Talia's Blog

Talia Rivera
A mother’s life; arrived at from drugs, teen pregnancy, and jail, through faith and gang intervention.

archives

April 30, 2009
Project Hallways
The project hallways were oddly structured, each floor like a maze, with passageways that confusingly led to unexpected places. I hung in the hallways when I should have been in school. Yet, in part, the hallways were like school, the graffiti an essay of street names, gossip, and slander. “D-Nut,” “T-Bone,” “White Boy Bobby,” “Bedrock,” “Monique fu#*! Dwayne,” and “Nicole is a hoe.” I tagged “Talia was here.” The hallways were damp. The walls sweated, even in the winter. Cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, and spit littered the floors. The corners were like clogged toilets,...
Childhood, Childhood Memories, Urban Life
April 28, 2009
Massachusetts...in the hands of high school kids
Oak wood braced the banisters, blue and gold drapes cuddled the windows. A painting of John and Samuel Adams with James Bowdoin drafting the Massachusetts Constitution hung above the platform. The state representatives began to fill the chamber, clustering in clicks, chitchatting and laughing. The speaker hit the gavel against the sound block, and the room settled. He quoted, “For every problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” An amendment was announced. A woman walked to the podium and began speaking. The chamber reminded me of disorderly high school kids with a...
Government, Social Services, Taxes
April 27, 2009
Fashion, Art, and Buttons
Fashion is like Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “Sunflowers.” The painting expresses a characteristic style – “bold use of color and composition.” Likewise, fashion frames one’s persona – clothes, shoes, accessories, hair, and (even) cell phones paint a portrait. Fashion, like art, varies depending on the artist. A young contemporary artist’s fashion is high-priced Michael Jordan sneakers, True Religion jeans, a gold chain, bamboo earrings, and flashy finger nail polish. A mature artist wears a collared shirt, slacks, and a pair of flat (but comfortable) black shoes. Yet I have...
Fashion, Violence
April 26, 2009
Sun, Sirens, and Murder
I sat, parked outside a Jamaican restaurant, looking forward to a curry shrimp dinner with white rice and mixed vegetables. A young black man walked down the street. He wore discolored blue jeans and a grey sweater. His Afro hair was a mess, nappy and uncombed. Looking through the rear view mirror I followed him as he walked by the car, pass the restaurant. My phone vibrated. I looked down to see who was calling. When I looked up, he was standing with his legs spread wide apart and his arms lifted high. Two white men – two plainclothes cops – searched his pockets. After he was frisked,...
Crime, Urban Life, Violence
April 20, 2009
Pre-planned funerals!
A land mine was triggered on Thursday when the Massachusetts House of Representative released its proposed budget. I easily pictured youth bleeding, their skin ripped and punctured by our representatives’ fatal ball point pens. The ground trembled. Graves gaped. I remembered the lost lives. Tyrone Hicks Tiffany Lomax Liquarry Jefferson Carlos Sierra Alex Burgos Roderick Carter Darrius Jones Tyrone Credle Devonte Dalvin-Franklin Thomas Webb Anna Banana Kendell Floyd Oliver Baptise Tessie Blackwell Carl Searcy Dion Taylor Kevin Walsh Herman Taylor Jamol Norfleet Yorki Lipscomb Tacary...
Economy, State Government, Violence
April 16, 2009
“He is going to be dead soon.”
I stared at his mug shot. I remembered. It was another gang intervention. We identified 25 of the city’s most violent gangs and their most influential members. Charles sat across from me. We asked him and others, “please stop.” It was ghostly. Steven Odom crossed my mind. Steven was probably playing basketball as we pleaded with the young man who would soon become Steven’s murderer. When Charles left the room a police officer said, “He is going to be dead soon.” A probation officer agreed. That was August. Charles was found dead, shot on Orlando Street in Mattapan, on Oct. 14, 2007...
Gangs, Intervention, Violence
April 15, 2009
Spare Me My Childhood
We assume our childhoods are past, that we have grown to maturity. Until our childhoods confront us. Recently, childhood memories I locked in a black box at the back of my mind are finding their way out. Part of me is mad at God. “God, why didn’t you come sooner? Didn’t you see me in that bleak bedroom bleating and begging? Didn’t you see me weeping and waving my hands?” “God, if you had come sooner I could have been spared from my best friend’s father, from the agony of my adolescence, from the dysfunction of my family – from me.”
Childhood Memory, Religious Faith
April 14, 2009
It's Us!
While waiting at a red light, I saw my mother and her boyfriend. I rolled down the window and asked, “Where are you going?” She said, “Did Baby Danny get the $5.00?” A simple question, but not. Mother, daughter, grandson. Family. Recent emotions and events. Mother and sister fighting. My sisters at war. The light turned green. I drove away. I felt a sharp pain in my chest; I thought I was having a heart attack. I haven’t felt like this since I sat my ten-month-old daughter in between my mother and sister as I walked away to surrender myself to the Suffolk County House of Corrections...
Daughters, Family, Mothers
April 13, 2009
Hidden behind the high
I imagine it is easier for my mother to stay in her own world. In her world she is free of reality; her “cock sucking, motherfucking junkie” is safely hid behind a high. In her world, she is out of harm's way of her mother’s nasty words, her children’s pain, and her own disappointments. There, instead of facing it all, she lies down like a doormat and welcomes defeat.
Daughters, Drugs, Mothers
April 8, 2009
Him Reincarnated
As I waited for the bail magistrate in the police station’s lobby, I read the walls. A plaque honoring a fallen officer read, “Dear Lord, be good to me the sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” (An Irish fisherman’s prayer.) I looked at the mug shots of the level three sex offenders. They included my Uncle Darnell. I shook my head in embarrassment. My mother sat on the bench with her head hung low, quiet until she said, “I had a flashback of him yelling, ‘Bitch! Bitch!’ before he slapped me.” He was reincarnated in her. “This time I was stronger,” she said. “I pressed my knee into...
Family, Jail
April 6, 2009
Stories
My sister, handcuffed. I heard four different stories. “She came in the house yelling and screaming, ‘Get out! GET OUT!’” “She hit me first. She picked up something and hit her over the head. Her eye swelled to the size of an egg.” “The children were crying; the neighbors were peeking out their windows.” “There were twelve police officers outside. When the sergeant saw her eye, he said, ‘Book her.’” Yet there was really only one story. And that is that my mother neglected us and it has never been dealt with.
Family, Mothers, Sisters
April 5, 2009
My Phone Rang…
My phone vibrated nonstop. I was worried. I thought about all the reasons why my phone would be ringing at ten o’clock at night. I wondered if it was my grandmother or maybe one of my boys was gunned down. I slowly reached for the phone, much of me didn’t want to know who it was or why they were calling. I recognized the caller ID, it was a street worker. Now I am certain that something happened. My heart is racing. I answered. “Yo T,” he said, “Some dudes from around the way hit me up and said they saw your sister handcuffed and being escorted to a police cruiser.”
Family, Sisters
April 4, 2009
Memories
Summer is approaching so I’m busy raising money to hire the boys. As I looked through old notes, I stumbled upon our first sign-in sheet. I smiled. I didn’t know these boys before that day. I remember they walked in, skeptical of me, disbelieving that I wanted to offer them a job. I explained the work to them, “You will be hired as community organizers.” How-much we-get-paid was all they wanted to know. “Ten dollars an hour,” I replied. “Yes sir, we wanna work,” they said with a southern twang. I smiled at the memory. But the smile quickly turned to grimace. Mitch and Vince won’t...
Community Organizing, Summer Jobs, Urban Life
April 3, 2009
What is that smell?
I was sitting in church. An evangelist ministered in song, the parishioners waved their hands in the air, others fanned themselves, some stood to their feet and clapped their hands as she sang, “Blessed assurance Jesus is mine.” As the congregation lifted its voices in praise I felt a wind. Like that of Acts 2:2, “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house….” I asked my husband if he ate the piece of gum that I had given him. “Yes,” he said. Then what is that smell? It was strong and powerful and nearly toxic. Then I realized...
Church, Social Graces
April 2, 2009
Hamburger Meat
“You don’t need an extra strainer to drain the meat,” I said. Shouting bounced off the kitchen wall. It wasn’t about the meat at all. It was our personal idiosyncrasies; like water boiling at a temperature diffused in the air. “Put the top on the toothpaste when you finish using it!” “Pick up after yourself!” “Clean the sink after you shave!” “Clean the bathtub after you bathe!” The reverberation of our voices echoed in the stairwell, into our bedroom, and into bed with us…him on his side and me on mine. All after we ate the lasagna.
Husbands and Wives, Marriage
April 1, 2009
Words
Past words are daily neglected. Like the vows that a husband and wife exchange. How does the phrase, “those special words that will marry you,” simply become a series of letters carelessly clustered into a sentence trying to reach an ending? “I…take you…to be my…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.” How do those words, written and recited with love and significance, become just another sentence?
Marriage, Vows