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?