Triple Jeopardy

THE PHONE CALL CAME DURING HOLY week. A timid, young voice on the other end of the line stated simply, "My mother said you could help me." When Nicole finally introduced herself, I knew that a five-month search was over.

I had met her mother at the Women's Federal Correctional Institution in Alderson, West Virginia, while I was on an assignment there for Sojourners. In our first conversation, Celia talked mostly about her oldest daughter. "Promise me you'll find Nicole when you get back," she pleaded as I left the prison. For weeks I tried to keep my promise to her. Phone calls to social workers and foster parents back in Washington, D.C., only revealed that Nicole had disappeared without letting anyone know her whereabouts.

I received letters from Celia and returned to Alderson to visit her. Slowly, over time, she offered me the pieces of her story. Terrified to think of having to make it on her own with four children, Celia had stayed for 13 years with a husband who beat her. In recent months he had begun to abuse the children, so she took them and fled to a friend's home.

Her husband became enraged and threatened to hurt each of the children, beginning with the oldest, unless Celia came back to talk things over. On a Sunday morning, while Nicole was walking to church, her father and two of his buddies waited on a street corner and then gang-raped her. Nicole was 14.

The husband threatened similar violence against the next daughter, so Celia went to the house to talk to him. One of the men who had participated in the rape was downstairs in the house while Celia and her husband talked upstairs. A cousin of Nicole's, having heard about the rape, arrived with a gun and shot the man. By the time the police arrived, the man was dead and Celia was in the room, having run downstairs with her husband when they heard the shot.

Celia was handcuffed, along with the cousin, and taken to jail. A public defender told her that the circumstantial evidence was so strong that any judge would rule against her, despite the cousin's testimony of her innocence. She was, after all, the mother of the rape victim and therefore had the strongest motivation for the killing. The lawyer convinced her to plead guilty to manslaughter in order to avoid a first-degree murder conviction, which carried a possible life sentence in prison. She got four years, to be served at the federal women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia, 300 miles away from her children.

Nicole spent several weeks alone in the hospital, recovering from the physical effects and emotional trauma of the rape. Hospital personnel feared that telling her that her mother was in prison would only add trauma to trauma. So for weeks she bore the devastation and isolation of knowing that her father had raped her and believing that her mother had rejected and abandoned her.

After her recovery, she had to testify against her father in his rape trial. The ordeal was particularly difficult for her, and when it was over she disappeared. Her father was acquitted of the rape charge.

MONTHS LATER, WHEN she finally called me, I had no idea how I could help. I suggested that we have lunch together on Friday. It was a Good Friday I will never forget. Tears streamed down her cheeks like the rain that poured outside as she told me, "I don't have any money for food and I'm going to have a baby."

She explained immediately that the baby wasn't a result of "what my father did to me." It was fathered by Charlie, a 28-year-old man into whose arms she had run when she got out of the hospital looking for someone to love her. Charlie, a Vietnam veteran, was at least responsible enough toward her and the baby to invite Nicole to live with him and his extended family--his parents, two brothers, and a sister with three small children.

These 10 people shared a two-bedroom house, and Charlie's parents were putting pressure on Nicole to pay her way. Some low-level housing inspector was, according to Nicole, being paid off to keep quiet about their overcrowded home that violated D.C. housing codes. If he was expected to keep quiet about Nicole, the inspector said, then he needed a small increase in the sum.

I didn't know where to start. Injustice overlaid with corruption overlaid with trauma formed the foundation of Nicole's life.

Over the months I visited her often at her home with Charlie's family. The front room of the house contained only a rundown couch, where the parents slept, a cloudy fish tank, an old television set that was constantly on, and an empty set of shelves, beside which was nailed Charlie's certificate of discharge from the Army. The kitchen was in constant use, as the household had to eat in shifts from four overturned dairy crates that served as chairs around a small kitchen table, which was missing a leg. Upstairs, Nicole and Charlie shared a room with Charlie's two brothers, and his sister and her three children occupied the other.

Charlie, like his father, was an alcoholic and could not keep a job. Junior, his youngest brother, was mentally retarded and also could not work. The mother, bent over from arthritis and years of back-breaking work, still brought in money by cleaning rooms at a nursing home. The sister tried to juggle part-time work with the demands of three small children, one of whom was also mildly retarded.

Despite the odds against them and the angry frustration that often enveloped them, the family honestly did their best to try to care for one another. The whole family was present and cheering when Junior took second place in a race at the Special Olympics. The children were deeply loved.

In August, Nicole and I made the six-hour drive to Alderson to visit Celia. All of Nicole's hopes for the day were crushed when Celia began to challenge her on why she stayed with Charlie and express her anger and disappointment that Nicole was getting herself trapped in the very same sort of mess that she had been in when she got pregnant with Nicole. Nicole tried to fight back her tears and finally ran out of the prison visiting room sobbing.

Celia began to cry, too. "I wanted so much for her," she cried. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt her."

Celia then turned to her worries about her youngest daughter. Lisa was just 8 years old when Celia was taken away to prison. Celia had heard that she was doing poorly in school and was not happy in her foster home. I told her that I would try to check on Lisa.

Celia also talked about the anger and bitterness that had consumed her during her first year and a half in jail. But in recent months she began to recognize that she needed to trust God and knew that only her faith could pull her through. She wanted to trust--for her children's sake as well as her own. A tear came to her eye as she said, "You know, when the five of us were together, we used to laugh so hard sometimes. We'll laugh together again some day."

As she said this, Nicole came back in. As the apologies flowed, they gave each other a hug.

AS THE TIME CAME close for Nicole to deliver her baby, I was plagued with the feeling that I needed to do more for her. Finding a doctor and baby clothes for her was important, but it didn't address the real issues of her life. I didn't want to become her financier, and yet the disparity between our resources always disturbed me.

Nicole helped me lose a fair dose of idealism and gain a lot of awareness about my limitations. Yet those realizations didn't make me want to turn my back on my hope of deeper transformation, but only to push harder to try to shed myself of privilege and make the struggles of the poor my own. Through Nicole, I was learning that my identification with their struggles came not from a commitment to a set of principles, but a deepening commitment to particular people.

From time to time, I gave Nicole money when she asked for it. I always struggled to stay on the correct side of the fine line between compassionate generosity and a dangerous charity that would foster in her an unhealthy dependence on me. This was never easy. I had so much, and she had so little. And it seemed to me that, at the age of 15, she had every right to be dependent on somebody. Nobody else in her life was dependable.

One time when she asked for money for food, she came back the next day asking for more. She confessed, "Charlie and I used the other money to go dancing." When I opened my mouth to chastise her, she pleaded, "Isn't it OK to dance when you're hungry?"

I will never forget a cold winter night when Nicole called to tell me that the heat had been cut off at the house, due to an unpaid bill. I drove over to the house, expecting to find the family huddled together around the open oven for warmth.

Instead, as I approached the house, I heard music blaring from the top floor. Inside, the entire family was dancing. The youngest child was giggling as she tried to show her bent-over grandmother how to pirouette and boogie at the same time. Pillows were flying and everyone was laughing, and Nicole shouted to me over the din, "We're trying to keep warm!"

During the months before Nicole gave birth, I struggled with the idea of inviting her to move in with me. At various times the family was threatened with eviction, and I considered the option more seriously. I wanted so badly to fix her life and make everything smooth. But those were my dreams for her life and not her own. The best I could do was simply be her friend.

On Thanksgiving Day my goddaughter was born. Nicole named her Celia. The hospital was deserted that Thanksgiving Day. I was alone in the maternity waiting room for several hours before little Celia made her appearance. I prayed like crazy for Nicole and the baby. Then Charlie burst into the room, smiling. "It's a girl," he said proudly. We both wept.

At two hours old, Celia was as precious and beautiful as Nicole and I always knew she would be. I whispered to her through the glass that separated us that everything was going to be OK. Her peaceful sleep made me feel that the words were true.

I had a godmother's privilege to call her grandmother with the news. Celia was thrilled at the news of a baby girl, asking me for all the details. "How big is she?" "What time did she arrive?" "Is she pretty?" she wanted to know. "She's beautiful," I told her.

I was about to hang up, when I remembered a detail I had forgotten to mention. "Oh, and her name is Celia."

Celia was quiet for a few moments and then whispered through her tears, "Thank you. This is quite a Thanksgiving."

For the next month, Nicole and I looked forward to talking with her mother on Christmas morning. I had arranged with the foster parents of her sisters Sharon and Felicia to bring them to my house for the call. Lisa's foster mother refused to let her come.

It was a continuing sadness to me that no persuasion on my part ever moved Lisa's foster mother to allow her to spend time with her family or me. Remembering my promise to her mother, it had occurred to me to try to challenge her foster placement through the appropriate channels. But this battle was one too many in a war that I already felt I was losing.

Charlie, little Celia, Nicole, her two sisters, and I spent the morning opening gifts, eating, and waiting for the phone to ring. At mid-morning the call came. Nicole answered it and yelled, "It's her!" Sharon and Felicia begged for turns and then spoke to their mother. There were more tears than words exchanged that morning. By the time I got my turn, Celia was too emotional to say any more than "Merry Christmas" and "Thank you."

WHEN SPRING ROLLED AROUND, it became possible to make a trip to Alderson. Nicole and I decided that Palm Sunday weekend was a good time for Celia to meet her grandmother.

I tried again to reach Lisa's foster mother. This time she was more direct with me: "It is my duty to protect that child from the bad influence of her mother." I wished she could understand how tormented Celia was with fears for Lisa.

On Friday afternoon--just about rush hour--Charlie, little Celia, Nicole, Sharon, Felicia, and I packed into a Volkswagen station wagon, along with supper, a tape recorder, and a pile of rock-and-roll cassettes (Felicia's contribution). Rain fell gently most of the night, with a few pelting interjections. My godchild murmured softly from time to time, and Sharon and Felicia sighed as they changed positions in their semi-sleep, trying to get comfortable in the cramped quarters of the back seat. At one point I heard some faint singing and turned around to find Sharon quietly singing Celia back to sleep.

It had been a year since Nicole walked out of the rain into my life. It was a year of great turmoil for me. But in that peaceful moment, late at night on the road to Alderson, I knew that it had been worthwhile. I thanked God for the privilege.

The visit was a surprise for Celia. Part of our trip from Washington had been consumed with plotting the all-important details of the surprise strategy.

Nicole and I met Celia as she came into the visiting room. Moments later Charlie, Sharon, and Felicia with the baby came pouring out of the rest rooms where they had hidden. Shouts of "Surprise!" echoed all through the visiting room.

Celia hugged each of her daughters and then focused her attention on her granddaughter. A big grin spread over her face and she said, "I think I'm going to cry," as she scooped little Celia up in her arms. She had waited for four long months for this moment. She circulated the visiting room, exclaiming, "This is my grandbaby!" and found a photographer to take a family picture of all of us together.

A week later Celia called me with surprising news--her parole board decided to release her in November. The early release carried the additional good news of a week's furlough for Celia the very next week--a week that contained Nicole's birthday.

I was grateful that Lisa's foster mother allowed her to be present at the big celebration the next week. I went to pick up Lisa before getting the others. Dressed in her best Sunday dress and black patent leather shoes, with a smile as broad and sweet as I had ever seen on a child, Lisa walked shyly toward me and extended her hand. Then she let a tear escape and gave me a big hug. "My mama told me about you," she said. Of all the children, she most resembled her mother. I savored the day, knowing that it would be a long time before I would see Lisa again.

CELIA WAS RELEASED TO a halfway house in Washington the first week of November. I went to visit her at the halfway house that week, expecting to find her full of hope at her chance for a new beginning. She was instead very tired and subdued--chain-smoking nervously, a habit she had never had before. She was not anxious to see her children.

It was Election Night 1980. I will never forget it. The residents of the halfway house were gathered around the house's television set. As soon as it became absolutely clear that Ronald Reagan had won the election, the women began to cry. One sobbed hysterically, and another said in despair, "Things are gonna change." As I left Celia, who said little to me all evening, she said, "There's no hope anymore."

All of the children, with the exception of Lisa, and I were together at Charlie's house on Christmas Day. They had presents for Celia and anxiously awaited her arrival. The day dragged on, and still there was no sign of her. I finally called the halfway house.

"I don't have bus fare," Celia said weakly. "Tell the children." It was a flimsy excuse, but I did my best to sound convincing. The children's hearts sank as they realized their hopes for their first Christmas together in three years had just been dashed. All the presents remained unopened.

I couldn't figure out why Celia, so full of faith and committed to making it for the sake of her children, was now slowly destroying herself. Over the months, the forces eating at her became more clear to me.

She was released from the halfway house in January. After three years of confinement, she was finding freedom hard to deal with. So battered was her self-esteem, so wounded her spirit, that she could not find the confidence to carry on.

Despite the skills she had learned in prison, no one wanted to hire a woman with a criminal record. She went to job interview after job interview only to find rejection at every turn.

In addition, she suffered from a series of illnesses, including a serious infection that went untreated in prison. She had no money for the care she needed, I wanted to encourage her, to take her by the shoulders and tell her she had to get herself together for the sake of the children. They needed her. She had a responsibility. But I knew I had no right. She was facing more than anybody should have to in 10 lifetimes. And anything I could offer seemed only pious and shallow to me.

I DIDN'T KNOW what to do to help Celia make it, but I was determined not to let the tragedy repeat itself in Nicole. When little Celia turned 2, Nicole started talking about wanting to go back to school. She had only finished eighth grade. I had seen her compassion and her sense of responsibility toward her sisters take over when she realized that Celia wasn't going to get them back together. And when she started talking about wanting to be a nurse's aide, I wanted to do everything I could to encourage her. Together we tackled a multitude of obstacles--day care for Celia, money for books and a uniform, a quiet place for her to study, the need to convince Charlie that it was important.

Nicole began to share with me about the rape and the war within her between love and hatred toward her father. "I just can't understand why he did it," she said over and over. She asked me if I would help her find him. She wanted him to have the chance to meet his granddaughter. And she wanted to talk to him and tell him she was trying to love him in her heart.

I wasn't sure if it would be good for her to find him, but I couldn't refuse her persistent and courageous desire to forgive him. I decided to leave the reconciliation up to God.

The next week we drove to the gas station where her father was last employed. Nicole was nervous. When we got close enough to see that the gas station had been closed down, Nicole's face showed both disappointment and relief. We had no other leads on where to find him.

Nicole looked forward to the fall and the start of her classes with great anticipation. But one disaster after another threatened to derail her hopes. Her September welfare check got stolen from her mailbox, and with it the funds she was planning to spend on day care for Celia. She scrambled to find friends and relatives to keep her.

In October a fire started in the mattress in the children's room and swept through the top of the house. All of Nicole's new school clothes were burned in the flames. She was devastated by the loss but determined to go on.

During those two months, Charlie got and lost three jobs. With each job lost, he intensified his dependence on alcohol and became more abusive.

Through all of this Nicole kept going to classes, realizing that her only ticket out of despair was a good job. She excitedly shared with me all that she was learning, and she drafted all of Charlie's family into service as she practiced and gained proficiency in taking temperatures and pulses.

GRADUATION FOR HER six-month course was scheduled for late February. She invited me to attend the ceremony, since, as she put it, I was her "second mother." I was all ready to be a proud parent with a camera on her big day. But that day never came for Nicole.

Early one January evening, she called and said there was a "family crisis" that she couldn't explain over the phone. I had long before stopped trying to guess what sort of crisis might strike next. I put my head in my hands for a moment and then piled on layers of clothing to face the cold.

The Washington Post was calling it the worst cold spell to hit the city in almost a century. At night, "wind chill" dipped the temperature to 40 below zero. It was so cold that night that the old dog that lived in the yard at Charlie's house had been brought into the front hall.

The house had been without heat and hot water for two months; two days later the city government finally forced the landlord to turn the heat back on for the duration of the bitter cold spell.

Meals for 10 were being cooked on an old hot plate during that time. Celia had contracted bronchitis. Everyone in the house was bundled up in all the clothes they owned.

But it wasn't the cold or Celia's bronchitis that was the overriding crisis. It was Lisa.

Lisa was the one daughter Celia had taken back with her. But Nicole explained, as we sat on the old crates in the kitchen, that her mother had dropped Lisa off with her a week ago and never came back for her. "I can't keep her anymore," Nicole cried. "The housing inspectors are already after us. And besides, she won't listen to me. It's not good for her here." That was obvious to me.

Nicole was convinced that Lisa wouldn't listen to me either. But Lisa came and joined me in the kitchen when Nicole walked out. I would not have recognized her in any other setting. In the time since I had last seen her, she had grown into a beautiful young woman.

I asked Lisa if she would like me to take her back to her mother. She burst into tears. Through her sobs she explained that there had been some men drinking at her mother's apartment and one of them had tried to touch her. Lisa was 14 now.

The pattern was beginning all over again. The innocence and magic were dead in Lisa. Sitting there on broken-down crates, she wept and I shuddered in anger at the combination of bad luck and abuse that had set the course of Nicole's and Lisa's young lives. And I cursed myself for my own failure to make a difference.

I finally took her hand and said, "Let's go get some supper."

The incident with Lisa turned out to be Nicole's undoing. As with her mother, the pressure had built and built until one day something snapped, and it just didn't seem worth trying anymore to keep everything together.

Despite all my pleas to her to finish school, three weeks before she was to graduate Nicole dropped out. She decided that she needed to put more attention into her sisters' needs than her own. I tried to convince her that the best thing she could do for them was get her own life together and get a good, stable job. But she was unconvinced, and I had no more pep talks left in me.

If someone had written Nicole's story as fiction, I would have said to the author, "Change it. Make it more believable. No one can have this much bad luck." But her story is true. She is a picture of what it means to bear the triple jeopardy of being poor, black, and female in America.

Nicole walked into my life on Good Friday, and it seems we never really got past it. If there is any resurrection at all in her life, perhaps it is this: that she has learned to dance when she is cold and hungry. Perhaps that is a legacy she will pass on to my goddaughter.

AS FOR LISA, we had supper together that night. We went out after some hamburgers, and, on the way, she talked and I listened. She didn't understand why her mother's friend had tried to molest her. Nor did she understand why, when she was staying with Nicole, Charlie's older brother had paid Junior, the retarded brother, to try to force Lisa to go to bed with him--it was only a joke, the older brother explained later when Lisa ran crying into Nicole's arms.

She tried to sort through her feelings of fear, confusion, and shame. She was full of questions, and I tried to answer her as best I could while keeping my anger about it all under control. Why is it that the most vulnerable always suffer so much? I wished that she had had a mother the last few years to answer her questions and help her come to grips with her womanhood.

As we got out of the car, she said, "You're the only person I can trust." We barely knew each other. And then she added, "We're sort of kin, aren't we?" We decided over hamburgers that if there can be great-grandmothers, there certainly could be great-godmothers. We're sort of kin.

I took her home with me. We played a card game for a while, and then she talked some more. "I guess my mother doesn't want me," she stated. She talked about how painful. it had felt to have her mother go away to prison and now to have been left at Nicole's.

It grew late, and we made a bed on my floor for her out of sofa cushions and a sleeping bag. She told me that she stayed awake all night at her mother's because of being afraid and that she wouldn't sleep at my place either. Moments after she crawled into the sleeping bag, she was soundly asleep. I knelt down next to her, took her hand, and prayed for protection for her.

I lay awake a long time listening to her quiet, regular breathing. I knew that I had done the right thing that night--but I hadn't thought past the moment and knew that I would wake up in the morning realizing that for a while I had become the mother of a 14-year-old. I only knew that I was committed to not sending her back to a place where she might be hurt again.

The next day I tried unsuccessfully to reach Celia by phone. Lisa and I made some cookies. While they were in the oven baking, Lisa asked if I would be her mother.

There were a thousand reasons why I couldn't take her in, but I thought about it anyway. In the 20 hours we had been together, she had clearly won a place in my heart.

I FINALLY REACHED Celia the next morning. She had found a job, and we agreed to meet over her lunch break. I found my way to the federal building downtown where she had a cleaning job. We met in a dingy basement locker room. She had just 20 minutes for lunch.

Celia looked thin and tired and sick. Dressed in a faded blue cleaning uniform, she coughed and chain-smoked as we talked. To look at her was to see a pile of broken dreams and crushed hopes.

She had joined the underside of life in the capital city. Her work was dirty and degrading. With a small space heater as the only source of warmth, she cleaned the dark and cave-like cement-block basement of a building where upstairs power was brokered every day.

She had started drinking and began to stay close to men who she thought could protect her from her husband. They not only drank heavily but also dealt on a small scale in illegal drugs. At various times she had made a decision to get them out of her life and tried to do so. After several failed attempts, she resigned herself to their presence in her life and her dependence on their attention and protection.

Celia shivered in the thin uniform as she talked. The cold environs aggravated a problem she had with her back and her joints, so she worked in constant pain. And the unattended-to infection had worsened and spread so that her doctor said she needed a hysterectomy--but she didn't know when there would be enough money for it.

I tried to remember the Celia I had known before--strong, confident, full of hope. And I recalled the words she had said to me about her children while she was still in prison: "You know, when the five of us were together, we used to laugh so hard sometimes. We'll laugh together again someday."

It was clear to me that day that those words would never come true. It wasn't because she didn't want to have the children back. She just didn't have the resources or strength to care for them all. "I'm trying so hard," she cried. "I just can't do it all."

She had begun to try with Lisa, about whom she felt the most guilt. Lisa had grown from a child to a woman in the years that Celia was apart from her, and Celia was unable to forgive herself for missing those years of Lisa's life.

Celia had put a great deal of time and energy into getting Lisa out of her foster home and back with her. But then she realized that this daughter who was no longer a little girl was becoming a victim of the men who used Celia. "I wasn't going to just leave her with Nicole," Celia said. "I knew my place wasn't good for her. I just wanted her to stay there until I could get a better place."

Celia had to get back to work. "I can't keep her," I said. "She can't go back to her foster home, and Nicole doesn't have space and needs the freedom to live her own life. Lisa needs to be with you. She needs her mother right now."

"All right. We'll try to work it out," Celia said as I left.

LISA DIDN'T WANT to go back with her mother. "She doesn't want me!" she protested when I talked with her later. "Can't I just stay here?"

I pleaded with her to give it a second chance to work with Celia. "You need each other," I said, "and she'll protect you." I knew I was asking a 14-year-old to go back and face more than anybody should have to.

For two hours she refused to go back. A war went on inside of her between a child wanting to be a grown-up and a grown-up wanting to be a child. Deep wells of rejection and hurt bubbled to the surface as she talked about her mother.

She agreed to call Celia on the phone. They talked for a few minutes, and then Lisa reported what her mother had said: "I love you, Lisa, and I want you with me." Lisa cried. "I just don't know," she wailed. "I'm afraid."

I put an arm around Lisa's shoulder and said, "It's your decision. You think about it." I left the room.

Twenty minutes later Lisa came to me, tears streaming down her face, and said, "I'm ready to go back." Then she added, "Could I just stay here tonight?"

Before going to sleep that night, Lisa gave me a kiss on the cheek and handed me a large piece of paper. "This is for you," she said. Written in big letters were the words, "You are the Best of the West. Love, Lisa." "I'll never forget you," she said as she crawled into the sleeping bag.

As I was about to drift off to sleep, she suddenly said, "Once I wanted somebody to love me, so I tried to have a baby. It died. I didn't kill it. I would never have killed it."

There was silence for a moment, and then she asked, "Did you say your prayers?" There was another pause, and then she whispered, "Bless Nicole and my mother and you and my baby."

I didn't fall asleep. And it didn't surprise me when about an hour later, Lisa sat up suddenly and started crying, "I can't sleep. I'm thinking about my baby. I think I killed it. The doctor said so." She blurted out the story through her tears: "I was staying with Nicole and I was at the phone booth, and I had to run home quick to go to the bathroom. I think I ran too hard. I started to bleed."

The story continued to spill out. It had taken an hour for an ambulance to come as Lisa lay frightened and bleeding. As she finished telling me the story, she lay back down again and then smiled softly. "But it was OK. Nicole took real good care of me. She held my hand. And she just kept taking my temperature and my pulse to make sure I was going to be OK."

From Turning Toward Home: A Sojourn of Hope, by Joyce Hollyday. Used with permission from Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., San Francisco. Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.