Samuel Lewis Lee - A Nontraditional Love

 

 

It's 1964. So, I'm a 14-year-old kid going to visit his mother in the hospital. Mother was in hospital. She had cancer. She had been in the hospital since I was 10. So, going to see her in the hospital was the highlight of my day. 

 

So, this particular day I go to see her in the hospital and I play this game where I avoid the hospital staffs and I sneak up the stairs. When I come out the stairway, her room is right across the hall. So, on this particular day I come out the stairway and I notice that her bed is empty. So, my thing is, I asked the nurse, “Well, where is my mother?” So, the nurse said she was gone. So, my response was, “Gone where? Gone to another floor, gone for X-rays?” 

 

So, the dietician pulled me to the side and he says that your mother died, that you should go home and talk to your family. He didn't know that-- My home was like a-- My father was a violent alcoholic and my family was my friends. So, I tried to make my way home. I had tears in my eyes and I was crying. I find myself in front of a bus that's screeching, stopping. So, I just walk in front of this bus to try to get home, and the bus driver had to stop short and he got out the bus to curse me out. 

 

So, then when he figured out that something was wrong with me, he asked me what was wrong. So, I told him I just found out that my mother died. So, he put his hand on my shoulder, put me in the front of the bus and told me everything was going to be all right. So, he made sure I got home. 

 

So, after the funeral, I'm hanging out on a stoop. This lady comes up to me and she introduces herself. She says, “My name is Rose. I know who you are and I owe your mother a favor, because she got the NAACP to stop an eviction process.” She says, “I want you to come by my house and hang out.” So, she asked me was I hungry. So, she bought me a sandwich and a soda and some cookies and took me to her stoop, which she lived at. 

 

So, she said, “I want you to come by here every day, so I can look out for you.” So, I would come by every day after school, but it didn't take me long to figure out that Rose was a prostitute. Right. [audience laughter] And she says, “I'm going to look out for you. I want you to come by, I'm going to take care of you.” 

 

So, after my mother died, I started messing up in school. So, Rose says, “Well, I'm going to take you to school, and talk to your guidance counselor and see what the problem is.” So, she says, “I want you to meet me on the stoop tomorrow at 8 o'clock and we're going to go to your school.” 

 

So, the next day, I'm sitting on her stoop and this lady comes by with this big flowery dress on and this nice hat and this pocketbook. It was like really going to church. I didn't recognize her. So, she turns around and says, “Come on, Junior, I don't have all day.” So, when I noticed it was Rose, I was saying she looked distinctively different than when she's going to the school than when she's working. [audience laughter] So, she takes me to the school-- 

 

She's not really able to do anything, because she's not my biological mother. She doesn't have to paperwork. So, we come back to the house. So, she sits me on the stoop, she says, “Well, just stay out on the stoop for a minute, I'm going to go in the house and change.” So, she goes in the house and she changes. She comes out, sits on the stoop with me and she says, “Well, listen, you got to find a job. I got to get you a job.” So, I said, “Okay.” So, she got me a job with some of her best tricks, some of her best customers. So, one job was sweeping up in Nathan's on 42nd street at night. Another job was sweeping up in the pool room. But the most memorable job that she got me was working in a shooting gallery. 

 

So, a shooting gallery for the visuals is a two-room apartment with anywhere from 5 to 30 people in there, young, old, black, White, Spanish, Asian, a very diverse crowd. They are in there to shoot dope or coke or both. Shooting gallery is definitely an equal opportunity destination. And so, my job was to clean the coffee cans out, change the water from the bloody water to the clear water. That was my job. 

 

So, one day on the job-- You can call it that. So, I hear a lot of commotion. And these two drug addicts are fighting each other. One drug addict gets thrown out the window. So, I'm a little kid, so I back up, I stay out the way. And the guy who ran the gallery, his name was Red, light-skinned guy with red hair. So, he says, “Do you know what just happened?” And I said, “No, I don't know.” He said, “Well, one dope fiend stole a piece of cotton from another dope fiend, and you just can't do that in here.” So, he asked me, “Did I learn anything?” I said, “Sure, I learned that thou shalt not steal.” So, that was a lesson I learned from that incident. 

 

So, I started hanging out with Rose and I started working at the shooting gallery. So, I started the job when I was 14. So, I worked there until I was 17. So, when I became 17, Rose says, “Okay, you know enough. You go on your own and just do your own thing.” So, as a result of working in a shooting gallery and being raised by a prostitute, my natural vehicle of economic development was selling drugs. So, I sold drugs for a few years. I sold drugs for about five years, had a good run, apartment, cars and all that stuff. But five years later, I find myself in jail under the Rockefeller law. 

 

So, I find myself in jail for selling drugs. They have pictures of me selling drugs to undercover cop in my pajamas in front of my house. My thing was I wasn't going to cop to it. At that time, we had a governor by the name of Nelson Rockefeller. And so, this was the first year that he implemented the Rockefeller law. So, that means I was guaranteed to do 20 years. So, when I went in front of the judge, the judge says, “Look, you're going to cop out to 20 years and you start.” So, my thing was, I wasn't going to cop out to it. So, I hung out for two months before I decided I might as well take this plea and start to do this bid. 

 

I am in my cell. I figured everybody in jail knows God, so I'm praying. And so, I got my hands on the bar. I'm not praying for me so much. I'm praying for other little kids to come out of the community who didn't have no parents wouldn't wind up like me. So, I'm holding the bars and I'm praying. Then when I open my eyes and I look down, I see a pair of cowboy boots outside my cell. I look up and it's this white boy with a collar. So, he says, “Well, I apologize. I didn't want to bother you while you were praying.” 

 

He said, a friend asked me to come and check on you and see how you doing. I said, “Well, who was that?” He said, “Well, Rose.” So, he said, “Do you remember a lady named Rose?” I said, “Of course, I remember Rose. How is she doing?” He said, “Well, she's dying. And on her deathbed, she asked me to come and check on you. I checked on the judge. You got a real rough judge. He's a real racist guy. He's going to give you the maximum 20, 25 years, but I will be in court the next day with you, because somebody should be in court with you.” 

 

So, the next day, I go to court. The presiding judge. So, they have a substitute judge sitting on the bench and he can't figure out why I'm there. The DA doesn't have my records. So, he's mad at the D.A, like, “Why has this guy been here for two months, and he hasn't been sentenced and he hasn't started no jail time anywhere?” So, he asked me, “Well, why was I in jail?” So, I thought about it for a minute. I wasn't going to tell him I was in jail for selling drugs. So, I told him I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

 

So, what happens was, is that he looked out into the courtroom and he says, “Is anybody here for Mr. Lee?” So, the white guy got up with the collar and says, “Well, I talked to Mr. Lee, and now I'll be responsible for him if you release him.” So, the judge released me to this guy. So, I come to find out that the guy he released me to was Father Pitt, the founder of Samaritan Halfway Society. And so, the moral of the story, is that from the day that my mother died, who was my protector, to the day when my other protector, my other mother was dying from her deathbed, sent this guy to save me, is that there's nothing stronger than a mother's love. I will hope that they are sitting upstairs side by side, looking down and are proud of what I've become. Thank you.