AsK ME NO QUESTIONS:
AND I'LL TELL YOU NO LIES
by
Chester Jackson
Without ceremony, He was dead.
On a cold, gray day in January of 1996 my life long brother was laid to rest in a cemetery in Jersey in a plot shared by my mother's sister. The irony in this is immense as these two volitile personalities could never seem to see eye to eye in life.
My brother died on January 24, at home with his mother. Quietly death eased up to him and he was gone. As the news reached my conscious mind I felt the hopelessness that death inspires. Controlled tears streamed gently down my clenched jaws. I strolled stoically across Lenox avenue and up to 140th Street to where my mother lived. The security guard and the old women who stood watch at the entrance looked at me curiously. On the elevator, I took long deliberate breaths as I anticipated my mother's face. My wife met me as I opened the door. My mother sat composed and sober. That is her way. My wife held me as I tried to force anguish to come. Strangely, I had thought that the pain of this moment would be greater than it was. I was numb, I was already accepting and I had played this scene a thousand times in my head.
My brother lived his life like a race to self destruction. In the last weeks of his life I felt that we had come to a better understanding of one another. I remember sitting in my mother’s living room, in the portion occupied by my brother; staring at the splattered blood on the ceiling and walls. Blood that shot from his veins as he injected heroin.
On a dilapidated futon stretched across the center of the room my brother laid staring at images of our life in his mind. His hair was unkempt and matted. He paused a long time to consider when last he’d bathed. His face was gaunt and sickly. His eyes seemed genuine, although I’d forgotten how to read them over the years. We talked about the possibility that he could have contracted the HIV virus. I was generally skeptical where his aliments were concerned as he was a practiced hypochondriac. As he lay weak, frail, thin and listless I feared that this time he may be right. A few days before this conversation, he called me at home to ask if I would accompany him to the hospital emergency room. I was busy with my own life and told him to call an ambulance. On this day, he explained to me how three of his friends had gone to the hospital unaccompanied and died in a matter of days.
He wanted me to bare witness to the hospital that he had people in this world who loved him thereby making him an unsuitable candidate for the conspiracy to euthanase the homeless. This is the way my brother thought. He decided I believe, that he would just stay home and await the end. Whatever it was.
We laughed about the unpleasant aspects of suicide. He always could make me laugh. I remembered how much I used to enjoy being with him. He reflected on past deeds with sadness and confusion. It appeared that he couldn’t quite grasp why people in his life had done things on his behalf. In my heart I suspected that he would have out lived us all. I was wrong.
In recent weeks he’d asked me for money to get “Straight “ . Indignantly, I responded, are you gonna do drugs until you die ? He said simply,” no, that's not my plan ”. I realized that he asked more out of habit than anything else. My brother was afraid to die, just as he had been afraid to truly live. He hid from life in the comforting confusion of a Heroin induced haze. I spent many years running away from understanding his pain. It was knowledge that I was not sure I had the courage to bare.
My mother and I often speculated on what demons drove my brother to an early grave. Perhaps, the way my brother and I came to be brothers played a role in his untimely demise.
My mother is a pure heart. She is a genuine giver. At a time in her life when children by natural child birth were not possible anymore she took my brother from a friend of a friend. He was days old and in need of the only thing she could give him, a mother. He was the product of an extramarital affair that transpired while his mother’s husband was incarcerated.
Five years later another friend of my mother's would offer her another baby. I came home at a week old. The woman who bore me remained a part of my life until her death when I was twelve. She had always been my “ aunt ”. I remember her as a sad faced woman who never seemed happy in my presence.
My mother worked long hours in a New Jersey factory to feed and clothe her children. She never contacted the authorities for fear that she would lose her children. She struggled through the break up of her marriage and continued to raise her boys on her own.
When you grow up in the shadow of some great secret the power of that secret is awesome. As a little boy I learned that nothing was guaranteed. Unconsciously, on some level I came to realize that mother was all that stood between me and this dark shadow. I idolized her for the obvious sacrifices. I determined to bring nothing but good and praise into her life. I learned to feel only that which was safe. I wore a smile with the conviction of a circus clown. I laughed when appropriate and was silent when unsure of the proper edict. I built dreams so grand that the universe in all it's darkness winked at me through the twinkles in the stars.
When my brother became a teenager he discovered ways to make his pain go away. He learned to seduce women. He learned to be the toughest kid in the crowd. He learned to ingest chemicals that made it possible for him to feel normal.
Certain memories linger in my mind like old friends. I remember my brother coming home from a boy scout camping trip. I can see his face as he carried his pack and canteen. I can still feel my heart racing as I ran up the block to greet him. I remember his smile as I struggled to carry his pack the last few steps home.
I remember him standing down a bully with such confidence that it made me proud to be his brother.
I remember the look in his eyes when after a heated argument I screamed at him in frustration, that he was nothing and that he would never be nothing. The pain in that moment has stayed with me, as I saw the words impact him with the force of a mallet.
I can hear his voice calling my name, Chet. Hey Chet.
In my house we learned that some things where beyond our control and therefore not worth being verbally addressed.
I can only imagine the anguish that my mother suffered as she pondered when an absent mother would return to claim one or both of her children. I was thirty years old when the blinders where lifted from my eyes. My mother sat on her bed and handed me a wrinkled piece of paper that told me that I was someone else's child. She wished out loud that she had not lived to see this moment. I could not bare the look in her eyes and quickly stuffed my feelings and set about comforting and reassuring her. This was a monumental moment in my life. I was born again. I was finally able to look at the circumstance of my life and make sense out of the madness. I was able to walk out of the shadow and begin to see. All the years that I had spent wondering why I felt so incomplete and out of place crystallized in my mind. I realized then that I was not the one with the problem. I knew that all along there had been something unseen stalking all of us. The realization that it was real was staggeringly liberating.
Childhood is a remarkable period. The new person absorbs what the world has to offer like a dry plant; sucking in the water as fast as it's roots will take it. For my brother, the world held danger and no sense of future. For me the world was a place best lived in cautiously. Fantasy the only safe place to dream. If you asked no questions there was less chance of a startling discovery.
My mother’s greatest fear was that one day we would realize that she was not our birth mother. She believed that this knowledge would somehow invalidate the lifetime of commitment that she had made to us. She was wrong.
Adoption has become my life. The fantasy and the reality. In fantasy history can be undone. In reality the pursuit of the fantasy keeps us going. In October of 1990 I took a position as a Family Life Advocate with Downey Side ... Families for Youth. The Regional Director at that time was a friend I'd known from college. He knew I was unqualified and perfect for the job. I spent the greater part of two years following him to agency meetings and conferences. Eventually, I began to meet the children of foster care. The children that I could have been, had not a quiet, little woman followed her heart. I convinced myself that the calling I felt had something to do with homeless children. In November of 1991 my wife and I took a 16 year old boy named Robert as our son. In July of that year we had also been blessed with the birth of our first birth child Brandon. Shortly thereafter, Robert's birth sister Eboney, a 14 year old foster child that he had been separated from six years prior came to live with us.
Visions of happily ever after quickly danced out of our lives. The hole in my heart grew larger as I realized that all was not resolved. The calling that I thought would make me complete only forged new cracks in my fragile self image. The damage done by life in the shadow of the secret was not erased by the revelation.
Robert was a man sized boy from whom the foster care system demanded too little and we expected even less. I was a man working through the pain of a boy from whom the world demanded so much and I had learned to expect so little. Eboney was a little girl thrust into the role of a young woman from whom we demanded so little and expected too much. As the fantasy began to unravel my wife and I struggled to remain firm in our commitment. The introduction of children into our lives sent everything spinning wildly. The precious time together that we had cherished became scarce. The needs of the family began to supersede the needs of the individuals.
Resentments grew as we all lost something that we had hoped to gain through our becoming family.
From Robert we learned that he could be ignored, when the tension rose he simply retreated into his shell until it passed. Eboney on the other demanded attention. She appeared only to respond to confrontation. She pushed and prodded until we were forced to corral her. She’d step out of bounds until we would rein her in. We lived our life in cycles, there was quiet and all was well, then we would discover some transgression that demanded a response. On mother’s day of 1993 my wife was informed by Eboney that she was pregnant. My Wife was three months pregnant with our second birth child Geneva. Geneva was born in October of 1993. Our granddaughter, Charisma was born in November of 1993.
There was great rage in my house. In retrospect, the pregnancy was an important moment in the life of our family. It forced us to address the status of Eboney in our house and lives. We moved off the emotional fence and got her fully involved in our lives. Many feelings have been expressed and repressed during our first five years together. The lessons have not all been pleasant nor easily learned.
Adoption for me has become a very personal crusade. I’ve learned that family life in all it’s imperfections is work and best lived in the light of reality. I have forged a new family and expanded on the old. Finally, the pieces of my shattered origins are suitable for reconstruction.
In January of 1958, I lost my family and gained another. In the years that would follow I searched without knowing what I had lost. In March of 1991, I discovered what I’d lost and the tools for healing were within my reach. In January of 1996, I’ve lost another piece of my life, but gained new insight in death to the meaning and value of life. A brave woman dared to give herself to children that might otherwise have suffered the horrors of total abandonment. Her motives where simple. Her commitment sure and steady. The results, one son is dead after years of denial and self abuse. The other has grown to manhood and continues his search for self fulfillment. In the final analysis I remain a work in progress. As is true of all matters of the heart time teaches those strong enough to learn.
The power of adoption is the willingness to commit oneself to another. Not to an ideal, for that is short lived. Not to a loved one because a love is built over time. The children that we choose to bring into our lives are strangers that over time we will grow to love. The power of adoption is that willingness to claim all that comprises the many facets of a human being. Whether the child is 3 days or ten years old is irrelevant. The true power of adoption is not in the outcome but in your willingness to commit to the process.