After a while I got used to Tenille’s abuse. I actually came to not only expect it but almost enjoy it. She had begun to convince me that she was the only one in the house that loved me. It just so happened that the only attention that anyone paid me came in the middle of the night. Deep inside I knew it wasn’t right. It just didn’t feel natural. Oftentimes she hurt me by being so rough. Sitting on my face, nearly smothering me at times. “Boy you need to get stronger,” she’d say. “Give me fifty push-ups.”

I did them every day until fifty became too easy, then I did a hundred. I did get stronger and angrier every day at my life, which proved to be a dangerous combination. I attended Powell Middle School on 129th Street, in the heart of Harlem. With my home life a wreck, I began to act out in school, bullying other kids and being insubordinate.

This morning I hadn’t been feeling well and for no reason in particular, I decided to stick my foot out and trip a passerby as we headed to the cafeteria for an assembly. Some rapper-turned-activist by the name of Chuck D was coming by our school to give a speech to what they called the at-risk youth. I was quickly becoming one of them.

When the student I’d tripped fell on his face and busted his bottom lip, the only thing I was going to be permitted to see was the principal’s office. I got there and it was overcrowded as usual. Being the last to enter, I wound up having to take a seat in the back with the nurse. After an hour of sitting, waiting to see the principal, I began rocking back and forth in my seat as I fought the all-too-familiar feeling.

“Son, what’s your deal? Do you need to use the bathroom? You’ve been rocking in that chair for thirty minutes,” the nurse said.

I ignored her and tried to stop rocking but started again a few minutes later. Again she started. “What is your problem?”

Finally I spat, “I do have to go, but I don’t want to.”

“Why not? Do you need privacy?” I assumed she meant to take a dump.

“No,” I responded. “I just don’t want to. Lately every time I try to go it hurts.”

“What do you mean it hurts?” She frowned and looked down the nose of her glasses at me.

“It hurts like hell…I mean it feels like I’m shooting razor blades out of my hole.”

Her face showed shock. She asked me my name first then she started with a bunch of questions.

Have you been having sex? Are you sure? Your symptoms say such and such. If you have had sex, then it’s your partner’s fault. They have done this to you; they gave you a disease. If you don’t tell the truth I can’t help you. You should know that in some cases where venereal disease occurs that it’s possible to develop septicemia and die.

None of it scared me until she said, “Khalil, that feeling you have it’s going to get worse and worse if you don’t tell the truth.”

I put my head down and continued to fight the urge to urinate until I could bear it no longer. I went into the bathroom and braved the pain as indeed it was getting worse every time. I stood on my toes and grimaced as I was almost dizzy from the pain.

I had begun to sweat from the ordeal. When I came out of the bathroom I sat back down and began to tell my story.

Then she left the office for about three minutes and came back in with the guidance counselor. Ten minutes later we were on our way to Harlem Hospital.

The antibiotics coupled with the IV they administered at the hospital had kicked in and after a few hours I was able to use the bathroom without pain. This would be the only bright spot of the day.

I would later learn that the police and child protective ser vices had shown up at my house, finding my father both drunk and high. Tenille was there and when they announced the charges and put the cuffs on her he attacked her and wound up getting locked up too. The only one who didn’t get arrested was Tina.

I was taken to a youth center on the East Side for the night, where they had a dormitory for children waiting to be placed into foster care. My case worker sat with me until midnight and assured me she’d be back first thing in the morning to take me to school.

The next morning I learned I wouldn’t be going back home. My father was being charged with neglect. It turned out that to protect herself, Tina had ratted my father out and given the authorities drugs that he had in the apartment as well as a handgun that he kept in his closet.

I didn’t shed a tear even though I was torn apart inside. Everything was happening so fast. Even though my world had been rough, it was all I knew.

A week later, after I’d been temporarily assigned to live in a group home, I was on the train headed to Brooklyn. Once I’d gotten word that my grandmother had told the case workers that she was too sick to take care of me, I’d made it my business to find out from my social worker where Frannie lived. I’d asked if I could send a card to her so she wouldn’t worry about me, to which she’d given me the okay. I had no intention of sending a letter or a card. I was going to show up in person. It had been almost ten months since I’d seen her and it felt like ten years.

I walked up Third Avenue toward the address that I had written on a piece of paper. I was scared I’d come to the wrong neighborhood, because all of the houses looked like rich people lived in them. Still, when I came to the address in my hand I knocked on the door. It was then I realized that it was an apartment building and not a house. I didn’t have an apartment number so I looked at the buzzer and found no names that looked familiar.

I waited for someone to walk out of the building and I walked in. I began knocking on each door. I was on the second floor, third door, when Frannie opened it. “Khalil,” she said, looking more surprised than happy. “How did you get here?”

“Hey Frannie,” I said. I was set to tell her how I’d skipped lunch so that I’d have money for the train ride and that I’d come because I wanted her to take care of me now that my father was doing twelve months in jail, but instead, I burst into tears. She looked out into the hallway, almost as if she was trying to make sure no one was around, and reached for me and embraced me. Feeling her and smelling her again after all this time was too much.

I cried in her arms for what seemed like thirty minutes in between telling her bits of my story. She cried almost the entire time as she begged for my forgiveness. She couldn’t believe what had happened.

Then her husband came home.

Our reunion was short-lived and together they drove me back uptown to the group home. As she walked me back in she assured me that she would do everything she could to gain custody of me. The only thing about it was that I didn’t believe her when she said it.

That was the last time I ever heard from Frannie and the last time I ever believed that anyone would do something to help me. My childhood ended that day as I watched their Cherokee drive down Malcolm X Boulevard. From that day on I knew that life was about survival and it was every man, woman, and child for themselves.