It was a hunch. I read an article in Essence magazine, written by its editor, Susan L. Taylor. I was so moved by the article, I wanted to write her. I discussed the idea with my dear friend Marjorie Battle, who lived in New York. Marge and I were always making plans about my career. She thought it was an excellent idea. We composed the letter over the telephone. Marge typed it on “good” paper and sent it to me by mail. I signed the letter and mailed it to Ms. Taylor. The few people I told about it said I would never get a response. Two weeks later, I got a call from Ms. Taylor’s office. She wanted to meet with me to discuss the possibility of the magazine doing my story. Essence sent me a ticket, and had a car pick me up at the train station. I had never been in a limousine that was not going to a funeral.
Standing in the doorway of her office, Susan Taylor did not know that I had on a homemade suit. She did not know that the jewelry I was wearing was borrowed. She did not know that my daughter had bought my pantyhose and underwear with the paycheck she earned working at McDonald’s. She did not know that my rent wasn’t paid and that my telephone was about to be disconnected. The glamorous Susan Taylor, editor-in-chief of the largest magazine ever published for black women, took one look at me and said, “Come here and give me a hug. We have been looking for you for a long time.” Susan had heard me speak at a retreat several months earlier. She said she was interested in my story.
Essence paid me and sent me to Los Angeles. Bebe Moore Campbell interviewed me and wrote the story. It appeared in an issue of the magazine with Diana Ross on the cover. I bought twenty-five copies, laid them out on the floor in front of me, and cried over them. Essence said that the story elicited more response than any other story in the history of the magazine. People began to call me for speaking engagements. The literary agent called back and introduced me to a small independent publisher who redesigned and published Tapping the Power.
Within four months, my life was moving in a direction that I had never imagined possible. Iyanla was emerging through a slow, often painful process. My lessons were grounded in an inability to love myself, to trust myself, and to believe that I was worthy. This inability manifested itself in issues with money. I had success etched into my soul. God put it there. It was my nature. But I had been programmed for failure. I believed what Grandma told me. I believed that I would never amount to anything. Although I was doing the work and enjoying it, I kept waiting for something bad to happen.
The Iyanla I had become was still very sensitive to and overly concerned about criticism. Every decision I made had to be confirmed and affirmed by at least five other people. I needed external validation. I learned a great deal by attending workshops and reading books, but I had not learned how to integrate what I was learning into my own spirit. Although I had chosen to be celibate, I was yearning and looking for the love of a man to make me feel whole. While it appeared to the world that she was a bright and rising star, Iyanla wrestled with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. At least once a day, I felt like six-year-old Rhonda, cowering in the corner. There were things in my past that I had not healed. There were things in my heart that I believed about myself and could not face. It was a recipe for failure. The only thing that helped and saved me was my ability to see and hear Spirit.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What’s the Lesson When You Get the Lesson but Don’t Know What to Do With It?
Truth must be realized individually. It must be realized by you, otherwise it is not your Truth. Only your Truth, not the truth, is expressed in your life, not anyone else’s. How do you find your truth? By seeking and finding the teacher within. You see, the Teacher and the Truth within are one.
John Randolph Price, in With Wings as Eagles
ALTHOUGH I WAS ASLEEP, I could feel the chill in the room. As the scenes of the dream unfolded, I began to shiver.
I could see Damon sitting alone on the floor of a huge, dark room. I was standing in the corner of the room. Even though Damon was not tied up, I knew, for some reason, he could not move. I called out to him several times, but he did not answer me. I heard voices that sounded angry and dangerous. In a panic, I ran out of the room, calling out to Damon. Again, he did not respond and he did not move.
I saw myself running up a long hallway, screaming Damon’s name. I looked back to see if he was following me, then I saw the men enter the room. I stopped and watched as the angry men walked over to where my son was sitting on the floor. One of the men hit him. “Please stop!” I screamed. “Stop it!” I ran back toward the room. As I reached the door, I saw that one of the men had a gun pointed at Damon’s head. For some reason, I could not step into the room. I stood at the doorway, begging them not to shoot my son. I heard the gun click. One of the men turned and looked at me. I begged him, “Please. Don’t do it.” The gun clicked again. My heart sank. The telephone rang.
I was sitting up in the bed, shivering and crying, trying to remember where I was, when the telephone rang again. I grabbed for the receiver and knocked it and the clock to the floor. It was 6:30 Saturday morning. I put the receiver to my ear, but I couldn’t speak.
“Ma?” It was Gemmia, calling from Morgan State University.
“What’s the matter? Why are you calling so early?” I yelled into the telephone.
“Ma, you’ve got to find Damon. He’s in some kind of trouble.”
Gemmia recounted the dream that had just awakened her. She had seen a mob of people chasing Damon. She was trying to help him get away, but they were separated. When she looked back to see where Damon was, a huge truck appeared from nowhere and ran over him. She was crying on the other end of the telephone.
I told her to pack. I would pick her up in two hours. My car was in bad shape, so I rented one, borrowed forty dollars, and picked Gemmia up in Maryland. Six hours later, we were driving through the streets of Norfolk, Virginia. I had no idea where I was going or where Damon was.
I knew Damon lived somewhere in Norfolk. His father and I had been there once when Damon first enlisted. I was sight driving, trying to remember what I had seen the last time. I pulled into the parking lot of a motel to ask the desk clerk where the housing complexes in the neighborhood were located. I turned the car off, unbuckled my seat belt, and reached over to open the door. As I looked up, I saw Damon running across the parking lot, headed for the pay telephone.
I never would have imagined that my son would be involved in the sale and transport of drugs, but he had a booming business that he ran from one of the rooms in the motel. A rival dealer had put a “hit” out on him. That morning, two gunmen appeared in his room. They didn’t realize who Damon was, and he convinced them that he was not the person they were looking for. He was in the process of making plans to move his operation when I showed up. It took me two days to shut the operation down and take my son back home.
There were few things in my life that I felt guilty about. How I had raised my children was one. When I hear “Iyanla, Great Mother,” I cringe. I may have been many things, but a great mother was not one of them and I knew it. Great mothers love and nurture their children. They teach them games and they play with their children. I had not done that, partly because I didn’t know how and partly because I was too busy chasing men and creating drama in my life. I did not know how to be a mother because my heart was closed.
In a very secret place in my soul, I felt I did not deserve the children I had been given. When I think of all the days I left them alone to go to work, or go to school, or to shack up with some man, shame grips my heart. When I think of all the nights that I left them to look for John or spy on Eddie, the guilt is almost unbearable. I was a good provider. I was not a good mother. Rarely, if ever, did I tell my children I loved them. I almost never told them when they did a good job. I was a verbally abusive taskmaster, afraid that my children would fail. But I never gave them what they needed to succeed. It was this aspect of understanding my name that gave me more trouble that anything else. How could I call myself “Great Mother” whe
n I knew in my heart that I had not mothered my own children? It felt like such a contradiction. It felt dishonest.
When Gemmia was thirteen years old, she stopped speaking. She went to school, came home, did her homework, and went to bed. If you did not speak to her, she did not speak to you. As busy as I was with my own issues, I noticed it. No amount of prodding or questioning got a response. If she wasn’t doing homework or housework, she would sleep. At first I thought she was pregnant. But two years into the situation, I knew that was not the problem.
I think she was clinically depressed. I think I was so crazy, and she had witnessed me go through so much drama, she became depressed. When I thought about it, I had never taught her the alphabet, how to count, or how to tell time. She figured it out on her own. Maybe Damon had helped her. I know I didn’t. Still, she was a brilliant, straight A student. One day I was talking to a friend who said she wanted to train young girls in the art of hair braiding. I asked her to train my daughter. Gemmia worked in Tulani’s salon for three years. She emerged as a master braider and a great conversationalist. When she was awarded a full four-year scholarship in biology, I knew I had been blessed. I felt like a bad mother, but a blessed one.
I taught Damon the importance of money. I taught him that to get money, you had to work hard, or lie, or be treated badly. I never sat down and said these things to him, but he was watching me. I lived with a man who beat me, because I thought I needed his money. I left my children alone at night to go to work for money. I worked two jobs and went to school, trying to amass enough money to move my children out of the projects. Damon and his sisters watched me work and not be able to make ends meet. They never saw me make a budget, because I did not know how. They never saw me use a credit card, because I didn’t have one. They knew when the rent wasn’t paid and when that was the reason we had to move. They knew when the light, gas, or telephone was off, and that I had to get beat up to get the money to put them back on. In Damon’s mind, why should he end up like me? Why should he work only to end up with nothing? I could have addressed all of his misunderstandings, but I had no idea how to begin.
Once they became teenagers, it was rare to see all my children home at the same time. I remember one particular Sunday morning, they were all sitting on Damon’s bed, laughing and talking to one another.
“I need somebody to help me in the prayer room,” I said as I passed through the room. “But they have to be a virgin.” No one moved. I kept walking. A few minutes later, I came back and repeated the request.
“Who’s going to help me? I need all the virgins.”
Damon spoke first. “Go ahead, Gemmia. Help Mommy.”
“No,” Gemmia said, “let Nisa go.” Damon could not hide his distress.
“Oh no!” he said. “What do you mean ‘let Nisa go’? You go. Why can’t you go?” Gemmia stared at her brother. I was staring at Gemmia, who leaned across the bed and pushed her younger sister.
“Go on, Nisa. Mommy needs you to help her.”
Nisa shook her head. “Uh-uh, I ain’t going. Why don’t you go?” Damon was stomping around, saying, “Oh no! Neither of my sisters is a virgin. I can’t believe this! Gemmia, Nisa, what happened?” I had all the information I needed. They were arguing among themselves. As I left the room, I heard Nisa say, “I don’t even know what a virgin is!”
My children always got along. I had taught them to take care of one another. Damon looked out for his sisters, and the girls looked out for each other. I could detect some distance between fifteen-year-old Gemmia and thirteen-year-old Nisa, but they still enjoyed being together for short spans of time. I could at least give myself credit that I had taught my children to stick together. That was more than anyone ever did for Ray and me.
As my career started moving forward, my children were my greatest support. They were excited about the book, they helped me write and mail the ministry newsletter, and they took a front-row seat every Sunday morning. I wasn’t able to keep Damon home very long after the Norfolk incident. He said he wanted to be with his wife, who was still stationed in Virginia. He promised that he was finished with the drug life. He lied.
Over the course of several months, Damon was arrested in every state along the eastern seaboard. Each time he was arrested, he would call me, profess his innocence, and beg me to pay his bail and get him an attorney. On the first two occasions, I did exactly as he asked. I didn’t help him because I believed he was innocent. I knew he was guilty. I did it because I felt so guilty. Every time he called with some new trouble, a dagger would stab my heart. Not only had I failed as a mother and caused my son to ruin his life, people were going to talk about me: “How can she be out there saving the world and her son is in jail?” When you hold yourself out in the public eye, people sometimes forget that you are still a human being. They forget that you have feelings, and they forget that you have a history. They act as if you popped out of a pumpkin patch one day, fully equipped to do whatever it is that you are doing. I knew better.
When Damon was arrested in Philadelphia, I called some of my law school buddies. They were willing to help, but I didn’t have the money to pay them. When he was arrested in New York, I got the brilliant idea to call his father, an ex-corrections officer, to see if he could pull some strings.
“Gary, have you heard from Damon yet?”
“His friend called here and said that he needed eight hundred dollars to pay his bail.”
“I know. Would you be willing to put up half if I put up the other half?” I asked him.
“I have fifty dollars. You can have that if you want it.” This from a man who lives in a mansion, receives a state pension, works as a locksmith, and sells used cars.
“You know, Gary, this is the first time in his life that your son has ever asked you to help him do anything. I think this may be a good time for you and him to really build a relationship. He needs manhood training. He needs something that I cannot give him.”
“The only thing wrong with Damon is the environment he grew up in. What did you think was going to happen to him? Look where he grew up! Look at the things he grew up around. He is only doing what he saw done in his environment.”
I was livid. This is a man who passed through twice a year to give his son twenty dollars and occasionally took him to eat lobster.
“I did the best I could, Gary, but you know what? I don’t have to defend myself to you, because you are his father. Right now he needs a father.”
“You say he needs manhood training. What is that? I never got that. How am I supposed to give it to him if I don’t even know what it is? What he needs is a good butt whipping, but it’s kinda late for that now.”
“What he needs is a man to talk to. He needs a man to tell him the things it takes to be a man. I sure don’t know what that is, because I’m not a man. He is reaching out for you, so I guess whatever you know can help him.”
“I don’t see why I should be forced to have a relationship with my son. Do you want the fifty dollars or not?”
“Please forgive me. You are absolutely right, Gary. Forgive me for calling you. I have no right to call you about anything pertaining to Damon, because you have demonstrated your commitment to him all of his life. And you know what, Gary? You don’t ever have to worry about me picking up a telephone to call you again. As long as I am black, I will never call you about your son. Please forgive me and have a good evening.” I hung up and paced the floor for hours, finally resigning myself to the fact that my only son would be in jail.
While he was in prison in New York, Damon was extradited to Virginia to face charges on a three-year-old case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five to seven years. He would be eligible for parole after serving two years. I cried and vomited for two weeks. I don’t think I have ever experienced such emotional pain in my entire adult life. I prayed and wrote about my feelings every day, sometimes three times a day. It is not your fault, I told myself. It is his lesson. It is the result of choices he has made.
Now he will learn to choose again. It took about two years for me to understand what Damon and I had been going through. When it was clear in my mind, I wrote him a letter sharing my deepest thoughts and feelings:
Dear Damon,
I have received your most recent letter, and I was very glad to hear from you. I have not blocked your collect calls. I have not been paid for quite some time, and I do not have a telephone. I am thankful for this time to be still and listen to my own thoughts. I recognize that you have grown a great deal and believe you have made great strides in your personal development, but it still feels to me that there are many things that you do not understand. I am sure that you have an idea that my financial situation is not the best it could be right now, yet you write asking me to do something for you. You and I both know the amount of money you have had and wasted, and that you saved nothing for a rainy day. This is why I am so amazed that when you need something you have no qualms about asking me for help, no matter what my situation may be. I guess that is what sons believe mothers are for. It does not, however, make me feel good.
Every day I pray for you. I pray for your enlightenment and your growth. I ask God to touch you right where you are and bring your heart and mind into alignment with His will for you. I pray that you will become one with God and the spirit of God within you. I know that prayer can get into places that I cannot reach. I know that prayer can straighten out situations I do not understand. I guess I need to pray a little harder and a little longer for you.
I spent twenty-two dollars to purchase the book you asked me to buy. I spent another two dollars and ninety cents to send it to you. I am not responsible if the Department of Corrections loses the book. Now, with my telephone off and no money to pay the rent, you want me to pay to Xerox the book and send it to you. That will not happen. I have sent you more than a hundred dollars’ worth of books in the last month. This is more than enough for you to read for the next year. Read them over and over again. Each time you read them, you will discover something new. You may even discover how to get the twenty-five dollars you need to submit your college application. The time has come for you to do for yourself. You must learn how to figure things out and make them work for you. You must pray and ask for guidance.
Yesterday, I Cried Page 27
