Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (5 page)

The whole thing was really wearing me down, and I knew my bluff had been called. I was not a seasoned hustler. I was just a rattled little kid lost in a strange place.

I approached the gas station at the far corner. This guy casually rode up on a bike and parked it against the side of the store. Fairly nondescript, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans, he strolled inside. He was probably buying a pack of cigarettes or a Hostess Honey Bun for all I knew or cared. While I was still standing there confused about my predicament, the dude came walking out, got on his bicycle, and pedaled into the distance.

Within minutes, cops stormed in from all directions with the lights going, sirens blaring—the works. The gas station had been robbed right in front of me. The place turned into a mob scene of commotion, law enforcement, and a frightened little Booker T.

As far as robberies go, this was not at all what I had expected. There had been nothing physical, no shouting. The clerk had not even chased the guy to get a good look at him.

I, on the other hand, was totally overwhelmed and made a scene of my own. I broke down right then and there. This little big man had been reduced to a baby in less than thirty seconds flat. Some of the officers noticed and began questioning me. After I told them the little I had seen, which didn’t help at all, they left me alone with my tears and panic.

Fortunately, a nice old white lady was pumping gas and took pity on me. She called my mother on the pay phone and waited with me until Mom pulled up.

Although I was relieved to see Mom, when I noticed the look of death on her face, it dawned on me how much trouble I was in. When we got home, I told her everything that had happened, shattering my unbreakable street code. I hoped the truth would make things easier on me.

Soon after I told her the story, the phone rang. It was the salesman. He wanted to stop by to pick up his money for the flowers. My mother told him to come on by, but her voice sent a message:
I dare you to show up at my house.

The dude opted to never show up at all, and Mom simply kept the entire eighty bucks.

We never spoke of my brief sales career again. Some businessman I was! I hadn’t even gotten my commission. Though it was an expensive punishment, I was just thankful I hadn’t gotten a whooping.

About that time, my mother started dating a man named Robert Hill, a self-employed carpenter and fisherman. Every so often, he’d take me to the beach to be his assistant. He let me do a little fishing of my own, which was a welcome escape for a city kid like me. Times with Robert were pretty cool, and I slowly started to see him as a father figure, especially when he and Mom got married. Then suddenly, for reasons I was too young to understand, they were divorced and he was gone, leaving Mom on her own again to take care of us kids.

On March 1, 1978, I turned thirteen. What could have been a symbolic entrance into manhood turned into a nightmare. As I mentioned, my mom worked nights, then sent us off to school with breakfast in our bellies and lunches in our backpacks. The rest of her late mornings and early afternoons were probably her only time to unwind and grab a little sleep while the house was quiet. Once we crashed through the door all hyped up from a day of school, she was on her feet and busy again. While we turned on the television, made snacks, and ran around tormenting each other, she vacuumed, picked up after us, and made dinner. It was great having Mom there to take care of things. It seemed like it would last forever, but it didn’t.

Nothing special was going on in our house this particular afternoon. We all did our thing, decompressing while waiting to eat. Mom cleaned up and did the laundry. While all of us pretty much just lay in her way, Mom went to the hall to turn the attic fan on.

Most houses in South Park had attic fans. We weren’t fortunate enough to have true air-conditioning. The big blades in the middle of the attic wall resembled an airplane propeller. When turned on, they sucked up all the stale air through the vents and propelled it outside. Unfortunately, even with the windows open, the circulation delivered a brick wall of hot, dry air. But sometimes if there was a nice breeze through the windows, we gained a steady cross flow that cleared out the dusty Texas air.

When Mom noticed the fan wasn’t working that afternoon, she asked if anyone would go check it out. The thing about checking the fan was that you actually had to go up to the attic, which was ridiculously dark and dangerous. The key to a safe visit was to concentrate while carefully walking along the top edges of the wooden crossbeams, which were horizontal drywall supports on the other side of the living room ceiling. A dozen rows of beams, separated by two-foot gaps, went from one end of the house to the other. The only flooring in between was fiberglass insulation and a thin layer of Sheetrock.

I always found going up there to be a scary proposition and avoided it at all costs. A chore of that caliber was almost always met with a look of
Who, me?
from anyone within Mom’s line of sight, and this time was no exception. Mom shook her head, pulled the drop ladder down, and slowly disappeared into the attic.

Without any warning but a quick, shrill scream, Mom crashed through the ceiling.

In shock, I watched her fall about ten feet straight down onto her neck and back.

No one knew what to do except panic.

Though Mom had seriously injured her back, she didn’t let the pain show. I guess she felt it was important to maintain her composure for our sake. When Bonita started crying a little bit, Mom said calmly, “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

Haunting words if ever there were any.

One of my brothers ran to the phone to dial 911. When the ambulance arrived, we all jumped in by her side for the trip to the hospital. Because of my mother’s reassurances, it still did not seem all too scary. When we got to the hospital, Mom was rushed away, and we were left to wait.

Although still shaken up, I was restless while I sat and stared at the wall. After hundreds of slow-crawling minutes, all our siblings arrived and we gathered to discuss what had happened.

When the doctor finally came out, the older members of the family spoke with him off to the side.

Billie Jean approached Bonita and me and told us Mom was stable, whatever that meant, and would be okay. She had some kind of damage to her back and would need surgery. “Routine procedure,” she said. “They just need to go in and remove some of the fluid that came out of her slipped discs.”

Again I was left in the dark.

Mom’s operation was an apparent success. While she recovered, we visited her all the time. She smiled and gave out kisses and asked us to catch her up on the goings-on in our lives and at the house. I told her everything was fine and that Don and Lash kept an eye on Bonita and me and that Carolyn and Billie Jean regularly checked in as well.

All in all, life seemed pretty normal. We got used to Mom being laid up in the hospital, thinking all along she would be home any day. Finally, after waiting and wondering for what felt like an eternity, we saw Mom walk right through our front door.

As would be expected, she moved a little slower, but there she was. That very first night she picked up right where she had left off, cooking one of her amazing dinners. It was almost as if nothing had changed when we sat down to the table to eat her famous mushroom chicken.

After a few months of normalcy, however, things got complicated. My mother experienced numbness in her legs, and during her recommended therapy it became clear something was not right. My sisters said they had a bad feeling about where all this might be headed.

I chose to ignore them.
Madea will be all right,
I thought.
She’s got to be.

Mom finally went back to the doctor to explain what she was feeling. After a battery of tests, she learned that the remaining fluid in her spine was compressing against a nerve, causing slight paralysis in her legs and feet. She needed one more corrective procedure to remove fluid and relieve the pressure. Then all would be well.

Mom was not thrilled at all about going under the knife again but reluctantly agreed, hoping for a normal life. On the day of her surgery, we all came to the hospital to show our support. We gathered around the bed to wish her luck, and I gave her a big kiss and a hug.

Before the nurses came, Mom repeated her soothing assurance. “Don’t worry, Junior. I’ll be okay.”

As far as I was concerned, my mother’s word was gospel. If Mom said she would be okay, I had to believe it.

About an hour later, most of us kids were outside playing football to pass the time. Billie Jean came frantically running out the hospital doors. When she finally got close and flagged us down, she struggled to speak. “There was a problem with Madea’s surgery. The doctor said they had an unexpected complication, and she stopped breathing. Now she’s in a coma and on life support.”

A chill ran up my arms and down my spine.

When I finally saw my mother, she simply appeared to be sleeping. Aside from having her eyes closed and being hooked up to a breathing machine, she still looked the same. Maybe if she’d had some sort of obvious external injury, it would have immediately registered with me. As far as I knew, Mom would wake up in a couple of days.

She never did.

The days passed and Mom showed no signs of improvement whatsoever. She had zero brain activity and was kept alive with an oxygen ventilator and a nutrition tube.

A few weeks later, my brothers and sisters gathered to talk about what to do. Because Mom had never designated power of attorney to anyone and did not have a living will, the family would have to determine how to handle the situation and all of Mom’s affairs.

Although I did not want to hear it, they decided the only choice remaining was to remove Mom from life support. We were told we would have to go to court to gain permission, which did not sit well with any of my older siblings because the process would cost a lot of money and time. They were not interested in any of that and could not have afforded it.

When it came down to it, we made the group decision to pull the plug ourselves.

With silence hanging heavily in the air, we slowly filed into her room. None of us knew what to do or say. It felt like time stopped altogether.

I stared around the room, looking to my siblings for comfort. All I found was confusion. The truth is that each of us was just as lost as the other. There was no way to escape the crushing pain. We were forced to face it as a group and then deal with it individually over time.

Just as Danny and Gayle approached the tubes and wires, the doctor walked in and decided to do it himself. We all took one last look at our beautiful, forty-nine-year-old mom, held her hand, and told the doctor we were ready.

As he went to work removing the mask and unplugging the equipment, the room filled with loud beeps and warnings.

Panic flashed through me. Horrified, I looked at everyone else, wishing the chaos would stop. I felt like I was paralyzed and slowly drowning as, with each second, my mom faded further away.

The beeping fell flat, and the heart rate monitor traced a glowing straight line. Rosa Huffman, my beautiful mother and only dependable guide, was gone. I had no idea how I would cope without her.

My mom’s passing struck an instant division in the family and inside me. Everyone ran around wondering what to do in the void our mother had left behind, and no one had any concrete ideas. I was only thirteen years old, but my carefree, protected life was over.

I grieved for my mother tremendously, but at first her death did not affect me as deeply as you would expect for someone so young. Unprepared to grasp what had happened in that room, I was resentful. When it came to confronting my feelings, I just didn’t.

We made all the necessary arrangements through Carolyn’s boyfriend, Luther Johnson, a respectable businessman who had the means. Luther owned a funeral parlor and took care of everything, leaving one less worry for us during such a difficult time.

It was not until the actual funeral that everything really hit me. I was not prepared to see my mother in a casket. In my lifetime, I had seen only one person at rest—my grandmother Ms. Odie James—and I was too young to feel the impact. However, when Bonita and I saw Mom’s body, her expressionless face, and her closed eyes, we were both so upset we had to look away immediately, tears streaming uncontrollably down our cheeks.

Various members of our extended family and some of my mother’s friends filed in and out, paying their last respects and offering condolences.

We got into our cars, formed a short motorcade, and followed the hearse to the cemetery in Plain Dealing, where a minister read some prayers. As two caretakers began to lower Mom’s coffin into the plot beside the graves of other deceased family members, I walked to the edge and looked down. I tossed in a handful of dirt and said a final good-bye.

My life would never be the same.

While I fought grief, my family fought each other. In fact, the whole time Mom had been in the coma, my siblings had been constantly doing one of two things: consoling each other or arguing about what to do with Bonita and me. The rest of them were old enough to take care of themselves. I had never even thought about living anywhere but home. What kid does? You wake up, go to school, and go home. Now, in the midst of trying to cope with such a great loss, this worry hit me like a sledgehammer.

Aunt T., Mom’s sister who was her spitting image, made it known that she really wanted to take on Bonita and me. Well, I guess this possessive thing came over my sisters because they did not like that idea at all. They went back and forth arguing, making it clear to Aunt T. that we were not going with her anywhere. My sisters’ stance was that Aunt T.’s taking custody and moving Bonita and me across the state would tear the family apart. Carolyn and Billie Jean stepped up and said they would look after us, insisting it was the only way to ensure our lives would go on as they had before.