Scared Silent by Mildred Muhammad

Author:Mildred Muhammad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strebor Books
Published: 2009-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

HOLDING THE CHILDREN IN MY HEART

While I was at Phoebe’s House, my frightened mother was alone at my old home. She stayed there for more than a month before my sister came and took her back to Maryland. When my mother left the house, I gave the furniture to one of the ladies leaving Phoebe’s House. Everything else in our house was put into storage.

I realized that my respite at Phoebe’s House was giving me a chance to calm down and decide what to do next. I was grateful that this kind of facility existed for women who needed safety and a chance to build a new life. You could stay at Phoebe’s House for up to twenty-four months. There were rooms for women with children and rooms for women without them. There were always women moving out while others were moving in.

We were like friends helping one another. I became particularly close to four women: Tami, Theresa, Oneeta, and Kathy. In the beginning, Oneeta did not like me at all. It even irritated her that I got up every morning and spoke to her. I suppose it was her way of avoiding a friendship. But in spite of her attitude, I spoke to her every morning.

Her response was always the same. “Why did you speak to me?” she’d grumble.

“I can’t speak to you?” I’d say incredulously.

Eventually, I just wore her down—and she started speaking to me whenever I spoke to her. She also became my protector, making sure no one bothered me.

Theresa, my roommate, had recently been released from prison. She had two children. Her daughter was in foster care and she was trying to get her back and reunite with her other child, too. She had cleaned herself up, gotten a job, and was working toward getting her own place for all of them. She was nervous and excited about the possibility of her family being reunited. We prayed that it would happen, and finally, she went to court to regain custody of her daughter. When she came home, I was waiting for her at the door. She walked right past me and went to our room. When I went upstairs and walked in the room, she was sitting on the side of her bed crying. I asked what happened.

“They had already made up their minds before I got there,” she said. “They took her from me. I don’t know what to do.”

She cried and I cried with her. I didn’t leave her side. Finally, I was able to convince her to stop crying. I put on my favorite song, “Fragile Heart,” by Yolanda Adams. It seemed to calm her down. She was so heartbroken and watching her go through that made my heart sick, too. She called her little girl her miracle child.

“The doctors told me I couldn’t have any more children,” she explained.

I asked for a picture of her daughter and I hung it up in our room. She thanked me for that.

Then she said,

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