A Child's Story

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

A little something to think about.

A child attends public school in Memphis. He lives in a poor decimated neighborhood. Years before he was born the people who worked at good paying semi skilled jobs moved to greener pasturers. The professional people and couples had moved before them, right after the Fair Housing Act, the last of the civil rights rights acts, was passed in 1968. His grandmother had 7 children, she was a welfare recipient. However, she did all she could to make ends meet. Her husband was an alcoholic who used to beat her, he finally died of liver failure and she was left alone to take care of all those children. 

Her youngest daughter, who was this boy’s mother, started life with little chance.  By the time she was 5 years old she was already sexually active or to put it more accurately she had already been molested by her older brother who had been molested by his uncles. By the time the girl was 15 she had already had two abortions and was pregnant again with her third child to be carried to term this time. Oh and right after she found out she was pregnant the third time someone introduced her to rock cocaine. By the time the baby was born, prematurely and with severe withdrawal, the girl was addicted (sprung) terribly to the great white bitch.

This young man, now a student in Memphis City Schools, has seen more in his 15 years than many people will in several lifetimes. Survival is the only game he knows and he knows lots of games and gangs. From the time he hit the streets at 5 years old he was taught through experience that the best way to settle a squabble was with violence. By the time he was 6 he was carrying a knife to school just to protect his lunch money. By the time he was 8 he had witnessed hundreds of fights and beatings, and watched his mother perform oral sex on men for a few dollars and in fact was stealing and lying for her help her to support her habit.

He felt great betrayal because this same woman would beat him viciously with extension cords and all sorts of objects when he committed any real or imagined infraction. She would impose a morality on him that she herself could never live up to. 

On the few occasions when she was so guilt ridden she would say no to the drugs for a while at least and off to Church she would trot her son and herself to infuse her soul with a different narcotic, religion. The boy, now street wise, saw the “cheat” of the alpha male, the preacher, and grew to have great disdain and detestation for the preachers consorts and the fools who supported him. 

The preacher would often misquote the bible and and particularly loved the non existent scripture “Spare the rod, spoil the child”  and his mother with her brain so addled with the fire of God and the want of cocaine, spared neither the rod nor staff, nor ironing cord, nor table leg especially when she wanted to turn a trick, this time with the preacher and her son dared said something. Funny thing about that rod in one part of the book it is an instrument of torture in another it is a tool of support. “Damn God make up your mind”, the boy thought as he listened to the 23rd psalms quoted accurately this time, “thy rod, thy staff they comfort me.” His cognitive dissonance would soon turn into utter chaos. 

By the time this man-child reached 12 he had witnessed two murders, one that was never solved, and knew of countless shootings and stabbings and beatings that were never solved also. He knew because in many cases he was there watching not as a bystander, but a lookout at first. He had finally found love in the form of the young men in the hood. They called themselves GD or VL of CVLs or Peoples or Folks , but one thing for sure he found love and acceptance. 

Just last week he proved what he was made of. He took a Tech 9 semi automatic pistol and blew another 15 years boy’s brains out all over the driveway where the victim was standing. He was now a man. This man-child still attends Memphis City Schools. He can barely read. He acts out often. He has been suspended repeatedly. Most of the children in his class know someone like him and in fact many are faced with similar circumstances. Though just children they posses the thousand yard stares of seasoned veterans of combat. They have seen way too much violence for their young tender years. 

This child by all accounts suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is hyper-vigilant, like an animal. He is preoccupied with weapons, violence and death, especially his own. He is afraid at school, though he can never, ever show it for fear of being labeled a punk and he is terrified on his way home, where he is most vulnerable and once he gets home he must always be on guard against violence. Rest and peace are something he will never know. His expectation is to be killed or jailed. He has no care and no hope.

The irony is just last week the Memphis City School Board just re-opened up a proposal to reinstitute violence, whippings, back into the schools. Now do you really think these children give a damn? I didn’t!

Copyright:  Al Lewis - 2010