What If: On Black Lives and Mental Health

When I think of Black Lives Matter, I think of my grandmother. Shortly after her seventieth birthday, she begins calling 911 in the middle of the night to report invisible squatters and the children they leave in her care. Although she is a black woman who was born in segregated Florida, she has always had a reverence for the police for as long as I can remember. “The cops used to ride behind me to make sure I got home safely,” she often tells me about her nightly walks home from work when she was just twelve years old. If there were a picture of the holy trinity, Granny’s would be a color portrait of Jesus, President Barack Obama, and a police officer.

Granny donates small amounts of money to different police benevolent associations. In turn, they mail her gifts of appreciation like pink mailing labels pre-printed with her name and address in fancy calligraphy fonts. Or calendars containing a different profile and picture each month of an officer killed in the line of duty. Sometimes I wonder whether these organizations are even legit, but the lifetime supply of pretty labels makes it worth the risk.

When I think of Black Lives Matter, my mind wanders back to the night I awoke to find a white police officer standing over my bed saying, “Ma’am, your grandmother called us. Do you mind if we take a look around?” Do I really have a choice? I think as I look up at the blond-haired, crew cut-wearing, broad-chested man standing in my bedroom. Granny has called 911 and already let him into our home and my bedroom. I’m not sure what mortifies me more: The fact that a cop is standing in my bedroom in the middle of the night while Granny yells Are you okay? at me from downstairs; or that a stranger is seeing me in my bedtime glory—a white headscarf with black polka dots; a green clay mask on my face; red plaid pajama pants; and a hole-riddled, used-to-be-orange-ten-years-ago T-shirt with the Serenity Prayer written on the front. Serenity is just what we need.

“My grandmother sees people who aren’t really here,” I tell the officer. He still searches my bedroom, and the two adjoining rooms that house a walk-in closet and a makeshift library Granny created for me several years ago. The invisible people have absconded with their children before the officer’s arrival. The officer and I go back downstairs to talk to Granny. She is still waiting by the front door, her brown skin sweaty and her dark brown, straight shoulder-length wig disheveled from the night’s excitement. “I’ll drive around the block a few times to see if they’re still in the area,” the officer tells Granny to ease her fears.

Contrary to Granny, I have always felt uneasy about police. I don’t espouse Granny’s the cops are your friends outlook. In 1999, I march through New York City streets with hundreds of other Columbia University students to protest New York City police officers’ shooting of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo. I wear a white label with “41” written in black magic marker taped to my bookbag strap for a whole year. I want every person I encounter to remember the forty-one times cops shot Mr. Diallo on his front stoop. I am still horrified when I think of Abner Louima, the Haitian man whom police tortured and sodomized with a toilet plunger in the bathroom of a Brooklyn precinct in 1997. I remember Rodney King, a black man whom Los Angeles police officers beat beyond recognition in 1991. I watch in shock when the officers are acquitted and riots erupt in LA.

And then there are the casual indignities boys in my family endure at the hands of police. Like the numerous times police stop my teenage cousins and ask them for IDs and their reasons for being in a certain neighborhood. A certain white neighborhood. A certain white neighborhood in which they reside. Even in a post-slavery, post-racial America, Black folks still need manumission papers in their own neighborhoods long before Trayvon Martin crosses a fatal path with George Zimmerman. No, the police are not part of my holy trinity.

*

Eleanor Bumpurs
Sixty-six-year-old black woman
Diagnosis: Psychosis
Bronx, New York
October 29, 1984

Eleanor has not paid rent in four months and owes $394.60. The New York City Housing Authority calls the police to evict Eleanor from her apartment. She doesn’t open the door. The cops bust in. Eleanor charges towards the cops with a knife, they say. There is a struggle. An officer blasts two shots into Eleanor’s right hand and chest. The shooter is acquitted. Two Social Services supervisors are demoted for failing to request proper psychiatric assistance and an emergency rent grant for Eleanor. The police shoot Eleanor like a rabid dog in the street. For $394.60.

Granny always shows signs that she is unraveling. Sometimes she chases the invisible people around the house, yelling at them to get out. I am afraid she will trip while chasing them up and down the stairs. Other nights, she is calmer but equally delusional. Like the night I arrive home and she tells me, “He was cold, so I put a jacket on him.”

“Who is cold?” I ask her.

“The little boy,” she says. She is pointing to the bannister, over which she has draped her pink and grey jacket. I don’t tell Granny that the bannister is not a little boy, because challenging her will only upset her. And it’s been a long day at work.

She sometimes feeds the intruders. Like the night I walk into the dining room and see four plates set out in front of chairs. Each one contains potato chips and Oreo cookies. And she has set a glass of juice beside each plate. “The children were hungry,” Granny explains.

“If they’re still hungry later, you can feed them then,” I reply and empty the plates.

On one of these nights full of signs, Granny calls 911 again. Two cops arrive—one black and one white. This is the first time they’ve ever sent a non-white officer. I don’t remember the black officer’s name, but he looks young—much younger than the white officer. He has an angular, chiseled jaw and square chin. He remains quiet. I don’t remember the white officer’s face, his features merging into the countless others who have visited our home. But his name has a -shek at the end. I remember thinking that his name reminds me of “Damashek,” the name of one of my elementary school teachers. So, I name him Officer Damashek.

“Let’s talk over here,” I say to Officer Damashek while Granny continues talking excitedly about the squatters to the young black officer. Granny is very defensive. I can’t let her hear me tell the officer she’s seeing things again. We stop in front of my neighbor’s house next door. “My grandmother has been experiencing hallucinations for the last few months,” I tell him. “They began after she fell at church.”

“Does she have dementia?” Officer Damashek asks.

“I don’t know. She refuses to go to the doctor.”

“Jodi, don’t lie! We can’t get help if you lie!” Granny yells from in front of our house. Must you be so loud at one o’clock in the morning? Must the entire neighborhood hear our melodrama? I try to telepathically ask Granny.

“Do you think she’ll go to the hospital tonight?” Officer Damashek asks.

“I have no idea. But, you can try,” I answer, my voice a mixture of sleep deprivation and resignation.

Officer Damashek walks back over to Granny and the black officer.

“Ma’am, if we take the children to the hospital, will you go with them to make sure they’re okay?” he asks Granny.

“Oh yes. Thank you, Jesus,” she replies. Granny’s prayers have been answered. She is relieved that her phantom children will be helped. I too am relieved, and hopeful that doctors will finally be able to name the culprit responsible for Granny’s forgetfulness and nighttime intruders. I grab some things from the house so that Granny and I won’t show up to the hospital looking like a pair of homeless people: shoes, her medications, her butter pecan-flavored Ensure drink and Oreo cookies (like a child, Granny must always have snacks), and the house keys. I rush back outside before Granny changes her mind.

Granny and I sit in the ambulance as the police officers and EMT workers exchange information.

“Where are the children?” Granny asks me.

“They’re in the police car in front of us,” I reply. Officer Damashek is a good teacher and I am a quick study. That answer satisfies her for the moment. We arrive at Jamaica Hospital. Although we used to always pass it as we rode the Q24 bus on our way to church in Queens, this is my first time here.

“Where are the children?” Granny asks again as the EMT workers wheel her into the emergency room on the stretcher.

“They’re in the pediatric emergency room next door,” I say while pointing to a door adjoining the lobby.

“I think y’all just told me that to get me to go to the hospital,” she says. I laugh. How quickly and suddenly the pendulum swings from delusion to lucidity.

“Well, you needed to come here anyway so you can rest,” I answer. Never admit a lie. Just distract. And she does need to rest. Her late nights of screaming at the invisible people and calling the police have taken their toll, robbing her of sleep and leaving dark circles under her eyes. She sleeps through our entire ER visit. Several hours, X-rays, and conversations later, the doctor has an answer: vascular dementia. Numerous mini-strokes over time have damaged her brain and are causing the hallucinations. As the sun rises the next morning, I call my boss from the ER to explain that I will not be coming to work that day. With a prescription for Risperdal and a referral to her primary care physician in hand, Granny and I take a cab home.

I keep meaning to search through my old journals, hoping I wrote down Officer Damashek’s real name because I want to thank him. I want to thank him for seeing Granny not as a threat, but for who she really is: sick, afraid, frustrated, human.

I am relieved that Granny can come back home and is not placed in a psychiatric hospital or nursing home. Granny’s 911 calls always scare me. I’m afraid the cops will fine us as punishment for Granny making false police reports. Afraid the cops will take Granny away from me. Separate us. Tell me, “It’s clear you can’t take care of her or adequately supervise her.” Granny raised me. She brought me home from the hospital when I was a newborn. When it became clear that my mother’s crack cocaine addiction wasn’t a temporary phase, Granny filed an application with the Kings County Surrogate’s Court to become my legal guardian. It has always been just the two of us.

I am also relieved that our police encounters have been pretty unremarkable—as unremarkable as one can be when chasing invisible people.

When I think of Black Lives Matter, I think of the Christmas Eve Granny calls 911 to report that she smells smoke and sees dead bodies lying on the floor. I am at work, unable to protect her. Unable to hold her hand while explaining, “Excuse me, officer. My grandmother sees people who aren’t really here.” Cop cars, ambulances, and fire trucks arrive at our house. Granny is frightened and begins to cry. She has forgotten where she placed her keys. The firemen break the lock on our front gate. When they enter, there is no smoke. No dead bodies. Just Granny. The authorities have finally separated Granny and me. On Christmas Eve.

The police say Granny has to go to the hospital. The ambulance takes her to the psychiatric ER at Brookdale Hospital, and my neighbor Gail rides with Granny so that she will not be alone. But visitors aren’t allowed in the psych ER. I visit Granny when she is transferred to the geriatric psych unit at Beth Israel Medical Center three days later. I cry when I see her, so helpless and confused. She is still talking about the invisible people at home. Her matching dark chocolate-colored velour shirt and pants have stains on them. Her nose and the surrounding skin are peeling and her lips are chapped. How are these doctors helping her, I wonder. After two weeks and numerous tests, the doctors find the real culprit: Alzheimer’s disease with psychotic features.

When I think of Black Lives Matter, I revisit that day in the Dominican hair salon around the corner from our house. I need to hurry up and get home, a nagging inner voice warns as the stylist removes rollers from my hair. I rush out of the salon, my freshly curled hair not yet blown straight.

“Help! The voodoo man is trying to kill me,” I hear Granny yell as I walk down the street. I walk faster and then I sprint the rest of the way home. A small tribe surrounds Granny on our front porch. Her home attendant attempts to console her in Spanglish with soft words and pats. Our neighbors try to reason with her through her tears.

“Do you really think we’d let people stay in your house and hurt you?” someone asks her. Granny stops to think.

“No, I guess not,” she replies. But, she won’t move, still too afraid to go back inside. And then I call 911, because I don’t know what else to do. Because Granny’s anti-psychotic meds aren’t working. Because the cops always know how to make her feel safe. This is the first time I have made this call. An ambulance arrives and takes her to the psych ER at Brookdale Hospital. Three days later, she is then transferred to the geriatric psych unit at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. The doctors change her medications. Granny returns home two weeks later.

*

Michael Noel
Thirty-two-year-old black man
Diagnosis: Paranoid Schizophrenia
St. Martinville, Louisiana
December 21, 2015

Michael’s mother sees the signs. The signs that he is about to lose it again. He is agitated. Kicks an ironing board. Knocks over an ashtray. She waits until Michael leaves the house and then calls 911. She has made this call many times before. Just last week, Michael told police that he speaks to Jesus Christ. The coroner’s office issues a protective order so the police can take Michael to the mental hospital. “Murderers!” Michael yells as the two white officers attempt to enter his house that evening. They wrestle Michael to the floor. They struggle and get one handcuff on him. They take him down like a criminal on the run. One shot to the chest. In the living room. In front of his mother and aunt.

The coroner’s office issues a protective order.

But it doesn’t protect him from death.

Maybe Michael really did talk to Jesus.

Maybe Jesus tried to warn him.

Maybe Jesus will meet him

At the coroner’s office.

When I think of Black Lives Matter, I think of my grandmother and I wonder. What if Granny were taller? Heavier? What if she were younger? A man? What if she had grabbed a weapon to protect herself from the invisible people? A weapon like the long, skinny iron pole we keep by the front door. The pole she used to swing at grown men who tried to flirt with me as a young girl.

Lavall Hall
Twenty-five-year-old black man
Miami Gardens, Florida
Diagnosis: Schizophrenia
February 15, 2015

Lavall’s mother awakens to find him outside, almost naked and holding a metal broom handle. She calls the police at 5 a.m. because she doesn’t know what else to do. Because the cops always know how to make things better. Just a week ago, they had taken him to the mental hospital.

“I’m scared. Please don’t hurt my baby,” she says.

“Get on the fucking ground or you’re dead,” one officer yells at Lavall.

Five fatal shots pierce his body.

I wonder. What if Granny had grabbed a weapon to protect herself from the invisible people? A weapon like the yellow baseball bat she sometimes swings at the people in her TV. “Get outta here,” she yells at her reflection in the black television screen. I take the bat from her and hide it in my bedroom to save the invisible people and our furniture.

Deborah Danner
Sixty-six-year-old black woman
Bronx, New York
Diagnosis: Schizophrenia
October 18, 2016

Neighbors call 911 because Deborah is acting erratically. Officers arrive. This is not the first time they have been called to her home. She is agitated. To Deborah, these officers are unwelcome guests. Invisible intruders made visible. She grabs a pair of scissors and then a baseball bat. She swings at an officer, they say. He shoots her two times.

Deborah and Eleanor are killed in the same month, thirty-two years apart. Two shots each. Same age. Same borough. A painful history repeated.

*

Annie Lee McKinney

(aka Granny)

Seventy-four-year-old black woman

Brooklyn, New York

Diagnosis: Alzheimer’s Disease with Psychotic Symptoms

June 27, 2011

I make one last 911 call. I am at work and Granny is with her home attendant. The home attendant says Granny is out of it and not herself. Granny is unable to feed herself. She is lethargic and talking strangely. “Put my grandmother on the phone,” I say in a panic. Granny’s speech is slurred. I call 911. I then call my neighbor and ask her to go check on Granny and wait for the ambulance to arrive. I leave work and rush to Kingsbrook Hospital, where they are taking Granny. “Get off of me! I’m not going to lay here and let you kill me,” she yells at the nurses in the emergency room and refuses to let them touch her. Perhaps she thinks the invisible people have followed her to the hospital. I try to calm her down and convince her that no one is going to hurt her. Once she is admitted, Granny continues fighting the nurses. They wrap restraints around Granny and tie them to the bed to prevent her from getting up. One day after being hospitalized, doctors place her on a respirator because she is having difficulty breathing.

“She’s a miracle,” a doctor tells me when Granny is taken off the respirator one week later. The doctors still don’t know what caused her respiratory distress or the symptoms that landed her in the hospital. Perhaps her Alzheimer’s just advanced suddenly, they tell me. It happens sometimes. This doesn’t comfort me. Maybe her body couldn’t metabolize all of her medications, they add. But I want to believe in magic and happy endings. We are optimistic that Granny will come back home once she receives feeding therapy and relearns how to swallow.

“She was able to swallow when she was home,” I tell her doctor. “What happened?”

“With Alzheimer’s patients, either they use it or lose it,” he replies. “If they stop using a particular skill, even for a short period of time, they may forget it,” he adds. Alzheimer’s is such a sneaky thief.

Granny is transferred to a regular hospital room.

“In three weeks, it’ll all be clear,” she tells me one day while lying in her bed. I’m not sure she has spoken or that I’ve heard her correctly. Other than screaming at nurses and talking to her dead sisters and mother, she has barely spoken since being hospitalized.

“What did you say?” I ask her.

“In three weeks, it’ll all be clear.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” she replies in a soft childlike voice. She doesn’t say anything else.

Granny is discharged from the hospital and admitted to a nursing home two weeks after being hospitalized. She never begins feeding therapy because she is either unwilling or unable to follow the therapists’ directions.

And then she develops pneumonia in both lungs. Rapidly multiplying bacteria spread throughout her bloodstream and her body goes into septic shock.

Every time I touch Granny, her heart monitor beeps faster. When I touch her right leg, she raises it and turns towards me. She opens her mouth wide, unable to scream because she is intubated. But her arched eyebrows and the grimace on her face let me know she is in pain. Granny is right. It is starting to become clear. I think Jesus talks to Granny. Jesus is trying to warn us.

I look for Granny’s doctor, but can’t find her. So, I wait.

“Can I sign those papers the social worker spoke to me about?” I ask when she returns to Granny’s room. “I don’t want her to suffer,” I whisper. I can’t hold back my tears.

“I understand,” the doctor replies. I sign the do-not-resuscitate order that night.

My friend Jennifer is with me. We sing and read Bible scriptures to Granny. And I talk to her, even if she can’t answer. Even if I’m not sure she hears me.

“Thank you for being the best grandmother I could ask for,” I tell her as she struggles to breathe. I stroke her chin and forehead, the only places on her body I can touch that don’t hurt. “I love you. It’s okay if you need to leave me now.”

The next day, two weeks after Granny’s spontaneous utterance, I am on my way to see her. My phone rings at 12:19 p.m. as I rush through the double doors to the Intensive Care Unit. It is Granny’s doctor calling.

“Ms. Savage, I am sorry to inform you . . . ”

“Don’t say it. I know. I’m here,” I say to the doctor. Our eyes lock as he sits at the workstation outside Granny’s room with the phone still to his ear. Granny is still warm. I am surprised at how peaceful she looks, her skin color having changed from a fever-induced red hue to its natural golden brown state. Her amber-colored eyes have dulled to a gray, her fire extinguished. “Sweetie, it’s finally over,” I say as I hold her swollen hand and stroke her small face. I close her eyes.

Death is never welcomed, nor easy. But how one dies matters. I am grateful. Grateful I had a chance to say goodbye. Grateful Granny did not die like a criminal on the run or a rabid dog in the street. Death could have come by bullet, on our front porch or in our home. Who would bear witness? Just two black women in the middle of the night—one young, one old. No smartphone cameras or Facebook Live to capture the last moments. In another time, Granny could have been another name. Another hashtag created. Another life stolen. I am grateful that death chose, instead, to visit Granny in a quiet hospital room. On a warm sunny afternoon. The last Monday in June.

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