The police had arrived to a home at a breaking point. The house was thick with raw emotion: hatred hurt, frustration, heartbreak. How we really felt about our lives came out that night, and the police could not tell the aggressor from the victim. I was in such a rage that I blacked out, not remembering later what I said or did but recognizing that if I did not get a handle on myself, I would go to jail. I thought jail might be the best place for me right then because I was so filled with hatred that I wanted to take out my rage on the next person to cross me, even if it was an innocent bystander. Hurt people, almost without exception, hurt people. They don’t need cause or provocation. They think that by hurting others, they will be able to beat out their own pain, and in those moments when my fists made contact with Joe’s skin, I felt the great release of years of pent-up aggression. I didn’t see yet that when the adrenaline wore off, I would feel more depressed than I ever had.
My mother, whose belly was round and full, lowered to her knees while another officer pressed her to get down. “Ma’am, I need you to get on the ground.”
I leaped to my feet and directed my fury at the officer. “For the love of God, can’t you see that my mother is pregnant? Take your hands off of her.”
Almost immediately, I felt the crushing blow of cold steel against the back of my leg; the officer’s baton knocked my entire body to the ground. With a knee to the middle of my back, a third officer was able to calm everybody down so that even heads would prevail.
Drunk and with a cigarette still dangling from his upper lip, Joe yelled, “Pack your shit up and get the hell out of here—I’m done with all of you. Get out of my house, now!” At his words, we all froze. The only income my mother received as a housekeeper was under the table. Therefore, and as the police would later confirm, all the bills and the rent were under Joe’s name; if Joe wanted us out, we had to get out.
Desperately, my mother begged Joe to reconsider, but the deep sense of betrayal he felt was too much for him. “Just get out,” he repeated, wiping his forehead of blood and spitting into a trashcan.
Just get out. The words rang through my entire body as, in complete shock, I hurried back to my room to pack a couple days’ worth of clothes and my books for school. I flashed back to the early morning sounds of an annoying vacuum cleaner buzzing and my mother talking to Jesus, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if Jesus was really there and why he would allow our family to be broken apart like this.
As I crammed t-shirts into a bag, I mumbled, “Jesus, if you are there, please rescue me and my family. Please, Jesus, help us now!” I neither heard nor felt anything back and retreated into a cocoon of depression that would manifest itself in destructive ways in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.
My mother, Darrell, and Derrick took a little longer to gather their things, partly because my mother was the only one who knew where everything was. They also may have been procrastinating; hoping that Joe or the police officers would feel a shoestring of pity and not force us out into the blistering New England winter-night streets. In the shadows of crushed beer cans and an overflowing ashtray of cigarette butts, Joe sat quietly at the kitchen table, not uttering one word in our defense.
Once we were outside, the reality that we were on our own settled in. Dazed and bruised, both physically and emotionally, my brothers and I followed behind our mother with our coats half on, each of us weeping for our own reasons. One police officer had stayed in the house to get a statement from Joe, and two others escorted us down the street. When we got to the bus stop at the end of the road, the officers hung back. We sat down on the steps leading to a big white Protestant church, and I hoped someone would open the doors and help us find a place to stay.
“Where are we going, Ma?” Derrick asked in a small voice. He was ten or eleven, dark-skinned like Joe, with ivory teeth and a sweet, soft-spoken disposition. “Where are we going to stay the night?”
“Just shut up and be quiet, Derrick,” Darrell said. Like me, he was still emanating rage, clenching his jaw and fists. Darrell was a loose cannon and didn’t seem to notice the cuts and bruises marring his face and knuckles.
Rubbing her pregnant stomach as if looking for an answer, my mother did not respond. She just peered further down the road to see if a bus was anywhere in sight. The police car still idled between our house and the bus stop, but otherwise, the street was quiet and empty.
Ten minutes turned into twenty and then forty-five minutes, and as an hour approached, I realized that we’d been so in shock when we left the house, we had not realized it was close to ten o’clock at night, and the city bus had stopped running hours ago. Numb and cold, my mother alternated covering our hands and ears with her hands to keep the blood circulating and help us avoid frostbite. Then the police car came to life as the officer inside drove forward to check on us.
As he rolled down the passenger window, steam flew from the combustion of the cold outside air with the heated car air. “No more buses tonight, huh?” the officer asked.
My mother shook her head without a word, her shoulders held back proudly.
The officer sighed, and I saw compassion on his face. “Listen,” he said, “I know of a shelter on the other side of town that might take you guys in for a couple of nights. Why don’t you get in?” He gestured toward the backseat of his cruiser.
My mother looked into our eyes, seeing how hard we shivered, and decided to take him up on his offer. We loaded into the police car fast in search of relief from the frigid, black night. Ma sat in front with the officer, while Darrell, Derrick, and I piled into the back. I was eighteen, and although I had already done much that could have landed me in the back of a police car, I’d never had this experience. I hid my head on the way to the shelter, embarrassed that someone from the neighborhood might see us. I made up my mind that I would never experience this again: this confinement to the back of a police car, feeling the absolute absence of freedom. As we drove down Main Street toward the downtown area, the silhouettes of sterile housing projects overwhelmed me. Life as I knew it was changing.
When we arrived at the shelter, called the Abbey House, we were greeted by a young white woman in her twenties who had a warm smile and a spirit of caring about her. My brothers and I stayed in the car as the police officer and our mother inquired about emergency shelter for the night. At eighteen, I knew that I would not be able to go into the shelter with my family. I feared the worst, thinking that I would be dropped off at the men’s shelter. I knew what that meant, what some of the men in there might do; I did not want to be another man’s bitch for the night, or ever, for that matter. The thought of defending myself as fresh meat terrified me. It was true that I grew up fighting and had just finished fighting Joe, but fighting grown, strong homeless men with nothing to lose was a different story. I just could not go there—I would rather sleep out in the bitter cold and die on the streets than emotionally and mentally die in the arms of a sick, twisted, homeless man.
In just a few minutes, my mom and the officer returned to the police cruiser with puzzled looks on their faces. My fears had been so vivid, so forceful, that I was certain bad news would follow. But when they entered the cruiser, no one said a word, and our heads lowered in the back seat as we drove off. Before we turned a corner, I glanced back at the Abbey House and saw the young white lady standing on the snowy front yard, a look of disappointment and apology on her face. I sensed that if it was up to her and she had the power, she would have let us all in the shelter that night, but the rules and regulations would not permit her to do so. I would find out later that the Abbey House was a short-term emergency shelter for women and children only, so my brother Darrell and I would be off on our own to face exactly what I feared most. Thank God, though, my mother wanted all of us to stay together, so we had to find a different solution.
Still in the police cruiser, we headed northeast on Route 9 toward Boston. We made our way through Shrewsbury, stopping at a dilapidated motel that had daily, weekly, and monthly rates posted outside the front door. The motel sign was dangling by one or two stubborn bolts, and some of the light bulbs were out on the sign. The police officer dropped us off, and we collected our belongings and went to the office.
It was now around eleven, and the office looked unchanged from the 1970s. A picture of John Travolta from Grease barely clung to the wall, and James Taylor played on a small transmitter radio with a long antenna. The office was empty, but my mother didn’t hesitate. She strode to the countertop and banged on the bell, signifying the need for service. A middle-aged man emerged from behind a door toward the back of the office. He was overweight and disheveled, with long hair and an overgrown mustache, and he looked my mother and all of us up and down before asking, “So what brings you here tonight?”
My mother replied, “How much does it cost to stay here for a week? We need a place to stay for a little while.”
The man seemed to soften. “Well, if you need a place to stay and can pay me by the end of the week, you can stay here.”
We walked, single file, through the narrow hallway to a room on the second floor. We all stayed close to the building because the railing was unstable and rattled back and forth with each step.
Mom opened the room door with the key, and an immediate reek of smoke made us cough and cover our noses with our shirts. The room was illuminated by a yellow-white light in the middle of two twin beds. My mom asked me to take off the top blankets on the beds because, as a housekeeper who also worked in a hotel, she knew the common practice was to wash only the bed sheets. As we got settled in and took off our shoes, we found that the carpet was sticky, trash from former guests was left behind in the trashcan, and the bathroom was filthy. It was clear that the room had not been cleaned that morning. My mother launched into housekeeper mode, actually going to the office for cleaning supplies, and the room felt more comfortable and livable in no time. I welcomed the strong smell of bleach, especially in the bathroom.
After she finished cleaning, I could see the depression in her eyes, and she said nothing to us as we watched television. Making herself small in bed, she turned to face the wall and just went to sleep. Traumatized by this entire experience, I told my brothers to get some rest because we had school the next day.
The lights from the motel shone through the translucent curtains, and tears ran down my cheeks as I wondered why God was making us go through this. I had never experienced such internal pain, fear, and anger before, and I did not know how to process what was happening to us. I started to feel that it was my fault. If I’d just let Joe do what he wanted to do and hadn’t threatened him, perhaps we would still be in the apartment and not in this rundown motel off a two-lane highway.
Throughout the night, I was woken up by the moaning, weeping, and sobbing of the others, but no one said anything because the cries represented what we all were feeling. Hopelessness deposited itself into my spirit that night. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep forever.
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