Freeing Tammy: Women, Drugs, and Incarceration

7 | Terrence Alone

94 C h a p t e r S e v e n Terrence Alone I try to teach my son that I do not exist to feel for him, that he must do that for himself in order to survive as a human being. And that is not always easy, for him nor for me. Because it’s hard to see someone you love feel hurt, and to know that there are some pains you cannot, must not, protect your children from, if they are to grow up tough and whole. It’s so much easier to teach them by order or example not to feel at all. — Audre Lorde Aunt Pat had finally had it: “I couldn’t go another day.” Her household was in an uproar, and her marriage was in tatters (and would not survive ). There were other issues, one involving a former girlfriend of her husband, but the conflict with Terrence certainly didn’t help matters. When Tammy was arrested, Edward, Terrence’s father, had fallen off the wagon after seven years of sobriety. He was back to drinking, and heavy drinking at that, living in a small room in a drug- and alcoholinfested inner-city neighborhood. And Edward quickly became incoherent when drinking. So he was ruled out as the next caretaker for Terrence. Tammy’s pastor arranged for Terrence to move in with a childless parishioner in her late 60s. That experiment didn’t make it to the twoweek mark before the woman told Terrence he had to leave. Again, the church came through with a tiny apartment it owned in a nearby low- T e r r e n c e A l o n e • 95 income south suburb. Tammy arranged for Terrence to enroll in a Catholic school because the public school in that neighborhood was known to be rough and dysfunctional. Terrence went to and from school by taxi and spent some weekends with Edward in the apartment . But the young man was thirteen years old and on his own. Terrence had to learn to do everything for himself—grocery shopping , cooking, cleaning, and laundry. He stayed close to the apartment. A teen’s dream in a way, but I was depressed, because never once did I have a friend over, never once did I throw a party, never once was the house not clean, never once did I stay up all night on the telephone or watching TV. Never once. It sounds like a clinical depression, and to some extent it probably was, but perhaps Terrence instinctively knew that his own safety and the peace of mind of his mother depended on his coming through responsibly . Tammy would call Terrence every evening at nine o’clock from the work release center to make sure that he was okay. And Terrence knew she would be extraordinarily anxious if he wasn’t there to answer the telephone. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t party. I did nothing. Went to school, came home, watched television, waited for mom to call, played computer games. No writing, no poetry. I was in a vegetative state. This is not to say that Terrence’s life was totally devoid of excitement and adventure. Mother and son well remember when Tammy gave permission for Terrence to attend a live concert of his idol, Brittany Spears. Getting to the northwest suburbs from the south suburbs involved a bus to the train station, a train, a subway, and a cab from the last subway to the concert arena. Coming back, with only a dollar in his pocket, Terrence learned to his dismay that the bus from the south suburban train station ceased running after midnight. He took a taxi, exited the cab without paying, and ran, hiding in a dark alley until the vehicle was gone. While waiting, Terrence saw a police squad car looking for him. Terrence knew that if the police questioned him, they C h a p t e r S e v e n • 96 would also discover the fact that he was living without adult supervision . Anxiously Terrence hid in the alley for what seemed like hours before he returned to the apartment. Today Terrence is able to look at the positives from this experience. First, Maurice, whom he despised as slick and dishonest, was gone from his and his mother’s lives. Most of the television and...