EXHUME
By Steve Hayer
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 selfprojection 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 image 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.
Steve Hayer Exhume
I found myself holding on and dwindling on the fringes of sanity and psychosis. By anyone ’ s ordinary standard what was transpiring in a finely built 2 family unit in the Gresham neighborhood was unnatural but to the persons in question that are directly in the thick of the very issue in question, what was going on was a feeling fully absorbed into the nervous system and became very much immune. Darkness it was I mean darkness almost likened to the chaotic state that symbolized the abysmal deep as described in the first chapters in the book of genesis in the Holy Bible, only this time the face over the deep it was just me Steve Hayer, son of Wayne and June March. Again, it also wasn’t the undefined and formless darkness void of meaning that I was surrounded by. No, everything about this darkness was very much familiar and it wasn’t an infinite space of nothingness. A room, one that had a light, a light that I could never control a mixture of pine only briefly smelt when one stood up among other odors. Rat poison mixed with the cranberry or possibly apple cider the senses in the nostrils will play tricks on you when faced daily with a plethora of scented concoctions.
A space possibly the size of a hotel janitor's closet give or take but at that time it seemed that much more, that much vast, that much mystical. I mean in terms of descriptiveness hell the biblical book of genesis void and formless chaotic deep didn’t have squat diddly nothing on y granny nanny ’ s pantry because let me be the first to tell you EVERYTHING in that pantry had order. Not to mention the entire house, the shelves in which there were several rows in the room were well aligned with soup cans majority were of the Campbells and healthy choice brand, Raisin Brand, Frosted Flakes, Crock Pots, deep fryers, apple juice , and a myriad of water bottles, cups and bowls.
It looked as if Grandma was preparing us for some type of nuclear apocalypse. It sounds crazy but it was ever much a reality and it was a reality worthy of reminisce. What really limited the space of the pantry that ironically became a sort of personal sanctuary for me was this ebony shaded pinewood dresser. The dresser was so mysterious it’s as if it had its own mojo on it because out of all the above objects, I just named this mysterious dresser purposefully placed along the middle of the wall adjacent to the other wall this was the one thing I didn’t touch and when I say touch I mean I didn’t really try to tamper with or open. How ignorant I must have been but in this case a good ignorance.
Not even the small stint of a blinking toy fire truck could get airtime in the darkness of this pantry. The type of pitch blackness that a demonic hell-spawn could be summoned up out of; this lack of illumination is the very thing that prepared me for the carceral system and to me that is true darkness. Even my father would lecture me on how much I should stay out of and avoid “the system”. He told me that it was as if you were dead to the world around you, that it was a place so dismal and full of decadence that at some point, if you are not strong willed, would bring you to a slow rot. I didn’t know it at the time but spending solitary confinement in that limited space was helping me to examine my spirit and the anatomy of my psyche, because strangely I handled myself well.
There I was in the incredible pantry for the umpteenth time. My brother and I conspired to eat some delicious apple pie from Jewel-Osco that grandma brought every week. We were so young and dumb because we knew that the pie was fresh and whole, not even a slice was made in the pie. In those days after Grandma fed us we weren't allowed to go in the refrigerator and eat anything, but the irony is my big bro dug his finger into the pie and barely gave me a portion but granny found out and taped our tails. Because of our sloppiness I ended up in the loathsome vault and my brother and the deep dark basement. I felt so much rage and vigor but I knew it was to no avail because I was helpless, open and powerless to immediately change the outcome. So on the flip side I cultivated my patience. I sat and waited to hear Granny Nanny’s jingling of keys, or hear her kid pulling up in front with the distinctive loud “blink, blink" sound indicating that she got out of the car and secured the locks on its doors.
It seems as though the pantry belonged to me as I knew the ins and outs of its confinements. I could just about tell you about every crack and every crevice of that hell hole, maybe even possible its diameter.
I kind of understand how our archaic progenitors, Adam and Eve must have felt when they experienced sun down for the first time. I know they were unaware of the time schedule because it wasn’t until after they fell from grace that they experienced this time like a lifetime of darkness. I too must have fell from grace and thus ended up in the pantry, but the irony is that I’d end up there and not have done anything.
I was raised by hard working Kingstonian and Spanish town Jamaicans. I was a first generation Jamaican-American along with my several other siblings who were raised and nurtured in the same house under the austere guidelines of granny nanny and our beautiful mother. I wasn’t the only one who had endured these peculiar conditions. I experienced this as an adolescent, and sat in that dismal crypt for at least five to six hours at a time, but I am still alive. I am still strong, and I am yet and still a man. I came to tell you that I have witnessed peers of mine go through things less tedious than that and they allowed themselves to slip and fall, waste away by the wayside.
I have always kept my faith and I have always kept my soul no matter how tough the streets of Chicago were, be it North, South, East, or West. My mind, body, and spirit was challenged in those little hours. I had come out with my hands clasped, my head bowed and my heart heavy but humbled. It is said that when a man asks the creator for patience. Almighty God doesn’t send him a gift wrapped box sent from the heavens that says “patience: no on the contrary he sends you to be placed in a situation to test yourself on just how much patience that you think it is you have. He allows you to reward yourself with the patience that you so much yearned for.
I always wanted to know the inside of my granny nanny, and mothers head as to why they were so strict and so reserved. What I have observed from so many west Indian parents is the household everything seems together and holistic and for the most part it is, but domestic relations can be the most odd. We were jittery young kids so it was inevitable that we would romp around and in the event that something should break or be knocked out of place. Ultimately one of us was going to blame the other for the screw up . That whipping seemed the most agonizing because it seemed like forever. What’s worse is that you got switched up on by your favorite brother or sister at the time so you resented them. For a minute but a day later we were back good.
The love we had for each other overcame our resentment and we never allowed any outside force to come between us. We vowed to be each other's protectors. Our mother and grandmother never left room for us to hold each other in contempt because she dressed us all the same. We ate the same portions of food and we all spent equal time with them unless you took it upon yourself to sit up under them and learn extra things about them. I didn’t grow up vindictive and jealous but harsh conditions promoted us to adapt to certain thought processes. My granny nanny and mother had undying, unconditional love for us.
In our life, especially in certain cultures, that thin line between the two disciplines of love and hate can be even more obscured. For example, I used to hear the axiom that is almost exclusively attached to the women “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of this world.” Now what type of craziness is this to say to the youth is what one would say who didn't grow up on the fringes between the poverty line and the just above the poverty line? But here is when the true exhuming of the soul must be performed because this mother nurtured us for nine whole months in the pit of her womb, her own conscious decision to see you through to the grasping hands of life? It is her admonishing us on falling short and missing the mark.
Because what she can do relieves her of the tempting urge to actually do such a thing and this abstinence epitomizes her deep unconditional love for a child. One thing I was taught by these two beautiful Jamaican women in my life is that I already had one strike against me in this life and if you are a minority reading this portion of the memoir it is for obvious reasons. Even before the age of male puberty you are drilled in the 101s of black life and in society and country that you are supposed to represent and are taught to show undying and unyielding patriotism for, views your life as expendable. It wasn't until a half century ago that you are considered just simply an American. What parent in their right mind wouldn't want to shield and shelter their precious Offspring from this daunting experience, but the truth of the matter is that such a world exists, right here in this Utopia that we call the land of the free and home of the brave. It is here that many foreigners now call home, because they are ignorant of the mental battle, the psychological operations that is still being executed upon this country's disenfranchised. But a witty proud Black family in Chicago knew better, and to be more specific, two women from the Afro-Caribbean family knew better.
Some of the tactics used to get the point across to us were crude. It all goes back to understanding the times my mother and grandmother were brought up and raised in. As a loving child it make you wonder why they had to experience such an injustice, to make them such numb people and render them almost completely void of personality and feeling. It seems like the only ones who knew of my granny nanny and mother's emotions was their grandchildren and children. We still didn't know exactly who they were and this is the story of my father's life, too.
My beloved Granny Nanny who was about 5 foot 2, 135 lb without much muscle at all hurling all types of heavy solid objects at us and beating our behind for about 10 minutes straight, not even breaking a sweat or lose a breath. Another example of her walking on water is her never having a job and still shopping at Jewel Osco at least once a week. When she was not in the mood for cooking buy us some Chinese food, she would even drive all the way out South to the Northside to buy my mother everything she needed for a refrigerator and cabinets and she would only have her checkbooks and standard banks. I even went to cry now that I mentioned this because I came to terms that I won't have my Granny Nanny forever. As I speak of her now I am reminded of the fact that she has full-blown dementia. Her grace as a goddess was that no matter what she did to us, she kept us fed well, in a warm and cool house and properly clothed.
So exactly what is it that caused me to always have to face that dark room. Who it is that drove my guardian to think it was OK to leave me in that deep contemplation of a dark pit. What is it that we deserve? Was it a lack of better options? Was it a place of distress and thus the ultimate result of my granny nanny being knocked into a freeze zone because our current behavior triggered her anger emotions, triggered her traumatic memory? It is because of my deep observation of the mind of the friend, foe, enemy and family, that I have become so game conscious of so many things. It is because of my experience with this form of psychological and verbal abuse that I find myself liking to be alone, not really caring if I have more enemies than friends, or having friends at all for that matter. I find myself a lot of times like my grandmother and mother, because one minute I will be cool with my peers, but then the next minute I am so much in contrast to them because of certain ethics that I hold and they may not.
I knew I was loved because I always made Granny Nanny, smile, and laugh. She would place her hands up on my face in the most affectionate way, the most caring of eyes and she would tell me “No matter what I do to you, you always love your grandma out of all my grandchildren. “
I still feel that no one has as much adoration for granny nanny like me, and that I am grandma‘s favorite. Even though she told me she was not supposed to have any favorites. Why is it that it seems as though the house and the dark pantry knew this beautiful woman more than any of her grandchildren? Why did she love to be there by herself and give the other half of her soul to the garden in her front and back yards? If I find this out I will also figure out why even parts of my soul and childhood still belong to that dark pantry room. It is as if the gates of paradise and the chambers of my hell are in that very room. I learned how to manifest prayer in that darkness. I prayed because my spirit told me it was the right thing to do. It is a West Indian love, good old time love coming from a woman who had the good old time religion.
When you are incarcerated, the powers that be, aim to eviscerate your very soul, and spirit, it was a way to completely strip your entrails and physical parts from you. They have no means of rehabilitating the individual in custody, because to rehabilitate means to restore or reinstate back to a former rank and that can never be possible. When you are released, you become free in the physical sense, but are stripped of certain civil rights, such as being applicable for certain decent paying jobs, can’t go to certain countries. I was being prepared for something that was bigger than Nino Brown and I don’t blame my granny nanny, nor do I blame my mother. I just wish I could make a difference.
I am gladIdidalot of exhumingofthesoulbecauseI seewhythecarceral state doesn’t servetorehabilitatetheindividualin custody.Becauseeveryoneof uscaught inthesnareofthesystem,wearetensofthousandsofdollarsapiece.
lifeisprecious.
Butahuman
I knew because of my strict upbringing that I was better than the mediocre me that I often exuded. It was mostly because of who, and what I settled to be around. I don’t know what I would do if my granny nanny was to pass because my soul was attached to her as if we were Siamese twins. I have children and I don’t want them to go through what I have gone through nor do I want them to be caught up in the dreamland and think that the world is fair. That they can freelance without some inevitable mishap occurring and they proudly make the wrong decision. I guess this indecisiveness is a form of me sitting in that darkness, listening to the devil knocking at the door, but I won’t let him in. It is through my struggles that I found that odd. Undying love for my tormentor, and it was to her why I got that fearlessness of the unknown.
I don’t know if I would change some things, those moments made me. Because granny nanny, put me through so much adversity that I developed rationality about myself that allowed me to become a critical thinker, a true leader of men. To be a true leader one must not only be willing to encounter tumultuous moments, one must also have endured them. I noticed a common pattern in my family line, both on the paternal and on the maternal side, how the grandmother plays the initial predominant influence in the child’s development. My granny nanny came to this country for us and later on she sent for my mother. When she made it here her Jewish father had been here, but unfortunately, my mother’s beloved father died when she was very young. He left them with a good lump sum of wealth, but my mother was lacking something essential in her early childhood development.
It was from Adam's rib that Eve was taken from, and that rib cage is a very object that shelters the heart and lungs. My granny and mother felt that they were sheltering us from the dangers of the outside when they would constrain us, limiting us to the house and those rooms but I don't think they realized that at the same point they exposed us to the dangers within ourselves. True and all, they pester us on reading books and tell us how successful our ironic Jewish grandfather was as a lawyer and the importance of education. I don't imagine that they predicted these jail doors that I'm currently behind were a reality for us. Oh, how I wished the jingling of these keys I hear now wasn't the keys of some Sheriff employee doing some head count, but rather the sound of my Granny Nanny opening the door so let me out and prepare a meal and take me to my mother's place. This is true love because she never allowed me to stay detained indefinitely. May Allah bless you Granny and reward you greatly.
It was from Adam's Rib Cage Eve was extracted from. I think about it now and I asked myself, isn't it the mother who epitomizes humanity and unconditional love? She is indoor paying for us, she risks the closest experience to near death for us. She had three consecutive periods of watching the moon wax and wane to make the ultimate decision of abortion or keeping us. This is true love, this is a love that I wouldn't trade even if I were offered the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left hand. This is a part of the 101's that my mother and grandmother silently relate to me, though discreetly not at all secretly.
I won't sit here and tell you that the pantry episode of my awesome life didn't have some Frankenstein effects because it definitely did! Every human being had flaws and these flaws aren't what solely defines a person, but it is the struggle against those flaws to find the greater good that defines the true content of one ' s character, that is the color that brings life to an artwork.
I smile that every time I meet someone who has preconceived notions about my person or even harbors prejudice against me and my entire race for that matter. I shake up their Foundation and I cause them to completely reassess their way of thinking when it comes to me and I also get them to be careful how they handle my people. This is one of the gifts that I have been given in my life due to the adversity that I have gone through. I wish I can impart these values upon the offspring that I have in this Earth.
I don't have to be silent or indifferent when it comes to teaching them about the world and themselves because I was invested with the ability of discernment. I wasn't buying into what was going on around me. Many times I looked at my son Yasin who I named after a verse in the Holy Quran that speaks of great struggle and turmoil but ends with the promise of prosperity and of Eternal serenity. I see in my son where exactly my mind was when I had him. I strive to give him all that I could not give myself while at the same time make him understand that the world he lives in is not a perfect Utopia. With much self-reflection and determination he can mold his small piece of Earth into the paradise that his spirit so yearns for. For my daughter I want her to know that she forms the base of community life and that the universe is very fond of her because natural selection has chosen her because biologically every human is born with her unique chromosome passed down from mother to child, be it boy or girl.
Even from behind a jail cell I learned to take the crooked with all the straights.
I even muster up the courage to compose a tiny part of my life into a memoir. My mother always expressed the importance of the pen to me and on several occasions insisted I write a book. During my short time in the carceral state I attended many classes, some even on the collegiate level. I have complete undivided attention when I speak on a subject and I probably do get that form of attention and respect. I feel such an initial feeling of open ears, empty brain and a closed mouth I must have grown so much. It is true that a young human being coming from a diverse community of the streets of Chicago can have such a humane presence. It is also evident that a youth coming from that same place can bear the potential to make change and not only in the community that they’re initially from, but that they also can change the very world. Change does not start from the top, change starts from the bottom.
I am nowhere near the summit of My Success but I have finally begun my Ascension. I only focus my attention upwards because I have nothing left behind me that is worth turning back for. There is no better quotation in reference to the messages of this Memoir “CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF” because life is about taking mental inventory and thinking critical and I will end this with this quote:
“If you cannot bring Muhammad to the mountain then you must bring the mountain to Muhammad”
Steve Hayer
I Am From
I am from the Black Winter Fell Pratt and Bosworth
from apartment buildings and Lakeside
I am from Granny's Gresham house, ginger, jerk, pine sol
I am from cold, windy air
Smells of Mexican corn with paprika, and curry chicken
I am from Queen Granny Nanny and June March
From dancing to Reggae's Bob Marley with Mom
From black pride
From the image of the Almighty Black One
From the Cradle of Civilization
I'm from Islam
I'm from Chicago
From Kola champagne and bean pies
From Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X
I am from Black and Proud
Until the lion learns to write their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter - African Proverb
