Ruby grabbed me and my little brothers and ran to the front yard wearing nothing but her underwear. She shouted, “The aliens are coming to get us!” and the neighbors watched the spectacle.

This is what my eldest brother told me. At the time he was about 12 years old and trying his best to calm our hysterical mother and bring us all back inside. Each time incidents such as this is recalled by various family members, a detail is added that was unknown because the pain may not be fresh, but it still throbs. For instance, I never asked my brother if the police came or if he called our uncle or someone else. And as I ruminate over this particular incident, my heart breaks a little each time.

Can you imagine yourself at 12 years old and the only sane person in the house? How scared he must have been when this happened? For ten years, he had our mother to himself. How would a 3 year old, a 7 year old child now 12 who is watching his mother devolve know what to do to help her? He watched her unravel overtime. He was with her through two bad marriages. He watched Ruby evolve from a pretty woman who loved fashion, makeup, and hair into this person screaming at the top of her lungs in the front yard-in front of everyone.

My younger brothers and I were babies and our eldest brother felt responsible for us all but he didn’t know what to do. My grandmother saw it but could do nothing and my heart breaks when I picture how much Ruby’s unraveling cut my grandmother to the core. The family prayed… a lot.

Then THE worst thing that could happen to a family happened to us.

When it became apparent that Ruby could no longer care for us, the county took us away. They split us apart and had already placed my brothers with a family but that was not the end of it.

Before crack cocaine shredded what was left of the African American family, the children were taken in by relatives. Through court proceedings and tenacity, our family regained custody of us but we were still split apart. My brothers grew up in another state and I was raised mainly by our maternal grandmother. Our eldest brother suffered most of all and shuffled between various relatives because no one really wanted custody of a teenage boy.