How Did I Get Here?
“Hey, Miss Diane, can we play?”
My eyes darted around the Curtis Elementary School gym, looking for the kid who called over the rubber thud of basketballs and squeaking shoes. There was Lamont, standing in the doorway with two of his boys. What’s he doing here? I wondered.
“Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back,” I told the volunteer helping me wrangle the crowd. I walked past seventy-five kids running layup drills in their Kids Off the Block T-shirts and over to Lamont. “What’s going on?” I asked him.
He held up his Jordans and nodded toward the court. “We wanna play.”
I studied his face. I had known that boy for years, and not once had he shown up to the basketball program. He wouldn’t even come to Kids Off the Block, the after-school program that I ran out of my home. I talked him into coming to the bowling alley with us once, but he never would set foot in my house.
“Miss Diane, I ain’t sitting next to those so-and-so’s,” he told me then—only he didn’t say so-and-so’s. Too many rival gang members there, apparently.
I had no idea why he showed up that afternoon ready to shoot hoops. But I also knew I never turned anyone away who wanted to play.
“Cool, come on in.” I pointed to the lines by each basketball hoop. “Go ahead, we just running drills now.”
Lamont and his boys walked across the gym, their backpacks slung over their hoodies. I figured they’d change into their gym shoes and jump in with the other kids, so I turned my attention back to the program.
“Miss Diane, watch!” a boy hollered as he flung a basketball at the hoop.
I grinned and clapped, watching the ball sail toward the backboard and bounce into the net. “Nice shot!” I cheered. Three days a week, the gym a block from my house was filled with kids just dying to dribble and shoot. Basketball had a way of bringing boys together, no matter what block they came from or what gang they pledged their allegiance to.
Not fifteen minutes later, the door swung open and in walked TO.
Oh, Lord, I thought.
TO wasn’t supposed to be there that day. Most days he showed up ready to play, but he had told me he couldn’t come this time for one reason or another. And most days, I would have been thrilled to see him. But most days, Lamont wasn’t there.
Everybody was scared of TO. The kids told me he still ran around with his gang, much as I fussed at him to quit. I couldn’t go a day without somebody telling me about kids from TO’s and Lamont’s gangs shooting each other up. And now, members of both gangs were in the gym with seventy-five other kids.
“Oh, hey, TO!” I said nervously. I stood in front of him trying to steer him away from Lamont. Lord, please don’t let Lamont notice TO, I prayed.
“Hey!” I whipped my head around at the sound. There was Lamont, glaring right at TO. Too late.
“I know that was you the other night!” he bellowed, charging toward TO with his boys behind him. TO didn’t move, but he wasn’t backing down. The look on his face said he was fixing to fight.
Both boys screamed at each other, hurling words that I never allowed my KOB kids to say in front of me. And there I was between them, in the middle of a screaming match.
“Calm down!” I tried to yell over them. “The other kids are watching. Stop!”
But they didn’t. Before I could move, Lamont and his boys reached in their backpacks and pulled guns. Later, the other kids would tell me they were .45s, the kind of gun Dirty Harry carried. All I knew was they were huge. TO locked eyes with Lamont as two boys behind him whipped their guns out too.
Everything froze. From my peripheral vision, I could see the other kids staring, scared to move. No basketballs bounced now. There was just an eerie silence. I was nearly fifty years old, and I was stuck between a bunch of kids dead set on shooting each other. It was like something out of a movie, only in movies kids holding guns look scared, like they wouldn’t actually shoot. Not these kids. Their faces were cold and hard. My heart pounded.
If one of these boys gets killed up in here, I’ll never forgive myself, I thought. Images of their families flashed through my mind.
Something inside me snapped. How dare these boys ruin a perfectly good day of basketball? I was furious at them for putting all the lives in that gym at risk. If bullets started flying, any one of us could get hit. Not just the kids holding guns. Bullets don’t care.
No, I thought. Not today. I ain’t letting this happen.
I grabbed TO’s collar, yanking him down to my height until our faces were just inches apart. If I could get through to him, everybody else would listen.
“TO, tell them to put the guns down!” I screamed. “Tell them! Put the guns down!”
“Miss Diane, I can’t tell them to put the guns down!” he screamed right back at me.
“TO! We all gonna get shot! Tell them now! Tell them to put the guns down!”
“I can’t, Miss Diane! I can’t do it!”
Our voices grew louder and louder. My throat burned, but I kept screaming. No one tried to escape. The boys around me were so scared out of their minds, they couldn’t move.
“TO!” I screeched. “Do it! Tell them to put the guns down!”
“I already told you I can’t!”
“Tell them to put the guns down!”
My chest tightened, and I felt lightheaded as I tried to catch my breath. Come on, TO, I thought. You better than this.
Finally TO’s shoulders dropped. “Put the guns down!” he commanded.
TO’s boys lowered their guns and stared at Lamont. A split second later they took off running, busting through the gym doors and out onto the street, leaving TO in the gym. Lamont and his guys were behind them with their guns in their hands.
I let go of TO’s collar and hightailed it out of the gym and into the school. I raced down the hall as fast as I could to the principal’s office. “Somebody give me the phone!” I cried out.
I could barely breathe as I called the police. I told them exactly where the boys were, and they contacted the police detective who happened to be in the neighborhood. All of them were caught right there in the street and taken to jail.
When I could finally breathe again, I stomped back to the gym. TO was still there, shuffling around with his hands in his pockets. I thought he might be apologetic. After all, his little dispute just about got all of us killed. But instead he glared at me.
“Miss Diane, what was he doing here?” he demanded, clearly referring to Lamont.
“You already know, TO,” I said firmly. “I don’t turn anyone away who wants to play. That’s my rule.”
He crossed his arms. “Well, then I’m not gonna come back.”
“That’s okay with me,” I said. I knew he was bluffing anyway. “You can’t tell me who I let come to my program. What you are gonna do is you’re gonna stop bringing that mess with you.”
“I didn’t start it,” he protested.
“No, that’s right, you didn’t. Lamont did. But you sure didn’t stop it until I made you.”
TO walked off in a huff. When he was gone, I closed my eyes and sighed. Diane, what are you doing? I thought. What is wrong with you? You could’ve got yourself killed.
This isn’t how I’d envisioned spending my days after my kids were grown. I was supposed to be fishing and playing with my grandbabies. I was supposed to be free. Not once did I think I’d spend every waking hour of freedom looking after somebody else’s kids.
I didn’t plan any of this. When I invited ten kids into my living room in 2003, I had no idea it would turn into a nonprofit that kept thousands of kids off the streets. I didn’t know a bunch of teenagers would turn my life upside down, tear up my house, and threaten my marriage. I didn’t know that I’d come to love them as my own, that I’d wake up every morning thinking about how I could help them that day, that I’d willingly step in front of guns for them. I didn’t know I’d experience the joy of watching them not only survive but also leave gangs, graduate from high school, find good jobs. Or that I’d know all too well the heartbreak of seeing them fall back into old traps. Get caught up in the streets. Become more victims of gun violence.
None of this was my idea. And I certainly don’t deserve the credit. I still don’t understand why God chose me to do this. If I’d known what lay ahead, I probably would have said no. But He used me anyway.
And by His grace, I’m still here.