Sticking with Integrity

Episode 5 of the STARZ Original, Power Book II took Tariq through an emotional high & immediate low, all in the last 10 minutes of the show. Tariq St. Patrick is a college kid, in the scene, he’s in a court hearing trying to get custody of his sister, Jasmine, after their grandmother’s alcohol abuse left Jasmine in foster care. Tariq wants to keep his family together and gets granted temporary custody.

Tariq and Jasmine’s mom is in witness protection after being released from prison for snitching. Their father is deceased. Tariq had no choice but to step up.

After watching that scene twice, and reflecting, it finally hit me, that could’ve been me. In fact, I was in something similar, where someone was in the position to make it more difficult to keep my family together. Thankfully it never got as bad as it could have.

My mom, like Tariq’s mom in the show, also got caught up in a situation that left her in prison. Even worse, after doing her 2-year sentence she got deported to the US. The day that I first learned that is still one of the worst days of my life. That was twelve years ago. I grew up with my mom, twin sister, and younger brother. My mom worked hard to give us the best life she could. I was a first generation Dominican American, and I needed to figure out how I was going to change my family tree. She had her own hair salon in a city twenty minutes outside of Boston. It was 2008, and the economic downturn and the lack of people paying to do hair, had really taken a toll on the business. She had empty chairs at the salon and could barely pay the bills and maintain her three kids. I’ve always lived in apartments growing up, section 8 housing to be exact. By 2009, I had graduated high school and was excited to start college. I felt like I was on track to start the rest of my life and the rug got pulled under me. All of a sudden nothing was certain. My life was full of certainty, and I was devastated. The only thing I knew was that I had to figure it out and push forward.

A few days after my mom landed in prison, we had to figure out all our finances and get everything in order. In the mail came a letter from the Peabody Housing Authority. I was nervous. I knew that was the annual letter requesting a meeting and an inspection to make sure you still qualify for the program. The section 8 was under my mom’s name and my mom was gone. We were a few decisions away from being homeless. My mom did her best to manage the situation. She was going to do whatever it took to keep us safe. She came up with a plan. She would tell the office she was out of the country taking care of her special needs brother. It was not that far-fetched since she does have a special needs brother that occasionally runs away and requires extra attention. Anyway, the plan was that she had to be in the Dominican Republic for an unknown period, and she fabricated documents to show that. In DR, as long as you can pay, you can falsely anything. The documents were done, and they were mailed directly to the director of the program.

“Hello, I received some documents from your mother, and I need you to come in”. That was the voicemail from the program director.

Fuck.

“What am I going to do now?”, I thought.

I had an appointment to visit Arthur and I was terrified. He was extremely intimidating, and I was supposed to go in there and lie?

I walked in.

“Come this way Joselin, thank you for coming. So, what’s going on with you mom?”

“Well she’s going to be out of the country for a while”

“Yeah, I read that. So, her brother is sick?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I replied.

The room is tense. You can feel it. And I felt like he was reading right through my bullshit. Fake looking notarized documents telling a story that seemed fishy. I knew what he was thinking.

I took a deep breath. “I know that those documents were sent to your office”, I began to explain. But the truth, is that the documents are fake. The truth is my mom is in prison. My twin sister and I are left alone with out 9-year-old brother. He looked at me in disbelief. Then, I noticed him look at a picture of his daughter on his desk. I explained to him that my sister and I were in college and working 30+ hours a week.

I’m going to give you a chance, because you are hard-working, in college, and you came in here and told the truth. That was it. I started bawling my eyes out.

Have you ever experienced a defining situation that when reflecting, had it played out differently, could’ve changed the entire trajectory of your life? Well, this moment was it for me.

The hearing in the episode of Power Book II, ended with the grandmother trying to reason with the judge, by saying, “He’s a baby your Honor. He can’t raise a baby”.

The program director could’ve made that call that day. He could’ve called child protective services or denied us the place to live. I thank God every day for my decision to be real and brave, no matter the circumstances. That’s the definition of integrity, right?