A song for Terry.

Terry was just six when he died.

Not a long time spent on this Earth,

But enough to make himself known to the universe.

There were many obstacles in life waiting for boys like Terry.

If life is a vast ocean, then he only sailed a meager ferry.

Terry was born in a place, in a time and

In a body that didn’t count much –

A poor, southern Black boy and such.

He was loved, for sure,

I’d see his grandmother kiss him every morning,

As she sent Terry off to school.

Like mine,

Terry’s household didn’t look like those on TV.

None of ours did.

There weren’t any of those Cosby kids.

But Terry was like my brother, my dear friend.

I looked forward to walking to school with Terry each day.

He always had something interesting to say.

Terry and I were in the same class.

He lived across the street,

And our school was just a few blocks away.

There and back,

I wanted to be by his side.

Sometimes I would walk to my grandparents’ after school,

And momma would pick me up after work.

No sooner did we get home and settled did I ask to go outside and play,

With Terry.

Our story was short-lived.

Two kids on the block,

On the poor side of town,

We lived cocooned in a world of luxury:

We were cared for and we were safe.

Everyone on the block looked out for all the kids;

There were no strangers around home base.

But, we also lived

In a time and place of misery,

Where things like poverty,

Would determine your destiny,

And all the dreams we would dream,

Would have to fight the sun to live.

A handsome little brown boy,

And a finely picked mini ‘Fro.

An easy smile,

And an easy-going way about him.

Terry was a nice guy.

And did I mention he was loved?

He was not the most popular kid in class –

Naw, everybody feared that guy!

Terry was the one everyone liked.

For Valentine’s day,

The whole class exchanged heart-shaped candies and notes with one another-

All in pink, my favorite color.

My one time of year to shine!

I was so excited to choose one especially for Terry, my brother:

Will you be my Valentine?

Even the teacher got along with him.

Terry never got in trouble.

He got sad-eyed when any of us got marched off to get paddled.

At lunch, I’d always sit with Terry.

Terry got free lunch, and

Peanut butter and jelly is what I got when momma packed mine!

We’d hurry to the front of the line,

And finish our food quickly,

So we could go to the play area the rest of the time.

I didn’t like milk, but Terry did.

And he didn’t care for apple sauce, but I did.

Sometimes we’d split:

Half a piece of pizza for half my sandwich.

We’d trade.

We didn’t keep score, but

We were always even.

There, right in the middle of the cafeteria,

Smack in the middle of the school,

Was a large, carpeted recreational area.

There, we’d play and everything was cool.

After lunch, but also before and after school,

We could climb and crawl,

Spin and jump,

Run and hide,

Seek and find,

And holler as loud as we’d want.

Teachers would monitor from nearby, but

They left us alone and took their break-time.

Our teachers would even rotate who had this monitoring job to do.

We weren’t a rowdy bunch,

So, there were no fights to break-up.

There were neither hoops nor balls to tussle over.
No nets, no bats –

No competition and all that.

Just a space…

Where us kids could be free.

We were free.

Terry died in the middle of first grade.

We had found out from our teacher that Terry was sick,

We’d all heard of sickle cell, many in our own families, like mine.

But none of us knew what it means.

We knew Terry was not always sturdy.

One time he’d had a bad bout with asthma.

Our teacher helped him take his inhaler,

That she’d showed us where it was kept in her desk drawer.

Now, she was telling us that Terry was just spending a few days in the hospital.

The whole class avidly awaited Terry’s return.

She didn’t know more than that,

I needed to know when Terry’d be back.

I knocked on his door, one day

On the way home from school,

To tell his grandmother I hoped Terry’d be ok.

I knew my grandmother would be heartbroken if anything like that happened to one of us.

Kids that little aren’t supposed to die.

Not here, and not of diseases we can’t even see.

Even at that age, I knew this just shouldn’t be.

And yet turn on the TV,

Every day we see signs and symptoms of little Black boys’ morbidity.

Whether from war or starvation in distant lands, or

Dilapidation and disease on these burning sands.

Just like what was happening to Terry:

A casualty of a neglectful society.

I didn’t get to mourn Terry,

Didn’t have some cathartic corral with our classmates about

The fun times we had or how much we missed him.

There was no school counselor coming to our class –

No one explaining the cycle of life, nor

Asking us about our feelings.

I knew how I felt.

I loved Terry, and knew the way I loved him was seen as peculiar;

I couldn’t let anyone know about this one-sided affair.

I was sad, and all this was unfair.

What would I say?

We were only 6 years old, and

Terry was the first boy I ever loved.

—

In memory of Muhammed Ali, another Black boy who survived those same streets and corridors.