A Grandmother’s Journey
By the time my mother had gotten pregnant with me, my grandmother was out of prison. She was there when I was born and she was even the person who gave me my name: “Jeremiah.”
My grandmother played a big role in my life, as she was my mother and my father and my grandmother all in one. She took me in when she didn’t have to and she played a big part in raising me into the person I am today. It wasn’t an easy road but it's the one she took anyways, the road that challenged her in more ways than one, and then she took the challenge again when my baby sister was born. This is her story.
Part 1: The Upbringing
My grandmother was born on June 2nd in 1967, in the Bronx, New York. My grandmother had 4 sisters and two brothers, and she had both her mother and her father in her life. A lot of people might think that it was a good life for her considering most people don’t have both parents in their lives but that wasn’t the case for her.
My grandmother had an abusive father and an abusive mother; they were poor, and they had no one to help them. My grandmother told me about how her dad would just come home everyday and just beat them for no apparent reason, and that he would also beat his wife – my grandmother's mother –and cheat on her as well with multiple women.
There was a story in particular that was just sinister that stood out to me when my grandmother talked about her upbringing. Her father didn’t allow her or her siblings to go outside, to have friends, to have any boyfriends or girlfriends, and they just weren’t allowed to be social at all. One day, she and her siblings were all looking out of the window, to see what was outside, but their father came home from work early and caught them looking outside. So my great grandfather got black paint, and he painted the window entirely so they wouldn’t be able to look outside again. That was the kind of man my great grandfather was, but still my grandmother loved him a lot. My grandmother was also a very intelligent young woman who had a lot of potential, and she even was accepted into a very prestigious school and she wanted to go there but when she asked her father to pay for her education, he told her: “I’m not fucking paying it” My grandmother was a teenager at the time, and that is when she dropped out of school.
Part 2: The Journey
After my grandmother dropped out of school she started looking for ways to get out of her mother and father’s home. She wanted to leave and live her life away from that place. That is when she met my grandfather, Jap; she was already 16 by then and she ended up pregnant through him as well. Then 9 months later, she had my mother and she got married to Jap, though their marriage didn’t end up going well for a few reasons. He wasn’t a great father at the time; he was always getting in trouble; he was in and out of prison. So my grandmother left him and then she went off and met another man. He was worse than my grandfather.
This man beat, abused, starved, and threatened my grandmother.. My grandmother had gone to the cops multiple times but they would just arrest him and then let him go a little later. The worst part is that my grandmother had grown up watching her father beat and abuse her mother, so to her this had all seemed normal. She thought that this kind of treatment was love, she thought it was normal. But it wasn’t until the last time she called the cops that she realized that it wasn’t normal and it wasn’t love either. The last time she called the cops, the cops came and one of them pulled her aside and began talking to her. After they were done talking, he looked at her and said “You're one of the lucky ones.” He didn’t say that in the sense that “you’ve got a good man” kind of lucky; he meant that in the sense that “You’re lucky he hasn’t killed you yet.” After the officer told her that, that is when she finally realized that this wasn’t a good relationship and she left.
After my grandmother left that guy, she decided to start trying to work. To work and make sure that her daughter was taken care of and had all the things she never had. But she didn’t do it in the way that was right.. My grandmother started dealing, committing acts of violence, carrying weapons, and more. She was the queen of some kind of mob.. But eventually it all caught up with her; she got caught up with the cops, was charged with multiple felonies, and served time in the state penitentiary.
Part III: The Grand Finale
By the time my mother had gotten pregnant with me, my grandmother was out of prison. She was there when I was born and she was even the person who gave me my name: “Jeremiah.” When she saw me she was overjoyed. She said that I changed her life, that my birth gave her something to look forward to and something to live for.
That is when my grandmother had decided to flip her life around entirely. She quit the drugs, she got out of the life, she cut contact with a lot of people who didn’t give up the life, and she even became a nurse and worked in a medical office for 15 years before she had to leave due to her own health issues. But she did say that she loved helping people when she worked there, and she loved making people feel better.
As of right now, my grandmother is out of work, but she still gets aid from the government. She spends most of her time reading, cooking, watching TV, or helping my little sister with her homework. But overall my grandmother did succeed in making me proud of her, and she did push me very hard to succeed in school because she wanted me to “be somebody,” as she calls it. Not only did she want to help me, but she also wanted to help people in our community at Comp Sci High, so she has a few lessons that she would like to relay to the students here.
To the young men: if you are in a relationship with a young woman, treat them right. Don’t ever lay a hand on them, don’t ever curse them out, don’t ever cause them any harm.
To the young women: if you are in a relationship where someone is causing you harm, then it is okay to leave, because someone who's in a relationship with you is supposed to love you and harm is not love.
Stay out of the streets, as you’ll either end up dead, in prison, or dealing with the mental and emotional consequences for the rest of your life.