Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LX)

“We Are Family”

One of the OES programs that I visited during the first year of our partnership was a teen parent support group run by the East Side YWCA. It was housed on a floor in an early 20th century building on 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue, across from the Citicorp Center.

The Y had a history of teaching vocational skills like sewing, typing and computer skills. I arrived when the site acquired Commodore 128 computers from OES. Waterways used the machines to develop student small press publications.

Expressive writing offered students the opportunity to articulate their individual concerns. By publishing their concerns and encouraging peer responses, Waterways encouraged a sense of community that dealt with such family issues as sustaining relationships, giving birth, and raising children.

We Are Family

The publication increased communication between students and city administrators, who were learning about the students from what we published. Our curriculum was student centered and the site teacher, Brenda Giscombe, encouraged her students to work on their expressive writing for We Are Family.

The young mothers took time away from nurturing their children, who were put into a nursery on the premises and were told to take classes so they could learn to support their families.

When a young mother wrote a story that was published, she was given copies of the publication. One student announced to the class that We Are Family was the first book she owned. It was proof she could tell her story:

One day when I found out I was pregnant I was so scared I didn’t know what to do. I was scared I couldn’t even tell my mother. I didn’t know whether she would be happy or upset. So I didn’t tell anybody except my best friend because I thought she would be able to help me. But I was wrong, she couldn’t. So I decided to tell my mother that I was pregnant. She was so upset that she just started crying.

She could learn to advocate for herself:

Living in a welfare hotel is no laughing matter. I know because I live in one. Where I live there’s only one bed for me and my daughter. There’s no bathroom and no closet so I have nowhere to put my clothes or to wash in private... As far as housing is concerned -- all who live in welfare hotels should have been in their own homes a long time ago. The waiting lists are so long that it’s a shame...In order for you to get an apartment you have to be in a hotel for 18 months, be in your last trimester of pregnancy or your child has to be 6 months or younger...I’ve been in the Madison Hotel on 27th Street since November 14, 1985. Now where does this policy leave me? People think because we live in a welfare hotel we can be treated like a dog or non-human. Well, it’s not true. As far as I’m concerned we have rights like anyone else.

The publications allowed students to air their grievances, their hopes, and the love they felt for their children.

Melody wrote:

I have a family of three -- my daughter, my husband and me. Every day we talk about what our day was like and then we laugh a little to ease the tension. I make sure I save some money because when you have a child you never know when you’re going to need pampers. I try to go to school every day so that I don’t miss anything important. I don’t want any more children until my life is better situated. I care for my daughter and my husband very much, as long as we’re together we’ll be a happy family.

Dianna wrote:

I feel that my future is important because I want to finish school and get the job I want. Like this I’ll be able to support my child and provide him with what he needs. I’ll also be able to care for him. I would also like to have another baby to make my family complete and happy. For recreation I like to listen to music, relax, and cook for my family. I really consider all of this fun and want it to be like this forever.

We Are Family

The January issue, a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., opened with an essay entitled, King’s Method of Non-Violence.

...personally I don’t think I could stand to be non-violent with someone being violent to me...
The author disagreed with

...the phrase he often stated strongly... ”free at last, free at last”

She said

We are not free. We may not have physical chains wrapped around our wrists, but there are mental chains and discrimination. This society’s perspective about young mothers often expresses negative views and criticizes us because we have children. I think that they should realize that what’s done is done. Maybe they should discuss what they could do to help us rather than condemn us. Personally, my pregnancy and child bearing were all beautiful experiences for me. Now that I have a child to raise and teach I’m a little frightened. Not because I’m unintelligent or anything I just want to make sure that i give her knowledge that I have the right way.

The girls were surprised at their peers who were critical of their choice to have children. Rufina’s wrote of a telling incident in “The Day”:

On the morning of October 27, 1987, we, the YWCA Teen Parents Program, took a trip to Manhattan Community College for a SPEAK OUT in front of senators and other city officials. We started late, but we got there. Then they divided all the teens who attended into four groups. In the Y’s group there were more teens without children than there were with children so there was a little disagreement of opinion between all of us. They would say, “We can prevent pregnancy with birth control.” And we would say, “You can’t.” So it caused a big argument between the Y’s students and the other teens. What we teen parents really needed was not taken into consideration. Almost all of the teens who spoke didn’t have an kids and it wasn’t fair. I think they should have had more teen parents at the program than they did.

After attending his poetry reading for Waterways at PRACA, the Y invited Louis Reyes Rivera to be key note speaker at their year end celebration in St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, which was housed in the Citicorp Center. Louis spoke about the need for students to define their own community.

They could express what made them happy, what made them cry, and their hopes for the children they brought into the world. The Waterways Project motivated students to write by encouraging them to give voice to their personal concerns and to publish their writing. Melody wrote a poem for the June ’87 issue:

Chovair makes me smile

Whenever I’m feeling down

She picks me up

And turns my world around

Whether she has pigtails or tiny curls

She will always be

A part of my world

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LIX)

At Veritas, Sharon wrote about the day she gave birth to her child. She constructed a narrative to make sense of her life and find herself in her own words:

Tyrell is my first son. He was born March 9, 1985. He is my pride and joy. Tyrell was born 3 weeks early. When I had Tyrell we were both in danger, I had to have a Caesarean Section and that is no joke.

It was on a Saturday - late afternoon. I went to the store to buy some potato chips and then I came home and received a phone call. I talked on the phone for a while. When I got off the phone I went to throw the bag in the garbage and I felt something funny was going on.

I went to the bathroom and found myself bleeding. So I told my sister to call my mother and tell her that I was bleeding and that I think I have to go to the hospital. When we went downstairs to catch a cab we got one and we told him to take us to Harlem Hospital. He took the route on 125th Street during rush hour when traffic is terrible. So when my mother saw a police car she told the cops what was going on and asked them to please take me to the hospital. That is what they did.

When I reached the hospital I went upstairs to the maternity floor and went through the screening. I told the lady that I was bleeding and she said that it was ok. But when she told me take off my clothes and get on the table she found out that I was bleeding a lot and not just a little bit. She called the doctors and they took me to the back and did a sonogram to find out where I was bleeding from.

The first one gave them a hint, but they were not sure. So they put me in another room, but did not leave me.

They hooked me up to two sonograms. About 7:15 pm I started getting labor pains in my back and they were one minute apart. When that started happening they knew what was going on and that’s when they told me I had to sign the paper to have the Caesarean Section. I signed the paper and they took me to the operating room about 7:25 pm. They took Tyrell from me at 7:33 pm.

When I woke up Sunday morning I called my mother to let her know that I was alright and my sister said, “Do you know that you have a son?” I said, “No.” Then my mother came to the phone and told me to ask the nurses to show me where he was. The nurse showed me where he was in the intensive care unit. He was 5 pounds and 5 ounces and had lost a lot of blood during that time I was in the room waiting for the doctors to decide what to do for me.

Tyrell is now living with my mother while I am in the program getting my life together. I know that he is well taken care of. He is only 18 months, but we are going to have a very good relationship with each other when he gets older. I am glad that I came to Veritas when I did because when I complete treatment he will be 3 years old, and I will have a job and apartment that is sufficient to take care of him, and I won’t have to depend on anybody else to take care of him.

I really love my son and I am proud to have him, no matter what I had to go through to have him In the beginning it felt strange having a child because I was not used to having a big responsibility. No matter if I have any other children, Tyrell will always be special to me, and have a special place in my heart, because I almost lost him, and almost lost my life too.

The creative experience for young mothers, like Sharon, was to publish stories and poems they could later share with their grown children and the world around them.

The Waterways Project was Barbara's and my child. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to go into the schools, work with students, create publications, and archive the expressions of a generation coming of age in New York City. It was sharing the creative urge to bring a new consciousness into the world.

Leon came to the Veritas computer room when he needed to tell his story:

I went to the hospital and found out that I have a heart murmur from smoking crack.

When the rain falls upon our face

The stars twinkle and the moon rises

The world twirls in a heart shaped form

The rivers open just like my heart

I went from site to site, gaining the trust of the students and publishing their stories. They wrote about their addictions, their dreams and all that haunted them.

A dialogue between Leon and his girlfriend contained the line:

I don’t think it will work because you sell me dreams.

In another issue of the magazine, Leon continued:

And we walked through the night

The stars grew closer

Each word we spoke

And the sky got bright

At the sight of like

And I raised my palm and spelled out “like”

And birds appeared from every direction

The published writing became a Rorschach test for the rest of the world to read into students’ words. Words placed on the page. Catalogued in libraries, stored in print, and more than twenty years later archived on the Internet.

Wendy wrote about her mother:

There I was selfish for her tenderness,
There she was using me with such cleverness
She didn’t care very much for us to get close,
I longing for it too much
Wanting to feel her motherly touch
So to the cooker first she went
Then there by her I was sent

Another of her poems:

Mommy, mommy, don’t cry,
Life is hard and full of lies
Mommy, mommy don’t cry
I promise that I’m gonna try
Mommy mommy don’t cry
This time I’ll no longer live in a drug cage
Because this time I’m gonna change
So Mommy Mommy PLEASE don’t cry

The computer was just another pencil, but changed communication. The students saved their words on floppy disks that were returned to them as magazines. Words, creativity, labels, ideas, emotions, sense, and intelligence were grist for the writing workshop. Students improvised poetry to the rhythm of their heartbeats. They composed lines to match the span of their breath.