by Anita Hill
Marla was now facing more severe economic difficulties, but she and the children were relieved that they no longer had to endure Leonard’s humiliating behavior and abuse, which had come to color the entire family’s existence. Marla was happier; Beth and Marlon were calmer. Overall, their lives were more tranquil. Social scientists may have described families like hers as broken and fragile, but she would have none of it. Beth and Marlon deserved the emotional security of knowing that the people living in their home wanted to be there and wanted to be a meaningful part of their lives. Marla refused to see hers as a broken home, no matter how limited a role Leonard played in her children’s lives. Indeed, she became convinced that her divorce from Leonard was more of a solution than a problem.
From Home to Haven
Marla knew that her children’s emotional security also depended on their staying in the only home they had ever known. The change of the divorce was enough; changing addresses was not an option. In the final divorce decree, Marla got the house, which meant taking responsibility for the mortgage as well as for educating her children, keeping them healthy, and making sure they were safe. In order to keep the house, she could not change her work life. Marla sometimes worked fifty hours a week, which limited her ability to shuttle the children to and from sports practices, music lessons, and other activities. Most nights, when she picked up her children from a babysitter, she had only enough time to set them to their homework and pull together a meal. After Marla put them to bed early on weeknights, she made their lunches and even managed to keep up her daily habit of making an extra sandwich for the man who slept in the alley behind her bank. With the same firmness her own mother had displayed with her, Marla woke Beth and Marlon early for breakfast before school.
Marla was eager to prove to everyone, including the experts who touted the nuclear family as the key to children’s well-being, that Beth and Marlon could thrive in a home headed by a single black mother. But she missed having a man in her life. What started out as flirtation with Ernest, a man who repaired her car, turned serious. Other than cars, he seemed interested only in her. Ernest, ten years younger than Marla, got along well with Beth and Marlon and spent most of his spare time with the three of them, becoming a fixture around their home. She eventually agreed that he could move in with them; it seemed a natural progression of their relationship. In retrospect, Marla is not sure whether she saw living with Ernest as a prelude to marriage or just a matter of convenience. What she did know was that five years after her divorce, she did not want to rush into another marriage.
She hadn’t planned to have a third child. But once Sam was conceived, she felt she had only one choice. Her two best friends from high school, also working women, each had only one child. But to Marla, her three didn’t seem excessive. Ernest was not as certain about becoming a parent as Marla was, but she assured him that if necessary, she would take care of Sam alone, just as she had Marlon and Beth. When Ernest left, Marla bore the responsibility for the day-to-day learning, well-being, and safety of her three growing children.
Sam had been born in 1980. Throughout that summer and for the next year, the city of Atlanta was on edge; a suspected serial killer was on the loose, and many of his victims were black boys. Novelist Tayari Jones was nine years old and lived in Atlanta during the murder spree. Thirty years later, she summed up the fear sweeping the community by saying that one lesson she took away from the ordeal was that “some people are more vulnerable than others. It wasn’t ambiguous.”6
Then in July 1981, the kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh while he was with his mother at a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, put fresh focus on the dangers that twentieth-century children faced. Adam’s death and the deaths in Atlanta combined to change the culture of child rearing in the 1980s. Perhaps this atmosphere of concern for the welfare of children was why Marla grew so protective of hers, especially Sam. Determined to avoid the nightmare of losing a child, Marla became gravely serious about the responsibility of protecting all three of her children. She walked them across the street for play dates with other children. She pestered them to come into the house as soon as it was dark. Once, Marla dreamed that an airplane crashed in her front yard. Two weeks later, a plane fell from the sky into the backyard of a house less than ten miles away. This was close enough for Marla; she read her dream as a premonition—not of the accident that had occurred, but of one yet to happen. Despite her generally laid-back demeanor, Marla grew especially anxious—some might even say a bit neurotic—about her children’s safety. For two years after the accident, Marla refused to board an airplane.
But none of her feelings of insecurity could stop Marla’s determination to make her house a home. She had raised her children there, planned and financed an addition, scraped and painted cabinets, and even learned to do her own plumbing. Hers was the place where her extended family gathered for Thanksgiving and Easter dinners; Marla had served forty-two turkeys, thirty-five hams, and scores of birthday cakes there. Marla kept her children close. They would have no reason to join the gangs that were growing in the streets and back alleys near her home.
Despite the growing mistrust between law enforcement and black communities in Southern California, Marla knew that it was still the job of the police to control the gangs that were starting to dominate the streets in nearby neighborhoods. But she knew just as clearly that within her home she had to be the law and manage her three active children as best she could. Marla was strong, independent, and determined to prevail with the kind of mothering that was called for in the context of civil unease and increasing street violence.
Marla’s older two children took to heart the tough-love messages she sent. Sam, however, preferred to focus on Marla’s softer side: his mother’s love of poetry and music. Sam shared his with everyone, whether or not they wanted to listen. His most ardent audience was the elderly woman and her daughter who lived across the street. Sam visited them in their home every day on his way home from school. The mother, who was housebound, was perhaps the most appreciative; each day Sam offered a new poem for her to critique, and she was never critical of his performances of verse or his monologues about his favorite television characters, sports stars, or musicians. She was grateful for the time and attention Sam showed her and encouraged him to write more.
Sam had been surrounded by music from birth, so his attraction to it was natural. Through the 1980s, from its origination in neighborhoods very much like the ones near Sam’s, hip-hop culture was going global. As early as 1982, inspired by television and movies, youths in places as far away as Denmark formed groups whose musical and dance forms reflected the style coming out of black and Latino neighborhoods in the United States. The style was professionalized and glamorized by Michael Jackson, whose 1982 album Thriller was music, dance, video, and fashion all in one. But a peculiar racial phenomenon was happening in the eighties. As Jackson’s skin color seemed to turn increasingly lighter, young Japanese men began presenting themselves with regularity at Tokyo dance clubs with darkened faces and dreadlocks, dancing to hip-hop music in rhythmic, interpretive, muscular moves. They were performing their version of blackness. In addition to his remarkable talent, Jackson’s broad appeal came from his ability to transcend accepted notions about race and gender, through skin lightening and plastic surgery. His appeal transcended class as well. Jackson made it cool to be a young black man for urban youth, who emulated him and took his dance and musical acumen in new directions. “Popping” and break dancing, forms of hip-hop expression, allowed young men of all races to combine physical agility and a new version of masculinity with their generation’s music and texts.
By the 1990s Sam had grown into a teenager with long arms and a slight frame, which might have suited him for dancing. But his lack of coordination (he never even learned to ride a bike) undermined any advantage his physical appearance gave him. Sam loved sports, but he was as unsuited to competitive sports as he
was to break dancing. Not only did he lack the physical grace of an athlete, but he also lacked the necessary competitiveness. His older brother, Marlon, delighted equally in hitting a baseball and catching a football. Sam preferred to talk endlessly about sports teams, thrilling games, and star athletes. For Sam and boys like him, rhymes were the readily available mechanism for establishing masculinity. The poetry Sam practiced for his elderly neighbor would develop into rap. Sam’s easygoing personality was suited for the combination of rappers’ freedom of expression and hip-hop and freestyle rhyme.
In urban settings during the 1980s, rapping had evolved from a musical form to a rite of passage to manhood, the way “playing the dozens” had for a previous generation of African Americans. But to succeed in establishing himself as an artist in the burgeoning musical form—let alone in signifying his masculinity—Sam needed to work on his rhymes. His could not be the poetry that spoke to old ladies; it had to be edgier, angrier, if he were to compete with the rappers whose hip-hop credibility—their “cred”—came from lives on the streets, in housing projects, and as gang members.
Sam had anger to address; his strained relationship with his father had grown more and more contentious. His poetry served him well in that respect. The fact that he had no experience on the streets or with gangs posed a challenge to Sam’s musical ambitions. Yet hip-hop was everywhere: in school, on the radio, in the inner city, in the suburbs, and in rural homes across America. The music called Sam, as it did so many youths in the nineties.
But as popular as the genre was, not everyone–certainly not the women of Marla’s generation—appreciated its content. In time, the generational and gender battle lines would be drawn in public discussion over the misogyny, violence, homophobia, and materialism that the lyrics arguably promoted in the name of artistry and masculinity. But Marla knew that she would never be able to keep Sam from the music he and many others were drawn to.
Indeed, over time, new and developing communication and entertainment devices have ensured individuals of all races, genders, and ages free access to the words and imagery that many find objectionable. It is absurd to tell those who are offended by the messages to just turn the dial. As Brown University professor Tricia Rose points out, “You’d have to shut down all of your children’s and your own investment in MTV, BET, VH1. You would basically have to unplug from society as a whole” to avoid much of the rap that is generated today.7
Sam, like many young men, refused to unplug. His finest achievement came when he helped write the music and lyrics for a CD recorded by a group of his friends. Though his contributions went unacknowledged in the liner notes, his role in the production was proof enough for Sam that he had musical talent. He did follow his mother’s advice, however, and found other work; he began focusing on his future, preparing for the day when he and his girlfriend would have their own home.
Not only was Sam sure that his poetry would never match that which had become popular; Sam was a pacifist. Growing up, he had heard the stories of boys his age getting involved in gangs and criminal acts and had witnessed gang activity himself in school, but Sam was not a fighter. Through Marla’s urging and his own reflection, Sam decided that life on the streets was not for him. On his job, as an aide in a group home for children who couldn’t or wouldn’t live in their family homes, he saw kids drawn to behavior and places that he had rejected.
William Oliver, a professor of criminal justice at Indiana University, explains the power and allure of the streets, which he describes as a “socialization institution that is as important as the family, the church, and the educational system” to economically marginalized black males.8 Indeed, the writings of sociologist William Julius Wilson suggest that the streets are in competition with those other institutions. He writes of mothers in poor neighborhoods in Chicago who recognize they have greater social control over their children where strong “churches, schools, political organizations, businesses, and civic clubs,” and the resources they need to engage them, are available. “The higher the density and stability of formal organizations,” the less influence the streets have on youth.9 Unfortunately, according to Oliver, the streets are where a small minority of inner-city young men develop ideas about their relationship to the larger culture that promote violent confrontations as a way of asserting power and manhood. And the influences are not limited to those who live by the codes of the streets. In today’s cities, even those who don’t abide by the codes are hard pressed to entirely unplug from the ubiquitous cultural influences of these alternative urban institutions, which in fact transcend geography. In Los Angeles, infamous for its gang-related activity, the boundaries between the obviously dangerous settings and the protected ones are nebulous and often difficult to delineate.
A Parent’s Worst Nightmare
Despite Marla’s best efforts and even Sam’s best intentions to avoid the violence of the streets, that proved impossible. At about six o’clock on a Sunday morning in August 2008, Marla heard Sam as he left to report to his job. That afternoon, anticipating that Sam would return home ravenous after his double shift, she went food shopping. As she unloaded the chicken and vegetables she had planned for dinner, she heard a police helicopter circling overhead. In response to this all-too-familiar sound, Marla said a prayer for the victim she knew was out there. She had no idea that just blocks away, a passerby had found Sam slumped over on a sidewalk, clinging to life.
A few hours later she received the worst news of her life. How she did it she doesn’t know, but Marla gathered herself and rushed to the hospital. “He fought so hard,” Marla said, but a few days after being shot in the chest at close range, Sam died. Marla was at his bedside.
Tragedy may have visited Marla’s home, but hers is not a story of defeat. She has found much-needed but somewhat unexpected allies, including Sheryl, the police detective who is investigating Sam’s murder. When she was first assigned to the case, Sheryl assumed that Sam was a gang member. (Among other things, she searched his room for evidence of gang membership.) But Sam was not in a gang. Sheryl could find no trace of Sam in the criminal system, and his murder did not fit the stereotypical “gang member shoots rival gang member” profile. Since Sam had no “usual suspect” enemies, the police force is at a loss for how to solve the crime. Sheryl, the African American mother of a teenage son, remains committed to the case and says she thinks about Sam every day. To Sheryl the mother, Sam was one of the kids who were supposed to escape that fate. To Sheryl the police detective, Sam is an enigma. She is willing to use whatever resources are available to find who killed Sam and has petitioned the city to put out a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest in his case. No one had collected it yet. Sam’s murder remains unsolved.
Ferroll is another of Marla’s allies. She, like Sheryl, is devoted to justice, but pursues that ideal through healing and educating grief-stricken survivors of violence. Ferroll started her counseling service, Loved Ones Victims Services, after working directly with police officers as they investigated homicide scenes. Nine years into her counseling work, her own brother, on the verge of becoming a lawyer, was killed by a robber. Ferroll’s effort to channel the anger and pain of loss into healing and positive action is directed to the eighteen hundred families she has served, as well as to the city itself. Every Angeleno suffers the effects of violence, whether it occurs in her own backyard or in streets miles away. For Ferroll, no neighborhood is immune from violence—it happens in wealthy and poor communities. Thus the responsibility for ending violence is both individual and collective. Ferroll and her network pursue the city’s and families’ healing with the same tenacity that Sheryl demonstrates in searching for Sam’s murderer.
Some days Marla wakes wanting to think only of Sam, to fix him in her mind and hold on to his laughter. On other days Marla cannot bring herself to think of him, lest her imagination go to the fear her child must have felt standing defenseless, face to f
ace with his assailant. In her mind, Marla was there with him—and just as powerless.
Often Marla wonders whether she had ever really been able to protect her children or whether she had been helpless all along. But each day, even after a sleepless night, she rises and shakes her fist at the sun, perhaps as much an expression of anger as defiance. Marla, the retiree, would rather sleep in, but cannot bear to become “one of those people,” so overcome with grief as to fear facing the day. She doesn’t see herself as the helpless victim. Marla knows how hard she fought, but she also knows that her best chance of winning was to fight within her home. She did that, and she won the battle to convince her children that their own dreams were bigger than a life of violence, but she was no match for the streets.
As Lorraine Hansberry’s Mama explained in A Raisin in the Sun, “I—I just seen my family falling apart today. . . . We was going backwards instead of forwards. . . . When it gets like that in life—you just got to do something different, push on out and do something bigger.” And so Mama made the decision to buy a home for her black family in a predominantly white suburb. Women like Mama Younger have chosen to “push on out” from neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. Whether the talk about killing and “wishing each other dead” refers to violence within the home or in the communities, the impulse is the same. Sometimes you have to push out of the place where devastation hits.
