Walk to Beautiful: The Power of Love and a Homeless Kid Who Found the Way

by Wayne, Jimmy

  “Yes, Ms. Friday,” I said obediently. I went to the restroom and turned my shirt inside out, cursing Charlie the whole time.

  One day Ms. Friday kept me after school because of my behavior. I don’t recall what I did wrong, but I remember Ms. Friday making me write over and over on a piece of paper, “I will not do this again. I will not do this again. I will not do this again.”

  As soon as Ms. Friday said I could leave, I went outside and lowered the flag on the flagpole that stood near her classroom window. I hooked my book bag on the latches that held the flag, hoisted the bag up to the top of the flagpole, and left it dangling outside her window next to the desk where she was sitting. She took one look and knew that it was my blue book bag.

  Seconds later Ms. Friday came to the open window and placed both of her hands on the windowsill. She leaned out the third-floor window and yelled at me, “Take that book bag down!”

  I cursed her from the road and told her, “I don’t have to, and you can’t make me. School’s out.” I eventually took the bag down and walked home to Reed’s Trailer Park, approximately five miles away.

  The following morning every kid in the school heard Ms. Friday whipping me once again with that leather strap.

  I failed nearly every subject in sixth grade. I think I even failed lunch. Although it would have been much easier for Ms. Friday to pass me on to the seventh grade simply to get rid of me, she didn’t. She held me back in sixth grade, so I had to repeat it. And when I repeated, she again was my teacher.

  Nowadays I like to tell people that Ms. Friday was my sixth grade teacher—twice. The second year, Ms. Friday pulled my desk up to the front of the class. This was not an honor. She put my desk right next to hers so she could keep an eye on me. She motivated me by giving me simple chores to do: washing the chalkboard or sweeping the floor or being the leader of the line were big deals. Slowly but surely I responded to her love and discipline.

  MS. FRIDAY INSTILLED IN HER STUDENTS THE CONCEPT THAT nobody was any better or worse than anyone else, regardless of color or social status. I didn’t mind playing with any of my classmates, but one student with whom I had a good friendship was African-American, Nigel Smith. We both enjoyed music and dancing, but I never volunteered to sing.

  At the end of each school year, we had a talent show, and students had to earn the opportunity to perform. I earned my shot by making a beard out of brown construction paper and a guitar from cardboard. I lip-synched to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man.” There were no cash prizes, but that talent show was my first public performance. Nigel did a rap song and was the best performer in our class by far. For years after that I tried to write some poems I could turn into rap songs, but I never could get the groove like Nigel. It probably wouldn’t have worked—a white kid from North Carolina with KKK on his shirt—no wonder my rap songs were horrible!

  ANGER WAS A BIG PART OF MY LIFE DURING THAT TIME, AND it had little to do with school. The first year, I refused to cooperate with Ms. Friday. I wasn’t belligerent, but I definitely displayed passive-aggressive characteristics. During my second stint in sixth grade, I was much more cooperative. I knew Ms. Friday might hold me back for a third year.

  Ms. Friday was a Christian, but out of respect for school policy, she didn’t discuss her faith with her students. She simply lived out Christian values every day in front of us. She filled a desperate need in my life for order and also for a role model, someone who exemplified moral character.

  She emphasized the importance of education. “You need an education, and you need a job. It’s not going to be fun all the time,” she said, “but if you don’t get a good education, there are two places waiting for you—either the prison or the cemetery.”

  Ms. Friday was also big on taking personal responsibility. She tolerated no excuses for laziness. Although it wasn’t unusual for kids in our class to wear the same clothes over and over, she expected the clothes to be clean. “You’re in the sixth grade,” she said. “Don’t tell me you can’t wear clean clothes. You can wash them yourself with hand soap in the sink. You may not have much, but you can be clean.”

  In addition to encouraging self-control, one of the greatest gifts Ms. Friday gave me was a desire to write. Ms. Friday taught me to keep a journal and write out my experiences. At the time, I called the practice of writing down my experiences “stupid journaling,” but Ms. Friday would not accept any excuses. She didn’t necessarily read our journals—we could write anything we wanted, including deeply personal thoughts—but she did check every day to make sure that we had written something. It is a practice that I’ve continued to this day.

  MS. FRIDAY WAS A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS OF MY LIFE; SHE remains one of the most positive influences I’ve ever known, and I will be eternally grateful to her. More than anything, Ms. Friday taught me that your circumstances do not define you. If you really want to do something, if you make up your mind and put forth the effort, you can do it.

  Ms. Friday is not merely a teacher; she is an educator, and educators hope that their students will eventually catch on. Although I gave her a difficult time during my two years in the sixth grade, I did indeed catch on. Gracious woman that she is, Ms. Friday still sends me birthday and Christmas cards every year, and we have remained good friends.

  Fourteen

  MONEY FOR MAMA

  MAMA TRIED HER BEST TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH PATRICIA and me while she was in prison. It was always exciting when she called to talk to one or both of us. Since Grandpa didn’t have a phone and Sarah was working during call time, Mama called Mr. Reed, the owner of the trailer park. Mr. Reed searched for me all over the trailer park until he found me and told me that Mama was on the phone.

  “Hurry,” he said. “She’s calling collect.” Out of the kindness of his heart, Mr. Reed had agreed to pay for Mama’s long-distance call from prison. Mr. Reed was more than our landlord; he was a very good man indeed.

  I ran barefoot all the way across that trailer park and into Mr. Reed’s house, where, huffing and puffing, nearly out of breath, I picked up the phone and yelled, “Mama!” Despite her erratic behavior, she was still my mom, and I was always glad to hear her voice.

  There’s a certain tone mothers have when they speak to their babies, and that’s how Mama spoke to me even though I was now twelve and would soon be a teenager. She’d tell me how much she missed and loved me and asked if I was behaving.

  “Yes, Mama,” I replied dutifully. “But when are you coming home?”

  “How’s Grandpa doing?”

  “He’s fine, Mama, but when are you coming home?”

  Occasionally I heard other inmates in the background telling Mama to hurry up or demanding that Mama get off the phone.

  “I’m talkin’ to my young’un!” Mama retorted brashly, but I detected an uncharacteristic fear in her voice. I could tell that she was afraid of those women in prison.

  “Well, honey, I gotta get off here; these women want to use the phone.”

  “I love you, Mama,” I cried into the phone, hoping she could continue talking for a few more minutes. She rarely did.

  “I love you, too, Jimmy,” she replied. “Now, you better listen to your grandpa.”

  “Oh, I will, Mama, I will,” thinking of the filthy geezer with whom I was living. Mama and I said our hasty “I love yous” one more time, and then she said good-bye. I hated hanging up that phone more than anything in the world.

  It might be another month or so before I would talk to Mama again, but meanwhile, we’d communicate through letters. I would get so excited when I received a letter postmarked from Bragg Street, Raleigh, North Carolina. It didn’t have the prison name on the envelope, but I knew it was from Mama.

  I read every letter she ever sent at least twice. Funny thing is, Mama’s letters always reminded me of a church service. They’d start off by saying how much she loved me—and end by asking for money.

  IN A WEIRD SORT OF WAY, MAMA’S LETTERS INSPIRED ME TO work harder. Not necessa
rily for myself, though. I felt compelled to earn some money that I could send to Mama in prison. She needed cash to be able to buy food and cigarettes from the commissary and to purchase anything beyond the basic prison fare. She didn’t always tell me why she needed money, but she rarely wrote without mentioning it. So rather than the parent taking care of the child, we experienced a role reversal in which I was providing for my parent, even though I was only twelve years old.

  Grandpa had moved out of the old trailer near the golf course, so retrieving lost golf balls and selling them was no longer an option. I knew I had to figure out how to earn some money, and I had to figure it out fast. After all, Mama needed me.

  One day an elderly woman in the neighborhood asked me if I’d walk to Ingles grocery store to get her some washing powders (laundry detergent).

  I gladly obliged. She gave me some money, and I made the trip to the grocery store. When I returned with her soap, I handed her the change, but she waved her hand. “No, Jimmy, you keep it,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”

  I thanked the woman. I was indeed grateful, not simply for the money but for the idea she had sparked in my mind. If this woman needed help with her grocery shopping, maybe there were others in the trailer park who needed help too. There were a number of older people living there. I canvassed the trailer park, asking if anyone needed a young man to go to the store. I took grocery orders from a large number of the elderly folks living nearby.

  I wrote their orders on a piece of paper, accepted their money, then walked to Ingles and bought their groceries. Approximately twenty cents was left over from each order, and in almost every case, the elderly folks allowed me to keep it. That was great, but a few dollars a month wasn’t enough; I needed to earn more.

  Unfortunately that job ended shortly after it began when one of my customers sent me to Hardee’s to buy some French fries. Those fries smelled so delicious, I couldn’t resist. I ate half of them on the way back to the trailer park. My customer was furious and made it a point to tell everyone he encountered what I had done.

  They all fired me. I was right back where I’d started, but I had learned a valuable lesson: integrity matters. Whether running grocery orders or guarding a jewelry store, a person is only as good as his or her word. Once trust is broken, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to rebuild. Running grocery orders is like any other business; customers talk to one another about your service, so you better not eat one of their fries.

  Nevertheless, when one door closes, another one opens—except in prison. The thought of Mama behind bars and needing money for cigarettes and shampoo was more than I could stand. I decided that I had to earn some money before the week’s end.

  A few days later, while playing cards with some of the old men from the trailer park, a guy named Rick said he needed some blackberries to make some homemade wine.

  I perked right up as I envisioned opportunity knocking. I immediately said, “I’ll pick ’em.”

  Rick agreed to pay me two dollars for every gallon of blackberries I picked. Two dollars! Just for picking berries? I was going to be rich!

  I got up early the following morning and trudged down the hill behind trailer number 34, where I knew there were some dense blackberry patches. I knelt down and began picking. And picking. I picked blackberries until my fingertips turned a bluish-black. It took me an entire day to fill a single gallon jug.

  By evening I had welts and scratches from my neck down to my ankles from reaching around blackberry thorns. It was still hot outside, so when my perspiration trickled into those red thorn cuts, it burned like fire. It was as though those thorns were trying to tell me, “Son, there’s got to be an easier way to make a few dollars.”

  True to his word, Rick paid me two dollars for my day’s work, the one gallon jug full of blackberries. When I got home that night, I was finally frustrated enough to ask Grandpa if he’d just send Mama some money.

  I should have known better.

  Grandpa was rolling a cigarette and never even looked up. “I didn’t put your mammy in there,” he drawled, “so I’m not supporting her.”

  Thanks loads, Grandpa.

  Feeling defeated, I sat in the hot living room and watched him. Grandpa’s fingers twisted the rolling paper around that Half and Half smoking tobacco, packing it into a tight cigarette. He licked the edge of the paper, making sure it all held together. That’s it! I thought, as Grandpa’s cigarettes gave me another idea how to earn some money.

  His homemade cigarettes reminded me of marijuana joints, growing ever more popular among the poor, working-class people in the Carolina textile mills. Workers paid good money for the buzz that soothed their minds but didn’t cripple their ability to function, as too much alcohol might.

  I didn’t know much about weed, but I’d heard that a marijuana leaf and a tomato leaf looked similar. I ran out the door and down to the trailer rented by our neighbor, Drew. I pounded on the door until Drew answered. When he did, I begged him for some pot seeds. I knew Drew would have some seeds because he was the neighborhood drug dealer.

  Drew handed me a pill bottle half full of marijuana seeds and said, “Now get outta here, boy.”

  I hid the seeds in the tree house I had built near our trailer. Late that night I pulled up some of Grandpa’s tomato plants and hung them inside the tree house to dry. Two days later the tomato plant leaves were shriveled up and completely dried.

  I removed some rolling paper from Grandpa’s supply and laid a tomato leaf inside the paper, just as I had seen Grandpa insert his Half and Half. I sprinkled a few marijuana seeds on top of the tomato leaves so when it was smoked, the seeds would pop just as they do in a real joint.

  One by one I rolled “marijuana” cigarettes in my tree house. When I had approximately fifteen cigarettes, I climbed down and ventured out into the trailer park, selling each fake joint to the local potheads for one dollar each.

  My first customer was Drew, the drug dealer. He didn’t say anything as he smoked the fake joint. He just smiled at me with a sick sort of approval. Only one skeptical guy balked at giving me a dollar before he had tried the smoke. He made me stand in front of him as he smoked the joint. But once he heard the seeds popping, he gave me a dollar.

  No one ever asked me where I got the joints, not even Drew. I guess they thought I was running marijuana for someone in the trailer park, and they weren’t about to start butting into someone else’s business.

  I sold most of the joints and had enough money to purchase a money order and send Mama at least nine dollars by the end of that week. I did something similar every week until Mama was released from prison, doing whatever it took to earn some money that I could send to her.

  The day Mama got out, she came straight to Grandpa’s. I was so happy to see her, but she didn’t stay. Instead, she left to go celebrate with some of her old friends. She was gone most of that week, making up for lost time, filling her life with fresh men and old liquor. She eventually showed up with some guy who owned a restaurant, but then she left again.

  For the first month following her release, it was as though Mama was still in prison; she was gone all the time. She’d surface for a day or two but then disappear again for days at a time.

  I often wondered if she appreciated my working so hard to send her money while she was in jail. If she did, she never mentioned it. She never even said thanks.

  Fifteen

  SPARKLES

  THROUGHOUT THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1985, I STAYED with Grandpa in Reed’s Trailer Park, and Patricia stayed with Sarah Moses. Grandpa didn’t care what I did, so I basically ran wild all hours of the day or night, going to school if I wanted and staying home and roaming the neighborhood if I didn’t. That had been a running theme of Mama’s letters while in prison: “I heard that you weren’t going to school.” She wasn’t really worried about me so much, but for some reason, Mama thought it made her look bad in prison if I didn’t attend school. So while Mama was in prison, I received nu
merous requests from teachers and guidance counselors for a family meeting. I’d have Sarah Moses sign the requests, or I’d sign them myself and return them, declining the meeting request.

  One woman, Debbie Dillinger, who lived just beyond Reed’s Trailer Park, noticed that I was a lost soul and made a special effort to keep me from self-destructing. Debbie and her husband, Terry, were both especially nice to me, watching out for me. They had a daughter named Dana and a son with a disability, Dusty, who wore metal braces on his legs, impeding his ability to run or to even walk well. Other kids ignored Dusty or didn’t want to play with him because of his disability, but I knew what it felt like to be ostracized; so not surprisingly, Dusty and I became best friends. We played together in his yard almost every day. Debbie fed me as though I were one of her own kids. She often allowed me to take a bath or a shower in her house. Maybe it was in self-defense on the Dillingers’ part, trying to fend off my body odors, but the bath sure felt refreshing to me, especially since I was living in Grandpa’s pigsty. On many occasions the Dillingers permitted me to stay overnight with their family in their simple but clean home.

  ONCE MAMA WAS FINISHED RUNNING AROUND ALL OVER town, she finally came home and blazed a trail from one side of Reed’s Trailer Park to the other. She even called Debbie Dillinger out in the yard and threatened her for no reason at all. She wanted to beat her up. “Do you think you’re the mother of my kid?” Mama shrieked at Debbie, shaking her fist in Debbie’s face.

  Terry heard the commotion outside and came out of the house. Quickly sizing up the situation, he stepped between Mama and Debbie and said, “You’re not going to hit my wife. Go on; get out of here.”