A Piece Of Cake: A Memoir

As Cupcake sank into her new substance use, she started taking more than she was putting in, and Tommy urged her to find a job using the education she had gotten. He warned her that she would need to diligently practice enunciating her words, refraining from slang and swearing, and that he and her friends would punch her each time she did swear. Cupcake hated this idea at first, but the more that she practiced, the easier it became. Eventually, after months of practice and searching for work, her effort paid off. She was offered a word processing position by a woman who liked her right away.

Tommy, Daddy, and Uncle Jr. were all proud of Cupcake for getting a job, which motivated her even more. Tommy told her not to tell anyone the truth about her past, believing that white people would only judge her, but Cupcake wondered if it was his own pain that made him feel that way. She decided nevertheless to create a story based on Marcia’s life in The Brady Bunch, and she convinced her co-workers of this story without issue.

The group of women she worked with were all friendly, and Cupcake soon learned that they all took various drugs as well. Most of them used various “uppers” to be able to type quickly for hours at a time. Cupcake was offered cocaine in the bathroom one day by one of the women, named Sandra, who told her that although everyone there used something, they didn’t really talk about it. Along with her new job, Cupcake continued committing petty thefts, selling drugs, and helping friends with their crimes as well.

Cupcake and Tommy fell behind on their rent and moved in with a friend who had three children and lived in a small apartment. Cupcake told herself that partying and doing drugs around the children was fine because they weren’t being beaten. When Cupcake found out she was pregnant yet again, her friend tried to convince her to keep the pregnancy for the welfare money. Tommy interrupted to remind Cupcake that neither her lifestyle nor her personality (at the time, short-tempered and impatient) were suited for children. Cupcake agreed and had an abortion, still angry that she had lost her first child to Connie’s attack years before, and unable to consider trying to have another.

The abortion made Cupcake violently ill this time, but she recovered and went back to work a week later. She was fired on the spot, along with her manager and a few co-workers, for failing to declare sick leave and having poor work performance. Cupcake wanted to lay down and give up, but instead, she went back out and started looking for work almost immediately. She was still convinced that holding a job was the one thing that held her above the other substance users in her life.

Cupcake found another job that was must stricter, and she hated it. After showing up late daily for months, she quit before she could be fired again. She started going from one job to the next. As Cupcake began to earn more money, Tommy became insecure and worried that she would leave him. One afternoon, he thought Cupcake was eyeing a man across the street and slammed her head into the car window. Cupcake had no idea what Tommy was angry about, but defended herself by hitting him back several times. She ran out of the car and Tommy soon followed, crying and begging her forgiveness. Cupcake agreed to take him back, gullible to his claim that he would never hit her again.

When Tommy suggested that he and Cupcake get married so that employers would take her more seriously, Cupcake struggled to find a flaw with his logic. She thought about how Tommy would often fall into rages, particularly out in public where there were other men, and accuse Cupcake of cheating on him. Cupcake wondered if getting married might solve the issue.

At the same time, she kept looking for work and was eventually given a chance at a legal firm run by a lawyer named Jack Baker. It was a small firm that needed a legal secretary willing to be trained and work for minimum wage, so they hired Cupcake right away. Cupcake took this job more seriously than others, because she had a desire to work in the legal field. She found that her coworkers, which were two lawyers (Jack and Todd) and the head secretary/office manager, Gloria, were patient with her and willing to teach her. They didn’t even mind Cupcake wearing miniskirts and halter tops to work, though Gloria did try to encourage her to wear shirts that covered a little more skin.

Cupcake slowly learned legal jargon and court filings, and the rules of the English language. Jack hated smoking, so Cupcake had to hide her substance use, but overall was doing well at her new job. All her partyer friends marveled at the way she managed to find work and change her pattern of speech all while remaining addicted to heroin.

Cupcake started using “ready rock,” which is pre-prepared crack cocaine. It became her new favorite drug, but it was extremely expensive. Tommy soon complained about the lack of money, and Cupcake suggested quitting crack for a year. She figured that if she did that, she didn’t need to stop doing any other drugs. Tommy agreed.

At the same time, Tommy’s mother planned a lavish wedding for Cupcake and Tommy. When Cupcake went to try on dresses, she couldn’t manage to do it without first getting drunk and high. She and her friends were belligerent toward the salesperson and bought the cheapest dress that Cupcake could find. For a moment she felt beautiful, but it quickly gave way to a feeling of being an imposter. Cupcake invited 100 family members to the wedding, but only one aunt and her daughter, along with Uncle Jr. and Daddy, showed up for her.

Cupcake and Tommy partied the night before the wedding and were almost late, and Tommy gave Cupcake a bag full of alcohol and substances to get her through the day. Cupcake was dreading marrying Tommy and took full advantage of the substances to calm herself down. Cupcake admits that she blacked out and forgot the wedding itself, as well as most of the reception. When she came to, she was on a boat having a dinner cruise with Tommy. She wore a white dress and didn’t realize that her period had started. It got covered in blood, and when she rushed to the bathroom, a group of women gave her clothes and helped her clean up.

Afterward, Cupcake rejoined Tommy, who never once came to check on her. She started yelling at him for it, causing a scene on the boat. Because she and Tommy were the only Black passengers aboard, it only added to the hatred on people’s faces. When an elderly man told Cupcake that he hated “drunks,” Cupcake replied, “Well, us drunks hate YOU too!” (259). It was the first time she ever called herself a drunk and would be the last for “a long, long time” (259).

Shortly after getting married, Tommy and Cupcake’s relationship became extremely volatile and violent. She admits that both she and Tommy battered one another, taking turns in being the abuser in the relationship. Cupcake would tell herself that because Tommy never broke bones, it “wasn’t really violence” (260). At the same time, Cupcake ran into her childhood friend Rose and quickly became close with her and their other old friend, Mona, again. Cupcake also started using crack again, this time more than ever, and missed work constantly. When she was fired, she found a new job as a secretary at a larger firm across the street.

Cupcake and Tommy continued to struggle with their finances as they prioritized their substance misuse, and they eventually moved back in with Daddy to help share rent. It was only a temporary solution, because they were soon selling off belongings regularly to keep up with their substance use. Cupcake became underweight, which people started to notice, asking her why she was so thin. After learning about metabolism, she told everyone hers was high, and they believed her. At work, Cupcake started using false deaths as excuses to miss extended periods of time. When her boss started to suspect her, he put her on probation, and she promised to do better.

Cupcake’s boss was training for a triathlon when he was hit on his bike. He was paralyzed from the neck down, and hearing the news upset Cupcake more than she expected. It seemed to set off a switch in her, and she immediately went back to coming to work drunk or high, or skipping work all together. When Cupcake was fired as a result, she continued to tell herself that her life would be fine as long as she found another job.

Cupcake applied at another large firm and was hired by a lawyer named Ken, who was impressed with her (largely fabricated) resume. He liked everything about Cupcake except her name, and Cupcake reluctantly allowed him to call her La’Vette instead. She took a shorthand class at night to improve her skills and used post-it notes (which covered her entire desk) to keep track of everything at her job. Cupcake began to love answering calls and often used them as a chance to have conversations with Ken’s clients.

She continued doing speed and showed up to work high, and often unclean, unkempt, and hungover as well. Ken didn’t seem to mind if Cupcake did her work well, which she did, but several of her coworkers did complain. One woman, Maria, never lost patience with Cupcake. During this same time, Tommy found work with a delivery company and was trained to drive moving trucks. He, too, was often high or hungover at work.

Cupcake’s substance misuse was taking such a strong physical toll that the drugs and alcohol became “medicine” for one another. She would use alcohol to counteract the effects of speed and crack, or cannabis to calm herself down. Cupcake’s crack use was costing her so much money that she would sometimes run out and fall into serious withdrawals. She and Tommy rented an apartment’s worth of furniture, which they kept for a while, but soon sold off to their dealer in exchange for drugs. Cupcake also started charging gift certificates to her credit cards; she would then cash them and never pay her bills.

While all of this took place, Cupcake’s relationship with Tommy deteriorated even further. He would often become enraged based on false assumptions. When he made the mistake of thinking a man was leaving his own apartment instead of the one next door, he attacked Cupcake, who tried to fight back but soon fled the apartment. She ran through the neighborhood with Tommy chasing her and eventually managed to make it back to her own place to call the police. Cupcake was not used to calling the police, but it had become a regular occurrence.

When Cupcake’s Daddy saw her so disheveled and panicked, he lectured her for wasting her life on substance misuse and a toxic relationship. When the police showed up, they already knew Cupcake and her situation, and told Cupcake that Tommy was in the hospital after injuring himself while trying to hop a fence. Cupcake went the next day to see him, only to ask for drug money. Tommy refused, so she sold the rest of her furniture instead.

Cupcake started finding ways to avoid doing her work again or to avoid showing up at all. Her body was feeling the effects of her drug use more and more, and one day her sweat began to smell like cocaine. She would often go days without being able to eat, and at one point she fell asleep on her break and couldn’t be woken up.

When Cupcake was out buying crack one night, a police officer known by the locals as Preacher approached her. He invited her to sit down with him and told her that he knows she has “been through hell” (399). He went on to say that God had a plan for Cupcake and that because she survived things that most others would not, it must be meant to happen. Preacher told Cupcake that she would hit not rock bottom but “underneath the bottom” (309), but that if she was willing and open to it, God would then help her rise above it all. Hearing about God made Cupcake uncomfortable, but his words didn’t leave her mind. She ran into him three more times that year. Each time, he prevented her from going to jail and warned her to remember what he told her.

Cupcake became more and more ill, occasionally experiencing facial paralysis and no longer enjoying her drug use but continuing anyway. The drugs no longer had their usual effects, and Cupcake started looking for ways to cut down, but nothing worked.

When her Uncle Jr. and Daddy decided to hold an intervention, they took the willing Tommy and semi-willing Cupcake to a meeting for people with addictions. The people at the meeting discussed the most common signs of a cocaine addiction, including spending all one’s money on it, being unable to quit, and losing one’s family and friends. Cupcake knew all of this applied to her, but she was still convinced that, because she had a job and wasn’t using needles, she couldn’t be addicted.

Just as Preacher predicted, Cupcake rapidly approached “rock bottom.” She stole $500 from Daddy, who moved out as a result. She left Tommy, which, though a wise decision, she states, it was one made out of a desire to keep all the drugs to herself.

Cupcake’s old friend Mona let her stay in her apartment, but Cupcake abused the privilege by constantly smoking crack in her bedroom against Mona’s wishes. One day while buying crack, it occurred to Cupcake to steal some when the dealer left the room. He returned and noticed immediately, so he began beating and threatening her. Cupcake decided that she wanted to die because she couldn’t see another way out of her living hell. She told the dealer he would be doing her a favor, and the next thing she knew, she awoke beside a dumpster with the physical evidence of rape remaining. Angry that she was still alive, Cupcake screamed at no one, but when she realized she still had the stolen crack in her shoe, she felt better.

Cupcake told her boss at work that she had colon cancer and was being tested. In an effort to end her life, she tried to contract HIV by sleeping with countless men. When Mona discovered Cupcake using in the bedroom, she kicked her out, and Cupcake went back to the same dumpster she was at the day before. She spent four days there, using sex work to feed her substance use and thinking of nothing but her next hit. As she walked down the street, she passed a window and saw her reflection. She was thinner than she had ever been, her hair was ragged, her face bloody. She suddenly smelled herself and could see her eyes bulging.

Cupcake thought to herself that she must be dying, and she could see no way out of her situation. Suddenly, a voice within her suggested God as a possibility. Cupcake was confused and reluctant, but willing to try anything. She asked God for help where she stood, and the voice told her she would need to quit her job—and in person.

Cupcake went to the law firm and into her boss’s office, where she announced that she had a drug problem and needed help. Cupcake had never admitted any of this to herself or anyone else before. Ken (her boss) offered to give her paid time off to address her problems, and he called around to various rehabilitation centers for her. He found one with an opening called Mesa Vista, and he had a coworker with previous addiction experience drive Cupcake there. Cupcake tried to tell everyone that she couldn’t go, but every excuse was met with a solution, and she got in the car.