Chapter Two: The Tiny Tyrant – Grand Ma FuFu

She was 4'10" on a generous day, but Grand Ma FuFu carried herself like a heavyweight champ. No filter. No hesitation. No mercy.

I was eight when she arm-wrestled one of my friends at my birthday party. He thought it was a joke. She didn’t. She beat him — then roasted him for the rest of the party, calling him a weakling and branding my friends “crumb bums.”

I remember laughing out of shock, not joy. We all did. That was her style — dominate first, smile later.

My dad? He never smiled around her. I always sensed it: his simmering dislike,the way he gritted his teeth when she talked. And honestly, I understood why.

His siblings weren’t much better.When my grandfather passed — a union man with real money tucked away —we saw none of it. Grand Ma FuFu and Aunt Dolores made sure of that. Spiteful women, cut from the same venomous cloth.

After my dad passed, things got harder. My mom struggled. We struggled. The people who could've helped didn’t even blink.

But when my cousin turned sixteen? A brand new car from FuFu.

Me? I got silence. And when she did call… all she gave me was attitude. Nothing but insults and thinly veiled spite. That phone call still echoes.

That was my inheritance. Not money. Not support. Just the cold burn of being forgottenby the very people who could’ve made a difference.

But here’s the thing about fire —it can burn you, or it can forge you. And I refused to stay broken.