The nightmare that ensued would violently shift Tony’s childhood memories from those of a loving, responsible, adoring mother who braided his hair nightly, and daily brought him home his favorite, fried shrimp, while on her lunch breaks from the bank she was employed by – to a strung out stranger, so far gone and mixing with the wrong people, that Tony once had to stand guard over her inside of a small closet, knife in hand, ready to defend her with his own life against a grown man who was equally as high.
After nine years as an only child, being shifted back and forth between his mama who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take care of him properly, and his Auntie, who proved to be the only constant in his young life, he was joined by a sister and, again, by two more brothers. It was then that quick trips to the market to get a loaf of bread turned into stretches of absent days, leaving him home alone to care for his young siblings. It was then that a young child learned to feed babies their bottles, and a young child learned to change diapers…and that same young child learned what it’s like to sit by the window for hours and days, wondering if the next car coming down the road would carry his mother back home to them.
In 1989, when an angry threat by family member finally promised the long-overdue intervention of Children’s Services, Tony’s mama gathered her younger (now four more) children and fled to her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. Tony was left with his Auntie, again, and now without his little sisters or brothers. He graduated from high school, then to a local junior college, and then went on to a university in Missouri, but not before he would see his mother again, in Los Angeles. She was without the four children she took to Mississippi, but she had another in her womb, and she was still strung out. Heartbroken, confused, frustrated, angry…Tony threw a lot of words at her, the most painful of which – that she was no longer his mom.
A son’s bond with his mother is strong though. Stronger than anger, more enduring than drug abuse, and definitely cemented by the connections to little sisters and brothers. By the time Tony and I began our lives together at the University, his mother had brought into the world three more precious lives. Now, and with nine children and no fathers around to help out, Tony would spend his breaks from school visiting his mother, who now lived back in Mississippi. He would spend time with his siblings who were suffering the same fate that had claimed his own childhood. He would make promises to them. He would tell me about those promises…and in 1994, we would begin to fulfill those promises.
