Innocence Stolen

Innocence Stolen

God knew what he was doing by giving me boys. Although when I was pregnant with my first son I was hoping for a girl, so I could dress her up pretty, comb her hair and put fancy barrettes in it. I figured I would teach her about the world from an African-American woman’s point of view and all about what to look for in a man. However, when my oldest son Alex was born weighing 10 pounds 4 ounces on June 9, 1993, I couldn’t have been more pleased. He had the chubbiest cheeks you ever wanted to see and a head full of black curly hair that was so thick it looked like a wig. He was a great baby, even tempered with a smile that made everything seem better. I was a single mother until he was five years old. Up until then he and I did everything together and motherhood was a joy, because he’s always been an easy-going individual. I remember his first day at pre-school, his teacher Ms. Quinn was a rosy-cheeked woman who could pass for Mrs. Claus. She fell in love with Alex immediately. Even at the age of four he always saw the glass half-full and his love of life was apparent. I recall an instance when he and another child got into a disagreement over a book in class; Alex pushed the boy so he could have the book. According to his pre-k teacher, he was immediately remorseful and apologized to the child for hurting his feelings, without being prompted. Ms. Quinn made a point of telling me what happened as she explained that she had never seen such a compassionate child in all her years of teaching. As Alex got older he received nicknames such as Smiley Face, Mr. Helpful and Sugar Lump that seemed to best characterize his personality.

Alex attended private school all his life until he reached the fifth grade. He attended a small private school with one class per grade with a maximum of 20 children per class. It was during this time that he began to display signs of stress; he wasn’t his happy self and was always complaining about not wanting to go to school. Come to find out, his teacher was prone to fits of rage and was intimidating the children by throwing books and slamming her shoe against the desk. Needless to say, I took him out. After a series of tumultuous events, including fighting with the school’s regional office, he has ended up in a good junior high school in their highest honors program.

All his life I have had one mantra, which is, “His future is not up for grabs, and he has definite plans and great things in store for his life.” My intention has always been to show him how valuable he is as a person and as a black male growing up in a hostile society. We’ve discussed racism, classism, sexism, and the struggle African-Americans have endured in this great country. I never sugar-coated anything for him. We live in a neighborhood that I would describe as middle to lower-middle class. We live in a private house although it is flanked on both sides by two separate sets of public housing projects. When he was small I would show him the men in the neighborhood that were out early in the morning on the park bench drinking. In the evening I would point out the teenage boys in the neighborhood who were both selling and/or doing drugs. I have clearly explained to him that that’s what hopelessness looks like. I have explained to him that while we are by no means poor we are not rich either. We work for what we get and place value in more than material things. I always tell him that the measure of a man is not his wealth but how he treats people and respects himself.

Like any other parent, you do the best you can and hope that all you’ve preached and taught has taken hold in their mind and in their heart so that when you’re not around they make good decisions. All of my teachings have been reinforced by the word of God. I was saved and joined a local church while Alex was in my womb and as a baby he and I attended church regularly. When my faith wavers at times and I find myself not attending as often as I should, he still goes on his volition every Sunday with his God Mother whether I’m up to it or not. I am proud to say he is a willing participant and has grown in his faith in the Lord.

It is this faith that sustained him recently on a Spring evening when went he went outside after church to play basketball with a friend. He asked if he could take his ball and go down to the public park to play a few blocks from our house. Reluctantly, I agreed because the park is on the outskirts of one of the roughest public housing projects in our neighborhood. I figured it’s the middle of the day, bright and sunny and he would be with his friend. My husband and my toddler were also going to the same park so I figured he would be safe. While he was there he played a few games with the other children, but when some older men wanted to play a full-court game they kicked the kids off the court. Alex then asked my husband if he and his friend could go in “the middle” to play. My husband is not a native of my area and agreed to allow him to play in “the middle”, not knowing precisely where the middle was. It turns out the middle my son was speaking of was in the middle of the housing projects on a full-court that was created for the project residents.

What happened next was a chilling account of my son’s first experience with robbery and extortion. He and his friend were “invited “ to go into the middle to play a game by a group of youth that were considerably older than he and his friend. He is eleven and they were between the ages of 13 and 16. Alex said initially they were playing along fine until he and his friend’s team began to beat the older kids in the game. He said one of them became angry and asked where they were from and when my son told him the block, they said he wasn’t from there and had no business in their projects. He told my son anyone past a certain block can’t come into their projects and play. He then began to test my son by saying they need a new “hood” ball, and my son’s ball was it. They began to talk trash to each other and my son refused to back down and engaged to trash talking too. Soon after the situation began to die down, Alex’s friend said he was going to the store and would be right back. Alex’s mistake was not to go too. Shortly after his friend left, one of the older kids came over and asked to see his wristbands he brought at a sporting goods store with his own money the day before. Once Alex let him see them, he asked if he could have one, when Alex said no, he not only took one, but also ripped both of them off his wrists. Alex then asked for them back and got into a shoving match with him but when he called over his older cousin, Alex backed off. After that, the situation just went further down hill, these boys proceeded to play several games without him, but with his ball. Alex just stood there angry and humiliated until someone decided to give the “little kid” his ball back. During this time span I was at home with my husband and toddler who had left the park hours earlier. When Alex’s curfew of 7:00pm began to roll around I asked my husband had he talked to Alex before he left the park and he told me he had reminded him of his curfew and Alex agreed he knew what time to come home.

I got a really bad feeling and at 7:30 pm I got in my car to go look for him. I went to the park and to the corner store and all in between looking for him with lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach. He was nowhere to be found. I had my nephew looking for him in his car and my 88-year-old grandmother went to each of our neighbor’s houses looking for him. I went to his friend’s house, the one who went to the store and never came back, but no one answered the door. I had my husband stay home in case he called. When I called my husband to say I was going to the police precinct, he said Alex was just walking through the door. My panic and fear immediately turned to anger. How dare he just blatantly disobey me and come home when he felt like it? I know it was nice outside, he was playing his favorite sport and all but he knew what time to come in and had a watch on. All this was going through my mind as I approached the house. When I get home, first thing, my husband tells me he’s upstairs in his room and he said his watch stopped and he didn’t realize how late it was. I marched right upstairs and let him have it, I told him, how inconsiderate he was to have everybody worried and having everyone looking for him. I yelled at him and told him he was becoming an awful liar, talking about his “watch stopped”, “yeah right” I told him, it wasn’t even a good lie. I placed him on punishment for two weeks and took away his phone privileges. He never said a word, he just continued matching the clean socks I placed on his bed earlier. I stormed back downstairs and discussed it with my husband as I prepared dinner. We agreed he was lying about the watch but my husband didn’t think that he just decided to stay out, he said maybe something happened. I totally disagreed.

It wasn’t until the next evening at the dinner table when we were alone that my son finally confessed as he cried like a newborn baby. He told me the whole sorted story of how these boys in the projects had pushed him around, robbed him of his wristbands and teased him as he walked away after waiting over an hour for his ball. We cried together. He cried because his feelings were hurt, it wasn’t the wristbands or the ball; it was the fact that all he wanted to do was play with them. They treated him like garbage and he couldn’t understand why. He said, “They’re black just like me, they dress just like me, they look just like me but they treated me like I was different, like I was an alien.” I cried because not only had these young boys stolen my son’s wristbands they changed his view of the world. For all the talking and preaching I’ve done, I left out the street factor, I didn’t warn him of the predatory nature of the projects and their inhabitants, I didn’t tell him that he’s not like them and they know that and because of that he’s easy prey. I also didn’t tell him how I had been chased out of those same projects when I was younger. I didn’t tell him how envy and jealousy are common in the projects and how closeness breeds contempt especially among people who don’t value themselves or others. I never wanted to make yet another separation for him to have to deal with, I never wanted him to be afraid of his own people. Yet, I have come to understand that “It is what it is” and while I am most grateful to God that he wasn’t beaten, stabbed or shot, he now knows there exists an “us and them” mentality even among us. I’m sure he is still hurt by what happened and that time will heal his heart but he will never get back the innocence that was stolen.