Mourning My Student Who Killed Someone

All the students and clients I’ve been in service to over the years hold a special place in my memory and heart. Maybe you hold yours in your heart as well. Soleta**, one of my students whom I hold dear, was recently charged with first-degree murder for killing a young woman, leaving behind a motherless child. All day and through the weekend I felt the weight of this tragedy in my gut and my heart. The sadness is overwhelming. And there is anger.

The ongoing loss of life to gun violence in this country is unfathomable. It’s normal and understandable to see the murderer as the perpetrator only. However, there are many victims of the great love affair that Americans have with their guns. This post is not to explain or minimize the terrible and incomprehensible death of this young mother. This post is to attempt to tell some of Soleta’s story. Sometimes, the murderer is a victim, too. There are roots, histories, stories to perpetrators’ transgressions. They do not transgress out of the blue.

Traveling back in time

Upon hearing the news I traveled back almost 20 years to when I became the education director and sole instructor in our small one-room high school program. The program was developed to serve street-involved youth from ages 14 and up. I had a roster of up to 20 kids at any given time. It’s hard to describe the community that we created together over the years when I was there, a community with some of the threads still intact.

We came from all walks of life. The majority of the students were the youngest generation in a long line of families caught in the traumas from addiction, systemic oppression, and poverty. Some students had no home and slept on the streets. Some lived in the shelters for the unhomed. Some couch surfed then would go home only to leave again because it was better, safer, to be on the streets or on a stranger’s couch. I entered my schoolroom in the mornings and felt the ghosts of kids who had died over the years—from overdose, exposure, illness, and murder. I was keenly aware that we were, as Bayo Akolomafe recently said, “feeling each other’s grief, feeling the larger forces at work.”

I was the middle-aged White lady who lived far outside the city, firmly situated within many circles of privilege. They accepted me nonetheless, and many, I believe, loved me as I loved—and do love—them. Just as I loved and still love Soleta.

Upon hearing the news of the killing, I went back to my journals from the years that Soleta was a student. Her name came up again and again over the years—my worries for her, her absences, the hospital visits, the detention center visits, the celebrations, and delight.

December 2008

I am running late because of the traffic. I forgot I have to buy snacks before I get to school. Where to go downtown that has parking? Then I have to dash down south to pick up bus tokens for the kids. Then I have to dash to pick up Soleta—so many barriers getting there on her own. Then we dash to school.

On the way, Soleta tells me that she and Nikkya and Ravenna are friends again. She and Nikkya “hit” each other up on MySpace and then Nikkya and Ravenna came over to the house. Soleta says they had fun. They got drunk, and Nikkya was so drunk that she made them all hold their glasses up for a toast. “Here’s to my bitches and ain’t no girl gonna tear us apart ever again.” Soleta says she’s glad they’re friends again, because, she says, “I don’t have any friends. I don’t need any friends. But we’re like sisters, so we’ll always be friends.”

I ask her if she’s gone to get her injection yet. Soleta says no, that she’s “not going to that place no more,” that she’s going to see if she can do it on her own for one whole year. I say “pay attention,” be sure she lets someone know if she needs help. I remind her that this is a tough time of year for her. Soleta says, “Yeah, it’s December.”

I worry. Every year for the last three years, Soleta has ended up in the hospital in December or January. And she is not actively managing her schizophrenia right now.

We get to school, settle in, and talk about Soleta’s upcoming interview for her internship. We fill out a questionnaire that she will take with her. What are your strengths? the form asks. I ask her what she likes about herself, or what are the things that people say they like about her. She says, “I don’t know. Nobody says nothing like that.” 

As we talk about what her strengths are, I can see her mouth trying to hold back a smile. She is pleased. I am pleased that she is able to hear these bits of light shining on and out of her. 

“I have a strong spirit. I am a little shy but I am friendly. I am helpful.”

I tell her that she’s going to do great, that the people there are going to really enjoy working with her. 

September 2009

A meeting this morning with a large Black woman who drives a lime green pickup truck with the words “Queen Nefertiti” in large white letters on the rearview window. And a White woman, middle-aged, dressed in a stodgy beige business suit. We are meeting to figure out how to best support Soleta,  Queen Nefertiti’s client. Soleta has the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia with psychosis. She is barely 19 years old. She has been hearing the voices since she was 16 years old. I have visited her in the psychiatric ward multiple times. 

My intern tells me that she learned in one of her community college classes that in other cultures and other times this young woman would have been considered a shaman, a priestess, taught to navigate this bizarre interior world, taught to listen to the voices differently. But she is no priestess in this time and place. No priestess. She is labeled mentally ill and needs to be fixed, to be locked up, to be made right and whole. No one is telling her what the voices mean, why she was chosen, what to say to those who cannot hear. No priestess. Not here. Not now. . . . What is lost. . . . . What can never be found.

Students and volunteers and interns and staff trickle in. A steady stream throughout the day. The phone never stops. The students come in and out. These young people who keep showing up to their lives despite unthinkable circumstances. Darcy who wants to dance all the time. Madison, beautiful and brave in her new proclamation that she is a woman. Rosa with her reptile of the day in tow. Soleta, determined to make yet another concerted attempt. One more time.

These beautiful young people that get up every morning.
How do they do that, show up to their life as it is, with such resolve?
I want to know how they do that. 
How do they do that?

The Death Spiral

My grief is deep, and my rage is intense. Soleta should never have been able to obtain a gun. Never. I am so sick and tired, a weariness that goes bone deep. So many victims. Too many. Carrying the legacy burdens of intergenerational trauma, poverty, systemic oppression. And now this. A life lost. A child without her mother. A community reeling. A woman who will spend her life behind bars. Tragic, unconscionable, and senseless. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, walking round the Death Spiral asleep, in a trance we can’t break, don’t know how to break, won’t break.

I will not end this post attempting to bring hope or resolution. Referencing Bayo again, we must enter into this terrible crack in our culture with eyes wide open. We must not turn away. We are a country mired in blood and grief; we are being asked to fall into the grief, into the complexity, on our knees, to the earth, mourn the victims, and mourn the perpetrators.

**Names and some details are changed in these entries. 

Photo by: stp23