The Redemption of Bobby Love

by Bobby Love

  Deena and Carla were so excited to see me when I showed up at the party.

  “I told you I’d be here,” I said as I surveyed the room. The lights were down, a DJ was spinning records, and way in the back there was a table with punch and snacks.

  “How’d you get your dad to let you come?” Carla shouted over the music.

  I gave her a look. “He doesn’t know I’m here. I just have to be home by ten p.m. before he gets back from church.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came because Deon has been asking all about you,” Deena said, giggling.

  I smiled at that because Deon had been trying to talk to me for a while. He was really cute but I wasn’t sure if he really liked me or not. “Well, let’s go dance,” I said to my friends, and they followed me out to the dance floor.

  I loved dancing. Deena, Carla, and I would often spend our free time making up steps and routines to the latest hits, and we showed off that night on the dance floor. I was glad I’d worn my sneakers instead of my heels with my culottes and red shirt that said “Foxy” on the back. Now I could keep dancing the whole time.

  Carla and Deena weren’t as practical as I was and had worn high-heeled sandals, so they were taking a break while I stayed on the dance floor. That’s when Deon came up to me and asked if he could dance with me.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to play it cool, even though inside my heart leapt into my throat.

  “You’re a good dancer, Cheryl,” Deon said.

  “Thanks. You are too,” I said back with a dimpled smile.

  And just then, the DJ put on one of my favorite Michael Jackson songs. Deon and I were getting down when all of a sudden I felt someone tap me on my shoulder. I expected to find Deena or Carla, but when I whirled around, I was staring at my father.

  “Daddy!” I shrieked.

  I very rarely saw my father mad, but I knew I was in big trouble.

  He didn’t scream or yell, but one look at his face let me know the fun was over. I was so embarrassed. I said a quick goodbye to Deon, and then I scurried out of the community center and ran back to our building ahead of my father, who I knew would wait to yell at me in the privacy of our apartment.

  After that incident, I didn’t mention the word “party” to my father until I was sixteen. By the time I made it to my junior year in high school, even Daddy knew he had to allow me out to have some fun. Of course, he had no idea how much fun I had been having instead of going to school, but he knew that he couldn’t keep me locked up inside the house every weekend. Still, he’d always grill me about where I was going and whom I was going with before he’d let me go anywhere. And sometimes he’d still say no if the party I wanted to go to was too far away.

  * * *

  Junior year was winding down, and those of us in the class of 1981 were instructed to meet with the guidance counselor at school, Mr. Campbell, to make sure we’d have all the credits we needed to graduate on time.

  During the few interactions I’d had with Mr. Campbell, he’d seemed nice, so I looked forward to our meeting.

  When I got to his office, Mr. Campbell told me to sit down and then he asked me for my name and my grade.

  “I came to see where I stand with my credits,” I said. “I’m supposed to graduate next year, and I just want to make sure everything is in order.”

  “Well, let’s take a look,” he said, searching in folders and moving papers around his desk.

  “My goodness, Ms. Williams,” he said. “It looks like you’ve missed quite a bit of class.”

  I felt my cheeks flush. “I guess,” I answered.

  Mr. Campbell kept looking at his paperwork and then he glanced up at me and said, “You’re basically failing two classes, and you’ve been absent so much you’re not going to pass another class.”

  I knew I had messed up, but hearing it come out of Mr. Campbell’s mouth made it sound so final.

  I felt tears start to build, but I told myself to hold it together. “But if I do better now, I can still graduate with my class next year, right?”

  Mr. Campbell took off his glasses and wiped them clean with his handkerchief before putting them back on again. “I’m sorry, Ms. Williams, but with all of these absences and these failing grades, there’s no way you’re going to graduate on time.”

  “But I have to graduate with my class,” I wailed. “We’re the class of nineteen eighty-one.”

  Mr. Campbell shook his head and showed me the paper he was looking at. “I’m sorry, but it’s just not possible for you to make up all this work plus take all your credits for next year by next June.”

  I couldn’t stop the tears now. I felt so bad, and worst of all, it was all my fault.

  I pulled myself off the chair and left Mr. Campbell’s office with my head hanging down.

  When Deena and Carla saw me at the bus stop, they knew something was wrong. I told them about what Mr. Campbell said and burst into tears all over again.

  “What are you going to do?” Carla asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I have to do something. I can’t tell my father that I’m not going to graduate. And I can’t tell him that I’ve been skipping class.”

  “I’m glad I’m not in your situation,” Deena said, and Carla punched her on the shoulder.

  “You’re not helping,” Carla said.

  “Are you guys going to graduate on time?” I asked them. They’d been skipping classes too, and they partied more than I did because they didn’t have fathers as strict as mine.

  “Let’s just say my grades aren’t as good as they should be in math and history,” Deena said. “But I’m going to walk and get my diploma.”

  “Me too,” Carla echoed.

  So it was just me in this awful situation.

  By the time I’d gotten off the bus, I’d decided that I had to get out of New York. I was failing school. Deon and I had been seeing each other for almost a year, and he had just suddenly stopped calling me and disappeared. Nothing was going right in my life. I needed to start over. I needed to find a school where I could finish my senior year, graduate on time, and get my life together. And the only place I could think of, where I’d have a safe place to land and someone to help me get back on track, was Atlanta. I knew Sis would help me get out of this mess. She always talked about the importance of education, and I knew if there were some way I could graduate on time, she’d be able to help me figure it out.

  As soon as I got home, I called my sister to tell her what I had done and to beg her for help. I cried when I told her because I was deeply ashamed of allowing things to get this bad. But Sis didn’t yell at me. She just agreed to let me come down there and stay with her as long as I promised to work hard and focus on my education.

  “But you have to ask Daddy,” she told me. “You have to tell him what you did.”

  I sniffed. “I will,” I promised, so grateful for my big sister, but also wary of telling my dad.

  That night after dinner I waited for my father to sit down in the living room and get ready to watch his programs.

  “Daddy, I gotta tell you something,” I said as I perched on the edge of the sofa. “I want to go down south and live with Sis.”

  “What you want to go down south for?” he asked.

  “I want to go and finish high school in Atlanta.”

  “Why?”

  The tears started again. “Because I messed up, Daddy,” I squeaked out. “I haven’t been going to class.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t been going to class?”

  I told him everything. How I had started going to school late and how that turned into skipping entire classes because keeping the house in order and taking care of the boys had me worn out.

  Daddy looked disappointed. “I’ve been thinking all the time you’ve been doing what you’re supposed to do around here and keeping up in school,” he said.

  Part of me got angry when he said that. “Daddy, you have me running around doing all kinds of things. I
gotta do all the cooking and cleaning and shopping. You even have me paying the bills sometimes.”

  “It doesn’t take all day to pay a bill, Cheryl.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I know I didn’t do the right thing, but I want to make it better. I want to walk with my class and graduate next year, so can I please go down and live with Sis?”

  “Bring me the phone,” Daddy said. “Let me talk to your sister.”

  I did as I was told and then sat on the couch and listened to Daddy talk to Sis. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell he was listening. I saw his face go from angry to resigned to what looked like sad. I didn’t find out until much later, but apparently Sis had called my godmother and my godmother told Sis that I needed to get out of New York. She said she could tell I needed a change of scenery.

  But Daddy didn’t tell me any of that. He just hung up the phone and said, “I’m going to let you go, but when you get down there, I want you to go to class and do what you need to do to graduate. Okay?”

  I ran over to hug my father. “I will, Daddy. I promise. I’m going to make you proud of me.”

  “I know you will, Cheryl,” Daddy said. And then he made me look him in the eye. “I’m proud of you right now, Cheryl. You’ve kept this family together.”

  That made me cry again.

  Daddy gave me a big hug and then asked if I wanted to watch Carol Burnett with him. Of course I did.

  One month later, I was in a car heading south to Atlanta.

  chapter four

  Broken Promises

  * * *

  BOBBY

  I cried when I saw my mother. It had been six weeks of misery at the Morrison Training School—​fights with the other kids, threats from the counselors, and endless drudgery working on the campus farm. It was not what Mr. Allen had promised. It was everything I’d feared. So just seeing my mother unleashed all of the emotions I’d been holding in since arriving at the facility.

  Mama had told me in one of her letters that she was going to come visit me, but she hadn’t been specific with a date.

  But here she was on a Sunday afternoon in early December, beaming at me as we sat together at a table in the dormitory where I was assigned.

  “I brought you something to eat,” she said as she started unpacking her bag. She took out small containers filled with fried chicken, potato salad, string beans, and candied yams. My mouth started watering just looking at Mama’s food. Compared to the “shit on a shingle” that they had served us for breakfast that morning, this food looked like heaven.

  “Thank you, Mama,” I said as I dove into those dishes.

  She laughed as she watched me inhale all that food. “Don’t hurt yourself, Buddy,” she said.

  I grinned in between mouthfuls. “I won’t.”

  When I was done eating, Mama asked me how I was doing, concern causing the wrinkles over her eyebrows to show.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m okay, I guess,” I said, not wanting to tell her about the fights. I had already caused her enough grief. I didn’t want to make her sick worrying about me up here.

  My mother lowered her voice. “Keep your head up, Buddy. Do what they tell you to do and stay out of trouble,” she said.

  I nodded. “I know, Mama.”

  Mama looked around and then leaned in close. “I know these other boys in here are going to show you how gifted they are with their fists, but you just stay away from them. You hear me?”

  “Don’t worry, Mama, I can take care of myself,” I said.

  Mama sat back and looked me over and then said, “I know you can, Buddy, but you stay out of trouble.”

  I wanted to tell Mama that that was almost impossible to do when other boys started something. I had two choices in those moments: get beaten down and get a reputation for being weak, or defend myself and hope to avoid future fights. I was fifteen years old and trying to figure out how to survive in a place that had no real rulebook. But of course I didn’t explain any of that to Mama. Instead, I changed the subject.

  “You remember Buster Fleming?” I asked her. “He’s here.”

  “Really? This is where he ended up?” Mama said. “I know his father can’t be too happy about that.”

  Mama knew Buster’s father from church.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  We kept talking. Mama told me all about what was happening back in Greensboro with my sisters and brothers and all my cousins. She filled me in on what she knew about my friends. Soon enough the sun started to go down and Mama had to head back. Before she left, she gave me a few dollars so I would have some spending money to use at the canteen.

  “I’ll try to come back again before Christmas,” she said. “But in the meantime, I want you to start praying, Buddy. Ask God to help you get through this. Ask God to help you do better.”

  I said I would.

  “Do they have church services for you here?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, you need to start going,” she told me sternly. “God will help you. You just have to do your part.”

  I promised my mother I would go to church even though I knew I wouldn’t. I still believed that church was for hypocrites and sinners, like the ones I’d seen over the years at all the different churches we’d been to as a family. As Mama started to gather her things to go, my tears started up again and she pulled me in close for a hug.

  “You’re going to be okay, Buddy,” she said.

  I didn’t want my mother to think I couldn’t handle myself, so I composed myself quickly and pulled away from her embrace.

  “I know, Mama,” I said. “I’m going to be okay.”

  The thing was, I wasn’t okay. I’d been in three fights in only six weeks. It was a miracle that I hadn’t been sent to the hole yet. My friend Buster was telling me I needed to come with him to the gym and start lifting weights so I could bulk up my skinny teenage body and be ready for the next fight. But I didn’t want to get ready. I wanted to get out of there. I was tired of having to watch my back. I was tired of the counselors’ threats. I was tired of the horrible food.

  Mama’s advice to turn to God for help seemed silly. But I decided that if I wasn’t going to go to church, I could at least pray. When I was growing up in Greensboro, everybody prayed, either out of desperation or to keep good things going. So that very night I lay in my bunk and prayed to God to help me get out of Morrison. The next morning I woke up knowing I was going to escape. The idea just sprouted in my brain. Mama had always said that God answers our prayers even if it’s not exactly in the form we asked for. I prayed for a way to get out of Morrison, and I woke up with a clear mind and the audacity to figure out how to break free.

  Plotting my escape became my focus. Instead of buying snacks and toiletries at the canteen, I decided I would save the money Mama gave me and buy myself a bus ticket back to Greensboro. And instead of trying to figure out how to avoid getting into fights, I spent all of my mental energy on figuring out how to sneak off the Morrison campus without getting caught. I remembered that there were train tracks somewhere near the campus, from when Mr. Allen first drove me there. And I always heard the train whistles piercing the silence as I lay in bed at night. I figured if I could make it off the grounds of the facility, get to the woods, and then find the train tracks, I could follow those tracks all the way to the next town of Hamlet and then find the bus station.

  Christmas came and went, but escaping was all I thought about. I started to fantasize about where I would go once I made it back home. I knew I couldn’t stay in Greensboro because somebody would surely recognize me and I’d get sent back to Morrison. I dreamed about going to New York City because I knew a person could disappear in a big, crowded place like that. But I didn’t know anybody in New York, so I crossed it off my list. I decided I’d go back to Washington, DC, and prayed I’d be able to convince my brother Raymond to give me another chance. If he didn’t, I was prepared to live on the streets and
make my own way if necessary.

  By February I was ready to put my plan in action. I wasn’t scared. That sounds ridiculous now, but I wasn’t thinking about the potential consequences of my actions or what would happen to me if I got caught. Fear simply wasn’t part of my mindset at age fifteen. Instead, I was excited to see if I could pull off this daring escape. I thought I was smarter than all of the other kids who had tried to escape and had gotten caught. I had the same thrill of anticipation as I did when I stole a car or when I walked into a school full of white kids and convinced them that I had the same right to be there that they did.

  While I waited for the perfect moment to leave, I reviewed and replayed every step of my plan. I knew the dormitory counselor’s schedule. I knew how far I had to run to get to the school gates. I knew that as soon as I was off the property, I had to head for the woods and find those train tracks. And I knew if I timed everything properly, I’d have at least an hour before the counselors would even notice I was gone.

  My chance came on a Tuesday night. I knew after the call for lights out, the one counselor on duty would come to check that we were all in our beds, and then he wouldn’t be back for close to two hours while he checked the other dorms. After that second visit, there wouldn’t be another check until the morning counselor took over. So right after lights out, I slipped into the bathroom and put my street clothes on. If anybody asked me why I was lying in my bed fully dressed, my plan was to say I was cold. But nobody asked. I waited there in my bed until about 2:00 a.m., when the counselor came back for his second round of checks. When he left, I got up, looked around, pretended to yawn, and walked toward the bathroom. I looked around again, then slipped on my sneakers, grabbed my jacket, and headed toward the side door. I took nothing with me except the money for my bus ticket.

  At that time there were no alarms on the door, so it was easy to just sneak out of the building. Once I was outside, and the chilly February air hit me, I started to run. I ran right off the premises and up the street the way I was brought in. I could see headlights coming toward me, so I crouched down on the side of the road until the car passed. Then I headed into the woods. Adrenaline and excitement flowed through my veins, pushing me forward even though it was pitch black out there. I knew the woods were full of poisonous snakes, but I didn’t have time to let my fear slow me down. I just prayed I wouldn’t step on anything that slithered and kept on running, looking for those train tracks. At some point, my mind played tricks on me and I imagined I heard the dogs they used to send after escaped slaves barking on my trail, which made me run faster.