Rabbit

Patricia Williams, known as Ms. Pat, grew up in 1980s inner-city Atlanta in a family where no one had graduated high school in three generations. Her memoir traces her journey from an illegal liquor house to the suburbs of Indianapolis, where she lives with her family and works as a touring stand-up comedian.

Pat's earliest years were spent in her grandfather's bootleg house in Decatur, Georgia. George Walker, called Bear Cat, sold moonshine from a plywood bar while nine people crowded under his roof, including Pat, her mother Mildred, Mildred's boyfriend Curtis, and Pat's sister Sweetie. Mildred had an alcohol addiction, and the house doubled as a bar where neighborhood drunks gambled and passed out on the floor. Pat was her grandfather's favorite; he taught her to cook and made her feel safe. Mildred, by contrast, neglected her children and at seven began waking Pat at night to pickpocket unconscious drunks, paying her a dollar per wallet.

This precarious stability ended when Bear Cat shot a woman during an argument and was sent to prison. Curtis took in the family, but Mildred's drinking and paranoid accusations drove him away. Left to survive on welfare and food stamps, Mildred moved the children to a run-down duplex on Griffin Street, where utilities were frequently shut off and dinner was often a ketchup sandwich. Pat faced bullying at school for her hygiene and ragged clothes; when she was caught eating another student's sandwich out of desperation, the principal paddled her without asking why. Mildred devised schemes to feed the family: dumpster-diving, collecting aluminum cans, and having the children baptized at church after church solely to access food pantries.

Amid this chaos, Miss Troup, Pat's teacher in a federally funded Title I remedial reading program, became a transformative figure. She brought Pat soap, toothpaste, and fresh clothes, braided her hair, and taught her to read. One morning, she told Pat she had potential and could grow up to be anything. She made Pat promise to dream, and the message stayed with her for life.

When Pat was ten, a neighborhood bricklayer named Mr. John began bringing Mildred groceries and supplies. Under the guise of taking Pat and Sweetie to lunch, he drove them to a cemetery and sexually abused both girls, threatening that if they told, he would stop bringing food. The abuse continued for years.

At twelve, Pat met Derrick, a twenty-year-old man, on the way to a teen dance. He told her she was cute, the first compliment she had received. Under pressure from Sweetie and their cousin Peaches, Pat had sex with Derrick and was pregnant by thirteen. The family's caseworker, Miss Munroe, urged Mildred to consider abortion, adoption, or statutory rape charges, but Mildred refused. Derrick panicked about jail and disappeared, during which time his wife Evaleen appeared at Pat's door, revealing that Derrick was married with a child and another on the way.

Pat's daughter Ashley was born on August 9, 1986. Mildred refused to accompany her to the hospital, and Pat rode the ambulance alone. Miss Munroe helped Pat become an emancipated minor, qualifying her for a welfare check of $235 per month. Derrick returned, refused to use condoms, and Pat was pregnant again within six months. Her son Nikia was born that November. At fifteen, Pat had two babies, no job, and no education.

When Derrick was arrested for selling crack, Pat spent her entire welfare check on a quarter ounce of crack, divided it into rocks, and sold them at Techwood Homes, a public housing complex. Escalating gang violence drove her to Baldwin Street, where she partnered with Duck, a calm and strategic dealer. Their operation thrived, clearing thousands of dollars a day, and Pat bought a Cadillac and new furniture.

Mildred's health declined from years of alcohol addiction, leading to the amputation of her right leg. During a police raid, Mildred hid Pat's crack inside her prosthetic leg. Mildred died in her sleep shortly afterward. Pat arranged the funeral and returned to dealing the same day. Violence then caught up with Pat: A customer shot her, the bullet passing through her right breast and narrowly missing her heart. Duck ended their partnership, citing Pat's reckless behavior, and gave her $50,000 as her share.

Pat set up her own drug-selling spot on Ashby Grove. She took in her cousin Tata, who needed a safe home, and three of Derrick's nieces, whom Pat found unsupervised while their mother smoked crack. Pat cared for the children but also asked the older girls to carry drug packages, a decision that troubled her conscience. Her new supplier, Lamont, a college-educated man, challenged her worldview by showing her upscale homes and furniture stores, telling her the ghetto was nothing but a trap.

Pat was soon arrested. Tata, whom Pat had asked to hold drugs, was caught first and sent to juvenile detention, where she gave birth at fourteen. Pat served eight months at Fulton County Jail, where she befriended Eva, who was in recovery from addiction, and Brenda, an educated check forger who encouraged her to earn her General Educational Development (GED) credential.

Upon release, Derrick mocked Pat's ambitions, and she returned to dealing. But Hubert Hood, a laundromat owner on Ashby Grove, became a grandfatherly figure who watched her children after school and taught Pat about credit and financial planning. After Derrick struck Pat with a loaded gun that discharged and grazed her skull, Hood told her she had to let go of the bad in her life to make room for the good. Pat prayed for strength and finally left Derrick.

Pat met Michael, a clean-cut military veteran from a stable two-parent household, at a lip-syncing contest at Harlem Nights club. He was gentle and kind. When Sweetie's four daughters faced foster care because of Sweetie's crack addiction, Pat took them in over Michael's objections, throwing herself onto the hood of his car to keep him from leaving. He stayed. The couple also had two biological children, Michaela and Michael Jr., and raised all eight children together. Michael pressured Pat to quit dealing. After a brief stint forging checks, Pat realized she was chasing the thrill of the hustle just as her sister chased a crack high, and she stopped entirely.

Pat was fired from a series of legal jobs before enrolling in a Welfare-to-Work program. With help from caseworker Miss Campbell, she earned her GED and a medical assistant certificate, but a lengthy criminal history report branded her a convicted felon and cost her a medical office position. Miss Campbell, laughing at Pat's darkly comic retelling of the experience, told her she should be a comedian.

After Sweetie reclaimed her four daughters through family court, Pat felt a persistent emptiness. She signed up for open-mic comedy and discovered that making people laugh filled a hunger she had carried her whole life. Taking the stage name Ms. Pat, she began performing on the Chitlin' Circuit, a network of comedy venues with predominantly Black audiences. When Michael's job relocated the family to Indiana, Pat found her voice telling real-life stories onstage. Audiences of all backgrounds connected deeply, and podcast appearances, including Marc Maron's WTF, expanded her reach and led to the book deal for this memoir.

Ashley graduated from Riverdale High School, the first person in Pat's family to earn a diploma in generations. In a 2013 epilogue, Pat drove to Decatur to rescue Diamond, one of Sweetie's daughters, who was living in squalor with four children. Pat brought them all to Indiana, but Diamond eventually relapsed and disappeared. Her children remained with Pat and Michael. Each night, Pat told them the same words Miss Troup once told her: They can do anything and be anything, and all they have to do is dream.