When I had time to meet other parolees assigned to Mr. Harvey, I discovered that he scared each new boy with the same performance at their first meeting. I found that he was tough and strict, but he certainly wasn't the racist asshole that I first thought he was. In time, I began to think of him as a fair but firm man who treated all of his boys the same. I had badly misjudged him the first time I met him because the truth was that Mr. Harvey only wanted me to stay out of trouble.
***
One of my parole conditions was twice weekly sessions with Mrs. Jenkins, the same dull, ineffective, white woman in her mid thirties who was my counselor prior to my arrest. At my first appointment after my release, Mrs. Jenkins was shocked when she saw that I had grown so much that she had to look up at me.
I had always been big for my age, and most people, who saw me for the first time, assumed that I was older. In addition to having a big growth spurt while I was in Stockwell, I became even more obsessed with maintaining a rigorous workout routine. It left me with a well-defined, muscular body that startled people when they heard how young I was. When I underwent the mandatory physical exam just prior to my release from Stockwell at the age of thirteen, I found that I had grown to a height of five feet eleven inches and weighed a lean, muscular one hundred sixty-five pounds.
When she recovered enough to begin my session, Mrs. Jenkins started by asking me how my two years in Stockwell had changed me. Specifically, she said that she wanted me to try to use one sentence that would best describe the difference in my personality that day, as compared to our last session prior to my arrest. With a thought that had crossed my mind often since my first week in Stockwell, I answered her in a voice much deeper than she remembered.
"Mrs. Jenkins, here's the difference. Today, if someone took any part in trying to send me back to Stockwell on another phony charge, I would gut him like a fish and watch his bloody insides fall in a steaming heap at his feet, and I said he, but I wouldn't care if it was some dude's grandmother."
I was fortunate that she did not pass on my remark to Mr. Harvey. Instead, Mrs. Jenkins decided that she was not the right counselor to help me because I needed a male influence. My first session with her was my last, and my case was reassigned to Mr. Petty.
Starting with my first meeting with Mr. Petty, he always had an "observer" who was "learning the ropes," and he always thanked me for allowing the observer to join us in his office. After a few sessions, all of them attended by an observer, it was obvious that Mr. Petty didn't want to be alone with me. I didn't blame him. If he had known that I imagined using the heavy crystal paperweight on his desk to smash his phony smile, he might have arranged for two observers.
During the first few months following my release from Stockwell, I had many moments when I was close to exploding in violent behavior while I listened to Mr. Petty's prattle. He convinced me that he knew nothing about the boys he counseled and less about how they were treated in Stockwell. He acted as if my time in the juvie prison was a positive experience, and that I should be excited for my opportunity to put all that I had learned to constructive use.
Mr. Petty was an idiot. In each session with him, I wished I could jerk him out of his chair and slap him around until he understood me. I wanted him to acknowledge what the foster care and juvenile justice systems did to me before Stockwell, and then I wanted him to admit that he didn't believe the detention center's bullshit boast that it caused positive changes in every boy paroled from there. Instead of helping me in any meaningful way, Stockwell fed and fanned the anger already smoldering within me when I arrived there.
When I left Stockwell, I was not reformed, rehabilitated, corrected, or cured. I was an angry, distrustful, selfish survivor, and I preferred to be a friendless loner. Although some people would disagree, in my mind, I was not a bully who randomly took his anger out on other kids. The people likely to see my rage were the ones who treated me unfairly, invaded my privacy, cheated me, touched my things, or if they were especially dumb, touched me without permission. Upon my release, I struggled to fight for my rights and to defend myself without seriously violating my parole terms to the extent that the court ordered me back to juvie prison.
***
Hal and Jenny Mackey, a husband and wife team in their mid thirties, were the live-in house parents of Tolley House. They were educated and trained in social work, and both of them had ten years of experience with child services before they took their positions with the group home for "troubled" boys. My first impression of the Mackeys was that they were average people from their looks to their behavior. Their views on most subjects were moderate which led most people in Harper Springs to see them as a liberal white couple. The Mackeys preferred to be called "progressive." Once I knew them well enough, I thought Hal and Jenny were decent, fair, and predictable.
As house parents, the Mackeys closely followed state guidelines in their operation of the home, and I believe that each boy received every dime of care that the state provided. I never knew of a boy who lacked any basic need, such as nutritious food, weather appropriate clothing, proper medical care, or a warm bed. There were times when Jenny even spent her own money to buy something for one of the boys that was not included in the home's budget.
Hal and Jenny turned out to be the best foster parents that I ever had, but initially, we didn't get along so well which leads me to what I call, "The Battle of Harper Park."
During my twice-weekly trips to my counseling sessions with Mr. Petty and his observer, one of my house parents would drive me past the older part of Harper Park on the way to and from the counselor's office. I first heard about the park from my Tolley House foster brothers who often hung out there after school and on weekends. When school dismissed for the summer, usually all of the boys, with the exception of me, would leave the house after breakfast each morning and walk to the park where they would stay until time for dinner that evening. I wanted to go, but the Mackeys declared that I was not ready. Each day, the other boys told me that they had a great time in the park, and since I initially didn't get along with any of them, they enjoyed torturing me with stories of their fun.
For two months, I begged my guardians to give me permission to walk alone to Harper Park and spend the day there, as the other boys did. Hal and Jenny maintained that they would not allow me off the grounds without supervision until they deemed that it was the right time, which was always another week or two into the future. They informed me that one day soon, they would allow me to go to the park, as long as I promised to walk with my foster brothers and remain with them the entire time, which was not what I wanted. Each time I discussed the park with the Mackeys, they made me so angry that I had to force myself to get away from them before I had a meltdown that would send me back to Stockwell.
The park was less than a mile from Tolley House, and by adding information from my foster brothers to what I saw from the minibus, I knew the potential recreation that the park held for me. There was a jogging trail running through the wooded area and an oval asphalt track next to the playing fields. In the past, the two large fields were where the town's kids had played baseball and football in the city recreation league. Since a new sports complex for the recreation department had been built at the opposite end of the park, the old fields were left for the neighborhood kids to play pickup games.
It wasn't that I wanted to join in the other kids' games so much, but I did want out of the house. I wanted the freedom to enjoy the park any way I wanted, and I needed a daily escape from Tolley House and the depressing reality of my life.
For two years in Stockwell, the only time I spent outdoors was an hour each day in the juvie prison's red clay exercise yard, which was surrounded by a fence, twenty feet high with double rows of razor wire at the top. Two years of living no better than a caged animal had been an eternity to me, and I was not much better off with my confinement to the Tolley House property. In a way, it was worse. In Stockwell, there had been no group of boys laughing at me when t
hey left me behind to enjoy their day in the park.
Instead of viewing a visit to the park as the privilege my house parents called it, I saw it as my right to do the same as my foster brothers, and the day came when I refused to have my request brushed aside again with vague promises. I decided to have a final showdown with Hal and Jenny, and I was prepared to get as ugly as necessary. I asked them for a private meeting, and they read my mood well enough not to aggravate me by delaying it. They were well aware of my anger issues.
When we all sat down in Tolley House's small office, I took deep breaths and spoke calmly. I told the Mackeys exactly what I thought, but I did so in a respectful manner.
I explained that I deserved the same freedoms as my foster brothers, and I did not need the other boys to accompany me as chaperones or tattlers. I didn't want their company at all, just as they didn't want mine. It wasn't fair that the Mackeys allowed the other boys to walk to the park and spend the day while they confined me to the house and yard. I argued that if the state had not thought that I could behave as well as the other boys, they wouldn't have released me to Tolley House. I had been unjustly punished for two years, and there was no good reason that the Mackeys should continue to punish me by denying my request for an activity that was routine for the other boys. I promised that I would not cause trouble. I would simply walk to the park, keep to myself, and return by dinner, the same time as the other boys.
My house parents began their tiresome speech about my anti-social behavior, which caused them to worry about my possible aggressive reactions to others in public. They told me that I needed time to polish my social skills and adjust to life outside of Stockwell, and until I did, they were afraid I might handle some situations poorly.
Mr. Petty, my counselor, had informed them that so far, my twice-weekly sessions had been a complete waste of state money because I revealed nothing with my short, nonsensical responses and took delight in knowing that my head games frustrated him. He added that I still refused to show any remorse for the behavior that sent me to Stockwell. The Mackeys further reminded me that I continued to reject their efforts to help me become part of the Tolley House family, and that I purposely alienated the other boys.
It was true that I avoided the other boys, but there was much more to the story. At the time, the Mackeys were either unaware of any trouble, or they were afraid to ask questions that might force them to confront John Gunter, a sixteen-year-old white kid, who was the self-appointed leader of the boys in Tolley House. As long as no boy complained and the home ran smoothly, it was easy for the Mackeys to dismiss their vague suspicions that something was not quite right in the group home. It was hard for me to blame Hal and Jenny for their cluelessness because John was very good at fooling adults. As for me, I saw through John's act in about the same amount of time it takes to spell "bullshit."
***
On my first day, when all of the house members gathered in the family room to welcome me, John acted as spokesman for all the boys and attempted to give me a "welcome hug." I backed away before he could touch me and offered my fist instead. He tapped my fist with his and hardly missed a beat as he promised that the boys would do all they could to make their new "brother" feel at home. I was proud that I refrained from calling him a phony in front of them all.
In Tolley House, the boys had four bedrooms upstairs with two boys to a room for a total of eight if the house was full. John was the oldest boy and always had his own room if there were less than eight boys living in the house, and since there were only six before I came, John and Malik both had their own rooms. The new plan was for me to room with Malik, leaving John his privacy unless an eighth boy arrived. As I listened to Hal explain the room assignments on my first day, I decided I would rather have a private room, and John quickly gave me an opportunity to take one.
That first night, I took a shower alone in the boys' communal bathroom and wrapped a towel around my waist when I finished. I was brushing my teeth at one of the sinks when I saw John and Malik in the long mirror as they sauntered into the bathroom. I almost laughed aloud at the exaggerated swag of their gaits. I knew right then that they were on probation, probably for a minor offense, because there was no way in hell that they had learned to walk that way in Stockwell. If they had tried that crap, after the other boys finished laughing, they would have given them a beat-down for their trouble. The next day, I learned that I was currently the only parolee from Stockwell.
While I finished brushing and rinsing, the boys were waiting there on either side of me to give me the real rules of the house. After watching the interaction between house members at dinner and the gathering afterwards, I suspected that there was more going on in the house than Hal and Jenny knew. None of the boys had served time yet, but they were not in Tolley House because they were eagle scouts and choirboys.
When the Mackeys pointed out that there had not been so much as an argument between any two of the boys in the past two months, I knew for sure that the boys were playing a game. No group of delinquents got along that well in Tolley House anymore than they did in Stockwell. By the subtle ways that the other boys deferred to John, it was obvious that he was in control, and I knew that he would approach me as soon as he found a time when our house parents were busy downstairs.
I was not impressed with my welcoming committee. Malik, a fifteen-year-old black kid about my size, stood quietly while John, who was a little bigger than I was, gave me the scoop on Tolley House. Since they were fully dressed, I couldn't tell for sure, but I had the impression that both of their bodies were soft as if they had never lifted anything heavier than a nickel bag of weed.
John's warning was about what I expected after seeing the show he put on for the Mackeys in the family room. He informed me that he was the undisputed leader of the "Tolley Gang," a name I thought might sound cool to a five-year-old kid. I was supposed to be scared when he told me that in order to remain healthy, I had to obey his orders and keep my mouth shut about anything he or the gang did.
I was not surprised to find out that John got his way among the boys who did his chores and covered for him when he violated house rules. Even so, I was not expecting to hear him tell me that he supplied every boy in the house with drugs for them to sell at their schools and in the park while John never sold to anyone. The other boys were the only ones who took any risk, and for that, John gave them a little weed for personal use and a chump-change portion of the money they made, keeping the rest for himself and his supplier. In the year 2000, the boys in Tolley House were not subjected to drug tests unless they had been convicted of a drug charge, and oddly enough, none of them had.
Each boy understood that if he were caught selling for John, he took the fall alone or faced retribution from John and his mysterious supplier who was supposedly "connected" to some major bad guys from Atlanta. John's supplier had an arrangement with the owner of a landscaping company to give part-time work to the foster boys after school, on weekends, and during the summer. The boys did very little landscaping work since their jobs were really a cover to explain any extra money they had.
I'm sure that John enjoyed his sense of power over the other boys. Taking the role as their leader probably helped his self-esteem, which must have taken a hit every time he used a mirror. I hate to sound so shallow, but John was one ugly kid. He would have been ugly without his out of control acne. I speculated that the only way he would ever get a date with a girl would be to dope her or hold a gun to her head, and even then, I thought she was likely to ask him to shoot her. He was that bad. I'm serious.
I must have been too slow to respond because John made it clear again that I had no choice but to do as he said. He leaned against the bathroom wall, his arms folded smugly to his chest. "So, River, what do you think? Do we have an understanding?"
I leaned against the sink, just two feet away from John, with Malik standing at an angle to the side of us. Malik was a skinny, fidgety sort, and I sensed that he really didn't like being Joh
n's right hand man. It was hard not to laugh at the pair.
"It sounds like a sweet deal, John. For you, that is. For Malik and the rest, it sucks. They do whatever you want to make your life good in the house, and they're stupid enough to take all the risks in your drug business while you and your dealer take most of the money."
Malik took exception to me calling him stupid. "You don't know shit. My cousin got caught with weed once, and they only gave him a fine and a little community service."
I was still smiling. "Oh yeah? I'm sorry for calling you stupid, but I was in juvie with dudes doing time for pushing weed. There's a big difference between simple possession for personal use and selling it at school. If the police search your room here and find that you got more than for personal use, you serve time in juvie. If you get caught selling at the park, you'll serve even more time, and if you get caught selling it at school, the judge will automatically order your ass to Stockwell until you're twenty-one years old, no exceptions. And don't let the words 'juvie detention' fool you cause Stockwell is a prison, and life there is pure hell unless you like fighting every day to keep things like your food, shoes, and virginity."
"Don't listen to that shit, Malik," said John. "Nothing is gonna happen to you. You know I take care of you guys."
I chuckled. "What are you gonna do, John? Go to Stockwell and protect Malik against guys doing time for assault, rape, and murder? How do you take care of him now? You force him to sell drugs, make him do your chores, and God only knows what else he has to do for you."
Malik dropped his eyes to the floor as if I had struck a nerve. He was obviously considering the validity of my words because my time in Stockwell gave me "cred" in the house. While he tried to look cool, he nervously shifted from foot to foot.
"Yeah, whatever, I'm not worried about it," mumbled Malik.
John tried to keep his cool demeanor, but it was a struggle. He didn't like the effect of my words on Malik. "I don't want to hear that you been saying any shit like that to my guys. Since this is your first day, and you're probably tired and shit, I'll let this slide, but you better sleep on what I said and make the right decision. You got until tomorrow morning to tell me if you're with me or against me, and your ass don't want to be against me."
My Name Is River Blue Page 8
