Lottie Jackson stood by the table while the girls took their seats for the Sunday Class. “Our lesson today is on our dreams. We all have dreams. Harriet Tubman was a slave who had dreams of being free, finally she ran to freedom. Rev. Martin Luther King had a dream that someday we would all have equality regardless of our race. Shannon Miller and Jackie Joyner-Kersee both dreamed of going to the Olympics and both recently won gold medals. Kobe Bryant dreamed about playing for the NBA and now he does. Beyonce dreamed of being a singer and her name is now being recognized. God can take a small dream that we have and make it into something big. What are your dreams?”
Lottie’s eyes followed Devon as he walked into the Sunday school classroom, with downcast eyes and slumped shoulders. “Devon, you are just in time for our lesson. Now, God has a reason for all of us. He has a reason for bringing us into this world and our dreams are sometimes the reason God made us. Sometimes the things we aspire to be and dream of becoming are part of God’s reason for making us, and sometimes we have dreams outside of God’s plans for our lives. God’s purpose for Adam and Eve was for companionship and to take care of the Garden of Eden. When the snake tempted Eve, she suddenly had the dream of being like God and knowing everything that God knew. Her dream was not God’s purpose for her and Adam, so as a consequence she and Adam suffered for trying to accomplish the wrong thing. What are some of your dreams?”
Not bothering to raise his hand, Trey piped up in a booming voice. “I want to be a rapper like Snoop Dog. They got lots of money, cars and women!”
Taking a cue from Trey that it was okay to answer, Pee Wee raised his hand and answered once called upon. “I want to be a basketball player like Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal!”
Ebony raised her hand. “I want to be a model, like Tyra Banks.”
“Devon, what is your dream? What do you want to become?”
Devon looked down at the blank paper in front of him, in the barest of whispers, “I don’t have a dream.” He ducked further into himself, in hopes Mrs. Jackson would quickly move on.
Sensing his insecurity, Lottie responded “Well that’s okay. Sometimes we don’t always have a dream. They may come to us later in life. Now, I want each of you to draw a picture of your dream,” Lottie walked back to the front of the room, wondering what was going on with Devon.
* * * *
Devon came home from school on Monday to find an old beat up green Ford LTD in front of the one-story apartment and was assaulted by a feeling of doom. He walked into the dimly lit apartment smelling of stale cigarettes, beer and vomit. His stomach no longer turned, because he was so used to the foul odor. He headed towards the kitchen to see if any food was left. Curdled milk that had been expired for a month, wafted up to his nostrils when he opened the door. Grabbing a handful of crackers that were crumbled, he tried to ignore the loud music blaring from his mother’s bedroom. He crept by his mother’s room, to his room to grab clothes for the next day. Before he made it to his room, the door to his mom’s room boomed against the wall. Leroy, a dealer who used his mother for sex as a trade-off for giving her drugs, rose up like a raptor hovering above Devon, with bucked eyes and foaming mouth. “What the hell you doing here? You saw my car.”
“I’m sorry, I just wanted to get…,” his voice stammered.
“Yeah, you gonna be sorry. Who the hell you think you talking to boy? Shut yo’ damn mouth! You know I don’t want you around here when I’m here,” Leroy’s spewed holding his pants up in one fist.
“Devon, why don’t you go to your friend’s house.” His mama wavered over to the door wearing an old dingy overly large t-shirt draping her frail, fragile frame with sharp edged bones protruding, that normal body fat would soften. Her hair was matted and falling out in tufts, while her eyes that were so deeply sunken you could see the sockets. The circles surrounding her eyes matched her obsidian colored eyes and made him wonder if Leroy had been beating on her. Instead of seeing Devon her eyes seemed to stare past him into nowhere. Track marks ran a race along the inside of her arm.
“Get back to the bed. I’m talking to him,” he spat, venom spewing from his full mouth as he spoke Leroy turned back slapped her, splitting her lip. Devon’s mom was too numb to feel the pain or blood trickling down her chin. Pulling the belt loose from the loops of his jeans, Leroy turned to Devon. “You ain’t disrespectin’ me boy”.
Although Devon cowered, he still felt the first sharp sting of the thick leather strap against his raised forearm.
”You think you betta’ than me?” he felt the THWAP of the belt, “You ain’t nothing but a piece of shit born to your whore of a mother, “THWAP, THWAP. “Even your daddy didn’t want her skanky ass,” thwap, thwap, thwap, “Spreads her legs to every man who will buy her crack,“ THWAP, “Now you get the hell out of here. Never amount to shit!” Devon crawled to the front door. It would be another night sleeping on the streets. Out of all the men, Leroy was the worst one.
Devon spent the rest of the day and night in the bathroom at the mall. He put up an “Out of Order” sign, so no one would come into the bathroom, after pilfering a coke and chips to eat from a convenient store. He muttered to himself, ”I’m nobody, no one sees me. I’m invisible. I’m a no-good piece of shit,” as Leroy’s violently propelled words replayed in his head. The difference between a beating and an unkind word was a bruise on the body faded away and a bone eventually mended, but scars left from vicious words never vacated your heart. Brutal words had robbed Devon of his self-esteem and value, breaking his spirit slowly day by day as it replayed in the recesses of his mind. Devon’s physical pain was temporary and fleeting, but his emotional pain lingered just beneath the surface; and like dust on a windy day, it was easily stirred up.
Devon snuck out of the mall the next morning and went to school like normal. When he arrived home, he found his mother lying on the filthy worn down avocado green carpet of the apartment they lived in. It wasn’t that uncommon for him to come home only to find her passed out on the floor. Noticing her body was cool to his touch, he threw an old ratty blanket over her and lying next to her still sleeping body. It wasn’t until the next morning, when he woke next to her, that he realized his mother was dead. Devon sat in the corner of the room crying and dialed 911 for help.
Over the next several days Devon felt like a drift boat in a vast sea. No mother. No family. No home. No future. No hope. The day of her funeral only three people came. Devon, the social worker who brought him, and a preacher who had heard about his mother’s death and felt sorry for her. Not one of the men who had used up her body had shown up. In the deepest area of Devon’s heart, he had thought his father would show up to claim him. But he did not show up and Devon’s heart was broken once again. Devon’s shoulders bore the burden of knowing that no one cared or loved him; the weight was more than he could bear.
After the preacher spoke the social worker whisked him to one of the many foster homes he would be placed in. The social worker had too many other children to check on and had very little time to devote to one child out of the many who were left with nothing and no one. Once Lottie Jackson found out that Devon’s mother had died, and he was placed in the system, she and her husband Eli immediately contacted the state to become his foster parents and later adopted him.
* * * *
Devon came home from school and ran through the door, dropping his backpack near an old coat rack. He passed the living room with the rose patterned sofa and loveseat and almost tripped over the leg of a teakwood coffee table. He ran to his favorite part of the house, the kitchen. A huge wooden fork and spoon adorned the rooster wallpaper next to the refrigerator. He ran his hand across the cool multi-colored wood countertop. Reaching for the pantry door he opened and peered in to see if it was still full, that’s when he heard a throat clear and turned to the old kitchen table that had been in Eli’s family for three generations. Sunlight peeked in from the red gingham curtains, highlighting the worn and scratched wood table that had been tinted and sanded so many times, he had no idea what the original color had been.
Eli and Lottie were sitting on opposite sides of the table, littered with packets of peanut butter crackers, hostess cupcakes, candy bars and a pair of sneakers and three shirts with the tags still on them, “Devon sweetie, I found these hidden under some clothes in a drawer, while I was putting the laundry away.” Her face blotchy, tears were streaming from Lottie’s red eyes.
Devon had been found out, he cast his eyes down in shame and his body began to tremor. He hadn’t wanted Lottie and Eli to find the booty he lifted from a corner store and mall. Would this be the moment they took him back like those other families? Would he end up in another group home because he had stolen the items? “Those aren’t mine. I don’t know how they got in my drawer,” he blurted out, hoping they would believe him. Eli, set his jaw and thinned his lips.
“Son, come sit b’tween to Lottie and me,” Eli pulled out a chair. Eli paused for a while, cleared his throat to hide his emotion, “You know we have mo’ in common with you than you think. I grew up po’ and Lottie grew up in an orphanage. My daddy was a drinker, when he wasn’t hittin’ my mama, he was hittin’ us. What money mama made cooking and cleaning for rich folks, my daddy drank up. There were nights my sisters and I went to bed with nothin’ but growls fillin’ our stomach. Every piece of clothing had been handed down from my older brother and cousins. I never had my own clothes.“ Eli looked over at Lottie.
Throat thick with emotion, Lottie cleared it before speaking, “I never knew my father and I grew up on my grandparent’s farm, after my mom died when I was three. We never had much. The same day we buried my grandmother, my grandfather dropped me off at an orphanage with only a picture of my mother and grandmother and the clothes on my back. I know what it’s like to feel abandoned and unloved. We love you Devon. You the child we never thought we would have. All these years I taught children thinking I would never have one of my own. Now I do. I will never let you go hungry or without clothes.”
Lip trembling, Devon spoke in huffs, “I’m sorry…I won’t steal anything else. Please don’t take me back to that home.” Tears flowed from his shut eyes like an endless stream. He felt strong arms wrapped around him.
“Boy, you ain’t goin’ anywhere, you hear me? This is not about that. We ain’t lettin’ you go, we will never let you go. We also will never let you starve. Lottie is a teacher and I own a contracting business,’ tapping the table for emphasis, Eli added, “We have mo’ than enough money to keep warm meals on this here kitchen table. We can’t allow you to steal though, that’s not okay. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir.” The tears in Devon’s eyes eased up.
Lottie sternly looked him in the eye. “But you are going to have to return everything that you stole and apologize to them for taking it.” Grabbing her purse and handing him a bag, “There’s no time like the present.”
Devon remembered watching parents when they came to pick up or dropped off their children at school. He had noticed that they always hugged and kissed their children. Although the kids were always embarrassed and would wipe the kisses off their cheeks, he had wished someone would hug and kiss him like that. Devon had a vague memory of his mother sitting him in her lap, when he was a very small boy, to kiss and hug him. Like those children he eventually grew embarrassed and wiped the kisses off his cheek and shy away from her hugs. Little did he know that the hugs and kisses would dry up when he was around five and his mother got hooked on drugs. The first time Eli and Lottie had hugged Devon, he had stood there stiff; as if he did not know what was happening and how to respond. Eventually Devon began to hug them back and he learned to open his heart and believe that someone loved him.
The first time Devon called Lottie “Mom and Dad”, was when he introduced them to his teacher at an open house. He had never before seen such a look of joy on two people’s faces. Eli had to turn away, but not before Devon caught the tears in his eyes. Over the years Devon and his parents formed a strong bond due to their nurturing. Devon had not realized how his mother’s addiction to alcohol and drugs had robbed them both of something so special. His new parents built his confidence and made him feel secure in who he was. Although he was still somewhat shy, he no longer felt that he had to keep people at arm’s length. Devon also never worried that he couldn’t depend on anyone to take care of him. The day that Devon was adopted by the Jackson’s was the same day he dared to dream of having a better secure life.
Jon´ee Hill 