THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604290030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
In sixth grade, 12-year-old Shalieka Jarrett listened as the two worlds she knew violently collided. The only sound on impact was a gentle sniff, sniff.
Sssssssst. Sssssssst.
The sound came from the next room. Two little girls locked eyes, and they shook their heads knowingly.
``We said, `Mom's doing drugs.' ''
The outside world had breached the safe world of home.
For the next five years, Shalieka struggled to preserve the family bond, tracking her siblings as they moved in and out of foster homes across New York City and, at the same time, tending her dream - to get out of the city and into college.
This month, the Hampton University freshman is being recognized as a 1996 Essence Award Honor Roll Achiever. The May edition of Essence, a magazine for black women, features her picture along with the likes of actor-philanthropist Bill Cosby and a handful of lesser-known but equally spirited African-Americans who have bettered their world or overcome great obstacles.
Drugs, divorce, the dregs of the inner city - Shalieka, though only 18, has met them all and defied any of them to bring her down.
By the time Shalieka reached high school, the drug culture outside the Bronx building she called home had seeped into her family's two-bedroom apartment and touched every part of her life.
Shalieka came to know the cycles of a cocaine addict. ``At first, there were no clues, it wasn't so intense,'' Shalieka said. Later, she could tell when her mom was high - ``She'd be walking fast, moving fast. I'd ask her if I could go outside and she'd say, `OK, whatever.' ''
When the high turned into low, ``it was like she hated the world.''
By then, Shalieka had found another world - a youth center in Harlem and her high school - safe places where she nurtured her dream.
Shalieka went to the High School of Teaching in Manhattan, a public school that she applied to get into. Kids go there because they want to be teachers, or because it's safer than their neighborhood schools. After classes, she earned $5 an hour at the Rheedlen Center for Children and Families. She needed the money for food, for clothes, and she didn't want to go home.
``I'll do anything,'' she told Geoffrey Canada, the center's director, when she applied for the job.
``I told her, `You have to know that all we have is sweeping floors, emptying garbage and cleaning bathrooms,'' Canada said. Almost immediately, he sensed an unusual determination in Shalieka. But three months later, when she finally told Canada about her other world, he was shocked.
``There was no food in her house; the drug dealers were treating her as if she came with the territory,'' Canada said. ``There were constant invitations to get romantically involved that were getting more aggressive.''
Sometimes, Shalieka would return well after dark to find drug dealers sitting on the couch, watching TV, just hanging out. Right there in her house. She'd say ``hi'' because she had to be civil, but then she'd go into the room that she shared with her siblings and shut the door. Inside the bedroom, Shalieka sometimes talked with her siblings about the drugs and the dealers to make sure they understood what was going on was bad and they shouldn't get involved.
In ninth grade, Shalieka received two presents. Her godmother gave her a silver locket on a chain for her birthday and her mom gave her a silver cross for Christmas. One day as she got ready for school, she thought, I should put that on. I should take that with me. Then she thought, No, she wouldn't take that, and stuffed the cross and chain in a dresser drawer.
When she returned from work that night, the silver was gone. She confronted her mother.
``Now why would I do that?'' her mother asked.
As her mother harvested whatever she could to support her habit, Shalieka's clothes - bought with money from her job - also began to disappear.
``In my neighborhood,'' Shalieka said, ``people will buy anything.'' Searching for peace, Shalieka moved in with her aunt. When she moved back home her junior year, her mother asked her to pay rent.
``Rent?'' Shalieka asked. ``Are you crazy? I live here.''
Shalieka bought a lock, put it on her closet door and moved everything she owned inside. She kept the key with her all the time, even when she slept.
In Shalieka's Bronx neighborhood, most kids don't think about finishing high school. In fact, less than half of New York City high school students graduate with their class; 20 percent just give up.
Shalieka's determination made her a pariah.
``No one in the neighborhood liked me,'' she said. ``I was going to work; I was going to school. Nobody I knew even thought about getting out of the neighborhood.'' Meanwhile at school, Shalieka was getting mostly A's.
She tried to ignore the dealers, but sometimes it seemed impossible. One day, as she walked into the apartment building, one of them tripped her. She started yelling at him, and he threw a Snapple bottle at her but missed. It hit the door and shattered.
The second time, Shalieka got scared. She was on her way to work when an argument erupted with one of the dealers in the street. She thought about calling the cops, but he threatened to beat her up if she dared to touch a phone. All around people watched the scholar and the dealer. No one tried to stop it.
``I didn't feel safe in my mother's house,'' Shalieka said. ``I never knew what I was walking into, I just never knew.''
Canada helped Shalieka realize that she couldn't go it alone and steered her toward agencies that could help. It was a tough decision, but she knew what she had to do.
On an October afternoon in 1993, New York City child welfare officials knocked on Shalieka's door. It was a knock she had been expecting.
``Just grab some things,'' the social worker said.
``C'mon, c'mon, hurry, we need to go,'' Shalieka told her younger sister and brother. Her older sister wasn't home.
Shalieka unlocked the closet and stuffed what she could into a paper bag while her siblings did the same. A few days later, they were staying at Norma Boyd's big house in Queens, where her sister slept in the attic and Shalieka and her brother shared a room.
``I'm glad we got out at the time we did,'' she said. ``I was scared for my life. They were crazy, you just never knew what was going to happen.''
Shalieka's junior year was a maze of court hearings and bus rides to bring books and candy to her siblings, who were eventually scattered in foster homes across the city. Shalieka moved in with Marlene Fox, an adult co-worker at the Rheedlen Center, who became a surrogate mother. Canada became her mentor and confidant.
``Eventually,'' Shalieka said, shrugging, ``you have to ask somebody for help.''
Later, there was a drug bust in the two-bedroom apartment, and her mother went to jail. She served her time on Rikers Island.
Through it all, Shalieka hardly missed a day of school or an hour of work. In the end, she graduated 11th in a class of 100. The PTA awarded her a scholarship. So did her church. She was accepted into a private black college. She left the city.
Shalieka tells all this quickly, flatly, while perched on a wall outside her Hampton University dorm. It's all in the past; she dealt with it and it can't hurt her now. Shalieka much prefers the future, which includes staying on the dean's list and then, in a couple of years, obtaining a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in teaching special education. Down the road, she might want to have two or three kids.
``She's seen the toughest parts of life already,'' said Canada, who nominated Shalieka for the Essence award. ``She's already passed that test; the other parts won't be so difficult.''
This summer, Shalieka will be back in New York to work. She will be living with her mom during the week and with the Foxes on the weekends. Most of her money will go toward tuition, but some will buy a desperately needed computer so she can crank out those term papers - like the one she just wrote on the limited agricultural resources of Africa - that will only get longer as she gets closer to her dream.
Today, her mom, Ceferina Rasulala, is out of jail and a full-time, dean's list student at a New York junior college. She answers phones 48 hours a week and sends Shalieka money when she can. Shalieka's sisters and brother are back at home.
Shalieka and her mom talk on the phone three times a week. But the mother and daughter don't talk much about ``the situation.''
``We know we can't forget it,'' Shalieka said. ``They know what happened. I know what happened.''
It's a perfect spring day at Hampton University. Sitting on the wall, bathed in sunshine, Shalieka seems somehow unscarred by it all. The only outward clue is her steely, straight-up posture and a chin held a little higher, with a little more determination, than the rest of us.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB