Christmas Memories

" She left on Christmas and just didn't come back." He tries desperately to make this comment sound as nonchalant as possible, but I still hear the pain that lives deep inside his voice.

I know I'm not suppose to have one, but my favorite student, Monntell a.k.a. P-Nut, is one of our best students. But good intentions can only go so far. I worry that Monntell will get caught up in the life that most of his family has already full-heartedly chosen.

The Veal Family is an interesting group. And between me and you, they make up between all or half of our program attendance on most days. There is LaRelle, the youngest who we've already met. Then their second youngest sister who's 16 & pregnant. Lacee, our favorite kid crack pusher, is the younger brother. Montell is months away from Lacee but older. Somewhere in all the confusion that is their household, they found time to informally "adopt" DeWayne, who apparently just stayed a few nights and never went away.

I rarely inquire about the personal lives of our students, maybe because I rarely want to know what they do behind closed doors. But Monntell is different. He's graduating early because Doris M. Johnson is closing its doors (FINALLY), and in bootleg efforts to make things right, all juniors who were even close to graduating could take their remaining classes online and graduate in the summer. I think he'll make it. I hope he makes it. Only the circumstances say he won't.

I don't really remember what made me ask about his mother. I believe he was telling me that Lacee was moving out again, and some anonymous older sister was taking LaRelle to move in with her (or maybe he said the pregnant one was moving out-and LaRelle was moving with her. I got confused somewhere). Anyway, all of this made me wonder Where Is Ya'll Mama???!!! He got a little quiet, but he eventually told me.

I was expecting her to be in jail. Dead maybe? In a mental hospital, sick? But, no. He simply said she lives not even five miles away off Belair Road. I'm glad he wasn't looking at my face, because an expression would have surely given it away. But what kind of mother leaves her children- leaves her girls- to be raised by a man? As he continued, he told me he was three. She left on Christmas and just didn't come back. Now she calls every once and a while and tries to make conversation- but its too late.

Now how's that for a Christmas memory?

UBRAN MATHEMATICS : SEX= LOVE

"She can't fit into any of the costumes because she getting fat. Thats what the shot does to a lot of people," Sharon says very bluntly. LaRelle is only 14. She's a baby trapped inside a grown woman's body.It hurts me to think that at 14 she's no longer a virgin. Who would have sex with a 14-year-old that is clearly so lost? "Anyone 14 and older" my mother replies.

I think I'm drawn to LaRelle because I see a younger me in her. She floundering in a whirlpool of pressures to find love, acceptance, and identity. I watch as she comes in every single day in her leaning high heels. Her see through shirts with hot pink zebra printed bras. Her tight pants that show hints of thongs before she bends over. I come to the conclusion that she has no one to show her what's right and wrong. Her older sister is 16 and pregnant. And while I never hear them mention a mother, they tell me that their grandmother is pregnant too. Which is scary in itself, but shows the type of world they live in.

She's a sweet girl at heart. But she's just that: a baby girl. Her maturity level is that of a 14-year-old, but sexually, she is very forward. I've literally seen her make grown men blush. One day, LaRelle comes up to me and boldly proclaims " I asked Mr. Bill if he like you. Ya'll always around each other and talking." I take a minute to think where she could get that from. True, me and the guest illustration artist,Bill, did talk a lot; but only because I introduced him to the program and I was the only person he knew there. Plus, he was just a weird person in general, and the other staff really didn't know how to handle his awkwardness. Nevertheless, what I realized is a little bit of how LaRelle thinks. In her mind, if a man and a woman are friendly with each other (AND THATS ALL IT WAS BECAUSE TRUST ME, WHEN I SAY BILL WAS WEIRD, HE COULD REALLY BE OUT THERE SOMETIMES- PLUS HE WAS LIKE A 42-YEAR OLD WAITER AND EX-DIE HARD JEHOVAH WITNESS- I DIGRESS), then they must like each other and want to be together. Maybe this is why she's on Depro-Vera. In her head if a boy- or man for that matter- show her the slightest bit of attention, then he must be interested. And it was all so simple then: she equates someone showing her attention to someone having feelings for her. And someone having feelings for her maybe means they want to be with her. And if someone wants to be with her, they want to have sex. And sex equals love.

Any Given Playground

"It just hurts so damn bad." I sit on the other end of the phone this morning not knowing what to say. What can I say? I'm a southern girl trapped in a whirlpool that I'm realizing is considered the "inner city." The room is quiet in her background, and so is Tisha's* tiny voice as she cries and relays to me the events of this past Thursday.

Being in a relationship with an older man who has more than enough kids, attached to even more baby mamas, Tisha has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the girlfriend handbook. Thinking she was crazy at first, I didn't say much, but then I came to the conclusion that she is one of those people who don't love easy - but when they love, they love hard. She has taken his kids- every one of them- in as her own. From babysitting and spending time with them, to dress shopping with his daughter and getting her ready for prom. And while they are not officially married, I'm sure common law went into effect some years ago, as she genuinely considers his kids her "step-children " because she does so much for them; in some cases more than their own mothers. That's why when Mrs.Flemanns casually mentioned yesterday as I was leaving work that Tisha's "stepson was shot" I knew there was more to it.

"I'm upset and hurt, but i can't say I'm surprised," Tisha starts. Apparently Chris was hanging out with some fellow gang members who had just been involved in an altercation. These associates did not tell Chris that they had just jumped a 15-year-old in the neighborhood. Upon finishing the fight, the boys went to the playground, and invited Chris for a game of basketball. "As soon as he got out on the court, the little boy they beat up came back and just started spraying the playground. My stepson was hit first in the arm. Then the side. Then the leg. And then the chest." As she starts to sob she tells me of faint pulse he had in the ambulance, and finally at the hospital while surgeons were giving him a fighting chance, he just "gave up."

I can picture her thin body shaking in the darkness of their row house in West Baltimore. I try to console her over the line, but I know there's nothing I can say to make this better. Sadly, this is just another 16-year-old black male that has lost his life to these Baltimore Streets. I begin to think of my students.

Fear: One day, one of these students that I have grown to care for and genuinely love, will walk out of here and not come back.

Fact: It could easily happen on any given basketball court in this city.

When did playgrounds become killing fields?