A Letter from Andrea...
Someone with more of a formal education than I have once
told me that necessity is the mother of invention. Where I
grew up in Brooklyn, we had our own version of that expression:
Necessity is the mother of crime. For that reason, in 1992,
when I was faced with a set of circumstances that was spiraling
out of control and threatening my future and my kids' futures,
I resorted to what I knew best — loan-sharking and my
family. The first is a criminal activity, the second is an
assortment of ex-cons, former drug abusers, inveterate gamblers,
and the most loyal collection of ass-kickers a woman could
ever hope to have. Only now, after having been away from that
life for a little over ten years, do I realize that what I
thought was necessity was really a matter of choice.
You're
about to read the story of how I got into and eventually out
of a life in which I was a party to and participant in a wide
assortment of illegal, immoral, and unethical activities.
I am not proud of any of it, and, to quote another expression,
it ain't braggin if it's so. What you are about to read is
true. I've changed the names of a small number of participants
to protect their privacy and preserve their innocence, though
as you'll probably figure out for yourself, there are very
few innocents in this book.
As much as it's possible to do
so, I've tried to present an account of events as they happened
and as I interpreted them at the time. I have to admit that
as I was writing this book, I had the same reaction many of
you may have to some of the things I did and how I perceived
them: How could she have done that? How could she have not
known that that was wrong/illegal/stupid/harmful, or any one
of another twenty adjectives to describe the insanity that
was my life?
I know you don't know me very well yet, and I
hope that by the time you get through reading this, you will.
But please trust me on this point: I get it now. I see that
I had multiple opportunities to get myself out of the cycle
of poverty and criminality that marked and marred my life
and the lives of my children. For the longest time while all
this was happening, I saw myself as a victim. I blamed everybody
for getting me into the crazy situations I had to deal with.
I never held myself as accountable as I should have for a
lot of what happened to me, and, too often, I did blame myself
for things that weren't my fault. When you're in the middle
of the shit, it's hard to keep it all straight. Time and reflection
have helped me to come to terms with most of the events in
my life and the role I played in them.
I'm not a victim. I
accept the consequences of my actions. This is probably hard
to understand, but I can't apologize for who I was then. How
do you apologize for your life? All I can do is continue to
keep my vow not to return to that life. That said, I can,
and I have, apologized to the people I've hurt.
I'm going
to leave the judging for God. I've always been a firm believer
in getting out of the way and letting the experts do their
work.
Warmly,
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