Scared to go home

Lakayana Yotoma Drury, August 2025

Executive Director report to the Board of Directors, August 2025

Dear Board of Directors,

I bought a round-trip ticket to Ghana for a Black boy who is shaped like a clenched fist

But he never showed up at the airport.

Why didn’t he show up?

I don’t know.

We haven't spoken about it since.

I’m taking time to reflect

But I know him enough to overstand his situation

He comes from a family with so many broken pieces

His auntie has run out of glue

He’s got a cousin who used to lace up gloves

But now he’s in the hole

I’m still bothered by the lost money

But I’m more concerned about how we move forward

There's a concept in dendrology called crown shyness

Where the tops of trees will blow in the wind

And the crowns of the tree sway together but never touch

That's how it feels sometimes with all of us

Swaying together but in our own space

I was with his brother the other day, and we had a conversation about everything

On the road between chicken and waffles and the prison industrial complex

“Are these buildings new?”

Shy Boy asks as he scans both streets as we roll down gentrification boulevard

We’re only 10 minutes from his apartment

But he’s never been to this neighborhood

He doesn't say much, but there's a lot going on in his mind

We just got done eating breakfast

At one of those fancy brunch spots

That has a line out the door on weekends

Nahh, these have been here.

We roll past fat cribs with back yards so big that they could fit another house

past a private catholic school tucked in amongst the trees

Shy Boy mhmmms as we pass

We bend the corner around a large, manicured roundabout

“They got a gold statue!” he exclaims

This was the cherry on top of his curiosity

Joan of Arc gleams with pride and points her sword

Towards the summer sky

I asked Shy Boy why his brother didn't come home for three days

After he never showed up at the airport

He replied with the preamble to the code

“He was scared to go home”

The comment cleared everything else from my mind

Scared to go home

Scared to go home

Scared to go home

A lot of us are scared to go home

We can’t even agree on where home is

Is it Africa?

Is it America?

Is it Albina?

Does it start at the intersection of Interstate and Lombard?

Or the Mason-Dixon line?

Should we stay in the wilderness of North America?

Or go home to the Motherland?

Do Africans even like African Americans?

I've been scared to go home plenty of times

Back when I was Shy Boy's age

When I was starting to read Malcolm

But at the frat houses with the white boys drinking Jungle Juice

Drunk, but not drunk enough to not be scared to go home

To hear another rendition of my mother’s prophecy

That I was gonna go down the same path as my father

I barely even know who that is

But I know a lot of us who are scared to end up like our dads

Scared to meet our fathers

Scared to love them

Scared to forgive them

Crazy thing is,

Most of our fathers

Became who they are

Because scared to go home too

It's like a rite of passage

We peeled through the affluent neighborhood and onto the highway that connects

All parts of the city, rich and poor, Black, and white, together

Shy Boy got his leftover chicken and waffles on his lap

And a case hanging over his head worth his whole life in years

I’m thinking about the plane ticket I bought for his brother

Two years younger, one shade lighter, and shaped like a clenched fist

Sometimes he cracks jokes and dances

Sometimes he pulls his hoodie over his locs and buries himself in his headphones

Shy Boy says once Clenched Fist showed up

He said he was scared to die in Africa

Scared of catching some disease

But he thinks it was really because he was scared to leave home

Home is a cramped apartment on the East Side

Because the DA said they can't live in the North anymore

Police rolled by one day, saw his cousin on the porch, and reported it to the housing agency

Next day, Auntie got the 30-day notice phone call

They had been through everything in that house

Sometimes it's good to start over

My mom lives in a four-bedroom, three-bath house on one of those fancy suburb streets

That's where we stay nowadays when we all get together

But I don’t call it home

Home is the three-bedroom townhouse

4157 Bruns Ave.

Behind the golden arches and the gas station

That smells like chicken nuggets and hoopties screeching onto the highway

We have been homeless, without a car, or job, or income

But we have never been without love or hope

I learned to shower, shave, and have sex

In that home

And none of these lessons came from my father

When kids start misbehaving

African parents send their kids back to Africa

African American parents send them to their grandparents

Or to live with their father

Or uncle

Anybody who might be able to talk some sense into them

Any distance between the kids and the system, waiting to receive them

A folktale with many names

Scared to go home

Can’t go home

Lost the home

Don't have a home

Can't wait till they come home

Everywhere but home

I paid $1500 extra to get the last seat in Business class

Because Clenched Fist needed to get out of the city

More than anybody else

But every opportunity he gets to leave

He keeps coming back

To the same familiar streets

That swallow up his friends

Have you ever been scared to go home?

What even constitutes a home?

Despite what the Department of Housing and Urban Development may say

A home can be anything

A home could be a sidewalk

A corner of a room

A blanket

A piece of clothing

A genuine I love you

Homes can move

Homes can burn

Homes can be bulldozed

Homes can be rebuilt

Home can be a place you used to know

Home can be a place you can’t physically touch

Home is a sober mother

Home is a father who is emotionally present

Home is that one street corner that you stand on

Whether you own it or not

Home is a light on when you walk up to the front door

Home is a hug with no preconditions

Home is your homie that holds your secrets

Home is the classroom of your teacher, who knows your story

Home is a park ducked off from the world

Home is a hand that holds yours

I spent the first plane ride thinking about how clenched fist wasn't on the plane

I spent the second flight thinking about the six boys who did show up at the airport

And on the final flight from Accra to D.C. I gave my body my exhaustion

I look back at my last text to clenched fist on the morning we took off

I told him

You've got a critical choice to make right now.

Looking back, it was a failed attempt to get through to him

But in all of my words

I never stopped to ask

Why

He didn't come home

How do I hold a clenched fist accountable

When accountability was what broke his heart in the first place?

Accountability doesn't grow in his section of the city

Fathers aren't accountable for raising their kids

The schools aren't accountable for educating the youth

The police aren't accountable for protecting and serving

Reminds me of that rap song I used to listen to with my mentor

Can't blame the game, cuz the game don't feed you, can't blame the world, cuz the world don’t need you

Is it possible to get in an airplane if you've never seen a dream fly?

Shy Boy can’t go to Africa

Perhaps ever depending on what happens with his case

He’s coming of age in a city that doesn't love him

The way he loves the city

When you’re scared to go home

The foundations of your world start to crack

A couple of weeks before the airport

Clenched Fist told me he’s not scared of going to jail

It hurt my heart to hear him say

Like the walls closing in on inevitability

If they could talk, what would they say?

My ponta said you can help someone who doesn’t wanna be helped

Trauma-informed care has some theory for me

My first mind says you can’t give up

One time, I asked clenched fist what he would add to his community if he could build anything

He said he would put a statue in the middle of the park

Back in his neighborhood in the North

Who would the statue be of?

I can't imagine it will be Joan of Arc