Jumped In Read online

  I trot along beside Big Mike, and my heart is thumping while I think, He will protect me, he will protect me. It is the mantra I am using against my rising anxiety, which notches up when I see a knot of homies standing on Grape Street, throwing gang signs to three boys inside a car driving by with the windows rolled down and rap music playing. I feel naked, out in the open, and I stand as close as I can to Big Mike. The sun is beating down on us, and it seems like all of Watts is on the street. I am approached by an emaciated black woman who announces, “I know you—you were on TV the other night, I just loooooooove you!” I freeze, but Big Mike starts laughing and pushes her away saying, “Move on, mama.”

  “She did too much PCP in the ’80s and she never been the same since,” he explains. I decide I won’t tell him that I had been on TV, two days earlier.

  “You know what PCP did to this neighborhood, in these projects, in the 1980s?” Mike asks. I explain that I worked then at the emergency room of Martin Luther King General Hospital, which filled nightly with people who’d OD’d on PCP. “One guy was so high he threw me up against the wall,” I say.

  “I feel that. I used to take it. PCP could give you the strength of a monster, a real monster,” Mike adds. “But the worst was crack.”

  I nod. The PCP epidemic was bad, but it was nothing compared to the devastation that was to come with crack. While we talk, we walk toward the entrance to Jordan Downs. Mike points to the cluster of gang members I have already noticed.

  “They just waitin’ to go through the pockets of the children who are goin’ into their houses. They’re takin’ anything they want out of those children’s backpacks. We gotta stop them.”

  Big Mike whispers directions into his walkie-talkie. He and another interventionist are watching two boys on bicycles in front of the housing project. “If another kid on a bike shows up there are gonna be shots fired. Get ready to duck.”

  Mike scans the area and I hear what sounds like a car backfiring. I know what this is and I carefully drop down behind Big Mike. Someone is out there shooting; someone is trying to kill someone.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, nothin’ is gonna happen to you,” Big Mike says reassuringly. “They are gonna have to get through me to get to you.” He has a death grip on my arm. The air is vibrating.

  “Come on, kids, getta move on,” Mike says calmly to a group of girls giggling and walking by him. A woman weaves in front of him and Mike gives her two dollars and tells her to get out of the way. She takes the money, asks him for more, and he rebuffs her, good-naturedly. She crosses the street and without looking at its destination, gets on a waiting bus. An LASPD patrol car drives by. We are still waiting for one more bicycle rider. A fight has broken out on the school campus.

  “Looka that.” Mike laughs while pointing at several kids who are fighting. “I know those two boys—they are gay, tryin’ to beat up three little girls.” It looks like the girls are fighting back. The walkie-talkies crackle.

  But I am not paying attention. I hear someone calling my name. “Hey, Jorja, Jorja, Jorja.”

  “Hey Bo!” Big Mike cries out.

  Bo Taylor parks his minivan and walks over to Big Mike and me.

  “So what’s goin’ on here this fine mornin’?” Bo asks. Bo and Mike are laughing while I stand between them, slightly dazed. A former Crip and US Navy veteran, Bo Taylor also works on the front lines of gang intervention and heads up the Unity One gang-intervention agency.

  I am not exactly sure what Bo does—everyone has a slightly different story. Bo negotiates peace treaties; Bo stops retaliation; Bo has the ultimate license to operate—he can talk to the OGs and the shot callers and get them to stop shooting. He has served as an unofficial bodyguard for University of Southern California football coach Pete Carroll and dignitaries from City Hall and Sacramento. Bo has the letters of transit into the community. He is the one who can get you in and out of Casablanca.

  Despite the intermittent shots being fired, I also know that Mark shouldn’t worry—I am never going to be as safe as I am right now, standing between Bo and Big Mike. Bo indiscriminately passes out cash to the children walking by. I know that he can travel into any housing project at any time of the day or night and people will talk with him, sit down with him—offer him something to drink, something to eat. He talks to young people, he urges them to stay in school, he tries to organize games, activities, tours, and trips to Disneyland. But he does not want to file the necessary papers to obtain the necessary grants; he just wants to believe the money will come. And it does. But what does Bo really do?

  What Bo and Big Mike and Aquil Basheer, among others, are trying to do is raise all the fatherless, motherless children in the neighborhoods. Solving the gang problem is not about peace treaties and midnight call-outs. This is what no one seems to be getting—not the police, not the Mayor’s Office, not the researchers drilling down into results. Someone needs to love these unlovable children.

  “They need fathers,” Big Mike offers.

  And Bo quietly says, “All they see is prison or death. They need family.”

  Six. Adopting New Ideas

  What do I want for my baby girl? I don’t want her to belong to a neighborhood. I want her to be safe. I want her to be strong. I don’t want her to be like me.

  —Cherilynn Jackson

  I knew that Big Mike was right about the needs of the children. But at this point in my life, I felt like a fraud. While I nodded and agreed and talked about parental attachment, part of me was convinced that the Department of Children and Family Services was about to show up at my front door, investigating my credentials as a parent. And of course, this wasn’t exactly a sentiment I could share at the monthly meeting of the Westlake wives. In the weeks that followed, while I turned in my final report on the LAPD’s anti-gang efforts to Mike Hillmann and started spending time with Big Mike and Father Greg Boyle at Homeboy Industries, I thought about the rather well-intentioned but half-assed wife and mother I was turning out to be. Was I really cut out for domestic life? Over a year after I put on a red dress and marched down the aisle to marry Mark in front of our assembled friends and families, I still wasn’t sure.

  While I loved Mark and Shannon, there was clearly trouble on the home front. My husband would plan romantic date nights out, then insist I go golfing with the Dodsons, friends of his who thought that George W. Bush might be too liberal. Shannon would cling to me, then act remote, invite me to school activities, then ignore me in front of her friends. And there I was, a rebel without a cause. A soldier without a war. One restless little white woman with a PhD and a belly piercing, all dressed in black, acting tough but feeling terrified. There were homies who had me on speed dial and kept calling all hours of the night and day. And right in the middle of all this, I had petitioned the courts to permit me to adopt Shannon. What was I doing?

  Mark was of little comfort here. He had decided—even before we were married—that I would be the perfect new mother for Shannon. He had also managed to tell several people—including Shannon’s grandparents—that this was his intention. But somewhere along the line, he had forgotten to discuss this with me. When he finally talked with me about adopting Shannon, I was frightened. I wasn’t sure I was mother material. And I had a long history to back me up.

  Up to that point, I had been quite contentedly childless. This was a choice, not a condition. I had never wanted children. All my adolescent role models were childless women. Margaret Bourke-White. Lillian Hellman. Oriana Fallaci. Thea Ernie. My aunt, or “thea,” Ernie was my father’s favorite sister, Ernestine. An executive with AT&T, she drove a vintage Thunderbird and had been married five times. I wanted to be her. I wanted to work. I wanted to travel. I wanted to drive a Thunderbird. And I didn’t want to have children.

  Of course, there was that rather perverse little idea of “the biological clock.” I never could take this quite seriously—in fact, the whole concept reminded me of Peter Pan and the alligator that swallowed the clock. When
the ticking grew louder, you knew danger was at hand. So I kept listening for the alligator or the clock or whatever I was supposed to hear to alert me it was time. When my friends got pregnant, I expected to hear it. When my beloved grandmother died, I expected to hear it. When I turned forty, I expected to hear it. Either I was hearing-impaired or I just didn’t want to have children.

  But still, everyone prevailed upon me to experience the joys of motherhood. My first husband, my therapist, my friends, my family—even my lovers. One lovesick boyfriend suggested we have a child and pass it off as my husband’s. But I knew, in my bones, that I did not want children. And I knew this because I did not think I would be a good mother. I was moody, I was selfish, I was self-indulgent. And then, when my first marriage ended, I looked like a genius. Although the divorce was painful, no one suffered except my former husband and me. After the divorce was final, there was no shared custody, no arguments over visitation rights, no need to ever see the ex-spouse again. I was free.

  Once I began dating, I realized that it was more than likely that my next relationship would include children. So I jumped right in the deep end. My first postmarital relationship involved a man with seven children. I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to be around them. He didn’t even want to be around them. When he accepted a UN posting in Afghanistan, I figured out he probably didn’t want to be around anyone. The second man who came into my life had four children. Although separated, he put me in the ring with his Catholic guilt and I wasn’t a contender. Exit ready-made-family number two. After that, I found someone with no ambivalence—a man whose wife had abandoned him and their two young daughters. I admired his devotion to his children and the way he played the twin roles of Daddy and Mr. Mom, until it dawned on me that he also used his daughters as a human shield against any serious involvement.

  I was tired. It was three strikes and I was out. I announced I was taking a sabbatical from dating for a year, to spend time alone sitting on my patio, where I would read the classics and “consider my options.” This was when I met Mark, the man I had waited for all my life. We fell madly in love. But there was a catch, and it was a big one. He had a child—an eight-year-old daughter, Shannon. After two months of dating, he assured me, “She’ll love you.” Of course she would. In the TV movie of my life, Shannon would immediately recognize me as the perfect combination of Mary Poppins and Lara Croft, bonding to me instantly. I prepared myself for Mark setting a land-speed record in his haste to propose. We’d all live happily ever after.

  This was not a total and complete fantasy. In my professional life, I had served as a nationally recognized expert in “childhood attachment, separation, and loss.” I trained clinicians and social workers; I testified on custody issues in court; people asked me for professional “therapeutic consultation.” Even Mr. Mom’s two daughters still called me surreptitiously. I was Dr. Jorja—as many kids called me—the queen of child welfare. And I’d know exactly how to handle Shannon once I met her.

  Of course, I had no idea what I was in for. The first time Mark brought her to my house, a three-foot-tall little sprite with strawberry-blonde hair and freckles climbed out of his SUV, ignored my warm greeting, and looked me up and down. She then turned to Mark and said, “She’s very pretty.” I, meanwhile, watched in complete awe. In those ten seconds, Shannon had assumed complete control of the situation.

  I spent eight of the most exhausting hours of my life that day. Mark smiled and barely spoke while Shannon called the shots. She wanted a tour of my house, she wanted to go rollerblading, she wanted to eat ice cream. Mark had planned for the three of us to end the day with dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. No. Shannon decided we would eat at home—my home. Shutting the kitchen door on Mark, she announced, “This is girls only, Daddy.” She was a chip off the old block—and it was making me anxious. I had the Mini-Me of control ruling my kitchen. But there was one thing Shannon could not direct—my seventy-year-old cottage. The oven mercifully exploded in the midst of our preparations. Mark quickly went to pick up Italian food while Shannon and I watched TV. When they finally departed after dinner, I fell asleep on top of my bed, fully clothed.

  My audition was a success of sorts. Unfortunately I did not get the part I tried out for. Instead of playing wife and mother, Shannon decided I would be her girlfriend. Both Mark and I agreed that for a few weeks we’d follow her lead, “Just till she gets comfortable,” we assured each other. Sleeping with my boyfriend was replaced by sleepovers with his daughter. Our plan was a partial success. Shannon granted Mark permission to date me. “However,” she added, “you can’t get married.”

  It’s maddening to have an eight-year-old directing your courtship. I give Mark complete credit here. I was a disaster. I was in love, impatient, and, most importantly, I was still ambivalent about motherhood. But I loved this man and I was determined to build a relationship with this little girl. So I spent an enormous amount of time with Shannon, alone. She slept over at my house, hung out with me at UCLA, and turned out to be a very good girlfriend. And of course, we fought over the one thing that divides all girlfriends—a man. Still, Mark and I continued to keep the “seriousness” of our relationship from Shannon.

  My friends all thought I was crazy. The women in the neighborhoods who knew me laughed. “Whatcha gonna do, Mama, wait for her to go to college?” They had a point. After six weeks of playing “weekend at Jorja’s,” Mark reached his breaking point and decided the time had come for Shannon to accept who I really was—Daddy’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, he had forgotten just who he was dealing with. Shannon brought out the big guns and cried, “I miss Mommy.” I could neither deny the pain of her loss, nor accept her plan to keep me on the periphery. I also knew this problem was a whole lot bigger than me and all my expertise, and that it was time to see the man I called Papa. My therapist.

  I have been in therapy intermittently my entire adult life. It helped me survive adolescence, college, graduate school, marriage, and divorce. Surely it could help me deal with Shannon. Therapy helped me with my rage and my fear. But that still left the problem of the girl who was going to be—for all intents and purposes—my daughter.

  I picked the night Mark answered a SWAT call-out to sit Shannon down and tell her that I knew she hated me. She began a perfunctory protest until I told her to stop. I told her I thought she probably wanted me dead and her mother alive; that she hated seeing me sleeping on her mother’s side of the bed. And I told her what I truly felt—that I wished both Shannon and Mark had never been forced to watch a young woman die. We both started to cry.

  In the TV movie version of my life, this is the point where we are supposed to all walk into the sunset, holding hands. In reality, there continued to be difficult moments shot through with pain while we bonded and became a family. I knew, however, that Shannon’s feelings had altered when I returned after a three-day work trip to New York. She had trouble sleeping while I was gone and told me, “I’m scared something is gonna happen to you.” I took the opportunity to ask Shannon how she felt about me adopting her. She held her arms out to hug me and said, “I really want you to.”

  It was clear that neither Mark nor Shannon had any doubts. That left me. I was the uncertain one. It was the feeling that had washed over me when I spent time with Big Mike and he talked about children and their need for love. It was time to confront this. For over two years, I had floated around in domestic purgatory, feeling like a hip and sensitive cross between a legal guardian and a child therapist. That was about to end. This would be “for reals,” as the homies often exclaimed. I knew that the love Shannon and I shared was also “for reals.” That knowledge gave me the strength to go ahead, despite my fear. And I was scared out of my mind. By adopting Shannon, I knew I was making the only irrevocable commitment of my entire life.

  As for the actual adoption, I wasn’t worried. After all, we were dealing with Dr. Jorja, the queen of child welfare. I envisioned sailing merrily through the adoption process. So many friends an
d family had applauded my efforts that I started to believe my own publicity. I was the Angelina Jolie of Westlake Village—bringing love and cheer to this repressed WASP family.

  But my adoption plan hit a snag. I discovered that the legal documents had to be filed in Ventura, not Los Angeles, County. In Ventura County I was not the queen of child welfare. Instead, I was “Hmmm . . . I don’t know how to pronounce your first name. Is it Jorgé?” All my behind-the-scenes machinations to shortcut the bureaucratic process were met with polite dismissal, so one Monday night I settled down to fill out the adoption application form with Mark.

  It was horrendous. About the only piece of information not required was the date of my last period. We had to submit detailed financial records and letters of recommendation. Once that was done, we could look forward to background checks and, of course, the inevitable personal interviews. It was worse than Mark’s application for a Top Secret security clearance from the FBI. We moved through this process in fits and starts. But after six months, the paperwork was complete and it was time to be individually interviewed. Truth be told, the people at Ventura County could not have been kinder. Shannon and Mark were interviewed together and then Shannon was left alone with the social worker while Mark came outside to sit with me in the waiting room. It was there that he dropped a bomb.

  “The social worker is very nice,” he began calmly. “She asked me if I wanted your name to appear on the birth certificate as Shannon’s mother. I told her yes, you are Shannon’s mother.”

  The true meaning of those words did not hit me until the birth certificate arrived about six weeks later and there it was, my name, date and time of Shannon’s birth. It was so official that I had to check my body for stretch marks. A few days after the birth certificate arrived, we received notification of the hearing for my adoption petition. We traveled to court on the assigned date and signed the papers that officially made Shannon my daughter. The pictures of that day are even more beautiful than our wedding photographs. In every frame, Mark looks jubilant while Shannon stands close to my side and smiles shyly. I look happy and confident. Unfortunately, I felt like I was about to jump off a cliff.