My Momma Said...

(by Ebony Dodson)

My momma always told me not to do drugs. "Everyone is going to move on but you,” she said. “They'll get clean and move on to better things. You'll be out in the trenches, high and dry. That's just how life works."

There was something about my mom's matter-of-fact disciplinarian analogies. They'll stick in my head for eternity. "Tell your friends that if they commit a crime around you and you don't want no part of it, you’ll walk away. Stay away from their asses. If they apply pressure for you to stick around, tell them to their faces you'll rat them out for involving you. Tell them that!"

I remember my mom telling me the story about how my male cousin robbed a bank and showed up on my grandmother’s porch with the bank money while the police were on his tail. Grandma (his auntie) did not let him in the house. She told him to get off her porch or she would call the police—“my damn-self" is how she would say it. My mom always told t