Winter’s ghetto love was rooted in things remaining exactly how she experienced them as a member of the reigning family. The fact of the matter is, for sixteen years she never had the authentic ghetto experience. Or at least we can say, she never had the same feelings, fears, realities, and hard times that girls her age had living in the same exact building.
For example, Winter does not have to deal with poverty of any kind. The other girls do. She does not have to answer to or prepare for welfare workers, probation officers, or intruders. The other girls do. She doesn’t fear the police like many poor people who have been unfairly brutalized or murdered for being black while standing, running, driving, or putting their hands in their pockets. “They work for Poppa …,” she says of the police. She does not have to deal with unwanted sexual advances by boys or men. The other girls do. Just a glance at Winter by a peeping locksmith leaves the worker trying to hold his face together after having it slashed open by Santiaga’s knife as punishment. Not to mention the fact that she has a biological and present father, unlike the overwhelming majority of her friends.
The fact of the matter is, there is no threatening authority in the life of Winter Santiaga prior to her father’s downfall. She does not even have to respond to teachers, guidance counselors, or school administrators. Winter says:
I wasn’t gonna report to school everyday like it was some type of job when they weren’t even paying me for it. School was like a hustle. Teachers wanted me to come ... so they could get paid to control me ... I just wasn’t having it.
Everyone is beneath Winter, beholden to her and her family, or irrelevant and nonexistent. This permanently alters her ability to experience healthy friendships. When one person has money and her friends don’t, the bond that supposedly holds them together can be either flimsy or completely artificial. When the money holder speaks they all listen. When the one with the money is wrong, no one corrects her. Instead they fear being cut out of the benefits that hanging out with the money girl brings. Even a spunky friend like Natalie can be impacted by a simple reminder that she’s wearing one of Winter’s old dresses. And, in every situation where there is a good thing and an excellent thing, the friend without the money is expected to settle for a good thing while of course the friend with the money takes and deserves the excellent thing. When it’s time to fight, a brawl with some chicks, Winter does not have to fight. Just the sight of Winter’s face, a reminder that “Santiaga runs things,” causes would-be bullies to stop dead in their tracks and fall back.
Winter grew addicted to this arrangement. She fed off of the attention. After all, the entire neighborhood had watched her grow up, experiencing life as none of them had. The neighbors saw Winter and her family floss, ride expensive cars and limos, throw big parties, spend money, gather gifts, and parade privileges. Earline’s Beauty Salon was a stage for Winter and her mom to flex their power. All business stopped and was redirected toward them when they entered the already packed facility.
When the Santiaga family, under the leadership of the father, picks up and moves to a Long Island mansion, Winter does not see this as advancement as most people would. She prefers the projects to the palace. She prefers the cement to the grass. She prefers the commotion to the peace. She needed to be in the projects with hundreds of people beneath her. She needed her friends to need her and to depend on and sweat her stuff. She needed her captive audience, and jealous schoolmates. She needed to be surrounded by familiar but subordinate things. It was her position in the hierarchy that drove her personality. In the suburbs no one knew her position or cared who she was, or worshipped and feared her father. Out there, she met her worse fear. She just blended in.
The Daughter-Father Relationship
From birth Winter was handed some twisted traditions. Her father sent a limo to pick her mother and the infant up from the hospital. He gave her a 24-karat-gold diamond ring on the third day of her life. He obviously thought that this was special, as she was told this story as soon as she was able to understand. The moral of the story he told Winter was “It was important for me to know I deserved the best, no slum jewelry, cheap shoes, or knock-off designer stuff, only the real thing.” So what’s wrong with this picture?
Stories of early childhood clue children in on who their parents really are, what really happened, and who they will ultimately grow up to be. The story of the limo and the ring is not about how a loving father slept in the hospital room right beside the mother in anticipation of the birth of his first child. In fact, Santiaga was not even there, hence the limo. The story that Winter holds up as told by her father is not about the smile on his face or the fear on his face as he witnessed a baby coming through the birth canal. It’s not about something she saw her father do that stuck in her mind forever. It’s about material possessions being given to define and/or express a father’s connection to his daughter. The story reveals the depth of the connection of the father and daughter, and the lack of depth at the same time.
Fathers set their daughters’ standard of manhood. Winter grew to see her father as a proud provider. One of his greatest values to her was his consistency in giving her stuff—diamond rings, necklaces and tennis bracelets, clothes, shoes, coats, pocketbooks, hairstyles, and of course cash. She consequently began to look at men as being worth what they could give her. A man who could not buy her, was less of a man. He deserved nothing more than to be used, sexually or otherwise, like Sterling.
Santiaga taught Winter that she deserved the best, but not because she worked for it, or accomplished anything in her life. She deserved it because he said so. She deserved it because she was royalty.
When a child is given things of great material worth, through no effort of her own, she loses the awareness of its value. No matter how much it cost, or what it took for the parent to acquire it, the child does not get the actual life experience of earning. The child has no scale on which to weigh or appreciate its value. Whether a child is rich or poor, by not requiring a child to prove herself worthy of gifts, valuables, and excess, the parent corrupts the child’s understanding of capital in capitalist America.
The child who is flooded with things, grows to expect them, needs them even. As time moves on, it will take more and more things to excite and delight the child, coming at a faster pace. Those items, although they increase in monetary cost, become less and less impressive to the child. However, they remain very impressive to the child’s friends who have never enjoyed even one hundreth of that lifestyle. The delight therefore then comes from the child showing off her stuff to her friends and getting a charge out of the envy and excitement the onlookers display. Winter Santiaga was so addicted in this way, she clearly stated that she would go to school only “If I had a new outfit to show off or some new jewels I knew I’d get sweated for… .”
In the process of giving Winter too much, Santiaga was also taking something away. All the years he spends “over providing and protecting” her from the real world, is time lost helping her to develop a skill of her own. Time is lost that she could’ve spent charting an independent course where she would have challenged herself to answer the question: What will I do when I grow up and am on my own? What is my personal plan and purpose on this Earth?
Another twisted tradition was the decision not to send Winter to school with regularity. In the novel, she never discusses any academic course or extra-curricular activities. Now, we all know that education can happen in many ways. It is not always necessary to attend the public school that is offered up to American youth. But, no private school, no home instruction, no family library or bookstore outings, no outside reading or information coming in, is a guarantee that your child will be naive and ignorant.
For many decades, many blacks in America have been confusing looking good with doing well. Mothers have taken two jobs to “make their children look right, and keep up,” when, in fact, no matter how well dressed, manicured, and heeled your child is, if she does not have any knowledge, any skill, if she
has not mastered anything, she is not doing well. Winter Santiaga looked great. Winter Santiaga could read, write, and count. Yet, Winter Santiaga was ignorant.
In the ghetto if you are born into the painful reality of having a criminal parent, an addict parent, an alcoholic parent, or an uneducated parent, the other adults in your extended family—the grandmother or grandfather, the aunts and uncles and cousins—become your opportunity to see beyond the limitations of your parents’ choices and circumstances. Any one of them may provide the alternative model or blueprint for you to pattern yourself after. Winter Santiaga’s extended family, the ones who lived close to her, were all involved in, or hostage to, or beneficiaries of criminal activity. Criminal activity was her norm.
When Winter is in a tight spot, after the takedown of her father, she cannot, or does not, think constructively about how to make money, employ herself, or reignite her education. Even though her skills as a cosmetologist, manicurist, beautician, decorator, and designer were impeccable and apparent to the reader, they were not considered viable options to Winter. They were, she figured, just something she would use to raise money to invest in and get herself set up in the drug world. The drug world, because of her father’s and family’s example, seemed the obvious choice. It was almost as if the legitimate options she had available, she considered beneath her and temporary. The illegal options she considered a step up and in.
Ricky Santiaga did talk to his daughter. His words were lessons in street survival. For example, he taught her how to be the daughter of a drug kingpin. He taught her to keep the family business quiet. He taught her how to profile and stunt, to look the part. He taught her not to go out with men who were not sharp and aggressive, not to go out with men who can’t give her, again, what she deserves. He gave her little stories about how he set up his drug business and why.
Yet he never trained her to survive in the real world, the legitimate realm. There was no talk of managing savings and bank accounts. There was no talk of life insurance or trust funds. There was no talk of a cash reserve, property ownership, deed transfers, equity, godparents, a plan B, a plan C. He never prepared Winter for the legitimate business world. He knew that his “profession” was susceptible to collapse and seizure. Still, when he was incarcerated, in the absence of access to his team, he attempted to use an unprepared Winter to conduct business with his lawyer or at least to serve as his messenger girl.
I never got the sense that Santiaga knew that what he was not saying was so much more heavy than what he was saying. The everyday example he set was so loud. His style was so overwhelming. The words he shared with Winter could not counteract his actions. His words did not steer her away from wanting his lifestyle. In fact his everyday presence seduced her. It made everything else in the world look miniscule and unsuccessful. Him telling Winter, therefore, to forget about marrying someone like himself or Midnight, fell on deaf ears. In his last moments of freedom he tried to urge Winter toward “ ... one of these big-headed doctors, lawyers, engineer boys …” instead of desiring a man in the drug game. But, her definition, image, and understanding of manhood had already been cemented by the example his life choices had already set.
There is no sense in labeling Souljah the hater. The flimsiness of the foundation Santiaga built for his daughter was made obvious by Winter herself. When she dates Bullet and Midnight reveals to her that Bullet is from the other team—“While your daddy was being raided you were having drinks butt naked with the enemy”—Winter does not side with her father and refuse to have anything to do with the man who brought about her father’s downfall, according to his top lieutenant. We are not discussing here Winter’s words or her emotions. We are discussing her actual actions. She speaks of loving her father, being loyal to her father. When it comes right down to the bottom line, how deep is her love?
Love is a demonstrative word. Webster’s lists love as a noun. I believe it is a verb, an action word. Love is supposed to make you do something. It is supposed to make you feel something deep and compelling that leads you to be unselfish, loyal, and protective. When someone violates the person you love, the least you can do is refuse to acknowledge, interact with, and support the enemy.
The fact of the matter is that Santiaga raised a daughter who was a hustler. A hustler’s first law is to get him or herself into a lucrative and sweet position. A hustler will trade anything for success, even people. A hustler will say anything, do anything, hurt anybody who stands in the way. Additionally, Winter’s criteria for choosing a man was based on what a man can do for her. Santiaga was down. Bullet was up. Therefore Winter chose Bullet, conveniently forgetting to support her father and ignoring the fact that Bullet was from the other team. “Family sticks together.”
The Mother-Daughter Relationship
“Momma didn’t work ’cause beauty, she said, was a full-time occupation.”
This is Winter’s description of her mother. All of the additional words and scenarios Winter spoke of were some version of the above quote. Winter’s mom gave Winter the tradition of women as physical, sexual beings, one-dimensional creatures. She taught Winter how to reach visual perfection. It was because of the mom that Winter knew how to dress and take care of her hair, skin, and nails. Her mom taught her what to be—“a bad bitch.” A bad bitch, according to the mother, is a woman who outshines every other woman. She is so alluring that she attracts the big fish, the man who is supposed to take care of her for the rest of her life. Winter’s mom taught Winter that “beautiful women are supposed to be taken care of.” They are supposed to shop, spend, and shop some more ’cause “like mom says, you can never have too much.” Although physical beauty and sexuality is one aspect of feminine power, what happened to the other 358 degrees of wisdom and understanding that should have transferred from mother to daughter? The absence of this information created a Winter Santiaga who was an emotional, mental, spiritual, and intellectual midget.
Moreover, the absence of a mother whose presence teaches love, compassion, intelligence, consideration, and consciousness leads to the creation of daughters and sons who cannot love anyone in a wholesome way themselves. Consequently, the mother’s shortcomings become the daughter’s shortcomings.
Once Winter’s mother is shot in her face, her visual perfection is shattered. Since Winter was taught that this physical beauty was the essence of womanhood, and is in fact what makes you a “bad bitch,” the crooked face meant that her mother went from being a queen to becoming an irrelevant peasant.
We witnessed Winter’s lack of capacity for emotion in the treatment of her mom. When her mother returns from the hospital, she plots to gain control of her mother’s new red Mercedes Benz instead of having a genuine commitment to her mother’s healing. She’s thinking, well, I’m still beautiful, why waste too much time worrying about anything or anyone else?
After the takedown of her father and the seizure of his material possessions, Winter is forced to ride the New York City subway. She mentions being embarassed by her mom’s appearance. She turns her body away from her mother to pretend the two of them are not really sitting and riding together on the train.
Throughout the hard times Winter never sees her mother as an asset. The idea that two or three heads is better than one when attempting to solve a problem never crosses her mind. She does not respect her mother’s ability to think or hustle. Moreover, because her mother is now “ugly,” she looks at and treats her as if she’s useless.
Winter, as an emotional dwarf, lacks the awareness and intelligence to help her mom fight the mental illness and drug addiction that is quickly approaching. She thinks only of how her mother’s downfall will effect her friends’ image of herself.
In fact, after her Long Island home was raided, and all of the material possessions seized, Winter takes her mother’s last 700 dollars and selfishly hogs it to adorn herself with new clothes in the middle of a crisis situation. We could only wish that this was the worse of it. However, Winter Santiaga moves on to
establish a life separate from her mother’s ruined life. She never once checks on her mother while she is living in the group home called The House of Success. Even after she gets the passes to go outside and move about freely. She never checks on her mother while living with Sister Souljah. In fact she uses her mother as a pawn in her game. She pretends that her mom is a cancer patient nearing death to manipulate the sympathy she knew would come from Souljah and Doc. Despite the fact that after the fall of Santiaga thousands of dollars passed through the hands of Winter Santiaga at different time periods, she never gave, sent, or set aside money for her mother. Moreover, she never even intended to.
The only thing that Winter did ultimately give her mother was crack. She took it from the cookie jar in Bullet’s apartment and dropped it through the sliding slot in the door. She secretly watched as her mother groveled for it. She even listened as Bullet humiliated her mom, treating her like a common crackhead worthy of no kind of respect.
These attitudes and actions are what makes Winter the coldest Winter ever.
Winter and Her Sisters
While the Santiaga family is on top, Winter does the normal babysitting chores that an older sister would do in any family rich or poor. She takes Porsche to her dance lessons, the children to the mall. Winter’s all decked out in a T-shirt that reads, “These are not my fucking kids.” She is so perfect at always distinguishing herself as separate from and mostly above everyone else of any age. However, we never get a sense that the word sister has any deeper meaning in her mind and heart. We never hear her speak of them as more than an obligation, intrusion, or nuisance. In fact, in the presence of Midnight she views her sister Porsche as up and coming competition.