But that’s my biggest fear—to lose another
child. If I lose another child, I probably will lose my
mind
.
People seem to think that I am doing good, but I’m
not. I’m horrible. I can put on my “front face” the majority of
time, but my heart is broken; it’s torn apart. To this day, I don’t
understand why God allowed me to be in this situation, because I
was an excellent mom.
My goal was to protect Terrell as much as
possible—from the gangs, the drugs. I didn’t want him to be
connected to nothing negative in the neighborhood. When Terrell met
friends, I made sure I met their mother and father. That was
something that he said parents don’t do anymore, but I did it. I
wanted to know whose house he was going to, and a little bit about
their families. Is the father living in the home? I just needed to
know some information. And then I
monitored
his friends.
They would bring their book bags in the house and leave them lying
around and, at times, I would peek in their book bags to make sure
that their bags were okay, because I needed to know who my children
were around.
Terrell had always been an advanced student.
He started speaking and walking earlier than a lot of children, and
he skipped a year ahead in grammar school. He was outgoing,
outspoken, had to get the last word in. At school, his principal
and teachers used to tell him he was a leader and to remain
positive because other young people followed after him.
He started playing the bass guitar in his
freshman year. The bass was his passion. He played for a lot of
gospel artists—he played for a quartet group called The Victory
Travelers. He actually got a chance to play on the Main Stage at
the Gospel Fest with The Victory Travelers and some great choirs.48
Terrell was doing everything that I always wanted to do. I sang,
too, and was in the choir, but Terrell was making it and
accomplishing everything in the gospel music world that I wanted to
do. So I enjoyed supporting him and cheering him on from the
audience. I was known in the music world as Terrell’s mom. It was
just awesome to see him on the stage playing. His goal was to
travel around the world and play the gospel music with his
six-string bass guitar. But this did not happen.
My husband and I taught Terrell right from
wrong, just like any parents who love their children. I’d stay up
and watch him come home, just to make sure his eyes were clear. If
I’d smell cigarettes, I would say, “You know what we studied about
the lungs?” I’d grab this lung picture and show him everything. So
my husband and I stayed on him, building him up to be the great
young man that he was.
The day before everything happened, I had
cooked a pot roast and meatloaf. I had made pot roast for that
Monday night and meatloaf for that Tuesday. So that Monday night,
he was talking to his girlfriend on the phone and he was like, “You
gotta come over here—my mom, she threw down! She cooked some pot
roast today.” The next day was the meatloaf day and, when I came
home from work and the meatloaf had been eaten off of, I called him
to ask, “Why did you eat the meatloaf before I got home?” The
moment I left the message was probably when everything was
happening because he didn’t pick up his phone.
At 6 o’clock that evening, Terrell took his
girlfriend to church for her praise-dance rehearsal. While she was
practicing, he was in the church playing his music. His friend,
Darren, had drums in the car, so he put his bass down and went
outside to help Darren, because he was helpful. That was something
that he did. Then, this other car pulled up with some more
musicians in it. They were out there talking for a moment at this
car on church grounds, and somebody came by shooting.
Somebody said that the person was on foot,
somebody said he was in the car. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just
know that somebody came by shooting. My baby, after he was shot in
the shoulder, he struggled back to the church for help, but they
didn’t know he was shot. They thought that he was just panicking or
something. He started shaking, and they just kinda stepped over
him.
That made me mad, because my baby got shot,
and nobody even knew it. They were so busy running outside the door
of the church, and everybody was stepping over my baby. So he
stumbled to church, the place where you’re supposed to get help,
and they finally realized he got shot. He told one guy that he
think he got shot. Those were his last words.
Me and my husband and my other two children
was doing homework and preparing dinner. As soon as we got the
call, we all ran out and went to the church on 116th and Halsted.
They were bringing Terrell out to the ambulance. He was still
breathing then. My regret is that I got back into my car, ‘cause
that’s what they told me to do instead of getting in the ambulance.
I wish I would’ve gotten into the ambulance. I wasn’t thinking. I
was just trying to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I never
thought I was going to lose my son. He’d been hit by a car
before—and he made it. And I thought that must be because of my
prayers. So I never would have thought…
It was an eternity driving to the hospital.
On the way there, I was calling friends and family and I said,
“Praaaaaay and meet us at Christ Hospital—praaaaaay!” I’m calling
everybody and telling them to just pray for Terrell and meet us.
And my husband kept saying, while he was driving, “Breathe,
Terrell, breathe!”
So when we got to the hospital, we were
waiting, and I was wondering when they were gonna let me back there
with my baby. The doctor came out to talk to us, and I wasn’t
really comprehending what he was saying to us, until my husband
said, “Are you talking…you’re talking in the past. Are you saying
my son didn’t
make
it?”
And that’s when we found out that—and I lost
it from there. This devastated my entire family. The first year
without Terrell was horrible for my entire family.
When we got to the first-year anniversary of
his death, I tried to take my life. And, you know, I’m a Christian,
God-fearing woman, but I couldn’t take the pain of him not being
with me anymore. I took a whole bottle—a bottle of pills—and went
to sleep. And then I woke up the next morning—I didn’t wake up, God
woke me up—and I saw the sun and I was mad. I was like, “Come on,
God, you left me here again?”
I believe that if all of the kids got the
love and attention they needed, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
True, you have parents out there who want to help their children
but don’t know how. But there are some parents not trying to raise
their kids, not putting forth the effort. Like the ones who don’t
have nothing to do with their kids, but when they go to court, they
say, “Johnny, he was a real good child.” They need to be held
accountable. Parents must raise their children, make sure that they
get a decent education and do their homework. You need to be a
parent and not be your child’s friend, hanging and kicking it with
them. It starts in the home.
I used to think that, as long as I raised my
children right, as long as I kept them in order, then my boys would
be safe. But now I know differently. If I don’t take care of my
neighbor’s kids, if I don’t take care of other youth, my own
children aren’t safe. So my goal is to work with the high-risk
children and be proactive.
Everything that our youth have to look
forward to is violence—it’s the games, the videos with shooting at
the police, the songs. There’s a whole lot of pieces to this
puzzle. Gun legislation, it’s a big one. There are so many guns in
our community that I don’t know if they are dropping them out of
cargo trains. Our youth can go get guns for $25; some can get them
for free. I asked a group of young people, eighth grade and under,
“So if you need a gun, where can you go get one?” And one of the
boys was like, “I can go to my friend’s house and get a gun.” And I
said, “Are you’re serious?” He said, “I can get one. They sell them
out of their car trunks.”
People sell guns like it’s candy.
We shouldn’t have to live in fear. We
shouldn’t have to be afraid to let our kids walk to the store. We
do not have to live this way. When we can get the people in our
community to realize this, then we’ll be okay. We don’t need any
more mothers in my situation.
We need to speak out. If we don’t speak out,
the black community is going to end up being in the museum. We are
going to end up there, and people are going to say, “This is where
black people used to live. This is how they used to look.” At the
rate that we are going now, we’re going to have more black men
incarcerated or murdered. And the generation is going to become
extinct. So we have to speak out.
—
Interviewed by Ann Szekely
Endnotes
48 The Chicago Gospel Music Festival is an
annual city-sponsored event. The Victory Travelers are an acclaimed
vocal quartet based in Chicago.
A TWIG IN A TORNADO
TIMOTHY CLARK
Timothy Clark—not his real name—is a
19-year-old who lives in Washington Heights, an overwhelmingly
African-American neighborhood on the Far South Side, near Beverly
and Roseland. He lives with his mother and two maternal siblings.
He has eight siblings on his paternal side, although he doesn’t
have a relationship with his father or his paternal siblings.
Timothy is tall with a husky build. He is
casually dressed for the interview, wearing jeans and a hoodie. He
mentions that the hoodie once belonged to his best friend, who was
shot to death on Timothy’s birthday in 2009. Timothy’s mother has
repeatedly asked him to discard the hoodie because it is so old and
dirty. But Timothy cannot bear the thought of throwing out this
reminder of his friend, whose name is tattooed on Timothy’s
arm.
Timothy attends Community Youth Development
Institute (CYDI), a small alternative school on the South Side that
has approximately 200 students. He transferred to CYDI in September
of 2010 after being expelled from two public high schools, Hyde
Park Academy and Julian, because of poor academic performance and
repeated fights. He credits the mentor in an after-school program
for being instrumental in his determination to “turn a new leaf.”
Timothy is proud of his recent academic performance. He rarely
misses school and hasn’t had a fight in four months.
I’ve been fighting since I was 8 years old.
When I was in preschool and kindergarten, I would come home crying,
beating my head on the wall. People used to talk about me; they
called me slow and stuff and I didn’t have any friends. But one
day, when I was in third grade, I fought somebody who was 14. He
was messing with my little brother. I told him to leave my brother
alone, but then he started talking about me, so I just hit him. He
got to hitting me back, so I got scared and balled up. But then I
thought about my big cousin Dee who used to tell me, “Ain’t no
losing a fight; you have to win or you have to fight me.” I knew he
was serious. The fight led from the alley to my backyard to my
gangway to my front. I whupped him in the end, because I didn’t
want to fight my cousin Dee. Ever since then, I would tell people,
“You ain’t going to do too much talking.”
I joined a gang in fifth grade. I thought it
was cool. Everybody I knew was in a gang, even one of my friends.
He was like a celebrity. Every girl in the school wanted to go with
him. He used to have money. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to
be in the spotlight.
The process was kinda sweet for me, because
my uncles were big-time gang members when I was a shorty. I stayed
in their old neighborhood, near 69th and Elizabeth in Englewood, so
the gang members already knew me. There was really nothing to
becoming a Gangster Disciple, or GDs as they call them now. I just
had to learn some rules and I was basically in. When I first
joined, they just told me to look out for the police and let them
know when they were coming. Later on, I started selling weed.
It wasn’t long before my friends started
coming to me when they were getting into it with folks. One time,
my friend was into it with a dude, and he came and got me. I told
the dude he had to leave my friend alone. He was still woofing at
my friend, so I jumped him. Another time, my friend smacked my
brother. He was our family friend; his mama and my mama had been
friends a long time. He hit my brother and tried to run, but my
cousin caught him and punched him. I came over and kicked him and
we stomped him out. We used to play football and basketball with
him every day, but that day we had to beat him up.
When I think about it, I’ve been in quite a
few fights. A couple of them were bad, but there was one time when
I hurt someone really badly. Dude was short and I was kicking him
in his face and stomping him with my boots. They told me he went to
the hospital and I was scared that he might be in intensive care.
Afterwards, I felt bad for doing him like that. I was like, “Man, I
hope he is alive.” Luckily, he was all right. I don’t know why I
didn’t stop before it got that far. Sometimes, there is something
that just comes over me when I fight; sometimes, I just black
out.
Because of my actions, there are a few areas
where I gotta look over my shoulder. Like, I work for the Chicago
Park District at Fernwood Park. There’s a dude that I got into it
with who is always over there. When he sees me, or me and my
friends, it’s either going straight to shots or straight
to fighting.
I ain’t gon’ say I’ve never been shot at;
I’ve been shot at before, but I’ve never been hit. I’ve never shot
anybody, either, but I have owned a gun. I bought it for crunch
times, like when my community is in war. That’s when there is so
much fighting and gunshots that you can hardly go outside. I bought
the gun from somebody I knew. I told him I wanted a gun, he told me
what type he had, and I bought it. The gun was $280. Me and my mans
bought it together; I put in $100 and he put in $180. I got my
portion from my mom when she got her tax return. I told her that I
was going to buy some clothes, but I used some of the money to get
the gun. Me and my mans realized that we didn’t really need the
gun, so we sold it.