Every day, 19-year-old Shemeka Campbell gets up at around 4 am, prepares her younger siblings for school and heads out to the family shop where she remains until after dark, catching a dollar to help the family survive.
“I does get up and cook. My other sister would help press the school clothes then I would go downstairs bathe them and bathe myself at the same time and then carry them out to school. Sometimes when I know they late I would put them in a car and I would go to the shop and open up and start selling.”
Most times when she gets home her siblings are in bed so she would have a bath and crawl in as well to start the cycle again the next morning.
Less than one year ago it was not like this, but a brutal act robbed Shemeka and her five siblings of their mother. On January 18, 2016 Leolyn Sullivan was stabbed to death allegedly by her reputed husband Clarence Carter at their Wisroc, Linden home. He has since been charged. Shemeka and another sibling were also injured in that attack, but for her the injuries can in no way compare to the pain she feels over the loss of her mother.
When Leolyn died, her youngest child was just two years old and her death saw Shemeka assuming the role of mother to her siblings – Saskeya, 17, Saffron, 14, Sharga, 7 and Shebeke, 3 years old. She also has an older brother, Steven, but he does not live with them.
Christmas
Shemeka hopes that she and two of her siblings will spend Christmas with their brother as an aunt has promised to take the younger ones for the holidays.
“I can’t stay home… I don’t want to spend Christmas there and I hope we can go away for the Christmas,” she told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
She does not want to compare it with last year when she was celebrating with her mother, who was big on Christmas and ensured that their home was festive, that they got gifts and all the delicacies to eat. Her mother also made a good black cake which Shemeka loved.
“She did everything, we didn’t have to do nothing…,” she said of her mother.
Shemeka admits that her relatives and father would assist them—they share an apartment building with an aunt and cousin—but she said the sheer weight of having to take on the responsibility of being the eldest in the house can prove to be burdensome.
“It is like sometimes I don’t have a life,” she said, but quickly added that she would not want to live apart from her siblings and would do her best to ensure that they remain together.
“If I could get just one Christmas gift, it would be you know like a mother figure, just somebody to advise and help me sometimes, because you know sometimes my sisters after me would not want to listen to me,” the young woman said. She added that the person does not have to live with them but could help her to talk to her teen siblings and advise her.
Her mother operated a shop at the Linden market and Shemeka ensures that it remains open even though it difficult at times especially with the fact that most of the sales come after dark.
“After my sisters and brother go to school, I have to get somebody sometimes to pick the smaller ones up because I can’t leave the shop and I would keep them and they would go home to the other two when they finish school,” she explained.
The youngest of the children was born with a defect in both of her hands and their mother used to take her for therapy. This had to be continued by Shemeka placing addition strain on her young shoulders, but she marched on, determinedly and now her sister has started to use both of her hands which she counts as a blessing to the family.
“It is very hard and you know sometimes I can’t even explain it. Sometimes I does feel very frustrated like I does just want go and leave them. That is how I does feel sometimes. I don’t even get time for myself. I don’t go nowhere. I does just deh with them all the time,” Shemeka attempted to explain her situation almost in tears.
He sisters would assist and would help to iron the schools clothes but at times it all proves too much for Shemeka and maybe for her siblings as well.
Leolyn’s eldest was not living with the family when she died and Shemeka related that he calls to ensure that they are well and would assist them as much as he could. He would even take the younger children some weekends. But yet the last year has been very tough.
“You know, I didn’t know is all of this my mother did, now I say to myself that she was strong,” Shemeka said.
The last moments of her mother’s life remain etched in her memory. She, her mother and a sibling were bloodied and being taken to the hospital.
“I remember myself asking she if she alright and she keep making a sound. But, you know, she had this big hole in the back of her neck and I feel is how they hold her when she reach the hospital make she dead. They didn’t have no stretcher or anything and I see when we went in the hospital nobody didn’t have time with she, they just paying attention to me and me sister so is like then she dead,” the young woman recalled. Her suspicion was confirmed after she was discharged from the hospital.
She remembers her mother as a “peaceful” persons who at times she did not get along with.
“Sometimes she used to get me vex, but, you know, now I know the reason why she used to get me vex because she just wanted to see good from us; she didn’t want see bad from us and that was the reason she used to tell we tek in we education and thing but you know everybody got them good and bad,” she said matter-of-factly.
Now when it is difficult to talk to the teenagers, she would tell them, “You know if mommy was around you all couldn’t do these things and they would get vex when I tell them that.”
Help
The Caribbean American Domestic Violence Awareness (CADVA) has been working with siblings and according to its local coordinator Tiffany Jackson, relatives also do not want the children to separate.
She noted that recently Shemeka has become very frustrated and said she hoped the children would be given some assistance to help to ease the burden.
“… If there is anybody out there who can render some assistance to these children, even the government we would appeal to them to do so,” Jackson told this newspaper in Shemeka’s presence.
She said the assistance did not have to be monetary, but persons could help in restocking the shop as sometimes the turnover was not as good and Shemeka found it difficult to do so. “Sometimes things fall apart. These are just children who depend on the business and the 17-year-old would be writing examinations very soon, so they need the help,” she said.
In 2017, CADVA will focus more on children who are left without their parents through homicide and will from time to time work towards taking them out of the environment temporarily. The first set of affected children were recently taken to the US, where they have relatives, and while they visited their relatives they were also involved in a retreat designed to assist children in their situation.
Next year, CADVA hopes to give Shemeka and her siblings the same opportunity.
“Specifically, Shemeka needs a break; you don’t want her to be so overwhelmed that it breaks her,” Jackson said, adding that children who do not have relatives in the US would be accommodated by CADVA’s international coordinator Dianne Madray before going off to the retreat.
Jackson pointed out that children in such situations are just expected to grow up without their needs being catered for.
