“Duck, son, you need to learn to make your own way in this world,” my mother said as she walked me outside to the storage bin of our apartment, pulling the key out of her pocket. We lived in the projects, and inside that bin was the lawn mower my mom had purchased straight from Heilig-Myers furniture store, shelling out a bunch of money for a device that until now, she had forbidden us kids to fool around with. Yet there she stood, tapping her foot on the ground to the beat of anticipation as she eyed the mower, urging my nine-year-old self on with a curt nod of her chin.
I had never cut grass on my own before, but her steely confidence in me felt too good to pass up. Every other time I’d dug around in the storage bin it had been to retrieve my BMX bike, now I was digging for principle. I pulled the handlebar of the machine and the wheels followed, freeing the mower from the cluster until it was fully in my hands and invoking in me the sense of a qualified grass cutter. Though I’d yet to cut a single strand, I was buzzing with excitement as I yanked back the rip cord and braced myself for the wailing churn of the motor.
With her hands cocked on her hips and a stern crease on her brow, my mother waited patiently, and I set about mowing our lawn for the first time. I felt her studious watch as I walked our lawn, returning to her when I was done for a bit of doting praise, but instead she said, “Now, go knock in Ms. Maggie’s door and ask her does she want her grass cut.”
Ms. Maggie was our elderly neighbor who kept company most days with her TV soaps while the wild grass grew around her apartment, a haven for garden snakes and ticks. I strolled up the walkway and rapped on the screen door with my most earnest grass cutter face, my chest tight with the weighty responsibility of performing the task without guidance. Ms. Maggie appeared in her house robe and slippers, hair rollers bulging under her silk head scarf, and the TV remote attached to her hand like a prosthetic clicker. I was hired with the go-ahead nod and got straight to work on her lawn, discovering new techniques along the way like how to tilt the mower upward to avoid stalling the blades and checking underneath stones for critters. I pulled invasive weeds by hand along her zestful garden, as I reckoned a mishap there would earn me a good fussing. Once done, Ms. Maggie took a break from her regularly scheduled program to thank me with a $5 bill.
I sauntered home with the money in hand and covered in grassy debris where my mother received me with a cheeky grin and said, “That money’s yours. You worked for it, you keep it. Now look over there at that grass in Ms. Julia’s yard. And don’t forget you’ll need some gas.”
She was right – I would need more gas, $2 worth to fill up the tank. I was left with $3 and another lawn to mow; I was investing in myself.
I headed to the convenience store across the street and pumped regular unleaded fuel into my plastic container. Then I carried my equipment over to Ms. Julia’s door where I got cookies and again, the nod. I mowed from the outer perimeter inward towards the porch to keep from recutting the disposable grass bits. I wound the water hose up around the clothes line post and skirted the sewer grates with their protruding bolts. It was an hour-long job that earned me another $5 and a bi-weekly contract. I mowed two more lawns that day and made $9, but what I came home with was something worth more than currency.
I returned the mower to the storage bin feeling like I’d done something more worthwhile than wasting away the summer morning watching cartoons. I walked into the house where my mother was at the kitchen stove with a spatula in hand and a lesson on her lips. “Ya see, ain’t nothing you can’t have in this world, Duck, if you’re willing to work for it. Now go on in there and wash that gunk off you. And put that money up somewhere.”
ABOUT THE WRITER. Terry Robinson is a long-time WITS writer who writes under the pen name Chanton. He is a member of the Board of Directors of WITS, and also facilitates a book club on NC’s Death Row. He has spoken to a Social Work class at VCU regarding the power of writing in self-care, as well as numerous other schools on a variety of topics, including being innocent and in prison.
Terry Robinson’s accomplishments are too numerous to fully list here, but he is currently working on multiple writing projects, contributes to the community he lives in including facilitating Spanish and writing groups, and is co-author of Beneath Our Numbers: A Collaborative Memoir From Inside Mass Incarceration and also Inside: Voices from Death Row. Terry was published by JSTOR, with his essay The Turnaround, and all of his WITS writing can be found here. In addition, Terry can also be heard here, on Prison Pod Productions.
Terry has always maintained his innocence, and is serving a sentence of death for a crime he knew nothing about. WITS is very hopeful that Terry Robinson’s innocence will be proven in the not too distant future and we look forward to working side-by-side with him.
Terry can be contacted at:
Terry Robinson #0349019
Central Prison
P.O. Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131
OR
textbehind.com
His writing can also be followed on Facebook and any messages left there will be forwarded to him.
