THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603200044
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLISE LYLES, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 241 lines
ON SUNDAY MORNING at Abyssinia Baptist Church in Norfolk, Tarrod Cunningham sings, a tenor angel beneath a neon cross. ``Just as I am, I come to thee, oh Lord.'' As he ushers the aisles, old ladies in flowery hats smile and wave sweetly.
On Monday morning at Maury High School, Tarrod, in leather jacket, swaggers down the hall, parting a crowd of pep-stepping nerds and slow-slogging bad boys. His dead-on, direct gaze intimidates.
He's been suspended at least seven times in his school career. ``I have a big record,'' he almost boasts. ``I believe fourth grade was my first time.''
At 17, Tarrod is a boy on the cusp. As he moves into manhood, he could go either way: become a statistic of crime, punishment and public school failure or ``make my mother proud and stuff.'' Home, community, mean streets and school tug him back and forth.
Tarrod and thousands of teens like him put lawmakers in a quandary: whether to spend millions on an ounce of prevention, or invest even more tax dollars to incarcerate kids gone wrong.
But Tarrod does not see his life through the lens of socio-economic problems that politicians, journalists and educators do. ``Inner-city,'' ``low-income,'' ``urban,'' ``underprivileged'' - their labels don't apply.
In Tarrod's world, he is just a boy growing up on West 34th Street, the master of his fate.
He is a manful boy, Wesley-Snipes dark and handsome, nearly 6 feet tall. In shirt-sleeves and pants creased enough to cut, he is looking for a job.
The hodgepodge of businesses on 35th Street don't do much hiring. So on he goes, past boarded-up houses, storefront churches and bullet-shattered windows to the Park Place Community Development Center.
Tarrod scopes out the place the way he scopes for Natasha, Kendra, girls. Positive posters on immaculate cinderblock walls speak: ``Take Personal Responsibility.'' The long, polished, board-of-directors table and 12 chairs beckon. The place has an aroma of importance, power - different from the street power up on Colley Avenue. Tarrod breathes it all in.
``I would like to inquire about a job, ma'am,'' he says to Delores Harris.
A long-time community worker, Harris has seen kids soar and too many stumble hard. An African amulet swings around her neck as if to protect them from the danger and hopelessness outside.
From the start, Harris detects character.
Persistent as the poverty in his neighborhood, Tarrod calls the next day. The next, he drops in. Then, he calls again. He's hired by a grocery store.
``I like his assertiveness,'' Harris says. ``He has the ability to be direct, to go after what he wants without being offensive or irritating.''
Harris sees a leader.
At the Order of the Eastern Star Masonic Lodge on Princess Anne Road, Tarrod is crowned Prince of the Sons and Daughters of Solomon. He dons a shiny white cape. ``That means I'm in charge of the youth.'' On weekends, he sells chicken-noodle dinners to assist his mother's campaign to be crowned Queen Esther of the Order.
Then he steals away to a friend. ``My mother doesn't like him because he smokes weed.'' What she doesn't understand, says Tarrod, is ``everybody smokes weed.''
``But I don't,'' he says. ``Sometimes, they might ask me to take a hit. I did once. But it'll never happen again. I don't let people pressure me.'' That was one of the ``worst'' things Tarrod's ever done. The other was a ``keg stand.''
``Me and my friend went to a white-boy party. It was my first time drinking beer. They held me upside down and I drank for 23 seconds. I got real dizzy and vomited the whole night. I don't drink beer no more, either.''
Sometimes, it's all a jumble pounding in his mind like a boom-box: drugs, drinking, girls like Natasha or Kendra who could tempt him into trouble. Something in him wants to do better than that. But then some days . . . .
He seeks advice from his minister, the Rev. Frank Guns, or from Harris, the community worker.
They see a boy growing into his own man.
``He doesn't wear those baggy pants and all of this gold jewelry that some of these boys wear,'' says Guns in his church chambers on Colley Avenue. ``No matter what I ask him to do, he'll do it. He's a very fine young man. I can't say anything bad about him.''
At the community center, Harris nods. ``He will be somebody that we'll hear good things about. He's something,'' she nods, her African amulet swinging. ``He's something.''
The job at the grocery store does not work out.
Tarrod telephones Harris angry, upset. They're cutting his hours back to four per week.
``Why?''
``Come on now, they must want me to quit.''
Plus, they're not treating him the way he thinks he ought to be treated.
The voice over the phone doesn't sound like the Tarrod that Harris knows.
She wonders about the assertiveness that she likes so much. Did it cause trouble for Tarrod on the job?
She knows that in a suburban boy, such a quality might be seen as savvy, the stuff of a future politician. But in a boy growing up in Park Place, it is often seen as aggressive, even dangerous.
She tries to calm Tarrod. ``Never mind, I'll find another job,'' he interrupts, and hangs up.
Telemarketing, McDonald's are his next gigs. Some of his friends don't respect them too much. ``It's money,'' says Tarrod.
Harris wonders a little and worries.
In early morning, an almost Leave-It-To-Beaver serenity hangs over Ernestine Cunningham Davis' house on 34th Street.
She has equipped her home with every essential of the American Dream - family-reunion photos, calico curtains, potpourri baskets, a saxophone, even a piano once. And Alex Davis, a loving, hard-working stepfather for her boy. So that maybe Tarrod will not turn out like his older brother. In and out of trouble.
Tarrod and his natural father used to get together a lot when he was a kid. They're ``friends'' now, says Tarrod. ``He's not exactly somebody I look up to.''
Tarrod dashes down the stairs, skips the cereal bit and grabs a school book that he's been forgetting a lot lately.
In the den, on the way to the door, he stops and bows his head before crossing the threshold. No one leaves Ernestine Davis' house in the morning without praying first.
She prays, ``Lord help us through this day,'' before putting on her coat to go to her mailroom job at Old Dominion University.
``Not tomorrow. And we're not worried about the past, oh Lord,'' her son intones. ``Help me to hold my temper. And not let these teachers provoke me.''
Tarrod shoves first.
It's pure reflex. He nearly knocks the boy down in front of the whole class. He can't stand anybody getting all up in his face. A dude had stabbed him when he was a kid. No way was he going to let it happen again. The match lands him out of school for five days in October.
On his report card, A's dip to D's.
At Maury High, the crown jewel of Norfolk schools, not quite midway between affluent Ghent and struggling Park Place, the forces of Tarrod's world clash most. Teachers with best intentions. Officials often on the offense.
The October suspension is at least number seven. ``Violation of Rule 31: Fighting - mutual combat.'' Five days.
They go back to fourth grade. Fighting. Five days.
Eighth grade. Disruption, screaming and yelling at a teacher. Five days.
Ninth grade. Disruption. ``Tarrod was involved in an altercation with another student which nearly ended in a fight.'' Two days.
Ninth grade again. Disruption. ``Horseplaying, walking out of class without permission, disrespect.'' Three days.
The suspensions are ``all part of the conspiracy to get me kicked out of here,'' says Tarrod, dropping into a cafeteria chair between classes. ``They don't want me here because I speak out for myself.''
He pauses.
``I know I've got to learn to control my temper. Sometimes I do it the right way. And sometimes I do it the wrong way.''
Cloaked in the tan leather jacket that he refuses to leave in a locker, Tarrod squeezes into a front-row desk in 11th-grade civics class, shunning boys in the back who wear braids and hooded sweatshirts.
``What are the privileges of the presidency?'' Tarrod's hand waves wildly. ``Pick me. Pick me.'' But his answers are borderline jive. ``A choice of the biggest Christmas tree and best turkeys in the United States.''
Teacher Darlene Gee returns a quiz, 17 out of 20 correct. Most sentences have no periods. And Tarrod does not have his book again today.
Gee puts her hands on her hips, puzzled. ``Plenty,'' she says. ``Tarrod has plenty of potential. That's why I stay on him. For three weeks, he'll be an angel. Then just like that, he'll change on me.''
On this November day, before Ernestine Davis leaves her house, she must pray about the gun.
Tarrod was carrying it on school grounds. That's what school officials alleged, according to Tarrod.
He had been driving the family van the day before when officials pulled him aside after school.
Students had reported seeing him and a gang of boys with a gun on school grounds. In the Maury parking lot, officials took his keys and put him in the back seat of a Norfolk Police car, no handcuffs.
``Go ahead, search it,'' Tarrod told them. ``All you'll find is pillows and Bibles.''
``And that's all they found,'' he told his mother.
Despite written permission from Tarrod's mother, Assistant Principal Ted Daughtrey declined to comment on the incident, citing student confidentiality.
Davis took several hours off from her $12,000 a year job as a mail sorter to go see about her son. But she didn't receive any answers, either.
``No one ever give me a clear explanation. I don't know what went on,'' she says.
Tarrod laughs about it all. ``Sometimes I come to school thinking, `Who's going to provoke me today, get me in trouble today?' But they're not going to get me. I'm going to graduate . . . with an academic diploma.''
Five months later, a composed, self-assured Tarrod in a necktie faces three panelists, professional, business types. He's a top contender for the Colonial Boys Club Youth of the Year.
He's not going to blow it this time.
Last year, he slam-dunked them when he asked about their career paths.
``Well, a lot of times the club brings people who've been in jail, or drug addicts - that's all right,'' he had said. ``But I want to know what people do who have never had to go to jail.''
Harris had raved. ``How insightful.'' Here was a boy disputing the not-so-subtle assumption that he would fail first, go to jail first. Here was a boy guarding his own destiny.
He still didn't win.
This time, Tarrod steadily answers all their questions. But he's just a little anxious about possible inquiries into his school record.
So he brings it up before they do.
``I used to get in a lot of trouble,'' he says. ``I had a temper and couldn't control myself. But I've overcame my past record. I always fight my battles. But I learned how to fight them, when to hold my tongue.''
Tarrod recites his last progress report: two As, two Bs and two Cs.
One panelist smiles. Is she impressed? Or dismayed? Disgusted?
At first, Tarrod can't tell.
Do they see the good Tarrod? Or the bad Tarrod?
The boy who pounds 35th Street looking for a job, any job? Or the boy who blows up and kicks butt at school? The boy who leads community youth in clean-up campaigns? Or the boy who has been suspended more than half a dozen times? The boy who sings like an angel in the church choir? Or the boy who lets the devil use his head for a drum?
Which?
Then it's clear. Yesss. They are pleased with him, pleased with his candor.
``I think my score went up because of it, because I changed,'' Tarrod grins.
He wins. Youth of the Year.
``He's a very nice young man, real quick to volunteer for us,'' says Kim Barnes, the club director.
``I knew I would (win) 'cause I got choices,'' Tarrod says, almost cocky, standing akimbo. ``I got a choice to go to college or I got a choice to get out of high school and don't do nothing. I got a choice to get somebody pregnant. I got a choice to go get a gun and get in a gang. Or I can make my mother proud and stuff.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Tarrod Cunningham chats with his friends after practicing with the
gospel choir of Maury High School in Norfolk.
ABOVE: Tarrod also sings with the Abyssinia Baptist Church choir.
Yet he is no choirboy: He has been suspended from school at least
seven times.
LEFT: Tarrod laughs in Spanish class with Stacy Gregg, left, and
Tasha Dobson, right. ``For three weeks, he'll be an angel,'' says
one teacher. ``Then just like that, he'll change on me.''
Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Torrod[sic] Cunningham, far right, attends an Abyssinia Baptist
Church Sunday school class led by Frances Blowe, far left.
by CNB