BROKEN

By Leon R. Walker Jr.

A very young, and dark life, this is the story of Leon Walker’s youth, and his deeply rooted demons. From his earliest memories to his last year of high school, he recalls, in great detail, his childhood as disturbing, turbulent, and mind shattering. Born in 1965, as a black kid growing up in the inner city of Cleveland, and East Cleveland in the 70s and early 80s, he was exposed to poverty, racism, and violence. The victim of not only a broken home, Leon somehow survived his youth, determined to learn from his mistakes and succeed in a seemingly inhospitable world. His young mind warped, his eyes deceived, he saw, and engaged in things no child his age should ever see, or do. His life BROKEN!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642370690

Book preview

much.

Preface

For those children who are struggling with life each and every day, I was you. For those of you who are being broken, damaged, abused, left alone, and given away, I was you. Here I stand before you to tell you my story. I’m going to discuss a way of life that most people know nothing about, but all of you who have been through it or are going through it now will understand. See, like you, I have been broken down to my purest form, and as you will read, I remained wide open for many years. Still, I’m here to tell you today that there is hope. There was hope for me, and there is hope for you. That’s what this book is about. This book isn’t just about tragedy. It’s a story of survival. I want you to know that you can and will survive. I’m living proof of that.

The events in this book took place between 1970 and 1983, a period that began more than forty years ago. That’s a long time. But everything that happened to me, every challenge that I faced, is still happening today to youth and adults everywhere. These tragic times were unavoidable for me. Once you live through them, they’ll stay with you forever. It’s your choice to do something about them, though. I learned that the hard way. Hopefully, this book will make the process a little bit easier for you.

How did I survive? The will to make it through started deep within myself, down in my soul. What I learned is that God gives you what you need to survive. It’s all within you, and you find it when you learn how to count on yourself. These struggles don’t discriminate. Anyone is susceptible to the things I fell victim to. Abuse, violence, poverty—these things don’t pick or choose whose lives they touch.

Just remember that whatever life has in store for you, whatever tragedy befalls you, you do have a choice and a voice in the matter. Choice is critical here. I couldn’t control the bad things that happened to me as a kid, but I could control the choices I’ve made since then—and, luckily, I’ve made good ones. That’s the only reason I’m still alive to tell my story.

I am not afraid of my truth anymore,

and I will not omit pieces of me to make anyone comfortable.

—Anonymous

Prologue

I Hated Christmas

It was Christmas at my grandparents’ house. We were on the west side of Cleveland. The year wa s 1972. The house was well lit outside with beautiful colorful lights. A small flurry of snow adorned the windows. The streets were covered, and you could hear the wind blowing through the door.

My grandparents always erected a huge tree in the living room and placed wrapped gifts at the bottom of it. The house was fairly crowded but had just enough room to be comfortable. Each friend and relative brought food to share. Banter flowed, and Christmas carols blurted from the small speakers on the floor. You know, the normal things on a Christmas day.

We could feel the excitement and love in the air. Kids ran up and down the stairs, opening gifts, laughing, and being playful. I had just sat down with my mother in the living room, and I began to get hungry. I could smell turkey, chicken, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, potato salad—all kinds of food, including delicious collard greens simmering and bubbling. Steam lightly billowed from a large pot, filling the house with the aroma of smoked ham hocks. That and the smell of baked goods filled the house like a low-hanging cloud—but there wasn’t a cloud, just tantalizing aroma.

I sat across from my mother, mouth tightly closed, legs crossed at the ankles, hands clasped, nose wide open. Hungry as shit, I raised my eyebrows two to three times, real quick, and shifted my eyes to the right, gesturing to my mother to make a quick escape to the kitchen.

She rose from the couch. Excuse me, she said politely as she passed a group of people smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. This made it easy for our quick trek to the grub, close by. She swooped by, grabbed my hand, and off we went to the kitchen. We could smell those good greens brewing, and we just had to have a small taste.

I looked up at her with a sheepish grin on my face, and she looked down at me. We were both excited and smiling about the large spoon of greens we were about to devour.

My mother knew that I loved greens, and she loved them, too. All she wanted to do that day was to make me happy. Doubleo, she said, peep around the corner to make sure Mama isn’t looking.

Mama was my grandmother, so I took a peep. Grandma wasn’t anywhere to be found. I don’t see Grandma, Mommy.

Okay, she said, let’s taste the greens.

Cool, I responded with childish energy, swinging my hips from side to side like Chubby Checker doing the twist, delighted at my little treat.

My mother dipped the spoon in the large, simmering pot. Careful not to burn me with the hot juice now balancing in the spoon, she bent down and gave me my small portion.

I took a deep slurp of the hot juices and then moved my head to the side. Mommy, these are very good, I informed her, my voice amping up.

Be quiet, little boy, she said, grinning at me. We’re gonna get caught.

I inhaled the collard greens quickly, a grin on my face, eyes closed tightly, and my little head and miniature Afro tilted back. It was like heaven.

Open your eyes, boy, she said.

I opened them, and we looked at each other as if we were being sneaky. We were. We both chuckled silently, though it was hard for me with my mouth stuffed. I was happy.

Shhh, my mom said. We’re not supposed to be in here.

I put my index finger in front of my mouth to signal her to shush, too. Eyes wide open, wanting to burst into laughter, I covered my mouth with my hand, and we laughed again.

As my mom took the spoon up to her mouth to eat her small portion, in came my grandmother. I became stiff as a board because I knew this situation was about to get violent.

What did I tell you, Sylvia? my grandmother barked.

What are you talking about? came my mother’s reply.

Get the fuck out of my kitchen, Grandma snapped.

Mama, don’t yell at me, my mother said.

Out of nowhere, my grandmother slapped the shit out of my mother, right in front of me while I was still standing there holding on to her hand. The slap was so loud, hate filled, and thunderous, I thought Grandma had punched my mother. I was stunned and frightened, my legs jittery. My heart dropped immediately.

My mother stood there in amazement, staring into my grandmother’s eyes. Her left jaw was getting darker and darker red with each passing second, and swelling at a fast pace, but she didn’t move an inch. Everyone in the other room had heard the slap, and they ran to see what had happened. Meanwhile, along with the pee running down my leg, I could feel the tremors going through my mother’s body, as if my grandmother had slapped me.

My mother’s grip on my hand tightened. She wasn’t going to let me go, even after being slapped. Had my mother fallen, I would have fallen with her. Had she crawled out of that house in pain, I would have crawled with her, willingly.

My cousin Joy zoomed into the kitchen. Dorothy, she yelled, why did you slap Sylvia like that?

Crack. My grandmother slapped the hell out of Joy, too. She pointed her finger closely in Joy’s face, waving it up and down, her head tilted, her other hand resting on her hip. Listen, you stay out of it, bitch. That’s my daughter, and if you don’t like it, get the hell out of my house.

Okay, Grandma, Joy replied, head down, holding her jaw. She left the house, fast.

My mother never raised her voice that day. She didn’t even move. I felt horrible. I couldn’t protect my mother from her mother. All I could do was look up at my mother, eyes full of tears, and say, I’m sorry. I put my head down.

To see and feel my mother get struck like that by her own mother really shook me to the core. As I put my head down, tears dropped onto my little PRO-Keds shoes, my nose started running, and I didn’t know whether to be angry with my grandmother or to still love her. I surely didn’t like her slapping the shit out of my mother that day, over some damn greens. It had to be more than that. My mother’s face was cherry red from the slap, and it was hard for me to look at her puffy red jaw.

Why didn’t you hit Grandma back? I asked a few moments later.

Well, you don’t hit women, my mother explained. You just don’t do it, even if it’s your own mother.

That day, and from then on out, my mother taught me a couple things. One, she was extremely strong, and two, you never hit women, a valuable lesson for me at such a young age. I received that lesson, but the words exchanged that day stuck with me. To me, verbal abuse wasn’t as bad as physical abuse. Physical abuse scared me while verbal abuse seemed funny to me. I would for sure learn the difference between the two later in life. They were both extremely hurtful, but I chose one over the other when I became upset.

Christmas was ruined, and ruined quite often. I saw abuse early on, up close and personal, and I never forgot it. I grew numb to it. Even when I learned how to abuse someone else—verbally or physically—I was numb to how they felt. I didn’t consider the effects of abuse, mainly verbal abuse, either. The I don’t give a shit how you feel attitude entered my soul very early. My words had become poison.

And through the years, my mother and grandmother were known to have extremely violent fistfights in the street.

Chapter 1

Good Roots

Little things matter.

Learn and know the matter in little things.

East Cleveland, Ohio, and Hough Avenue are my roots. I am not only deeply attached to my city, but I am forever grateful for Cleveland and the people who live there. Clevelanders especially love their athletes and their military. It’s one of the few cities left that still really cares about both, and I’m grateful for that—grateful enough to mention it. It was here that I spent my childhood, and it was here that my demons planted themselves deeply in my soul.

I was between the ages of five and nine years old when the initial tragic events took place from 1970 to 1974.

My family had moved to East Cleveland from the inner city of Cleveland. Before moving to East Cleveland, we were living off Superior Avenue somewhere. I believe it was a street called Moulton. Prior to that, my father had lived on the west side of Cleveland, where he grew up. That was where he met my mother. In the early ’60s, my father spent years in the violent Hough neighborhood located on the worst side of town in Cleveland. This is where it all began, really.

In 1966, there was a major race riot in Hough. Prior to the riots, there were about twelve thousand whites living there. It was upscale and a nice place to live, even having good Catholic schools. By the 1990s and early 2000s, however, you would never have known it to have been such a nice place. Life either forced the whites to move out, or it forced us blacks into poverty. The latter is really what happened. The truth of the matter is that whites and blacks have been trading places for years, but I feel that we as blacks were doomed from birth because of the color of our skin.

As blacks moved into the Hough area, whites moved out and into different neighborhoods. I say different, because Hough was still considered a good enough area to live in and raise kids until the demographics changed and it became known as a poor black neighborhood. Today, it has shifted once again. Poor blacks have moved out, and rich whites and blacks are moving back in. Talk about divide and conquer at its best.

Growing up there, we knew nothing different. We enjoyed what we had and thought that what we had was good enough—a lesson that I will return to in a bit. The important thing to remember is that thinking what we had was good enough became our mind-set, even though we knew deep down inside that we were better.

The things that I’m telling you now aren’t just true about me. They’re true about everyone who lived in Hough in those days. If you want to know why we are the way we are as blacks, I’ll tell you. It might hurt to hear it, but I’m going to be brutally honest. It’s because of coming from nothing and living in broken and dysfunctional households with divorce, murder, lack of standards, lack of organization, lack of morals, no insight, no guidance, no direction, and no caring. Worse yet, we get stuck. Once we achieve something, we either don’t value it at all, or we value it so much that we forget where we came from.

You’ll notice that I say black and not the more politically correct African American. In fact, most of us actually prefer to be called black. It’s a term that we grew up with. We also called each other nigga, a term of endearment shared among blacks. What’s up, nigga? we would say.

I never really understood that there were other black identities besides my own. I never knew much about people in Africa beyond the little bit that I learned in grade school, so it came almost as a surprise to me later in life when I learned that other people felt differently. I learned then that we as blacks are not accepted by the real Africans. They believe that we have been, and will always be, slaves of our own country. They see us as having been tainted by white America, so we are not their brothers, nor are our black women their sisters.

I was actually told this by an African man I met later in life. What was funny to me was that this African guy was in town to control a lucrative prostitution organization that included many Ethiopian women. He thought that I was tainted, but there he was, exploiting his African queens by way of the American crime of prostitution. Our conversation didn’t last very long after I pointed that out to him.

Still, not everyone thinks this way. I was later fortunate to meet other African men and women who made it clear to me that they did not share his beliefs. Hearing this made me feel a lot better about what I was told early on. I started to read more about the continent of Africa and its history, just to educate myself about where my ancestors were from and what they had endured. It broke my heart to learn these things, but now I know.

On another topic, I believe that many blacks are very materialistic, though that isn’t only true for blacks. We idolize sports figures, drug dealers, pimps, and hustlers. Over the years, as I sat down and thought about how materialistic we are, I realized it was what I was, and I was a part of it. I had become shallow, just like the others.

While I grew up around a strong circle of family and friends, I notice looking back on it that my priorities were screwed up. Although my parents made sure we went to school, did well, and respected our teachers, we weren’t taught to value higher education at all. Was it because my grandparents didn’t have an education, so there was nothing to pass down to my parents? Both of my parents dropped out of high school in the tenth grade. Conversation with family and friends in my household centered mostly around athleticism, wit, who gave the best parties, who had the best fighting skills, and who had the biggest penis—hardly academic topics. To this day, those topics of conversation haven’t changed much among many blacks. This has been proven over and over again.

While over the years, blacks have gotten much better at valuing things that matter and teaching their kids well, there is still a ways to go. We are more aware now of the minimizing and dehumanizing stereotypes that are still prevalent today, but they come back to hurt us time and again because some of us continue to value the wrong things.

However, this isn’t true for everybody. There are plenty of black families who expose their children to mentorship, guidance, and constant supervision, teaching them about the finer things in life. Part of this includes exposing them to people from other cultures, taking time to engage also with whites, Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnic groups. This kind of enrichment pays off. The blacks I know who were afforded the opportunity to branch out, or those who decided to do something with their life, have enjoyed stellar military careers and have become great leaders of the world. They also became solid pillars in the community, better-educated athletes, and have held down some of the most distinguished, lucrative positions in America, along with maintaining their athletic abilities.

I have found that it can be done: you can be an educated black man or black woman and still enjoy your athletic abilities, attend the prestigious universities, and do well in society. The negative stereotypes about blacks are only true about you if you live a life that makes them true.

One thing’s for sure, and I will carry this for the rest of my life. A hidden source of mentorship and guidance for us young kids growing up on Alder Avenue in East Cleveland and on Hough Avenue, in one of the roughest parts of Ohio, was found in the older men and women in our neighborhood. Some were older than our parents, and some much younger but older than we were. I’m talking about the older cats and ladies in the neighborhood, the East Cleveland pioneers. They really cared for us, and I feel proud when I think back on this memory. I will cherish it forever.

All the kids that I grew up with, my siblings and myself included, were lucky to have had them in our lives. I have no idea who taught and led them, but they passed their knowledge down to us each and every day. Because of them, we were all great athletes. We had manners, we had respect for our elders, we attended school, and we also possessed a great work ethic. Believe it or not—and a lot of people don’t know this—as young black kids, aside from the stereotypical basketball and football, we also learned how to ice skate, play tennis, swim, and wrestle—sports mostly thought of as things that white kids did, but we were all just as good, all because of the older cats in the hood.

For instance, I know that blacks have been playing golf for years. It just didn’t get any attention until Tiger Woods came on the scene. We all knew about it, and the older guys were talking about it back in the ’70s. There were even black lifeguards at the swimming pool back then. We all were Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, too. I sure miss those days. We didn’t realize that we were learning life lessons at the time. We just went along with it. But it really did help us. Not only did these experiences shape who I am today, but the lessons I learned back then would be my guiding light for years.

East Cleveland has had, and still has, some of the best athletes, musicians, and mentally strong people in the world. Our community was very tight-knit. Each time I go home, I make it a habit to look for these strong, positive men and women who led us. It really depends on what you are exposed to when it comes to what you know, how you think, and where you ultimately end up in life, and we were blessed early on to be