From Blocks to Blueprints — Part II: Heat & Hunger (Houston, TX)
Houston Gave me a Childhood — Most Adults Couldn’t Survive
by Andre Smith
I don’t remember the moment we left New York, but I remember the heat.
Houston had heat, but it wasn’t just the sun. It was survival in the air. Hunger wasn’t a feeling; it was a fact of life. Before I knew what pain was, I’d already learned how to carry it.
This is where survival became strategy.
It’s late 1984, we landed in Houston, Texas, sometime between baby steps and broken promises. I was barely one, still figuring out how to stand. But the city would teach me something Yonkers didn’t have time to:
How to move through pressure without cracking.
Houston didn’t greet us. It gripped us. The air was thicker, the streets louder, and the silence between the chaos felt heavier. I didn’t have the words yet, but I felt the shift in my bones.
We landed in Southwest Houston. Back then, it was nothing like the postcards. Just rows of tired apartments, concrete heat, and enough noise to drown your thoughts. The buildings leaned with exhaustion, the streets carried stories you weren’t supposed to ask about, and the real danger didn’t always come from the outside.
Houston in the early 1980s was booming due to high oil prices, until 1986 when prices plunged. Leading to 211,000 jobs lost, which equated to a 9% unemployment rate in the city. Financial instability forced a surge in foreclosures, a rise in crime, and the spread of the crack epidemic. The economic downturn led to widespread urban decay, abandoned buildings, poverty, murder, and drugs.
I was brought to a crumbling city. But inside our apartment, there was already war.
My earliest personal memory of my father is him and my mother fighting. I’m watching cartoons, probably ThunderCats or Ninja Turtles. When I hear the yelling and commotion.
We had a short walkway that connected the bedroom to the bathroom, that you accessed from the living room in our one-bedroom apartment. They were disturbing my cartoons, so I got up. I stood at the entrance of the walkway, only to witness my father dragging my mother off the bed, through that walkway to the bathroom. I followed, glued to the action, but confused.
Next, he picked her up and slammed her into the tub and started punching her. Even as a preschooler, I knew this shit wasn’t right. So, I turned into Lion-O or Raphael and went into the bathroom to break it up. Why the fuck did I do that? Because I got pushed into the wall, but the beating stopped.
There were some fun times too, don’t get it twisted. I was a Michael Jackson superfan like everyone else in the 80s. I used to sing and dance on the coffee table for my mom’s friends…I don’t know how many V-necks I ripped through.
Our crib was immaculately cleaned and decorated. My closet was filled to the brim with the dopest fashion and jays galore. My mom also showered me with compliments about my looks or intelligence. Pops gave plenty of hard-learned knowledge and old-school game. Always reminding me in his own way, that I was meant for more than the block.
My mom worked at MD Anderson, one of the top cancer hospitals in the country. I didn’t really understand what that meant back then. I just knew she’d clean herself up, pull her scrubs on like armor, walk into a place built to fight death with dignity, and came home tired.
She’d spend her days around doctors, labs, and clean white walls, then come back to our apartment where the air was thick with smoke and struggle. It was wild, looking back. She went from fighting to save lives during the day to fighting her own demons at night.
I didn’t know the details, but even as a kid, I could feel the weight she carried. It was a daily shift between two worlds, saving lives by day, and trying to hold hers together by night. Both of them were trying to break her.
We lived near Bellaire. Back when the only thing moving faster than the heat was the hustle. Apartments packed like shoeboxes, windows open because AC was a luxury, and the walls thin enough to hear another family breakdown. My own included.
The city called it the Fourth Ward, but by then, the lines were blurred. We just called it home. And due east, 20 minutes, tucked inside the Fifth, where we crossed more than streets on the way there.
It was there, in that part of the city, one of the few places a boy could sit still long enough to learn something: the barbershop.
The clippers buzzed like streetlights flickering on at dusk. The shop smelled like Blue Magic, sweat, and stories that weren’t meant for kids but always found our ears anyway.
The barbershop was part courtroom, part comedy club. Dudes argued over Jordan vs. Drexler like it was life or death, all while holding a straight razor. You learned quickly to keep still, listen close, and don’t repeat shit you heard in there.
The Fourth didn’t teach with words. It showed you in silence. It taught me how to read tension in a room, how to move without making noise, how to survive where struggle didn’t brag. It just breathed. The Fifth was rough, yeah, but it felt honest. Like life didn’t wear makeup out there. But to be honest, in the 80s, there was no place safe.
And while the world outside kept shifting, I was still just a kid trying to make sense of it all.
These were my elementary school days, I started Kindergarten in 1988. I don’t remember the name of the school. Hell, I don’t remember much from those classrooms at all. But I remember the heat. I remember the hunger. I remember watching my mother’s eyes before she sent me off, like the world might teach me something she couldn’t shield me from. Even though she didn’t hide much either. That’s the kind of education you don’t forget, even if you do forget the desks.
I do recall school feeling like somewhat of a safe haven. I always enjoyed learning, a light that stayed lit no matter where life tried to dim it. It was the one place I didn’t have to carry the storm on my back. The lessons made sense, even when the world didn’t. And for a few hours each day, I could just be a kid. Not a witness. Not a warrior. Just a boy with a pencil and a chance.
But nothing at school could prepare me for what started to fall apart at home. Peace doesn’t last long when the foundation’s already starting to crumble.
Pops left Houston around 1989, I was nearly six. At the time, I wasn’t hurt like most kids. I loved my Pops, but he still had some demons and like any typical young black male, the sun rose and set on Mom Dukes. The violence and constant arguments took their toll, so part of me was glad to see him go at first. Then came the increased drug use and revolving door of baseheads.
But peace didn’t show up when he left — just more shadows.
What followed was the slow unraveling of the only world I knew existed. The apartment got quieter, but the streets got louder. And the faces coming in and out of our home didn’t wear smiles. They wore hunger. They smelled like burnt chemicals, scorched plastic, sour metal and failure. Most of them looked like zombies that could never be satiated. At this point, Moms wasn’t working anymore. She was a full-time entrepreneur, and ready rock was her product.
In a recently discussed memory, with my mom and aunt, something sinister was remembered that adds even more gravitas to this era. Sometime in late 1990, my moms was fucking with this dude that was like 21 or 22 (she was 33). I don’t know how they met, but they did business together. He was actually kind of cool. Homie didn’t fuck wit me in a negative way. We played Nintendo from time to time. There was some danger under that façade though. Of course he hit moms too; it was almost like she needed the abuse. I’ve never known her to be with a dude that didn’t hit her.
They used to rent cars hoping to avoid the heat. One day, it almost backfired.
The cops came to the apartment asking about that boyfriend. He had rented a Chrysler LeBaron under her name. A few days later, they said it turned up in the water — with a body inside.
I don’t remember feeling anything. I just remember how quiet everything got. Moms didn’t cry or fold, but I could tell she was scared. Real scared.
They were asking about a gun. Said the body had been shot. She turned over her piece, but it wasn’t the same caliber. No charges. No arrest. Just pressure in the air and a warning that not everything rented gets returned clean.
I was too young to unpack it, but old enough to know it mattered. Something shifted in me after that. I stopped expecting the grown-ups around me to be solid. To keep me safe. Even the ones who were supposed to protect me. Especially them.
Pops was already gone too, so there was nowhere to fall back. No refuge. No voice of reason. Just Moms, the streets, and whatever decisions came with trying to stay afloat. That boyfriend wasn’t the first mistake Moms made, and he damn sure wouldn’t be the last. But that was the first time I saw just how close death could sit to your front door without knocking. And how dangerous it gets when survival links people who were never meant to be connected in the first place.
After that encounter with the police, I noticed the jakes watching the crib. Mind you, I’m barely seven at this time, and I peeped cops in the shadows. I was in the second grade!
What were you doing in the second grade?
I never said anything to Moms. Thought maybe she already knew. Figured if a kid could see it, surely, she could too. But she kept up business as usual.
Same traffic. Same hustle. Same faces.
Looking back, I don’t think she knew. They weren’t watching her like a target… more like bait. That boyfriend had disappeared, but that LeBaron and that body, were still a problem. It wasn’t long before the cops had enough reason or maybe just enough suspicion, to descend and tear our lives apart. I don’t know what the warrant said, but they raided the apartment, took her in, and started pulling at the threads.
She got bailed out a few days later, but the damage was already done. We lost the crib. All my toys. All my dope ass gear. After that, it was just me, Moms, and a bag or two bouncing from couch to couch. Whoever would let us crash for a few days. We were broke. Tired. Sliding through the blur with no plan.
Eventually, we ended up staying with these twin brothers she knew somehow. They sold dope too. The house smelled like: hustle, burnt foil, blunts, and paranoia. The TV was always on, but nobody ever really watched it, but me. No school. No schedule. Just movement. I knew exactly what we were running from, and I knew we were only getting closer to it. I just didn’t know how the fuck we would escape it.
Needless to say…we didn’t escape shit.
Pops had been gone for two years by then, living out in Charlotte. Moms eventually reached out to my uncle — his best friend — for help, after the arrest. He looked out, he always did…always would, but he saw how bad things were getting. He told Pops everything. And Pops knew what time it was.
He came back to Houston quietly. Played PI, since even my uncle didn’t know where we were. We had been bouncing around too much. Pops hit the streets, asking questions, knocking on doors, putting pieces together until he finally found us.
He watched the spot for a few days, waited, and calculated. Until he figured out the only way to get me out safe…was with the cops.
When the cops kicked that door in, it wasn’t calm. It was mayhem. Guns in my face. Yelling. Folks scrambling to flush coke and crack down the toilet. I remember the noise, but I also remember feeling still. Like everything was spinning except me.
Once things calmed down, Pops walked in. The cat who was supposed to protect me, but was absent for the past two years. Now he was here? After all the shit I had to endure?
I understand he had no obligation to my mother, but damn, I needed him to stand by me before that night. Not just show up when everything is already broken. Not as a rescue mission. As a son! Before I stopped expecting anything at all. When I was still breakable.
They took Moms away. I left with Pops. And just like that, the world split. I didn’t see her again for two and a half years. All I had left was a suitcase full of memories, a trail of tears, and a silence where her voice used to be.
And on that day, when the weight of the world pressed in from every side, God didn’t save me.
He hardened me.
Something eternal was born in me. The Untouchable.
Before the red and blues got turned off and the police tape went up, Pops and I were already on a 15-hour, 1,050-mile trek. Crossing seven state lines. In the moment, I had no idea where we were headed. And Pops didn’t talk much back then, especially about emotion shit like I just faced. We did talk, but whatever we said on that drive, it didn’t stick.
Damn, the words truly escape me, but I knew what was sitting in that Lincoln with us.
Confusion. Rage. Abandonment.
In two years I had: watched a murder accusation ripple through my living room, seen my mother cuffed and hauled off twice, lived through two raids with police guns in my face like I was the target. Then Pops shows up out the blue, not to save us, but to separate us. The same man who vanished two years ago now riding shotgun, while everything I knew burned behind me.
I was leaving Houston, but it felt more like I was being exiled. My mother was gone. My home was gone. And I was headed toward a new city with a stranger I was supposed to trust.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t speak much. I just stared out the window like it held the answers. But all I saw was the road.
What Houston Taught Me — Lessons from the Heat:
· You don’t need to know you’re in a war to be scarred by it. Even before I had words, I had wounds. The fire didn’t wait for me to understand, it just burned.
· Love can live under the same roof as violence, but it don’t feel like home. Watching the people who made you try to break each other, leaves cracks in places no therapist can find.
· When you grow up around addicts and hustlers, trust becomes a luxury, and silence becomes survival. I learned to watch everything because asking too many questions; could cost you everything.
· Not all superheroes wear capes, some wear scrubs by day and pain by night. I watched my mom fight cancer by sunrise and demons by sundown. Both almost killed her. Only one paid the rent.
· The streets don’t teach with lectures…they teach with losses. And every lesson comes with a receipt. A missing friend. A bruised face. A closed casket. A missing voice.
· Protection ain’t always presence. The one who was csupposed to shield me, came back when the glass was already shattered. I needed a father, not a rescue mission.
· When the cops break down your door, you don’t just lose freedom, you lose pieces of your soul. Guns in your face as a child rearrange your definition of safety forever.
· You can’t pack trauma in a suitcase, but it’ll ride with you anyway. I left Houston with one bag and a thousand ghosts, none of them quiet.
· Being a child in the fire don’t make you a victim, it makes you a forge. But even iron bends before it hardens. And I bent more times than I’ll ever say out loud.
· God didn’t pull me out of the fire. He watched me walk through it and made sure I came out untouchable. I wasn’t saved. I was sculpted.
My second lessons weren’t any softer. They didn’t come wrapped in safety or structure. They didn’t whisper, they struck. They didn’t ask if I was ready, they handed me the weight and watched if I’d break.
Pain didn’t ask questions…it gave commands.
Murder. Addiction. Police raids. Guns in my face.
Addiction wasn’t just some distant cautionary tale or D.A.R.E commercial for me. It fixed my dinner, bought my clothes, took me to school, and slept in the same bed.
The streets didn’t pull punches. Neither did the people.
I didn’t just survive Houston. I was shaped by it. Hardened. Seasoned. Scarred.
I was a child standing in fire, treated like I was made for it.
And maybe I was. Because somehow…I stood in it…10 toes down.
I lost my mother to the system, my innocence to the pipe, and my home to the heat. But I didn’t lose myself, I was just beginning to find him.
Houston showed me what happens when the heat doesn’t let up, and the hunger doesn’t wait.
But it also showed me something else…
That I could carry it.
That I could walk through it.
That I could rise from it.
I was just a boy trying to outrun ghosts, but every step through that fire, became a brick beneath my feet. And those bricks? They became blueprints.
I didn’t feel shame. It wasn’t just a heavy stone on my heart.
It was fuel.
The fire didn’t consume me. It crowned me.
Untouchable wasn’t just what I became. It’s what I had to be to make it out.
I didn’t know it yet, but the heat was about to break. I wouldn’t trade the heat for anything. It taught me how to move without burning. And in its place came something colder, something that would teach me a different kind of hunger.
Next Up:
Part III — 🪞 The Mirror: The Silence That Shaped Me (Charlotte, NC) drops June 13.
