees that Jessica tries very hard to please George. George, however, mocks Jessica’s romantic gestures and calls her derogatory names. Jessica, in turn, takes her rage and frustration out on her twins. George, too, treats the twin girls roughly, crossing the line from horseplay into more serious cruelty. He also routinely goes too far while play-fighting with Jessica.

George taunts Jessica, telling her that her own family has abandoned her, and when she insists that she still has her old friend Lillian, he seduces Lillian. Jessica retaliates by sleeping with Lillian’s boyfriend, and then George beats her up. However, he does not kick her out, and Jessica makes it to one continuous month of living with him—the longest stretch yet. Unfortunately, that April is the same month that a federal judge approves a warrant for the FBI to install a wiretap.

The wiretap mostly picks up Jessica’s phone conversations. She harasses and obsesses over George’s other women and continues her affairs with both Danny and Puma.

George finally proposes to Jessica, and Jessica has a formal portrait taken. In late April, George is making arrangements for another shipment of heroin when Rascal calls. Jessica speaks with him. Their conversation is picked up by the wiretap, and it also legally qualifies her as a coconspirator in George’s business. Harsh drug laws determined prison sentences by drug weight, and, unfortunately for Jessica, she is pegged as a coconspirator in one of the biggest deals of George’s life:five days after the phone call, George and another dealer go in on a deal for 32 bricks of premium China white heroin, for which they pay $1.1 million. Each brick is worth $175,000 on the street.

One of George’s workers named Moby is arrested. Then, Rascal and Danny are arrested with over ten thousand Obsession glassines. When 10-4 pages all of the managers of all of George’s stores, they have all been arrested. 10-4 then calls the Morris apartment the next morning, while George sleeps with Jessica. DEA agents are already parked in the apartment’s parking lot, posing as Con Edison repairmen, while others wait and monitor the wiretap in plain clothes. They pick up 10-4’s conversation with George, in which 10-4 tells George to meet him beneath a nearby streetlight with plenty of money, and ready to run.

George dresses in a rush, grabs $7,500, and instructs Jessica to burn his photographs. George is arrested the minute that he arrives on the street. Jessica and Enrique are arrested when the agents come in to search the apartment. 

At the beginning of this chapter, George is being detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. Meanwhile, Vada, George’s wife, absconds. She and his son are never heard from again. Federal agents confiscate George’s money and property through federal forfeiture laws. 10-4 cooperates with the authorities, and snitches on George.

Jessica, however, remains steadfastly loyal to George. She endures the cumbersome and lengthy process of visiting him every day. During her visits, she feeds him news from the street: “who planned to plead guilty, who else might rat” (77). Jessica also somewhat neglects her children, while simultaneously dressing them up like dolls and photographing them. She uses George’s money to take her girlfriends out for wild nights on the town and resumes her flirtations with various men. Daisy, her cousin, becomes her sidekick. Also, although George prefers that Jessica live with his mother, Rita, the two women do not get along, and Jessica moves back to the Lourdes’s dilapidated apartment.

A network connects prison to the street, however, and George soon learns of Jessica’s escapades. Displeased, he confronts her, and she denies all accusations. In August, four months after his arrest, George is transferred to Otisville, a holding facility upstate. Jessica can therefore only visit him once a month. During this time, Jessica privately doubts her own loyalty and George’s worthiness, but she still gets six tattoos that mark her as his, at his command: as if she is “trying to convince herself of love from the outside in” (81).

Meanwhile, George receives copies of the wiretapped calls in order to prepare for his trial. He therefore learns everything that she has been saying on the phone: “her intimate exchanges with Danny and Puma; uncensored conversations with girlfriends about sex and life with George” (81). Furious, George openly fantasizes about delivering Jessica’s body, cut up into pieces, to Lourdes. He obsessively plays Jessica’s phone calls in his cell, and, through his connections, makes unauthorized calls to her, which she does not answer. 

This chapter focuses mostly on Cesar. By this time, Cesar has gone from merely acting like a hoodlum to being one. He has become the acknowledged leader of his street crew (FMP), which includes his friends Mighty, Rocco, and Tito. Their crimes have grown more serious, including brutal street robbery and even murder. Cesar follows Boy George’s example of focus and ruthlessness, and even George’s letters of caution from prison do not deter him from his path.

He soon impregnates Coco, while also seeing another girl, of whom Coco becomes aware. Shortly thereafter, he is sent to Spoffard Hall, the juvenile detention center at which he has already served time, on a conviction stemming from a shootout that FMP was involved in.

Meanwhile, Jessica is arrested while she waits in Papito’s car. Papito is one of George’s colleagues, who is trying to market some of George’s un-confiscated heroin. When the police arrest Jessica, Papito, and the others in the car, they find 109 heroin glassines, as well as “an annotated copy of George’s indictment in Papito’s pocket. Scribbled instructions—‘Quiet their mouths—[head] a list that included codefendants, the U.S. attorneys handling the case, and the judge” (86).

While Cesar stays imprisoned, he writes simultaneously tender and controlling letters to Coco: they are full of both reminiscences and harsh demands regarding the proper care of his unborn child. Cesar soon learns that Coco is romantically seeing a young man named Kodak, and his letters become full of hatred and threats of murder and brutality. He claims to only care for his unborn child, and not Coco herself.

In April, Coco gives birth to a healthy baby girl named Mercedes Antonia Santos. Cesar increases his written demands about the baby’s care as well as his violent threats against Coco. Coco quickly resumes her life in the streets after giving birth. When Cesar calls Foxy’s home looking for Coco, Foxy reluctantly lies about Coco’s whereabouts in order to cover for her, while she resentfully takes care of Mercedes. Coco eventually acquiesces to Foxy’s desire to be free of childcare, and begins to bring Mercedes to Lourdes’s place, where she and Jessica, who is busying herself with research for Boy George’s upcoming case, become more well-acquainted. 

By August 1990, George has returned to MCC, the correctional facility in Manhattan. He helps Jessica obtain a fake paralegal pass, which grants her legal access, without restriction on visiting hours, to George. She sometimes visits all day: they talk, exchange intimacies, and have sex.

Meanwhile, Cesar has been transferred to a correctional facility named Harlem Valley. Because he is serving time as a juvenile, he enjoys much more lax security standards than George.

George’s trial begins. 10-4 delivers damning and matter-of-fact testimony. Agents, officers, and experts also testify. LeBlanc states that the Obsession case would continue for years. Taz, Snuff, and two of the Chinese suppliers are apprehended and successfully tried. Papito and Joey Navedo (George’s old mentor and FBI informant) end up dead.

That summer, Jessica, her children, Lourdes, and Que-Que move into an apartment on Mount Hope Place, which runs parallel to the familiar stretch of Tremont. The apartment belongs to Felix, the older man from Tremont that Jessica has known since girlhood. Felix invites them to stay with him after Lourdes faces eviction. Jessica also begins a sexual relationship with Tito.

Jessica and Coco grow closer, although Jessica’s moods can unpredictably vary from warm and generous to punishing and cruel. Jessica meets Mike Tyson when he testifies during George’s trial, and Mike Tyson asks her out, which she refuses: she and Tito have fallen in love, although Tito is married and the members of FMP have vowed to not romantically take up with each other’s sisters. Although FMP has disbanded, it provides a perfect cover for their affair and an explanation for the time that they spend together. When Cesar finds out about the relationship, he forces Tito to end it, to Jessica’s grief.

In mid-November 1990, the jury returns a partial verdict: George is found guilty of fourteen counts: tax evasion and conspiracy to run a continuing criminal enterprise. Four of George’s thirty-two defendants are also convicted, while one lucky spot manager is acquitted. George is sent back to Otisville to await sentencing. George’s street connections and money have dwindled due to his trial and detention. However, he still hopes for a return to a semblance of his former life. On the surface, he and Jessica are still a couple, but Jessica’s visits have become erratic, and they are often unpleasant.

On March 31, 1990, George is sentenced in a packed courtroom. The presiding Judge Kram calls him “one of the most violent people to set foot in her courtroom,” although none of his charges technically involve violence (102). Under Federal Sentencing Guidelines, however, “conduct that did not reach the evidentiary standards of a trial could affect sentencing” as relevant conduct (102). Consequentially, several Obsession organization murders, as well as George’s numerous spoken and written death threats, are legally cited as factors in his sentencing. George is twenty-three years old when he is sentenced to life in prison, with no option for parole. Jessica does not attend his sentencing, and George tells her that “he’d rather she were dead than free” over the phone (102). Shortly thereafter, the phone company cuts off Lourdes’s phone line.

At this point, Coco has become pregnant again, this time by Kodak. Foxy, Coco’s mother, is furious that, because Foxy has been covering for Coco’s absences to Cesar, Coco’s pregnancy has clearly made Foxy into a liar.

Cesar, upon learning of Coco’s pregnancy, redoubles his wrath and threats of brutality. During Coco’s prison visit, he laments that if Coco were truly a virgin when they had first began seeing each other, she would have exercised steadfast loyalty to him. LeBlanc intimates, however, that Cesar is still in love with Coco.

Kodak initially denies paternity, while Cesar routinely calls Foxy’s home to both check in on Mercedes and berate both Foxy and Coco. Foxy quickly becomes fed up with his diatribes and insults against Coco, yelling vulgarities and threats in response to Cesar’s aspersions.

Coco throws an elaborate party for Mercedes’ first birthday, which Coco’s ex-boyfriend, Wishman, and his younger brother, Edwin, attend. Wishman is the street type, while Edwin is a quieter “mama’s boy” (105). Later that night, Jessica seduces Edwin. Also, police raid the party, and unsuccessfully try to convince Foxy to let them use her apartment “for surveillance: they were still watching the Cuban drug dealers who were working out of the building across the street” (106).

Jessica begins to spend a lot of time at Sunny’s with Edwin. Sometimes, Milagros brings the twins to her there, while Serena sometimes stays with Coco at Foxy’s, or at Milagro’s, but the majority of Serena’s time is spent with Lourdes. George eventually tracks Jessica down at Sunny’s, and calls to berate and threaten her, as well as Sunny’s school-age son. Meanwhile, Jessica maintains contact with George and resignedly states that if he truly wanted her dead, she would indeed be dead.

One day, while Jessica is at Sunny’s place, she is arrested. Since George’s arrest, narcotics agents have begun driving his flashy carsin a show of dominance. Jessica is taken to George’s Mercedes, where she is met with the “cherubic” Obsession case agent, whom she recognizes from George’s court proceedings (108). She is then driven to the MCC in the Mercedes, which is the exact car that George used to pick her up for their first date three years ago.

It takes Jessica two months of making phone calls and writing letters to raise $5,000 for her bail. She mails Coco and Edwin visiting forms. Because her two visitors are both under eighteen, they must obtain parental signatures. During the time between Jessica’s arrest and her sentencing, she and Coco become closer than they have ever been before. Jessica writes tender, loving letters to Mercedes from jail, although Mercedes is not yet old enough to be able to read them.

Jessica decides to plead guilty, in order to take responsibility for her actions. Her lawyer makes arrangements for her to turn herself in at the beginning of September, so that Jessica has some time with her family.

When Jessica is finally released in July, she asks Coco to bring her clothes so that she does not show up on the block in prison clothing. She then spends a precious summer at Sunny’s place with Edwin, who is the only boy she has loved, besides Tito, who doesn’t believe in hitting girls.

In September 1991, Sunny throws a party, and Coco and Milagros meet for the first time. Jessica, Elaine and Daisy walk home from the party, and Jessica knocks on Tito’s window en route. He catches one last glimpse of her.

The next morning, Lourdes refuses to come out of her bedroom to say goodbye to Jessica. Edwin, Elaine, and Daisy accompany Jessica to the courthouse. The guards make her leave all of her jewelry with Elaine. Later, alone in the MCC, Jessica begins to cry. She cannot believe that she has turned herself inand asks herself why she did not run away instead. 

It is October 1991. Cesar has arrived home unannounced. He strips off his prison clothes in Lourdes’s doorway, as prison clothes are bad luck. Coco hears Lourdes’s happy shouting, grabs Nikki, and hides.

Eventually, though, Cesar, with a newly muscular body, finds and greets Coco. He looks more beautiful than ever to Coco. Nikki is irresistibly lovely and charming. “She’s beautiful, God bless her”, Cesar says (113). Then he turns and leaves.

Lourdes’s new apartment on Mount Hope Place is not that different from her old place on Vyse, except that everyone is beginning to show some wear. Lourdes, at forty, is not as resilient. Little Star, at six years old, looks like a careworn miniature adult. Robert has returned from Florida and lives a regimented life as a bank teller in Brooklyn. Elaine lives with Angel and their two young sons in a tiny apartment on Morrison. Milagros has moved down the street from Coco’s mother.

Cesar’s FMP family has also changed. Rocco, seemingly at the behest of his ambitious schoolgirl girlfriend, is on the path to reform and getting his GED. Tito has dropped out of school and developed a cocaine addiction. Due to Tito’s dalliance with Jessica, and his indecisive attitude, Cesar found reason to distrust Tito. Only Mighty, who had gotten out of jail on the day before Cesar, seems unchanged and familiar.

That same afternoon, Que-Que is arrested, to Lourdes’s relief. They have been cocaine companions in the past, but he has developed a solitary heroin habit thathas turned him into a secretive thief.

Cesar has to either get a job or return to school as a condition of parole. He enrolls in school, figuring it will be easier to cut class. He and Coco immediately begin sleeping together. Coco sometimes takes care of Little Star, and is fond of the child, but troubled by Little Star’smanner, which she finds doleful, burdened, and unbefitting for a child.

Cesar quickly drops out of college, in favor of a job overseeing crack sales in Aqueduct, just below the college. He blatantly sees several other girls in order to exercise revenge against Coco. Coco doesn’t mind unless any of the girls become regular fixtures, which a girl named Lizette and her sister, Vicky, do. Although Cesar still loves Coco, he endeavors to punish her for Nikki. He prods at her insecurities—including her propensity to pick her face raw—rather than consoling and encouraging her, and constantly reminds her of his displeasure with Nikki’s very existence.

Within weeks, Lizette has become pregnant, and her mother dumps her at Lourdes’s apartment. Lourdes and Lizette get along well at first. However, Lourdes asks Lizette not to tell Cesar about Lourdes’s cocaine habit. Cesar finds out anyway. Lourdes then blames Lizette, and the two women begin to argue about cooking and housework. Lizette claims that Lourdes is a hypocrite, and Cesar must concede, but his hands are tied because she is his mother. Lourdes treats Cesar more like he is her man, rather than her son, regulating her clothing, her friends, and her nights out on the town. Lizette and Little Star grow a small bond, coloring together and mutually missing their mothers.

Privately, Cesar regularly sees Coco, who now lives at Foxy’s with her two children. However, in front of Lizette and at Lourdes’s, Cesar either ignores Coco or orders her around. Coco sees Lizette sharing the space and life with Cesar that was once hers, and she vows to restore herself to Cesar’s good graces by fastidiously tending to his clothes and sneakers.

Jessica is sentenced to ten years in prison, due to federal mandatory minimum sentencing requirements, along with the fact that she will not snitch on anyone, least of all George. The judge is legally bound to uphold those standards, although she does not think Jessica’s case merits the sentence. Cesar, who attends the sentencing with Lizette (not Coco) excuses himself to his parole office before the sentencing even begins, as he cannot bear seeing his sister sentenced. Lourdes, Elaine, Coco, Little Star, Brittany and Stephanie are granted a few minutes to say goodbye to Jessica.

Puma, the only father that Little Star has ever known, is murdered by fellow drug-dealers two weeks before, in December.

In early January, Lizette loses her baby. Although Cesar is cooling on her, he does not send her back to her home. Her miscarriage, though, emboldens Coco, who challenges Lizette to fights often. Still though, in public, Lizette is Cesar’s girl, while Coco gets no public acknowledgment.

Jessica is initially housed in MCC. She writes to Trinket a letter of condolence,in regard to Puma, and tries to keep tabs on Edwin. She crosses paths with John Gotti, who sends food to the women on Jessica’s unit. He remembers her from her paralegal days, and as George’s girl. The guards, too, remember Jessica as George’s girl. When Jessica has sex with a male inmate named Jamal in an unmonitored room, word gets back to George about it. Jessica, however, is unsure that her loyalties still remain with George. George’s threats remain with Jessica as she is transferred from facility to facility: she is told that a beating awaits her upon each transfer. But these beatings never materialize, and Jessica lands in her final destination—a prison in Florida—without remarkable incident.

In March 1992, Lizette returns to her mother’s place. Coco still lives with her two daughters at Foxy’s, and Cesar continues to visit her there. However, he also takes up with a girl named Roxanne, who has “a swan’s neck, almond-shaped eyes, and the posture of a dancer” (123).

One night, Mighty gets into a fight with a group of boys outside of White Castle. Roxanne’s cousin, who is with Mighty, summons Cesar to the scene. When Cesar arrives, the fight has moved inside the restaurant. Mighty, in the habit of standing in front of Cesar out of loyalty during fights, assumes his regular position. Cesar, however, slips this time, and accidentally shoots Mighty in the head, killing him. Cesar then retreats to Roxanne’s mother’s house, where Rocco finds him muttering incoherently and threatening to kill himself. Rocco manages to talk him down.

Cesar and Roxanne go on the run, surviving on fast food procured by Roxanne, cash from drug deliveries that Cesar makes, and money from Roxanne’s mother’s boyfriend. He still arranges to see Coco from time-to-time, and remains suicidal. Coco, unable to broach the topic of Mighty, instead obsesses about Cesar being on the run with another woman.

Roxanne becomes pregnant, and decides to keep the baby, stay coupled with Cesar, andreturn to her mother’s apartment. Cesar stays with Roxanne, sleeps wherever he can, and sees Coco on the side. Unbeknownst to both Coco and Roxanne, he has also begun to see another girl named Giselle, whom he pages whenever neither Coco nor Roxanne can spend the night with him. He cannot sleep alone. Giselle is a neighborhood girl whom Cesar has known even longer than he has known Coco. Giselle and Cesar initially made contact through a mutual friend, and then lost contact, as Giselle got married, moved to Yonkers, had a son, and got divorced. When she returnedto the Bronx, she and Cesar began a relationship.

Rambo, a Bronx homicide detective who is actually seen as fair by the people in the neighborhood, has been trailing Cesar for four months. Rambo has forged a cautious friendship with Lourdes, because he promises not to kill Cesar, unless he has to, if he finds him, while other cops would take any opportunity to kill Cesar. Lourdes passes the word on to Cesar, but Cesar vows that he will not go down without a fight.

Rocco plants false rumors that Cesar is fleeing to various cities in order to throw agents off. However, Rambo nabs Cesar through a mutual acquaintance, a tattoo artist named Big Joe. Cesar gets his first tattoo—Forgive me Mighty, R.I.P.— just above his heart. He boasts to Big Joe that Rambo is hunting him, and Big Joe tips Rambo off. Rambo then apprehends Cesar at Giselle’s sister’s house. Cesar is sleeping next to Giselle and her son when several officers barge in. They cuff Cesar and instruct Giselle to dress him. Cesar instructs her to double up on boxers and socks, in preparation for prison. She also slips a twenty-dollar bill into his pocket. Rambo escorts Cesar to the 46thprecinct quietly and allows Lourdes to bring in sandwiches and juice.

Coco cries upon hearing the news about Cesar but also rejoices at Giselle’s humiliation during the arrest. Coco is also pregnant, again (by Cesar).

In May 1993, Roxanne gives birth to Cesar’s daughter, whom she names Justine. Coco’s pregnancy, however, drives her away from Cesar. Cesar receives a sentence of nine years to life after he pleads guilty to manslaughter. He is sentenced as an adultand must serve the nine-year minimum.

Cesar lands in Coxsackie Correctional Facility, the first of many maximum-security prisons in which he will do time over the coming years. Tito is also there, awaiting trial for the murder of his wife. During the interlude of years, Tito has spun out of control with his cocaine habit and trade of robbing drug dealers. Tito claims that an intruder had shot his wife and then shot at him, while prosecutors would argue that Tito shot his wife and then himself in order to cover up the murder. Tito refuses to plead guilty, and Cesar doubts that Tito has the wherewithal to survive behind bars.

The two men hang out in the prison yard. They reminisce about better days and concoct schemes to hook women on the outside by writing letters and seeing who answers. As an adult, Cesar qualifies for conjugal prison-trailer access, but that requires a woman who is able and willing to get all documentation in order and make regulartrips to prison. Neither Roxanne nor Coco are up for the task. Eight months later, a friend sends Cesar Giselle’s address, which he failed to secure before he was locked up. 

Jessica is in a maximum-security prison in Marianna, Florida. The law mandates that she must serve the first two years of her sentence in a high-security facility, due to the length of her sentence. Jessica has many friends and suitors within the prison, because she speaks up for other women and herself to the guards. Prison is less frightening and more boring than she expected. She earns her GED and lands a job with federal prison industries (UNICOR), and devises brash and effective schemes to shirk her work, which earns her the nickname “The Idle Queen” (130). She does keep busy though, writing letters to Coco, Edwin, Daisy, George, Tito, and Cesar. She sends all the children in her family birthday cards, invents aches and pains which send her to the cute prison doctor, and falls for a girl named Tamika, with whom she spends entire afternoons arguing. She signs up for every prison workshop, and then writes home about what she has learned.

Initially, Jessica welcomes her assignment to Florida, because Lourdes, who has family in Florida, promises to move herself and Jessica’s daughters to Florida. However, things are so bad with Lourdes that during Jessica’s first year in prison, Lourdes hardly leaves her apartment, let alone making a move to Florida. Lourdes also does not get along with her family in Florida, although, in the past, her trips to Florida have had a steadying and reforming effect. Lourdes and Milagros also begin partying together at night, while Serena is left to tend to her baby sisters. Jessica laments the situation from prison.

Serena fails first grade, and, after the Bureau of Child Welfare’s visit, Lourdes gives up custody. Serena is then moved to Robert’s “more disciplined house in Brooklyn, where he [lives] near the Watchtower compound run by the Jehovah’s Witnesses” (132). He and Milagros trade children on alternate weekends, to share the load. None of Jessica’s children enjoy the arrangement, as Robert’s marriage is rocky, and he struggles with severe depression.

Jessica needs money for her commissary, but all of her family and friends on the outside are barely managing to make their own ends meet. This makes it more difficult to separate from George, as he is the one who picks up the financial slack when Lourdes cannot. He also deposits money into Jessica’s account, via his mother, so that Jessica can buy stamps and phone calls to keep in touch with her family. The costly fifteen-minute prison phone calls do not allow Jessica to get adequate conversation time with her children, and the twins call her “Jessica” while they call Milagros “Mommy.” Milagros eventually takes Serena in fully, as Robert’s wife has grown jealous of the attention that he lavishes on Serena. Milagros cares for a bevy of children that are not her own, and Trinket, who has testified against the drug dealers who killed Puma, lays low with Milagros after the dealers threaten Trinket’s life.

The prison doctor places Jessica on bedrest when she becomes distraught after a Mother’s Day card from Serena reads “I love you Jessica.” She feels hurt that no one in the family cared enough to correct Serena’s mistake, and feels that only George makes her feel loved. He is allowed to correspond with her because they are codefendants in the Obsession case. His letters are monitored and censored, but his declarations of love make the cut. He teases marriage in the future, and Jessica reclaims “Mrs. Rivera” as her moniker. Coco, however, does not like George for Jessica, as “he’s too strict,” she says (134).

During the second summer of Jessica’s incarceration, George arranges for his mother, Rita, to bring Jessica’s daughters to see her in Florida. After Jessica spends most of the first day of their visit with Serena, playing happily in the children’s room, Rita grows jealous and spiteful. The two women argue the next day, and Rita cuts the three-day visit short by a day. When Rita carelessly abandons Serena at the front entrance to Milagros’s dangerous apartment building, instead of walking her up to the unit and supervising the drop-off, Milagros decides to cut all contact with George.