Harsh Lessons For A Child Times Picayune 02-06-1998 "Life After Death" 6 Of 6 Part Series ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Word came in the worst possible way that night last October: from a passerby pleased to be first with the latest neighborhood news. "Derrick's shot." Deriandra's mother, fussing with the little girl's outfit before shooing her inside her cousin's house, can not forget the twinge of stone cold fear that flickered in the eyes of the 7-year-old. Instantly, intuitively, Deriandra seemed to understand the enormity of her loss. "I know Daddy's dead," she said, lowering her ebullient voice to a mumble and stuffing her fingers in her mouth. "I know it," she whispered. Torn between a past she thought she had escaped and a future that so many statistics had predicted, the girl's mother, Shawndrea Tucker, took temporary shelter in denial. "Deriandra, don't worry about it," she said, holding the girl steady and looking straight into her troubled eyes. "There are plenty of Derricks. I don't know what the man's talking about." With that nod to wishful thinking, she kissed her daughter and hugged her son, little Derrick, a squirmy 5-year-old, and pushed them indoors. Then she hunched over the wheel of her Geo Tracker and hit the gas, tearing around dark corners and down dimly lit avenues, muttering "No, no, no," all the way to Philip and Clara streets, the scene of the shooting. She knew the spot, a hangout splashed with graffiti memorializing neighborhood toughs, where the living share space with the recently dead. The cop car flash - red-blue-red-blue-red-blue - brought Tucker's wild careen to a stop, and she took a deep breath before getting out of the car. Holding one hand on her closely cropped hair and another on the cowrie shell choker around her neck, she walked toward the yellow tape marking the crime scene. Between bobbing heads straining for a better view, Tucker saw a broken body riddled with 19 bullets lying twisted on the ground. Derrick Mushatt's chest had been exposed by the emergency medical technicians who were trying to get his shredded heart beating again. It was a chest Tucker first knew as a 16-year-old in high school, when a smooth-talking rapper stole her heart. "What am I going to tell my children?" she asked, turning numbly to the closest person at hand, a stranger. Her eyes began filling with tears. "This is something I never wanted for my children. I don't even have a word. I can't think of the words I'm going to tell them. I never wanted to say these words. I never wanted this for them." Earlier that day, the only challenge Tucker thought she faced was getting to a birthday party on time. Now she faced the task of telling her children they were fatherless, of shaping the memory they'd retain. She could, like many before her, try to preserve the image of a four-star dad, a man who came bearing extravagant gifts on holidays, bought them candy at the fair and looked so cool and handsome on stage during his rap gigs. As that temptation beckoned her, a pregnant friend leaning on her car near the crime scene that night gave advice: "Girl," the friend said, rubbing her belly, "all you do is tell those children the truth." *** Ruptured childhood *** Deriandra is not a child to be lied to. "My girl, she is smart," Tucker says. Smart and more. The elfin second-grader sings, dances, displays her straight-A report card in a glass curio case at home, does a split, and then talks about growing up to be a diva and a doctor. She prattles unhesitatingly about her accomplishments to anyone who will listen. "I'm an A student. My daddy was, too," she says, while executing relentless pirouettes in stocking feet on the hardwood floor. "I loooooove spelling. Language and math, too." Spin, swirl, swoop. "I was in student council last year. I was a cheerleader." She knows the words to every song on rhythm and blues singer Erykah Badu's CD and closes her eyes when she croons into her fist, like a chanteuse on a smoky stage. She takes an African dance class on the weekends. She orders cappuccino whenever she has the chance. She lives in a powder-blue townhouse in a nice neighborhood. She does her homework neatly every night under her mother's watchful eye. She plays house with her black Barbie dolls, the only kind Tucker will buy her. But now the teacher's pet and daddy's girl also has a deep scar on her psyche. Whenever she gets a pen and paper in her hands, she doodles. Instead of pastoral scenes and sunny skies, she draws tombstones with her father's name and the letters RIP. When she rides down St. Charles Avenue and passes Philip Street, she chants to herself: "Philip. Philip and Clara. Philip and Clara. Philip and Clara." One day, shortly after her father's funeral, she told her mother she wanted to see the spot where her daddy died. She walked with heavy steps from the car to the blood-stained sidewalk and spoke not a word as she lit a candle. In September, foreshadowing the dark night when her father was killed, Tucker and her children had turned a corner on Broad Street in time to witness another man's murder. It was near Mushatt's house, and the victim had recently bought a motorbike from him. Soon word on the street pegged Mushatt as the gunman. A month later, Mushatt's murder closed a deadly circle. *** Road to motherhood *** Tucker grew up a cheeky tomboy in a home rich with talk of black literature, neighborhood lore and reggae music. Her mother, Valena Rawlins, decorated their little apartment in the B.W. Cooper public housing complex with African masks and rich batiks. Tucker remembers the place looking as stylish and resplendent as her mother still does, in her elaborate caftans and gold-tinged head wraps. She remembers the Turtle Band from Belize once coming to stay with them when she was little, and she remembers hanging out with the Nevilles, aristocrats of New Orleans pop music, after a move onto Valence Street made Aaron Neville a neighbor. An only child, Tucker was born 26 years ago, daughter of a man who was seeing two women in the Guste public housing complex. He visited her frequently but they never lived together. Tucker discovered her talent for bodacious hairdos at an early age, and the cultural salon that was Rawlins' home became simultaneously a beauty salon filled with giggling girls. When her mother urged her to find a career, Tucker promised she would become either a hairdresser or a maritime lawyer. As a teen-ager, she met Mushatt through a short-term beau named Jesse. "Jesse used to call me 'Queen,' and one day when he came by, he had Derrick with him," she says. "He told Derrick, 'This is my Queen,' and Derrick said 'Hello Queen, pleased to meet you,' and I fell in love with him that day." Derrick "Shack" Mushatt was a rap master who delivered pizza and had an eye for lithe girls with long, dark hair. He gave Tucker a friendship ring with a tiny blue sapphire and even tinier diamond chips. She gave him her virginity. "That's why I won't ever let Deriandra date anyone older than her," Tucker said. "It wasn't like pressure or anything. But because Derrick was older than me, and, you know, had been with someone, he knew what to do. If we had both been virgins, maybe we'd both be scared. But he knew what he was doing so I followed along." One day a few months after the young couple started dating, Rawlins looked at her skinny daughter and noticed slightly swelling breasts and the first signs of a stomach. "You're pregnant," she said. "I didn't want to hear it and I went crazy," Tucker remembers. "I went on a rage and broke everything, every window in the house, tore down everything and ran away." Rawlins asked Mushatt about his intentions. Tucker recounts the exchange: " 'I love your daughter and I want her to have my babies,' he told my mother. He didn't say 'baby.' He said 'babies.' " Even now, she giggles girlishly at the thought. When Tucker returned home after her brief rebellion, her mother took her to a rent-subsidized apartment she secured for her in eastern New Orleans. Welfare would pay the $550-a-month rent and Rawlins furnished it with matching wicker furniture and a too-small dinette set. The new apartment ensured that Tucker's baby, unlike her mother and grandmother, would not start life in the projects. The baby was healthy and hearty. The couple stitched their names together to create their daughter's: Deriandra. "She was not like you see those little babies with their eyes all tiny and their necks all wobbly," Tucker remembers. "Deriandra had her eyes wide open and kept looking all around like she was saying 'OK, so I finally got here.' " *** Family, then meltdown *** Mother and child arrived home to find that Mushatt had decorated the nursery with a paper border, a parade of Disney characters holding the letters of the alphabet. In the crib was a matching comforter. Mushatt had a decent job on an oil rig, two weeks on and two weeks off, assuring the family at least intervals of togetherness. He was an attentive father. He changed diapers, took hundreds of pictures and even endured the traveling "Sesame Street Live!" show with his daughter. Meanwhile, the couple nurtured their creativity as well. Tucker got gigs as a back-up singer with the Nevilles; Mushatt worked as a rapper, DJ-ing parties. Tucker remembers one day in 1990, Juneteenth, as the epitome of their good life together. They threw a block party on Valence Street that day for the African- American holiday commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation. They served up hip- hop music, vegetarian fare and a cake with a frosting map of Africa. Deriandra and her father sang together and he told her that he was going to produce her record some day. But the family foundation soon began crumbling. For one thing, about the time she had their second child, in 1992, Tucker learned of another woman who was claiming Mushatt as the father of newborn twins. For another, Tucker's mother had moved to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, where she lived a life of blue waters and white beaches, miles from her daughter and grandchildren. The charms of fatherhood seemed to wane for Mushatt. His offshore work and the steady flow of cash was gone. And a painkiller prescribed to him for a job injury was becoming an addiction, Tucker said. "I was feeling death upon him," she said, remembering her forebodings as Mushatt began changing. "Daddy left a few days after little Derrick was born," Deriandra says. She was 2 at the time. That's when the family as she knew it collapsed. *** Picking up the pieces *** "I set goals for myself," says Tucker, recalling the way she restructured her life to rule out dependency on Mushatt or anyone else. "For 1997, it was to get my own place." The first step was to get off the welfare rolls, where she had been since she was 18. Then she moved into the powder-blue townhouse - the essence of urban chic, with exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, high ceilings and black leather couches. In the spirit of her mother, she filled the space with African drums, jewel-tone candles and paintings by black artists. Upstairs was designated the children's domain, with plenty of toys and bunk beds to leap and swing from. Tucker is proud to say she paid for all of it herself, working as a hair stylist. "I don't do this credit thing, because I never, ever want to feel broke again," she says. "I paid cash." Though she spends hours creating elaborate hairstyles for her customers, Tucker's own look is stylish but low-maintenance. Her hair is plain and natural; her clothes are vintage hip; her only indulgence is the African jewelry, shells and silver rings, that she hunts at flea markets. The tattoo across her back of her children's faces is strictly sentimental and never displayed. While Tucker was ambitiously making a life for herself and her family, Mushatt continued his downward slide. His visits and his financial support became sporadic. He would stay away for weeks on end, then call at 4 a.m. asking to see the children. "I told him, 'You are not going to do this,' " Tucker says. " 'If you don't help me out with them, then you aren't going to be cataloging stars on your chest like you're doing all these good things whenever you want to.' " Tucker tried to protect her children from their father's fast life, but when Deriandra got old enough to remember his telephone number, she began calling. Tucker didn't stand in the way. A week before he was killed, Mushatt checked out Tucker's new home. He told her he was proud of her, she remembers. Today, she is working toward even better things for herself and her children. Whenever she can, she takes Jefferson Avenue past Isidore Newman School. "Now that's a good school. I want Deriandra to go to that school," she says. She is close to opening her own hair salon on Magazine Street. "I was going to call it 'Shawndrea's Touch,' but then I thought that was too selfish," she says. "I think I want to call it Elusence." *** Learning to grieve *** At the funeral, Deriandra, in an emerald-green dress and a head full of curls, read a poem she composed as an ode to her father. She put a copy in his casket, then sat back down in the front pew. Next to Deriandra sat Brittney Perkins, 10, her newfound half-sister and Mushatt's eldest child. A year earlier, Tucker had discovered her on a tip that there was a girl in the project who looked just like Deriandra. She tracked Brittney down and introduced the two girls, who became sisters easily and insisted their dresses match for the funeral. Across the aisle sat the twins with their mother. When she told the boys to say goodbye to their father, they raced up to the coffin and shook Mushatt's body, shouting, "Daddy, wake up!" Amid dozens of red roses and white wreaths - and a flower sculpture that spelled out "39 Posse," a gift from Mushatt's rap brothers - the preacher stood at the podium and hinted that a lesson could be learned from Mushatt's death. "I want to set the record straight," he intoned, in a tenor voice punctuated by trills of organ music. "God did not do this. The enemy did this. Because of Derrick's death, somebody is going to be saved. This is a wake-up call for somebody to get their life together." Family members sitting in neat rows punched the air with every "amen." Mushatt's mother, Sandra Hagans, supported by three relatives, stood in the aisle of Rhodes Funeral Home and confessed her tribulations with her son. "I tried to tell him," she cried. "I tried to tell him to walk the straight path." Later, as she sat in a courtroom watching the arraignment of Mushatt's accused killer, Tucker swallowed hard when the detective described the heroin deal that was going down that night. "I just don't know what I'm going to tell Deriandra and little Derrick about everything, about all of this. I just don't know," she said after the hearing. "I don't know what they're going through, and I don't know how to tell them, you know, about the stuff they said in court." In fact, Mushatt wasn't much of a player, police say. The only entries on his record were a few traffic violations and a minor fistfight. "He was no O.G.," Tucker says, invoking the term used for "original gangster." *** Death through kids' eyes *** Every day before school, after her mother fixes her hair and scrubs her saddle shoes, Deriandra walks to the curio case in the living room. She and her brother have created a memorial, with Mushatt's funeral program, a portrait of him and some flowers from his casket. In a precise ritual that bespeaks the way she mourns for him, Deriandra carefully opens the dainty glass door and pulls out the picture of her father. "Every day, I take you out and I do this," she tells the picture, kissing the face. "Then I put my daddy back, I put him back in there." On her first day back at school after the funeral, Deriandra had to put her head down on her desk and dozed off. It was the first time she hadn't finished her lessons. On the days to come, she eased her pain by communing with her father. "When I'm in school I think about him, and I know that he's watching down on me and he can see me," she says. Some of her schoolmates have been cruel, in the way children can be. "These two boys got out of line and I wouldn't let them back in, and they said that's why my daddy died, because I was mean to them," she says. Other schoolmates have offered a strange brand of condolence, by sharing their stories. "One girl, she told me they took her auntie out in the woods and killed her," Deriandra says, in between sips of cappuccino. "There's a lot of children whose daddies are dead." At home, her prayers have an urgency that sometimes takes her mother aback. "I pray and tell God that I want to help the police find the people that killed my daddy and I hope they put them in the electric chair," she once said. At night, Deriandra sleeps in one of Mushatt's old shirts, and her brother sometimes sneaks on a pair of his father's old boxer shorts and wears them crammed into his khaki school pants. On her father's birthday in December, when he would have turned 29, Deriandra persuaded her mother to take her to his vault in the Garden of Memories. They held candles in the cold mausoleum and sang "Happy Birthday" in timid voices as all three looked five rows up to the slab that bears the name of Derrick Mushatt. During the Christmas holidays, Deriandra remembered the year before when she and her brother waited and waited and finally were rewarded by a visit from their father carrying brand-new bikes. And the year before that when he showed up with motorized, pint-sized cars - a pink Barbie car for her, a Bigfoot truck for him. To compensate this year, Tucker borrowed money to make Christmas even more extravagant than usual. "They were sent down from heaven by Daddy," she told them. Still, as the realization dawned on Deriandra this Christmas that Mushatt would not come, she cried. With the help of her brother, Deriandra has carefully scripted the reunion with their father that they dream of. Little Derrick begins the story: "On resurrection day, we're going to be in a store . . ." But Deriandra cuts him off. "On resurrection day," she says primly, "we're going to be here in the house and the trumpets will go like this." And then the two children put their hands to their mouths, holding imaginary coronets and toot with all the majesty they can muster. "Tooo-doooo-dooooooooo." Deriandra then shrugs, as though it is as simple as anything, and concludes: "Then we'll see our daddy."