The Gross Pointe Academy (GPA) was considered the best of the best private schools in the area, with a huge, beautiful campus and a focus on the arts, public speaking, and intellectual development. My mom guided me through the application and interview process, and when I got into the Grosse Pointe Academy, she was determined that a lack of funds wouldn’t keep me from going.
My scholarship covered only 90 percent of the tuition, but my dad agreed to make up the difference. It would be a huge strain on his finances, but he wanted to contribute to my education and my future in any way he could. His marriage to my mom hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted it to. With my mom and me so far away in Michigan, he couldn’t be the type of father that he wanted to be, one who was physically present every day. But no matter how hard it may have been on him, sending me to Grosse Pointe Academy was something he could do.
Of course, I was too young to understand all this at the time. What I knew was that I was going to a new school, one that was known to value learning and curiosity as much as I did. I had no idea that it would challenge me to see myself, my family, and my entire world from a whole new perspective.
CHAPTER 2
Dads’ Day
Right before I started at Grosse Pointe Academy, my mom went back to the hospital. I was getting bigger, and my mom must have sensed that I was growing more aware of the world around me. She knew that if she continued to hurt me physically, I would remember it and eventually tell someone. So she stopped. Just like that. It was a relief, but it was also jarring to me because it was another sign that she could control her actions—at least to some extent. And even though the beatings stopped, her behavior was still disturbing and in many respects became more manipulative.
When she was mad at me now, instead of getting the flyswatter or a leather belt, she set about humiliating me. She would take me to the mall and deliberately make a scene or make me go up to groups of older girls and say ridiculous things. Other times, she would take me to a basketball court in a rough area and make me tell the guys waiting to play in the next pickup game that I was soft and afraid to play ball in the hood. Most of this happened under the threat of either violence or cruel and unusual punishments. She would say that if I didn’t do what she said, Kevin would put me in my place when he got home that night, or that she’d make me dress up like Steve Urkel and drop me off in a dangerous part of the city. Either way, I knew that my mom would make me pay for disobeying her. So I always tried to comply.
About half the time, after embarrassing me in public, she would apologize and tell me how much she loved me. Sometimes she would even offer to buy me things or take me out shopping the next day. I usually accepted the apology—to avoid making things worse—but I rarely expressed much interest in shopping with her or letting her buy me something to make up for what she did.
She was hard on Kevin, too. After they got into a huge fight and my mom forced him to sleep in his truck for a week, he threatened to leave her. It wasn’t the first time; their relationship had always been contentious. But this time when Kevin came back he negotiated terms with my mom. If he was going to stay, she had to let him sleep in her room—though still on the floor—and agree to marry him at some point down the road.
When I confided in Lola about how uncomfortable some of my mother’s behavior made me, she looked as if she was going to cry. “Zachary,” she told me, “you are a smart, handsome young man. You’ll be very successful in life. Don’t worry about any of that. Your mom is just crazy.”
The pressure from Lola and Kevin convinced my mom to go back to the hospital, this time as a participant in a mental health study. She was gone for only a few days, so I stayed at home with Kevin while a team of psychiatrists discovered that my mom had initially been misdiagnosed as bipolar. Her new diagnosis was schizoaffective disorder, which includes symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her doctors tried one medication after another, but nothing seemed to work. She continued in therapy, but she put on a show for her psychiatrists so that they would think she was better. She even began speaking at conferences about the importance of mental health support. They presented her as a success story, as someone who was in full recovery from her illness.
She was not recovered. In some ways, she was worse. My mom had always enjoyed gambling at the casino, but it was around this time that it became an obsession, likely an addiction. She started going to the casino every weekend, and then every night. Most of the time she’d stay out all night, arriving home just in time to take me to school in the morning. Sometimes Kevin was at home, but he worked late shifts and overtime a few days a week, so I was often alone. In some ways, it was a relief not to have her around, but I was scared to be alone in the house late at night. While the block we lived on was not as dangerous as some of the others nearby, there had been several burglaries in the neighborhood since we had moved in. And our house had even been robbed once.
The main thing about all that gambling, though, was that of course my mom needed money. This became her main fixation. She spent my dad’s child support and her own salary at the casino, maxed out her credit cards and took out additional loans, begged Lola to lend her money, manipulated my dad into sending more money that was ostensibly for something I needed, and took all the money I’d saved from doing odd jobs and from Papa’s allowance and rewards. That left Kevin.
My mom seemed to think that in order to butter up Kevin and convince him to hand over his hard-earned money, she had to pick a fight with me. I was sitting in my room reading a book after school one day when she came home. “Zachary!” she yelled. “Get your bitch ass down here, fucking pussy.” As usual, I had no idea what I could have done to make her so angry. I hadn’t even seen her since the day before.
“Now, who the fuck do you think you are?” she asked once I got downstairs. “You have a real nigga sitting in front of you right now,” she said, gesturing at Kevin. “A strong black man.” Apparently I’d disrespected him by not giving him a proper greeting when I’d gotten home from school. “If you don’t show him the respect he deserves, he will put you in the fucking ground,” she told me. “He will put you in the dirt.”
I looked over at Kevin, who was sitting on the couch, looking proud of himself. She continued berating me until Kevin was satisfied. Then she pulled me aside and spoke to me quietly with a serious look in her eyes. “Zachary,” she said, this time in a softer tone, “I have to do some things I’m not proud of, and I don’t want you to see me grovel and beg, so you better get your punk ass back upstairs.”
This scene played itself out time and time again. The details were always a bit different, but the pattern was the same—her making me feel small and vulnerable in order to make Kevin feel big and important. She changed up her rants frequently to keep me guessing, so that nothing she said became normalized and so that I couldn’t build up an internal defense against any one argument. I always knew what road she’d go down, but I had no idea where the booby traps were laid.
I’d go back to my room and try to read or play video games to take my mind off the pain I felt, but this often wasn’t easy. I think back on these episodes now, and a part of me wishes I had been able to muster the strength to respond to her anger with love and love only, to say to her warmly, “Mom, I just want you to know that I love you, that I’m sorry for upsetting you, that I’d never do anything to hurt you. I do love you, Mom, and I always will, no matter what.” But her outbursts of anger temporarily diminished, and sometimes extinguished, my capacity for compassion. Being yelled at by my mom was a transformative experience; it often shook me to the core and left me devastated. Alone in my room, sometimes I cried or socked a pillow, but most of the time I asked myself why she had to attack me to make Kevin happy.
This tactic always worked to get her what she wanted, though. Kevin handed over every penny and on occasion even called several of his relatives to ask them for money. Then she’d go back to the casino until t
he money ran out and she would have to start all over again.
Soon after, I was at Lola’s house for a visit. “Remember a long time ago when I told you some stuff about my mom?” I asked her. She seemed to be in a receptive mood, which wasn’t always the case, so I continued. “I need to tell you some more stuff.” I told her about the rants, the gambling, the threats, and the fact that even though she had stopped hitting me, she still hit Kevin sometimes.
Lola looked shocked. Just like the therapists and the audiences at those conventions, she had thought my mom was doing better. “Ooh-wee,” she said, letting out a breath. “Your mom is crazy.”
“Sometimes,” I told her, “I just wish she wouldn’t even come home from the casino.”
Lola grew serious. “Zachary,” she told me, “I will not let you go.”
I had no idea what she was planning to do. When she brought me home, Lola confronted my mom about everything I’d told her. “I will not let him go,” she repeated.
My mom grew enraged, but Lola refused to leave me alone with her. We had a dog at the time, a big German shepherd named Duchess. Lola was terrified of dogs, and of course my mom knew this. “Get her, Duchess, get her!” my mom commanded, trying to sic Duchess on my grandmother. I grabbed her by the collar and tried to distract Duchess by playing with her. My mom and Lola continued shouting at each other in the background.
Finally, my mom turned to me. “You will come with me,” she said in such a serious tone that I was afraid to disobey. I looked at Lola, who was visibly shaken. My mom took my arm and led me outside and into her car. She took off. In the rearview mirror, I could see Lola get in her car and follow us. I didn’t know where we were going. My mom did not say a word as she sped around corners and down roads with Lola in pursuit. She drove erratically around town for at least twenty minutes, constantly looking back to see if Lola was still behind us.
Finally, we came to a traffic light. With Lola stopped behind us, my mom put the car in reverse. It was as if she were trying to back directly into Lola’s car. She was so close that I could see Lola fumbling with the gearshift, trying to get out of the way. Just then the light turned green, and my mom sped off. I looked behind us again, and Lola’s car was nowhere to be found.
My mom continued driving for several minutes, a bit calmer now. We ended up in front of a building I recognized. It was her therapist’s office. She got out, sat down on the front steps, and took out a cigarette. Unsure of what to do, I sat down beside her. For the next twenty minutes or so, we sat in absolute silence as my mother smoked cigarette after cigarette, staring me right in the eye, her face brimming with a subdued rage.
I was terrified. No matter how much her rants may have broken me down, they never crept up on me. When I sensed she was getting angry, I could always try to say something nice and affectionate to soften her mood or build up my armor to deflect whatever she was going to say. But this was frightening, because I had no idea what she was going to do next. She was clearly furious, but it was a calm and controlled anger, delicately restrained, and that was far scarier to me than utter rage.
After what felt like a lifetime, she spoke in a perfectly calm voice. “Don’t worry, Zachary,” she told me, tapping on the end of her cigarette. “We’re going to get you some help.”
* * *
—
When my mother was twelve years old, she heard her father call out from his bedroom. She rushed into the room and found him on his bed, with his eyes rolling back in his head. She called 911, but it was too late. He died of a brain aneurysm.
I’ve come to realize that this was the precipitating event that triggered my mom’s mental illness. She became extremely depressed after her father’s death, but when Lola took her to see a psychologist, he said she was simply in mourning. That wasn’t right. My mom remained in a state of extreme distress, which manifested itself in many different ways over the years.
Before her father died, according to my mom, she had had an idyllic childhood. Her family moved from Texas to Detroit when she was three years old. Lola and my grandfather, Bernard, were teachers, both highly educated and intelligent. My grandfather was on the school board, and they lived in a stately home in one of Detroit’s nicest neighborhoods. My grandparents gave my mom as many opportunities as they could—ballet classes, Jack and Jill of America, and even debutante balls. But my mom was always mischievous. Even at a young age, she would play hooky, spend time in class daydreaming and drawing pictures instead of paying attention, or leave school during recess to go get ice cream.
My mom idolized her dad. She always held him up as the absolute epitome of what it meant to be a real man. “He was the realest nigga out there,” is the way she said it to me. She was obsessed with the idea of masculinity and what it meant to be a “real nigga.” “He looked at people a certain way, and they knew not to mess with him.” He was strong, confident, and fearless—a black man’s black man who carried a handgun, always wore a suit, and held an academic leadership position in the 1980s. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him.
But over time, as I listened closely to my mother’s romanticized stories about her dad, it became clear to me that he wasn’t as perfect as she claimed. For one thing, he had a violent temper. He didn’t terrorize my mom for no reason, but whenever she broke a rule or acted out, which was often, he’d pick up a belt and chase her around the house. “He tore me up,” she told me. Then he would calm down and apologize later.
She rarely mentioned those moments. When she talked about her dad, she almost always focused on the good things—the times he took her to get ice cream or to see a movie. I realized that a lot of the things we did on our fun-filled adventures were the same things she had enjoyed doing with her dad growing up. She always felt closer to him than she did to Lola and referred to him as her best friend and confidant.
After he died, my mom’s life started to spiral out of control. She refused to listen to my grandmother, ran away from home a few times, and had trouble focusing in school. In high school, she was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Despite all this, my mom was very smart and always did well in school. She graduated from the University of Maryland and got a paralegal certification from the American University of Paris.
It was there that her mental illness began to take another turn. She was severely depressed and spent almost all her time alone in her room, staring at the ceiling. Shortly after coming home, she was out jogging when my dad pulled up alongside her in his car. My mom gave him her number, and he called her thirty minutes later.
My dad told me that they had a lot of fun together in the beginning. He described my mother as playful, sensitive, and emotional, but he never had any inkling that something was wrong. Interestingly, though, when I talked to him about my mom’s childhood, I got the impression that he didn’t believe it was as great as my mom made it out to be. I’ve heard the same thing in veiled words from various aunts, uncles, and cousins.
After hearing this, whenever I listened to my mom take great pains to make her father and her entire childhood seem nothing less than perfect, I started to believe that she had in fact gone through some things that she’d never shared with anyone. The truth is, her words about her dad echoed the way I spoke about her—overcompensating so that no one would think for a minute that anything was wrong.
After the day of the car chase with Lola, my mom brought me to several different therapists and told them that I may have been suffering from “episodes.” Alone in the room with these mental health professionals, I wanted to tell them the truth, but I was too afraid. So I lied. I said how perfect and wonderful everything was at school and at home. They had no reason not to believe me, and they all reported back to my mom that I seemed fine; that I was driven, focused, and intelligent.
Some of these therapists were so impressed that they began inviting me to speak with my mom at mental health conferences. In front of hundreds of peopl
e, I delivered my own speeches about how proud I was of my mom for overcoming so many obstacles. I said that she was my number one fan and my best friend.
For hours at a time, often late into the night, my mom coached me on how to deliver those speeches. She taught me how to stand, how to make eye contact with individual audience members, and how to vary my facial expressions and body language throughout a speech. She gave these expressions labels—poise, passion, and instruction—and then she’d cue me as I recited a speech. “Show me poise,” she commanded, and then, “now passion.”
I was usually exhausted during these practices after a long day at school, but if I missed a cue, I’d get in trouble. “I said, show me poise, Zachary. Do you know how much I do for you, you ungrateful bitch-ass nigga?” She sat up and tapped her cigarette on the side of the ashtray. Tap, tap, tap. “Show me poise, or I’ll have Kevin come in here and show you what strength looks like.”
I fixed my posture, tilted my head slightly, and cupped my palms, gesturing with them in a controlled manner as I spoke, my voice gliding over the words with easy modulation, just as Bill Clinton had done in the video she’d showed me earlier. She looked pleased. “Now start over from the beginning.”
This training paid off when I started at Grosse Pointe Academy that same year. My mom prepared me in other ways, too. On our way to school on my first day, my mom told me, “Make sure you tell them that your grandmother was an educator and that your grandparents are well traveled. Make sure they know you can swim.” My mom was trying to help me learn my way in the new world I was entering—a world of wealth and privilege.
The atmosphere at GPA was completely different from that at my public school. There were other kids who loved learning and reading as much as I did, and the teachers were involved and engaged. My teacher, Mr. Lapadot, made learning fun by integrating academic decathlon games into the classroom and creating an economy in the classroom by rewarding us with tickets for doing extra assignments. We could save up our tickets and then use them to buy snacks or toys at auctions he held at the end of every month.
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