A Piece of Cake-Part Two

Ten Loaded Words

*prostitution(page 78): I think this is a loaded word because people know what this means and it is so sad that people would disrespect themselves that much just for money.
*druggie(page 81): This is a loaded word because someone who does drugs would feel bad being categorized like that but at the same time being a druggie is not something you should want to do and is very unhealthy.
*asshole(page 96): Just like all swear words this word can be very offensive to people.. You'd never say this word to someone like your grandmother or a teacher but some people say it when they are really mad at someone.
gang(page 106): This is a loaded word because the word gang symbolizes violence. Violence is something that is clearly bad and never represented in a good way for obvious reasons. Some people are in them, some people are scared of them. The word can have different feelings for different people.
*nigga(page 113): This word is very hurtful and should never be said. It is a very racist word and is super offensive to black people.
*shooting(page 117): This word can having different meaning for different people. A person who hunts would think nothing bad of this word but a person who is against guns would think of this word in a non positive way because it is representing violence.
*homies(page 120): This word can be a fun name friends call one another or be represented as a bad name for a gang member.
*smoked(page 141): This word can also having different emotional meaning for different people. For people who are smokers this is just a common word in their vocabulary. For people who are against smoking this word can mean something different to them and be a non positive and very unhealthy word.
*miscarriage(page 146): This word is a very touchy and sensitive word. For anyone who has ever had a miscarriage this word can bring back those saddened times.
*gang banger( page 146): This word can be offensive or just hard to understand because it means people who are apart of a gang that all have sex which is definitely not good because they are doing things for the wrong reasons.
*abused(page 154): This word is also a touchy one because people who have been abused would look at this word and re live the pain, for those who have not been abused they know what abuse can consist of emotionally and physically.

Summary

In this section much of what was going on last section. Cupcake continues her smoking and drinking and is back living with Diane and then running away. Diane finds out that she has diabetes in this section but is still mean as ever. Cupcake runs away and gets back with Diane several times as well. Cupcake gets pregnant but has a miscarriage and Diane makes her suffer through the physical and mental pain at the house not even the hospital. After this Cup runs away and goes to Hollywood. In Hollywood she joins a gang and everything keeps getting worse and worse. She continues her drug and alcohol addictions through these sections. In the end Cup goes back to the man she calls "daddy's" home.

Reaction

My feelings of this section were just like the last. I feel so badly for Cupcake and do not see how she can remain so strong and keep going with all that she has been through. In hearing her writing in this memoir it seems so real like I'm right there with her going through all these hard times with Cup. I can't even imagine how she must have felt through that and must have felt just so disrespected her entire life.

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.

First Post

The thing I am most anxious about at Edina High School is being in a new place and being with new people. I think it will be very enjoyable to have classes with new faces, like those from South View and new students from other schools. It is a little bit intimidating to be with so many older students though but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. The school is still a little big and new to me but it will be a lot of fun I can already tell! I am very anxious for dances and football games as well.

One goal for myself in my sophomore year is to try and get all A’s and maybe B’s and to complete all of my homework and turn it in on time. This is my first year that I have been really busy after school with Comp Cheer so it will be interesting and probably stressful at times but I’m sure I can do it! I hope I will get good grades and do well in the high school and hopefully not get lost anymore.