Listen to thisAn angry young woman's odyssey through the New York group home system ends with an unexpected discovery – the transforming power of one person's steadfast support.
I came into the system in '92. It was in the summer. I remember the night I went to Light Street, my first group home.
I arrived at 1:30 in the morning. When I entered the house, I was scared 'cause I always heard that people died in group homes. When I got inside, the girls were all sitting in the lounge. There were 25 girls in the house.
I stayed there for only a month, because I started hanging with the wrong crowd. I was smoking weed, drinking, and fighting. I was considered the baddest girl in the house. They had to get me out of there, so they moved me to another group home.
This one was called Coney Island Diagnostic. There were four girls living there. But I was kicked out 'cause I broke a girl’s jaw. Me and the girl were screaming in the hall after the staff went to bed. The next day the girl told the staff it was my fault. I got in trouble for that, so I hit her. When I left for school the staff said don’t come back, so I didn't.
I went to my grandmother’s house and stayed there for two weeks. I was getting badder and badder. My friend's mother said I would be on America’s Most Wanted at age 16. I told her, “Ha, I fooled you. I’m in a group home.” I thought everything was a joke.
When I left my grandmother’s house, I went to my old group home, Sheltering Arms. My male friends paid me to get them girls they could have sex with. They called me a female pimp. I was asking myself, “How can I do this to another girl?” but I didn’t care.
In October 1992, I went to court to get placed into another group home. It was a few days after my 17th birthday. They placed me in a 30-day transitional center in Brooklyn.
This was a group home I fell in love with. I loved it so much “cause all we did was smoke weed and have fun. I had a crew in there called B.M.E (Blunt Master Posse). We broke every rule in the book. I eventually had to leave because my 30 days were up.
This time they moved me to a lockdown in Queens. It was a coed group home, boys and girls. I went there with the intention of leaving. I was going to leave by any means necessary, so that’s just what I did.
I beat up this girl with the few friends I made in the three weeks I was there. The girl thought she was all that. My friends grabbed the girl outside the house. We beat her so bad she pressed charges.
When we got to the police station, they said I was going to jail. I was scared, but I really didn’t care. I stayed at the station for a few hours, then was let go. I went back to the group home. The next day I got moved again.
Moving from place to place was fun at first. By February of '93, I had been in eight group homes, picked up a tag name, and had over 20 fights. (My tag name was Bonnie, as in “Bonnie and Clyde,” the bank robbers.)
My last group home was back in the Bronx again. When I got there, I was wondering how long I would stay – a month, a week, a day, or, at the rate I was going, an hour.
Staff seemed nice at first. Most of the time I stayed to myself because the girls didn’t come home until nighttime.
The coolest girl in the house was Kathy. I thought she was cool from the first time I met her because she was so quiet. But when I would start fights with the girls in the house, if they said something wrong to me, Kathy would jump right in.
The staff in the house said that Kathy acted like my mother or something. She would always get me out of trouble. I still fought, but I was starting to slow down. See, every time I got into a fight, Kathy would take me for a walk.
Kathy was the only one who ever (I mean ever since I was born) encouraged me to make something of myself. She told me fighting was not the move. I looked at her as a mother figure because she treated me like she really cared, and I knew she did.
I always thought the people I hung out with cared, but I was wrong. Kathy said that if they cared for you, they wouldn’t tell you to do bad things, such as smoking and stuff, but the right things. I knew she was right, because when I followed her advice, I always had a positive outcome.
Kathy and I were hanging out more and more. After a while I started calling her my best friend. The staff became jealous, because at one point Kathy had been close to them. She used to tell them her problems, but now she was confiding in me.
Staff started calling me “sneaky” and told the other residents not to trust me. Kathy said, “Bonnie, you’re not sneaky. They just don’t understand you.”
In the system, residents understand other residents 'cause they have almost the same problems. Staff thinks and looks at it another way. So they put us down mentally, emotionally, sometimes physically. Kathy said that I just needed someone to care for me.
She always told me it was positive over negative, and that if you respect a person, you will get the same respect back. I became a positive person. I was given a single room. When I had first arrived, I was on restriction every day, and now I was never on restriction.
It came to the point that when I saw a fight, I would try to break it up. I never knew a person could change someone that much, but Kathy changed me. She gave me a heart I could not get anywhere else. I think that if I hadn’t met Kathy, I would still be listening to those people who called themselves my “friends.”
Me and Kathy made big plans to go to college and then into the health field. I stayed in my room and wrote poems while she practiced dancing.
We were chosen to see Mayor Dinkins for a special discussion on youth. (Back in those days, the only person I thought I would be chosen to see was the judge.)
Every night before I went to bed, I would thank God for a friend like her. Now I think that wasn’t enough.
One day me and Kathy got into a fight because I called her a b-tch. I was only playing, but she took it the wrong way. We got into a verbal fight. I got mad and said a lot of things that hurt her.
She always told me you can’t break up a true friendship, but I now realize that you can, after I felt the pain of losing a friend.
I miss Kathy and still love her dearly. After a while I gave up on getting our friendship back, “cause I kept trying and it wasn’t working.
Now I’m still on the right track and still thinking of the advice she gave me. I thank God for the good times as well as the bad. Although we are no longer friends, I just don’t know where I would be without her.
I know if God wants it, we will be friends again, and I hope that day is soon.
This feature: Ivy, Kenyetta. (2000). From fighter to friend. Reaching Today's Youth, 4, 2. pp.4-5.
