Encircled By Love And Duty Times Picayune 02-03-1998 "Life After Death" 3 Of 6 Part Series ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ There is nothing in her manner that even hints at rebellion. She dresses conservatively in her school uniform, with the shirt tucked in neatly. She addresses adults as Mr. or Mrs. She sings in the church choir. There is no dyed hair, no wild makeup, no tattoos, and only her ears are pierced. She is much too reserved for the pop style of mutiny favored by some people her age. But Shantel Young is 15, frustrated and silently seething. "I am NOT a typical teen-ager," she says, shaking her head and sighing hard. "I don't get to go anywhere. No school dances, no mall, nothing. I just sit at home." "Typical teen-agers get to hang out. I don't." As she attempts to navigate a situation not of her making, she sometimes finds it all confusing and not a little unfair. She is exasperated by the thought that life, as she imagines it, is passing her by. Partly to blame, she believes, is that her family doesn't fit the traditional mother-and-father mold. Shantel has not lived with her parents for years. When she was 3, her mother relinquished custody to her father, saying she was unable to care for her. A year later, when he was sent to jail, her father relinquished custody to his mother. When Shantel was 8, her father was killed. Although Shantel's mother is still in New Orleans, the two rarely see each other. "She's trying to get her life together," Shantel says, narrowing her eyes and creasing her eyebrows, signs of a forthcoming revelation. "She moves around a lot" is the way she puts it. Today Shantel still lives with her grandmother, Viola Hall, and her father's sister, Geraldine Singleton. While she knows they love her, she sometimes feels suffocated by their rules and annoyed about her role as baby-sitter while her aunt is at work. "I don't mean to be rude to them or anything, or make them feel bad," Shantel says haltingly, "but sometimes I don't want to be here. "I just want to be with my mom and my dad." *** Family struggles *** Charles Singleton, a part-time construction worker, is remembered by his family as a carefree soul who had a knack for making people laugh. He loved his only child but wasn't prepared for the responsibilities of fatherhood. He was 19 and a high school dropout when Shantel was born. His girlfriend was 16 and on her way to dropping out. The three of them lived with his mother, who was smitten with the tiny, premature baby, Shantel's Aunt Geraldine recalls. "She was my momma's first grandchild," she says. "It was fun." Singleton was fiercely protective of his daughter, comically so at times. "He was very, very strict," his mother says. "We would buy her clothes and if certain things were too short, he wouldn't want her to wear it. And she was a baby!" He would supervise her playtime with a neighborhood boy, frowning and mumbling whenever anyone dared suggest the two would grow up and date. "He would stop her from going out to play with him," Geraldine Singleton says. "We would say, 'Charles, they're babies. Let them play.' " Hall was hurt and perplexed when her son was arrested, and then convicted, of theft. "He had a lot of good in him," she says quietly. "I don't know what happened." She tried to keep his life from taking that turn. Singleton was 12 in 1976 when his mother embarked on a new beginning, moving her family out of the Desire public housing complex to Gentilly. It would be a step up for her family from the rowdiness and temptations of Desire, she thought. "That was the best thing that could have happened," Geraldine Singleton says. "Most everybody that lived there were single parents and the people were so mean. It was bad." She recalls having to defend herself and her younger brothers from older children. "I was very protective of my brothers and I always fought, constantly," she says. "People wanted to jump on them for the things they had." The early days in Gentilly were fun, filled with childish pranks and innocent mischief. But as the children got older, the neighborhood began to change. "People moved in from everywhere," Hall says. "And drugs came with them." The nerve-jangling sound of gunfire is frequent now. The corner store, where her father and his siblings shopped regularly, is off-limits to Shantel and her cousins because of the loiterers. "Every time I turn around, somebody's shooting," Hall says. "When I hear it, since my child got killed, I jump. My heart races." *** Everything changes *** On Sunday, Jan. 20, 1991, Viola Hall dressed and headed to The Asia Baptist Church as she normally did. She stopped by Singleton's room to let him know that she was going. "He told me he loved me," she says. "That particular day, it didn't dawn on me as being out of the ordinary, that that would be the last time he would say those things to me." At church, the pastor called the congregation to the altar. Hall made her way down the aisle to make a request. "I said, 'Rev. Bridges, pray for my son, he's getting ready to go overseas,' " Hall says, referring to a son then in the Air Force and headed for Gulf War action in Saudi Arabia. "I didn't realize I was asking him to pray for the wrong son," she says. "That same Sunday, Charles got killed. That same night." Shantel remembers she was on the couch watching television when her father stooped to kiss her on his way out to run an errand. "He said he'd be back in 30 minutes," Shantel recalls. "I said, 'All right, Daddy.' "When I woke up, I heard my father's girlfriend in the bathroom on the telephone crying." Charles Singleton was dead. Having dropped by a neighborhood bar before his errand, he was stopped by a man who got out of a car and shot him in the chest and back. He was a block away from home. He was 27. "Someone was knocking on my door and I heard this guy say, 'Ms. Viola, come see, Charles got shot," Viola says. "He was dead when I got around there." The reason for the murder remains a mystery to Singleton's family. Some say it was a case of mistaken identity. "Shantel never cried," Hall says. "She was going around consoling everyone else. She said, 'Grandma, don't cry. It'll be all right.' " Hall glances at a picture of Shantel on the wall. "This is all I have left of my son," she says. "It's my job to protect her. If that means sheltering her, that's what I'm going to do." *** Spreading her wings *** The huge, almost empty school auditorium is unheated and dimly lighted, but Shantel doesn't feel the chill. She is focused on the graceful movements of her dance instructor, Darlene Johnson. The occasion is a rehearsal of The Glittering Gators, a recently formed dance troupe that has been invited to perform at Dillard University for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day program. Shantel is a freshman at Francis W. Gregory Junior High, a Gentilly public school nestled in a residential neighborhood off Mirabeau Avenue. A dinosaur of a school, it houses about 1,200 students in grades 7 through 9. Loud and rambunctious, they jostle their way through the halls from class to class. When the bell rings, they create a traffic jam at the school's single entrance. To her teachers, Shantel is a model student: cooperative, inquisitive, respectful. "She's very mature," says Jacquelyn Hicks, her English teacher. "That's saying a lot when you're surrounded by a lot of immature students. She's very responsible." Shantel is concentrating on perfecting her dance performance. "I think it's going to be exciting," she says in a giggly voice that makes her sound much younger than 15. "The butterflies, the stage fright, that's fun." Dressed in a crushed velour shirt and electric purple tights that emphasize her petite frame, she is ready to glissade and arabesque her way around the stage. Although she has never taken formal lessons, she loves to dance and catches on quickly. "I block out everything," she says, "and concentrate on the moves or on my partner." But her performance is not without goofs. "Uh-oh, we have a problem back here," Johnson's assistant sings out. "It's called the Lady in Purple. What are you doing way over there?" Shantel shrugs sheepishly and slides into place. She snickers with the rest of the girls, who know that it could well have been any one of them. Shantel treasures the outlet The Glittering Gators gives her. The after-school rehearsals allow her to postpone the chores that await at home: cleaning, baby- sitting, refereeing her two younger cousins. "I love going to school," she says. "Sometimes I don't want it to end." *** Parental love *** Aunt Geraldine is pacing the sidewalk with her infant daughter, Dwaine, on her hip. It is shortly before 5 p.m. and nightfall looms. "I don't know where that girl is," she says, as she once again makes the short trip from her yard to the street corner. "She's never this late. Not without calling." Singleton stands peering down the street for several minutes, cutting an imposing and rigid silhouette. As if conjured by the force of her thoughts, two girls suddenly round the corner. When Shantel sees her aunt, her pace quickens. "I hope she isn't mad," she remembers thinking later. "I hope she doesn't fuss." Shantel starts to explain her tardiness as soon as she is within shouting distance. "Someone took the hall pass and our teacher kept . . ." she begins breathlessly. "I don't want to hear it," Singleton cuts her off. "You know what you're supposed to do." "Call," Shantel says, looking down. "But she wouldn't let us. She said we were old enough to stay after school without calling." "Um hmm," Singleton says, spinning on her heels and marching back into the house. With a grimace, the girl follows. Her friend walks on. *** Girlhood frustrations *** Shantel's days fall into a simple pattern: school, then home. Home is her aunt's modest two-bedroom double on a narrow, bumpy street, next door to her Grandmother Hall's. Her outings are restricted to school and church, for the most part, since Geraldine Singleton doesn't have a car and Shantel's grandmother works late at a restaurant in Gretna. When she isn't doing her chores or her homework, Shantel can while away hours on the telephone with her friends. On a warm Saturday afternoon recently, she is in her aunt's kitchen, wiping down the counter-tops. Dwaine is in a high chair eating. Shantel's other cousin Dwayne, a 10-year-old, is playing football in the street. "Dwayne doesn't have any chores," Shantel says. "He pretty much does what he wants. I guess it's because he's a boy." More often than not, Dwayne ignores Shantel's criticisms until he wants something. Then he whines and pleads until she gives in. Shantel says she's frustrated not being allowed to date or talk to boys and bets her cousin will be treated differently. "Watch," she says. "When Dwayne is my age he's going to have all sorts of girlfriends and nothing will be said." It leaves her feeling misunderstood, and perhaps misjudged, by her grandmother and her aunt, a difference she has a hard time discussing with them. "I try, but they just get mad and I get in trouble," she says. *** Raising a teen-ager *** Aunt Geraldine is sitting on the edge of her sofa in her compact living room, its walls hung with family pictures. Her hands gesture energetically as she explains what drives her disciplinary style. "I was NOT a teen-age mother and I don't want her to be," she says of Shantel. "These days kids are sexually active at a very early age. When I was her age, I was still a little girl. You know what I'm saying?" Singleton is 37 and used to being in charge. Her abrupt tone is commanding, a throwback perhaps to her childhood, when she played mother hen to five younger brothers. She talks quickly and has a penchant for the rhetorical, as in "You know what I'm saying?" She is operating on double time as she attempts to bring Shantel's behavior into conformity with her house rules. Singleton's fear is that her niece will be like so many of the teen-agers she sees on the bus to work at Piccadilly Cafeteria: loud, disrespectful and, in some cases, pregnant. "Shantel has a mind of her own, but she doesn't use it," Aunt Geraldine says. "That's why I still have to watch her." Across the room, Shantel sits in silence, absorbing the conversation. Dwayne is buried in a video game. "I know peer pressure is hard and everything. I try to show her that I went through the same thing," Singleton says. "The first thing she tells me is, 'Well, so-and-so did it.' I say, 'Uh-uh, no. You didn't have that to do. Use your own mind.' " Singleton understands that she may seem too strict to Shantel. But to her, boundaries and responsibilities are essential. "I watched my mother struggle to give my brothers and me the best," she says. "You know what I'm saying? "My mother never had to worry about cooking or cleaning. I took on a lot of that. I was never one to go out. That was never my scene. There's plenty of time for that. "I'm only trying to raise her like her father would have. I tell her sometimes that we're easy compared to what he would have been like." *** Feeling dad's absence *** Although Shantel has been told she has a lot of her dad's ways - certain facial expressions and a tendency to chatter - most of her memories of him are fragmented. There were times when he took her for rides. Times when he pretended to cry to get her to act right. The time when he fussed at her for playing house with a neighborhood boy. "We WEREN'T playing house," she insists. "We were playing Prince. "It was during 'Purple Rain' - you know, the movie - and he was our idol. I was listening to my friend's heartbeat and they thought we were doing something else." And then there were the times her father took her to visit her mother. If her father were still alive, Shantel is convinced her mother would be more of a presence in her life, and probably a less troubled woman. "My mom loved my dad and he loved her," Shantel says. "My mom sometimes tells me she still misses him. "I do too." *** Taste of a future *** The Glittering Gators have performed to a packed house at Dillard and there are giddy groups of teen-agers pouring out of Lawless Memorial Chapel into the clear, frosty night. Some of them are in choir robes, some in jeans, others in their Sunday best. They giggle and chatter, oblivious to the elements, rehashing the evening's performance. One of the girls is a petite 15-year-old, neatly dressed, in a crushed velour shirt. Her eyes are luminous. Her smile is bright. Her voice is filled with excitement and laughter. It is Friday night and Shantel Young is hanging out.