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Devastation and a Detour
Antonio Seay sat on the edge of his bed and tipped the photograph back and forth in his hands. The portrait had been taken a few years earlier when he was up North in college. He touched his image, wiping away a layer of dust.Forget the past, he told himself, letting the photograph fall to the blue bedspread. He turned his attention to the day's mail, a stack of bills and paperwork officials required before they'd consider deferring payments on his $20,000 college loan. He sighed and tossed the envelopes to the far side of the bed, then flopped back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.
Two of his college buddies had recently called. They had solid careers and fat paychecks. One was getting married. Antonio wanted those things too. He'd planned to go to law school or become a cop. Instead, at age 25, he was trapped in a housing project in a run-down neighborhood in Miami. Cockroaches skittered across the kitchen counter. The appliances were older than he was. The floors, even in the bedroom, were ancient linoleum, worn and chipped. The walls, grimy with sections of peeling paint, revealed decades of hard living.
Antonio glanced again at the photo of the young man full of dreams. Then he swung his legs off the bed and walked outside the bunker-like house into the night air.
The thump-thump-thump of rap music blared from somewhere in the dark. Up the street, someone shouted. Tires squealed. He went down a pathway littered with trash and turned and studied his home. The very place he'd vowed to escape. He closed his eyes and heard his mother's voice. She'd asked him to drive her to the store that day. That's where this journey of his had begun -- four years ago on a trip to the store.
It was a hot August afternoon in 2002 when Antonio rolled down the car windows and pulled away from the curb. He hardly noticed the bleak neighborhood where he and four younger brothers and sisters lived with their mother, Dorothea. In his mind he was already living in the future.
The first in his family to go to college, in ten months he would graduate from St. Peter's College in New Jersey, with a major in business management and a minor in criminal justice.
He glanced at his mother, who sat quietly in the front seat looking out the window. She was his inspiration, the strength in a family absent a father. She'd never complained. All she wanted was kids smart enough to avoid her mistakes.
"Sweetie," she said softly, "I got something to tell you."
Antonio's stomach tightened. When his mother talked like that, he knew it was something serious.
"I know I should've told you," she said. "But I didn't know how." She paused, searching for the words. "I'm letting you know, from mother to son, I've got HIV." Antonio was silent. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
"Sweetie," his mother said, "I'm going to die."
He returned to college, and each week he and his mother talked by phone.
Antonio learned a man she'd trusted and loved had infected her. By the time she got sick, tests revealed the virus had developed into full-blown AIDS. She was alive, though, when her son graduated and returned home in May. Two months later she was admitted to the hospital and soon afterward, a hospice.
Her death would rip the family apart. Antonio could escape, but only if he left behind his sisters, Shronda, 15, Keyera, 13, and his 14-year-old twin brothers, Torrian and Corrian.
Aunts and uncles lived nearby. Others were out of state. But none offered to care for the kids. They'd become wards of the state and sent to foster homes under the supervision of the Florida Department of Children & Families.
Then he got this crazy idea. What if he gained legal custody? He'd never heard of such a thing, but why not? He talked it over with friends. Some admired his guts. Others said if he had any sense he'd run and not look back. He knew his siblings would be a burden. He'd have to postpone any thought of a better life for eight years until his baby sister turned 21. A home in a nice neighborhood? Forget it. Law school? Out. He figured he could get some government assistance, but he had no job and no way to support himself and four children.
Maybe it would be better for everyone if the family split up. They could all start clean. The choice was clear -- abandon them, or his dreams. He prayed he'd do the right thing.
A Legal Aid attorney helped him prepare for court. She asked questions and filled out paperwork. Antonio was in her office the day in August 2003, just a year after his mother had told him the news, when a hospice nurse called. Dorothea had died.
Hours later he gathered his brothers and sisters in the living room and talked bluntly about the future. "We have to be strong," he said through tears. "It's not the end of the world because Mom's gone. We're still a family, still going on, no matter what. We have to be here for each other."
A week after the funeral, after mourners stopped bringing meals to the house, Antonio was on his own. He waited for a court date, hoping that the judge wouldn't think he was a fool, but a man who wanted to be a father figure the best he knew how.
At the hearing, the judge had Antonio and his brothers and sisters stand. "You look young," she told Antonio. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three," he answered.
"This is a big responsibility," the judge said. "Most men might not take care of their own child, and you come in here to get legal responsibility of your brothers and sisters."
The judge studied the paperwork provided by Legal Aid.
"I respect you," the judge told him, before turning her attention to his siblings. "Do you want to stay with him?"
"Yes," they answered.
Five minutes later the hearing ended. Antonio signed papers and drove his family home to start a new life.
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