Life Lessons of a Grown Babi: The Death of Ox by Lynn Washington by ConTextos Chicago

Life Lessons of a Grown Babi:

The Death of Ox

Lynn Washington

The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people at-risk of, victims of, or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017 this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high quality opportunities that nourish the minds, expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive self-projection to author new life narratives.

Since January 2017 ConTextos has partnered with Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection. These powerful memoirs complicate the narratives of violence and peace building, and help author a hopeful future for human beings behind walls, their families and our collective communities.

While each author’s text is solely the work of the Author, the images used to create this book’s illustrations have been sourced by various print publications. Authors curate these images and then, using only their hands, manipulate the images through tearing, folding, layering and careful positioning. By applying these collage techniques, Authors transform their written memoirs into illustrated books.

This project is being supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number ALN 21.027 awarded to Cook County by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Life Lessons of a Grown Babi: The Death of Ox

Lynn

Washington

Lynn sit still before you fall out that chair, stop jumping up in that chair before you hurt yourself. That’s what my sister and mother told me they said that day. And right now I have a permanent scar on my right eye that’s evident I had to find out the hard way why I should’ve sat down. That way of being must've stuck with me because I’ve had a lot of hard lessons that continued to come about in my life.

Growing up in Harvey was the shit when I was younger. My Granny (NaNa) and my mother Niecy (MeMa) knew everybody so any given Sunday we would have a house full of people and a dinner jumping off. Dinner wasn’t wings and fries, it was pot roast, smothered turkey, dressing, mac and cheese, fried smothered potatoes, fried chicken, candied yams with marshmallows, string beans and potatoes, seven layered salad, mustard and collard greens, deviled eggs and something barbequed with spaghetti plus German chocolate, pineapple coconut and a pound cake with a few egg pies.

The respect for my NaNa had the drinkers outside with the smokers. Some uncles and cousins would let you get a sip of beer, but that would only be to see your face from the nasty taste of the beer. Then they would charge us up to slapbox with them or with a cousin my age or size. At a few dinners me and my cousin Buster would fight and for whatever reason, I didnt know for a long time why my cousin Lou wanted us to fight but on command we would get right to it. Then I realized that if I got too close to Buster after a punch I would end up on my back pockets until I asked Buster how he was getting me down and he told me he was a Harvey Twister.

My hard lesson was underestimating Buster couldn’t whoop me, or that big cousin Lou who showed me love wanted me to get whooped. At another dinner I did the trick Biff did on the movie Back to the Future to my cousin Sandy, because I figured she was on crutches, she was easy prey. But instead of getting her to look down at her shoes so I could run my finger up her face over her lips, she stole on me straight in my nose.

My underestimating days were over, I thought.

It was a lot of fun with my cousins and friends. I remember my girlfriend Shante found a lit cigarette from one of my family members and told me we should smoke it. So she convinced me to hit it first. I took a pull and damn near blacked out. All I could remember was her lil pretty self tearing ass back to the front of the house. Then my dad telling me, “So you wanted to be grown, you almost killed yourself trying to smoke.”

We were always in competition. Who was the tallest, the smartest, and the fastest. The fastest competition was one of my favorites because on fact, I would smoke the fastest child or grown up even if I had on boots. One day the fastest competition came with me and my cousin Buddy, but it came with a task. The task was to ride on the side of the house and knock down a huge beehive with a stick and keep it moving. Of course I went first and I realized it was a lot of bees already so we came up with the idea to put on a windbreaker, now we really on something.

But Buddy’s became the smartest in this competition and he persuaded me with, “I’m the oldest, so I could go first so I'm off.” The stick was long enough, the bike was aired up good enough, I had a windbreaker on, hood tied up but had no idea about the terrain. I cut up through the side of the house and accomplished all my goals, but my tire went in a dip and flipped the bike over, upside down on me and just like Shante I saw Buddy tearing ass from the back side of the house.

Them bees got to me so good. They didn’t only sting through the thin windbreaker, they stung in the windbreaker all over my legs and with all that good planning I never thought about pants. So I ended up sick and being in the hospital from being allergic to the stings. My lesson was to cross all T’s and dot all I’s before I take part in anything and to never be mindless and follow no one.

My family is one of a kind. They never spared or felt the need to not show me an understanding and make sure it’s understood very well. I jumped off the porch while I was going to Emerson, between fourth and sixth grade. I had a cousin who was hustling drugs, and one day, while looking for a dollar or two I found a pack of rocks in his jacket pocket.

I stole one the first time and a few more every other time until I came home one day to an argument, because my cousin was blaming my old man for taking them. But what happened was my old man went to work around 5 AM and I would sneak in and steal the rocks and be out the house before my mother made it home by 7:45 AM.

I would leave out when my brother caught the bus, and even though we stayed across the street from the school, I was out early and would walk to the dead end to Michael Dawkins tip and walk back to school. But what Michael didn’t know was I would serve a fiend before I got to his door.

Body

A cluck asked me if I was straight and gave me my first 20 and I would have a shopping spree at the candy lady house before school. Then one day Mrs. Dawkins showed up at the school with the police and pointed in the classroom at me. And that morning, right then I hadn’t realized Michael wasn’t in class.

So the story was a cluck went to their house looking for some work and Mrs. Dawkins answered the door. And when they got to the bottom of it, Eric and Michael looked over our friendship and dodged an ass whooping by telling on me. I denied it, but the taste of money had me open so now I’m hanging on the dead end getting paid. But the logic of making $140 and I only keep $40 didn’t make sense to me.

Plus I became Blackstone but I didn’t get any work from them because they were passing out some crucial ass whoopins and my cousin Mahdi was the Kabar and forewarned me I will not be spared because we ’ re family.

But Harvey was flooded with people who knew my family and they didn’t mind being left anxious cause that’s all I would do and was cold on duck in them. But now I am in Brooks seventh grade and it’s not candy, it’s Used, Damage and Slick jeans, with Nike Crosstrainers, ACGs, and Jordans.

Then as the laws of nature would have it, that good thing came to an end.

I had an uncle that I figured was kool enough to pass me some paper. He told me how long I had before he wanted his money back. I agreed and I got back down. But old habits die hard and I ended up spending without thinking about Unk or the return. I played over the due date until my uncle showed up at our house one morning with a song called “Love’s Going to Last" by Jeffrey playing.

By the time the song reached its crescendo, I was getting grabbed up and getting attacked with a big long screwdriver. Fighting for my life was an understatement, and at that moment I didn't think he wouldn’t have taken it. And this is my uncle.

While I’m on my back, fighting with arms and my legs to make sure this big long screwdriver, don’t make it to its destinations my father open the front door and hollered out, “Aye, Aye, Aye” and my uncle stop trying to stab me and I stop fighting against him and my father’s next words, no doubt, shocked us both. He said, “Y’all take that down the street and close the front door.” And just like Shante and Buddy when my uncle looked up, I was tearing ass down the street.

So I took to being sadistic and evil. I took the name Lil Lucifer and rode the wave of, “if anybody do anything to me or mines, it's a problem” even though my family wasn’t messing with me. I was hell-bent with the thoughts, and couldn’t wait to have a problem to confront. Fortunately, in the midst of my madness, my brother took me to Ohio and tried to calm me down. It didn’t work. I became harder, more aggressive and dangerous until my hustle became superb. I even dabbled in swan pimping.

Then one morning, I asked Grass to drive for me, because it was a lot of police around and I was dirty and he refused me and told me one of his eyes was blurry and he couldn’t see out the other one. I knew it was serious because he never denied me.

The next day I got a phone call telling me Grass had a stroke walking down Fourth Street going to the hospital. My parents came to Ohio the following day and took him back to Chicago and ultimately found out he had an aggressive brain tumor. That was February. So I came back to the tip and rekindled a relationship from my early childhood and high school years. Tarrylyn Yvette Williams became my girlfriend again.

Body

We liked each other in pre-K, lost contact until around ninth grade and she became my girlfriend again and now here we were again, but this time she became more than a girlfriend; she was my woman and she got pregnant. Our families thought our love was rare and very special. Pre-K and high school to college sweethearts. We even went to the prom and the day after while still in our prom clothes, I took my GED and now here we are about to have a child together at 20 years old.

Grass’ tumor had been taken out, but it grew back double its size within a month and a half. By the end of April, the tumor was in full force, and all we were left to do is make arrangements to bring him home because before he got really sick, all he spoke about was going home.

By May, Grass was at home and we were watching him lose his way, his speech, his sight, motor skills. Then at the end of May my brother passed at 24 years young. I’m still hotheaded, but I can’t kill cancer and I have a beautiful woman with our baby on the way.

Six months later around Thanksgiving, I had to run to Detroit so I let Tarrylyn know I’m coming right back, but if she go through anything call me because she due in the very end of November or the very beginning of December. While I’m in the D my phone rang and it’s Tarrylyn’s number so I answered, “What’s up, baby?” but it’s not Tarry, it’s her father Robert and he asking me where I’m at. I told him, “I’m out of town,” he said, “I need to make it back because Tarry had to go to the hospital.”

I asked what’s up he just continued to tell me hurry back and he gonna tell her I love her. I got back to Chicago to find out the baby’s umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and decapitated her and poisoned Tarry’s blood Causing toxemia and she went into shock and cardiac arrest and passed. I didn’t know what I felt. It was too surreal.

Five months later I’m in the bed and I hear banging at my front room window and someone calling my name. My dogs are going crazy and I get to the window and it’s Mema telling me my cousin Spike is not doing too well and if I want to see him alive come now. When we pull up to my aunt's house, it’s cars from corner to corner and all my cousins and family everywhere.

Come to find out, my cousin had been sick, but nobody knew how to contact me. My mother had just found out where I stayed that morning. When I got in the house, my cousin was already gone. But he had a do not resuscitate him type of order if he passed, so the ambulance wasn’t coming. The only person waiting on a call was the funeral home. I kissed him on the forehead and that day I felt the pressure of my position I put myself in.

Two months later Mahdi, my cousin who was the Kabar for the Black stones, was now a prince, caught me on the block and confided in me about a lot of things unbeknownst to me. At the time of me hearing it, I didn’t know how to receive it. Because I couldn’t understand why he was telling me. He even let me know the fake name he was using. I was always in awe with Mahdi because he represented what I wanted to become with the Moes. He was getting plenty paper, looked like an action figure, he'll kick some ass, fluent in Arabic, the girls loved him, and he was my big cousin.

A girl named Candy came on the block a few days later and asked me did I know Isaiah Hawkins and I tell her yeah that’s (Mahdi) Tyrone and she say that’s what she thought and it’s some detectives calling her to identify his body. I had the task of going to identify my cousins overkilled bullet ridden body, and bring him back to Gatling’s funeral home for his services.

By the end of August, in the same year, my cousin, who was one year younger than me, get a rare cancer. I’m so pissed with cancer in fact, I can’t do nothing about my people who I’m losing in death but watch. I’m forced into a state of complete denial. I will not and can’t believe Timmy died two months after Mahdi, eight months after his older brother Spike, 13 months after Tarrylyn and 18 months after Grass. And to top all that off while I’m seeing live in living color they’re indeed gone. My beautiful grandmother MaMa Sally passed 92 years young a couple weeks later.

All while thinking the same immature thoughts that I’m gonna do something to anybody who does something to my people, cancer and time wiped away a handful in less than two years. Life was walking me through the valley of death, letting me witness my childish thoughts were frivolous, and held no weight.

Acts I’d done as a kid put me on a speed track to living as an adult. I looked into my life and realized it was me. I put life in a position as if I could control and preserve it because of how much I loved. But soon came to realize I didn’t have control over nothing but my thoughts. And what I thought were life‘s hard lessons was denial of accepting life on its terms, and because I deemed them hard, and expected them to be hard they continued and came hard. Until I realized I was learning to be responsible, mature, how to think, how to love to listen, how to treat others to not take anything or anyone for granted so never underestimate nothing and to live life to the limits and love it alive.

Life’s lessons were essential to my growth and growing up. Life lessons of a grown babi...

Life Lessons of a Grown Baby and the Death of Ox was established from humble beginnings and tough love. It prevailed because of consistent persistance...