He Kept Me

He Kept Me

By Beverly F. Smith

AuthorHouse™

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© 2011 by Beverly F. Smith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/17/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7012-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7011-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-7009-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011960212

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

After thoughts

This book is dedicated to

The Smith and Nixon Family—United we stand, divided we fall.

To my four beautiful children, who is my motivation and the wind beneath my wings.

To everyone who was ever told that you would never amount to anything—dream big and prove them wrong.

As I entered The District of Columbia Superior Court House, I took another glance at my watch and realized that I was twenty minutes early for Charles’s court appointment. Although his case was being called on the JM level of the courthouse, I proceeded up the escalators to the fourth floor to check in. Because Charles was a juvenile, I had to speak with a social worker before seeing the judge. Once I entered the crowded room of angry parents, I signed in and took a seat directly in front of the clerk’s desk. Now it was time to play the waiting game and I was prepared. I had my favorite book Prayers that Avail Much for Mothers by Germaine Copeland, a blueberry muffin and an orange juice. I had to give God some praise because it was a miracle that I made it here on time in DC’s rush hour traffic. I wasn’t a stranger to these procedures because I have been running down to this court house for the last four years. I had gotten accustom to hearing stories from the parents in the waiting room about how their child was falsely arrested and the threats about what they would do if they didn’t release their innocent child. There is a serious epidemic in DC with the youth running wild and breaking rules and sitting in this room time after time I see that a lot of the issues the children are having is peer pressure to fit in with the majority. As I sat and waited patiently for them to call my name to go to the back, I thought about how disappointed I was when I received the call from the police officer that was on duty at Cardozo Senior High School saying that Charles was arrested for robbing another student in the school. It was the end of the school year but Charles had only been at Cardozo for only three weeks because he spent fourteen months in Pennsylvania at Summit Academy all boys’ boarding school for troubled youth. I knew with Charles catching a new charge the judge wasn’t going to give him a slap on the wrist and I didn’t want him to. Unlike most of the other parents, I wanted the judge to give him a punishment that would make him change his mind every time he thought of breaking the law. Surprisingly my name was called within thirty minutes of waiting and the interview with the worker went by even quicker because our information was already in the system. I decided to skip the escalator and take the elevator down to the JM level because going to DC Court was like a reunion and I wasn’t in the mood for bumping into anyone from my past. After checking in with the courtroom clerk I took a seat outside of the courtroom and tried calling Mr. Carter, Charles’s court appointed lawyer, but the call went straight to his voicemail. Therefore, I prepared myself for the wait that was ahead of me, finished my muffin and O.J., and started thinking about how my life was before children.

CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning…

HELLO MY NAME is Desire Moore, but my family and friends calls me by my nickname MooMoo a name that I was giving at birth by my dad. When my mom and dad meet in Washington DC, my mom had five children of her own. The three oldest Paula, Jeff and Lil Shirley were being raised by their dad and the youngest two Jason and Vivian lived with my mom. Shortly after meeting, they were married, my dad joined the military, and they began a wonderful life together. Within six years of them marrying they had four more children Maria, Shawna, myself and my little brother Joshua. Because we were in the military, we moved around from North Carolina to Fort Belvoir, Virginia where my little brother and I were born and then to Georgia. I do not remember much from them days of living on the military base, because I was only four years old when my mom and dad separated and my mom moved back to DC with her six children and my dad left the military.

Six months before my mom married my dad her mother passed away leaving her younger brother Charles, whom we all called Uncle Ranky, as her only family member in the city. My mom is originally from Columbia, South Carolina but she was estranged from the rest of her family when she was a child for reasons that are worthy of a story all on its own. During the time my mom and dad were separating my uncle was going through a separation from his wife with whom he had two daughters with and he was going through some trying times of his own. So when we first came back to DC we stayed with some of my mother’s friends. Sometimes we had the pleasures of sharing a bed with their children, but for the most part we made pallets on the floor. After bouncing around from house to house, we ended up staying in a couple of different city shelters including the infamous Capitol City Inn that was on New York Avenue in northeast DC. This was a shelter that had a population of one hundred ninety-nine families, including seven hundred children. The conditions at Capitol City Inn were substandard living conditions that were partly responsible for mental and developmental problems detected in the children living there. After living there for a couple of months, we eventually moved in with my Uncle Ranky. Even though I was a little child, I remember as if it was yesterday when we all shared one room. My mom and her six children would sleep on the bed and my Uncle Ranky would sleep on the couch. The house that we lived in was huge, so I did not understand why we were not allowed to go into the other bedrooms. I later found out that it was a rooming house and we only had access to our room, the bathroom and the kitchen. During the day, I would sometimes go out with my uncle and help him collect old cans in the street and we would turn them into Safeway for extra money.

I was so young during these times but I also remember when my Uncle Ranky started dating a woman named Tootie. Tootie’s mom, Ms. Gladys had a house on Clay Street in Northeast DC and she was nice enough to allow us to stay in her basement. However, in order for us to keep from getting bit by the bugs that was crawling around in her basement half of us would put two dinette chairs together to sleep on and the older ones would sleep on the couch. Regardless of our sleeping arrangements, I really enjoyed living at Ms. Gladys’s house. In the summertime she would always let us play in the backyard, she would wet us with the water hose and give us popsicles. Her house was one block from Kelly Miller Junior High School and two blocks away from Smothers elementary school. Once school started up, Vivian and Jason attended Kelly Miller while Maria, Shawna, Joshua and I attended Smothers. I was six years old and was turning seven on November 1, and despite my age when I entered the first grade, it was my first time ever in a school building. Every school morning before this day I watched my older sisters and brother go to school while my little brother and I stayed home. Even though it was my first time in a real school building, it was not my first time in a classroom. My sister Vivian used to come home from school every day and insist that I played school with her, she was always the teacher and I was her favorite student. She taught me my ABC’s, how to spell, how to read, how to count and how to add. So by the time I entered Mrs. Duckett’s first grade class I was above everyone else academically. At the end of the year my Mrs. Duckett wanted to skip me to the third grade. This would have put me in my right grade, but because my sister Shawna was going to the third grade my mom decided not to skip me. My first year of school was everything I thought it would be and it was during that time that I realized that school was my first love.

CHAPTER 2

Highly Favored…

IT WAS THE spring of 1983 when my mom found a one-bedroom apartment on Hillside Road in Southeast. The neighborhood elementary school was Davis, which were three blocks away from our house and one block from the infamous Simple City housing projects. Maria graduated out of Smothers and was catching the W4 bus to Kelly Miller with Vivian. Jason graduated out of Kelly Miller and was now attending Spingarn High School on Benning Road in Northeast. My uncle’s youngest daughter Janice was having issues at home with her mom so she spent a lot of time with us and with my mom being from the country, she knew everything about making one-pot meals to keep us all fed and happy. She was famous for her boiled chicken with rice and carrots, her beef stew with potatoes, peas and corn, and my favorite lima beans and rice with fresh baked corn bread on the side. My mother’s cooking was so good that our friends would try to hang around us during dinnertime because they knew my mom would offer them something to eat. Living on Hillside was like having a block party every day. It was a small one-way street that was always filled with children running around laughing and playing. The boys would be playing football in the street and the girls would be doing cheers or jumping double dutch on the sideline. Everybody on Hillside was like