Latisha's Children

The afternoon sun hung low, washing the front yard in that buttery October light that comes only when half the leaves are on the ground and half still hang in the trees. Joy Perez stood on the lawn shouting directions as a makeshift Halloween graveyard rose around her.

"Put that one in back there," she said, pointing out a spot to her nephew Steven Kelley. He bent a coat hanger to anchor the homemade cardboard gravestone.

"Why don’t you put them in a row?" he asked.

"It’s an old graveyard, Steven," Joy said with a laugh. "The gravestones are crooked, OK?"

The Perez-Barnes family was putting the last touches on an extravagant Halloween tableau. Scarecrows lined the fence. A cloth witch smacked into a tree and a life-sized plastic skeleton dangled from a tree branch. Seven squat pumpkins, all from Joy’s garden, sat by the walkway waiting to be carved.

There was one for Joy and Manuel, one for her son and one for each of the four grandkids. "It’s like it was planned for the family," Joy said. "I think Tisha sent them."

Halloween was the last holiday Latisha’s four children spent with her before she was killed on Nov. 5, 2000. After so much real fear, it felt good to laugh at the synthetic variety. And Joy knew it would be the last holiday she would enjoy for a long time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s all would be tainted by memories of last year’s raw grief.

"I just want to have just one last good time," she said. "I want to do it up for the kids."

She looked around with satisfaction. Her 19-year-old son, Renaldo, who now stooped to prune perennials, was coming by the house more often. Sterling, Joy’s 11-year-old son, was back home after spending time in a shelter for troubled kids. Nylah, who would be 3 in November, threw handfuls of leaves. Michael, 8, and Marcus, 6, spread straw over the make-believe graves. Only 4-year-old Donte was missing, ordered to stay inside because he’d refused to take a nap.

Marcus, who wore a black stocking cap pulled low on his forehead, carefully arranged a narrow bundle of straw in front of a cardboard gravestone. "Grandma, Grandma," he yelled with delight. "Look at this skinny person!"

Joy threw back her head and laughed, her husky voice carrying in the crisp autumn air.

Since the trial, life for Latisha’s children has settled into a comfortable routine. The boys take turns seeing a counselor each week and are doing well in new schools, a good barometer of their healing. They lose themselves in laughter now and are completely different from the shell-shocked children who were dropped off at their grandmother’s trailer a year ago. With Joy creating a loving, stable home, their future looks hopeful. Yet all the children remain profoundly touched by the loss of their mother, and will be for the rest of their lives. 

SIGNS OF HEALING

Marcus came home from school one day and said, "I miss Mom," and seemed sad, Joy reported. But he was able to express his feelings and that is a good sign. Gradually, the horrifying images of Latisha’s death were receding and being replaced by the less fearsome emotions of sorrow and longing.

Studies of children who witness violence in the home show again and again that they are more likely to become aggressive themselves. But that has not been the case with Latisha’s boys. Marcus seems especially sensitive to others’ suffering and vulnerability.

One morning in early October, his first-grade class released monarch butterflies. The children had raised them from eggs, watching their transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. Marcus could proudly describe the difference between pupa and chrysalis.

After the Pledge of Allegiance and music class where Marcus sang with gusto in the front row, the teacher led the children to the courtyard.

"It’s a nice warm day for them to come out and fly," she said, setting the mesh cage on a picnic table.

Marcus maneuvered to the front and held open the mesh flap as the teacher coaxed a butterfly onto her hand, then onto Marcus’ finger. He stared at it, wide-eyed, until it flew off and the other children rushed after it.

"He wants to fly," Marcus said with concern. "Let it go!"

The butterfly landed in the grass a few feet away. Marcus shooed back the other children and lifted a leaf that had drifted onto the monarch’s wing. Then he leaned close and whispered, "Are you OK, buddy?"

Michael is learning to read, something that even a year ago, Joy wondered if he would master. Every day after school, he sits on the bench at the kitchen table to sound out simple sentences from his homework for his grandmother. "The airplane is green. The box is green. Put the chicken in the box." Joy has hung the living room and kitchen walls with his school papers, including his first spelling test where he scrawled lopsided words in pencil: fish, boy, in.

Michael remains tender and affectionate. He brings Joy gifts of flowers or fall leaves, asks her to make his favorite Jell-O pudding or lures her attention with little favors, "Look Grandma, I’m mopping your floor."

When the children first came to live with Joy, Michael would sometimes stand mute with frustration, unable to form even a simple phrase. He still grows tongue-tied when excited, but far less often.

In recent weeks, though, he has reverted to his old pattern of wailing inconsolably at the slightest trigger. Joy wondered if he associated Halloween and the change of season with his mother’s death. One day, he sobbed because Joy was busy and he had to read aloud to Manuel. Another day it was because his swim trunks weren’t in his backpack for a school field trip. Joy tries to be patient, understanding that her grandchildren’s grief will ebb and flow, even as it recedes over time. 

CHILDREN REMAIN FRAGILE

Donte exemplifies the children’s fragility. In late September, Joy fell ill with pneumonia and after an argument, Manuel left the house for three days. It was a hard time for everyone, but 4-year-old Donte seemed most affected. At Head Start that day, he told his teacher, "Did you know somebody killed my mother?" It was the first time Donte had mentioned it.

Usually a good-natured boy with a toothy smile, Donte loved school and quickly copied the other children in activities. But he remained troubled the day after he mentioned his mother’s murder. He played with balls and hula-hoops, but refused to join the group for singing and curled up in a corner when it was time to clean up. It took several minutes for the teacher to coax him upstairs, where he refused to eat lunch. After Manuel returned, Donte seemed to spring back.

Nylah, the youngest child and only girl, has blossomed into a playful sprite with the assurance that comes from being the darling of the family. The curly hair that was falling out after her mother’s death now grows thick. She talks in complete sentences and wants to go to school like her brothers. She loves roughhousing and begs visitors to twirl her around the living room by her ankles.

"I feel like I’m raising Tisha again," Joy said one day as Nylah, eating a hot dog, climbed into her lap. "It’s that humor and that laughter. She comes running into a room and I feel like I’m 24 again and it’s my Tisha running around that corner."

Nylah still sometimes calls Joy "Mommy," which makes her grandmother uncomfortable. Joy doesn’t want to replace her daughter. But Tom Ellis, the grief counselor, said to let it be. Nylah will sort it out when she is ready.

The child who is struggling most is Joy’s own son, Sterling. After Latisha died, much of his mother’s attention was consumed by her grandchildren. Sterling, already mutinous, began acting out more. By late summer, he was refusing to take a bath for weeks on end. He took his meals to the basement to eat alone. He picked on the younger kids, once telling Nylah to put her fingers in the toaster and push it down.

When Joy asked him why he did it, he said he was mad. He used bad words at school, where he attends a special program, and when the school sent home a note, he tried to grab it from his cousin Steven and threatened him with a pair of scissors.

The day after Sterling’s 11th birthday Joy sent him to a shelter for troubled kids, where he remained for a couple weeks. Now back home, he seems to be doing better. On the anniversary of his sister’s murder, he joined the other children in writing notes to Latisha that they sent aloft tied to helium balloons: "I love you sis, … I hope to see you in the afterworld, I know I’m gonna see you again ... I love you, how much I love you, you know I do, Sterling." 

MAKING PROGRESS

Joy and Manuel’s relationship remains rocky. But Joy recently convinced Manuel to start seeing counselor Tom Ellis on his own, and he said it was helpful. And, less consumed by her own loss, Joy better understands Manuel’s.

"He’s so hurt and so lonesome because the kids get all the attention. You can imagine what he feels. He’s human and he’s trying so hard. He gets so frustrated, sometimes he can’t take it."

Money is still a constant worry. Joy feels guilty about living off the children’s Social Security death benefits and wants to go back to work cleaning houses, to get out of the house and reclaim a part of her own life. "I need to hear someone say ‘Good job, Joy.’ I need to make someone feel happy and feel good," she said. But her health is fragile. She remains weak after a debilitating bout of pneumonia that landed her in a hospital on intravenous antibiotics. Also, she has been unable to find affordable day care for Nylah. In the meantime, Manuel may search for a job.

Although Joy’s grief has become more manageable with time, it still can overwhelm her. On the night of Nov. 5, the first anniversary of Latisha’s murder, Joy woke often and looked for the clock, wondering, was this the time? Was this the time exactly that her daughter fought for her life? Was this the time the bullet was fired? Was this the time she fell to the floor?

Joy has prayed for God to let her dream about Latisha, so she can feel her daughter’s presence, just for a moment. But she hasn’t.

"I somehow put into my mind that she’s a seed somewhere, and when this world ends and everything regrows, she’ll grow again," Joy said as she clipped back a few last perennials in her garden. "And I’ll be a seed, too. And somehow we’ll be together. Maybe we’ll never see each other in the same bodies, but God keeps promising eternal life. … I’m going to trust him."

As for Areece Manley, the man convicted of her daughter’s murder, Joy still wants him to admit what he did and recognize the pain he caused. But Manley, who is serving his life sentence at the maximum-security state prison in Oak Park Heights, maintains his innocence and is appealing his conviction.

Manley’s family stands by him. "He’s seen women in his life — women he loved — be abused," his mother, Geneaver Manley, said. "That’s why I can’t understand how they could say these things. He loved Tisha and he loved those kids."

CREATING MEMORIES

When Nylah turns 18, Joy will be 61. The better part of the rest of her life will be devoted to raising her grandchildren. She plans to teach them to cook ham hocks and greens, Latisha’s favorite dish. She wants to have them baptized and somehow, to find money for piano lessons. She wants them to do well in school and dream of being judges or teachers. Most important, she wants to nurture their memories of their mother.

To help with that, she has put aside mementos in a white paper bag in her bedroom. Latisha was a poor woman, so the keepsakes are modest: the black sweater she wore for the last portrait with her children and the sash to her silky bathrobe printed with pink and red hearts, the robe Marcus wore from the house the day of his mother’s murder.

One of Latisha’s rings and the gold cross with a diamond chip that Joy bought to put on Latisha’s body for her funeral are also there, saved for Nylah. Even a half-used container of Dove deodorant is in the bag.

"Of course, it won’t be no good by the time they grow up. But they can smell it. And I can say, ‘This is what your mom smelled like.’ "

As Joy was putting everything back in the bag, Nylah ran into the bedroom. "Let Grandma see your finger," Joy said.

Nylah pointed obediently.

"No, your ring finger," said Joy and then slipped onto Nylah’s finger a tiny gold baby ring that Latisha had bought for Nylah at a pawn shop.

"I have a ring!" Nylah squealed, prancing off to show Manuel.

"Oh, your mom would be so ..." Joy began, and then choked up. It was one more thing Latisha would never see.