A Piece of Cake- Part One

The first section of my book, A Piece of Cake was very sad. It starts off taking place in the year 1976 in San Diego, California. Cupcake Brown is the person telling the memoir and it is about her life. In the first chapter she finds her mother dead. She had wondered why no one had awoken her that morning and she went into her moms room to find her dead on the floor. The police came to the house and told her that her mom had had an epileptic seizure, swallowed her tongue and choked on it. Her mother was 34 years old and Cupcake was 11 years old when she passed away.
In chapter two Cupcake's family is mourning on the death of Momma.The only family she had was her Daddy who hadn't lived with her and her Momma, her brother Larry who she did not get along with her Uncle Jr. and her grandmother. The grandmother had Alzheimer's and didn't remember anything though. It was a rainy and gloomy the day of Momma's funeral. On this day Cupcake talks about God and blamed him for not saving her mom. A few days after the funeral they go to the lawyer's office to see who will be getting custody of them. Either the man Larry and Cupcake called daddy would be getting custody of them or a strange man named Mr.Burns would. Mr. Burns turns out to actually be Cupcake's biological father.The lawyer decides that Mr. Burns will get custody of Larry and Cupcake because he is their real dad The man that Cupcake had grown up with and called "Daddy" married a lady named Lori to try and get the children for himself but it did not work and Mr.Burns still got full custody of them. The only reason he wanted the kids though was for Momma's money.
After this Mr.Burns drove off with the children and left them with a strange lady. The woman is Dianne and is Larry and Cup's foster mom.Dianne does not seem like a very nice lady she swears a lot and tells a story of when she got forced out of Los Angeles for having foster children of hers die in her care.
Their new house is in Lanchester, California and Cup says it was a very nice house. This house was in a much different neighborhood then her last house in the hood! Everything in the huge home was fancy and very beautiful. Diane out of nowhere punched both Cup and her brother and hard! Diane yelled at them and Cup said she knew then that life as they knew it would never be the same. Diane only allowed Cup and Larry to be in three places, a tiny den, a bathroom and the back yard. They weren’t even allowed in their own rooms unless cleaning or sleeping in them. Diane had six other foster kids coming in so they would not have their own bed rooms. Connie who was Diane’s biological daughter got special treatments like having her own bedroom and being allowed to go in rooms the foster children could not.

Pete also lived in the house and he was Diane’s nephew. One of the first nights they were there Pete and Diane started drinking and got happier and happier the more they drank. Pete gave some of what he called rum and coke to Cup and she really liked the way she felt after drinking it. She called it her feel-good liquid because when she drank it she felt pretty and not alone. Pete told Cup to come to the bathroom with her and he became very angry and slammed her to the ground placing a towel over her mouth. He then raped her when he was 21 years old and she was just 11 years old. While the raping was going on Cupcake thought again of her hatred toward God. She wondered why he was doing all this to her and decided she hated God because God hated her. Pete threatened Cup and told her if she ever told anyone that he had raped her he would will everyone in her family. Pete told Cupcake to not even think of telling Diane because all the foster kids were was a paycheck to her. Two days after they had gotten to the home Pete raped her again. The six other foster children arrived and all eight of them were treated terribly and were pretty much just paychecks and maids for Diane. Diane abused the children often.
Cupcake couldn’t handle life at Diane’s house anymore and decided to run away. She ran for a very long time and then met a girl named Candy. Candy was white and very pretty. Candy gave Cupcake her first hit off the joint and more “feel-good” drink and taught Cupcake the ropes to prostitution. Cupcake said she was in it to survive on her own now and had her first trick of prostitution that night at only 11, almost 12 years old. Candy let Cup stay at her place that night and explained to her what a pimp was and that one lived in her home. Cup listened to the pimp named Money’s rules and decided prostitution, smoking weed and drinking was not how she wanted to survive and ran away.
Cupcake ran away and decided to sleep on a tree stump for a night, the police found her that night and brought her back to Diane’s house. Diane pretended like she was so worried about Cupcake but the second the police left she yelled at Cup and abused her. The abusing just got worse and worse. Diane enrolled Cup in a 99% white school but it was a nice break for Cup to get away from the foster home even if just during the day. Cup began smoking weed and drinking every chance she got. She made friends at school like her who drank and smoked together all the time. After Cupcake watching her friends shoplift she began to do it too at just age twelve. Cup began stealing small things like wallets and cigarettes which she also started smoking. Diane’s whip became Cup’s new frequent form of punishment for not cleaning things well enough.
Cupcake decided to run away again. She went to the tree stump where the cops had picked her up before and hitchhiked until a black man named Bob picked her up. Cupcake turned her second trick with Bob he paid her and dropped her off in Thousand Oaks. When Cup got to Thousand Oaks she didn’t know what to do and decided to call Uncle Jr. She hadn’t talked to him in months and he came up with a plan to send her money to get on a bus and get back to San Diego. Jr. was very happy to see Cupcake he brought her to live with Aunt Pam. Once Aunt Pam saw the marks from Diane abusing her she called the welfare agency of Diane. Cup had to go to Hillcrest Receiving Home which was a large family facility in San Diego. It housed children that had been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Sense Hillcrest was not a long term place to stay, Larry and Cup were going to be sent to foster homes in the San Diego until after the hearings of who would take them. Momma hadn’t even been dead six months yet at this point. Cup was sent to live with Mrs. Bassinet who had similar traits of Diane’s. She had the kids clean a lot and was always drunk which meant Cup was always drunk and stole booze from them. Mrs. Bassinet wasn’t as physically abusive as Diane but swore a lot at them.
Cup said she had wanted to be a cheerleader and Mrs. Bassinet objected but Mr. Bassinet said he would take her to practices. On the way to the first practice he pulled into a Kmart parking lot, gave Cup a pill called LSD to take and raped her. They never made it to cheer leading practices and did these three times every week. Mr. Bassinet also introduced Cupcake to cocaine and at every “practice” they’d smoke and drink together. Mr. Bassinet protected Cup until one night the police woke up Cupcake and she was taken back to Hillcrest, probably because Mrs. Bassinet found out about the “practices”. When Cup returned back to Hillcrest they made her talk to a psychiatrist and he told the judge that Cup should be sent back to Diane’s house.