Moriah Ulinskas

Maurice Stitts

 

I was born in 1974 in San Pablo Hospital in Richmond.  I was born a twin, but didn’t know it growing up. My mother used to give me hints like “you’re not the only one”, but I didn’t know I was a twin. When you’re young you don’t know stuff.  I went to the records department in Martinez once because I had to get a new birth certificate for a job and the lady at the counter said to me, “Which one are you? Which boy?”, because she said there were two on my birth certificate. I said, “I’m Maurice”.  The other name on it was Marlon.  I’ve heard there was a guy that looks just like me in Oakland and I’ve looked for him, but never found him.

 

When I was around four me, my mother and my auntie were going to a party and we got blind sided by a drunk driver. I ended up being in a coma for a few days up at Kaiser, then I was flown to John Muir hospital in Walnut Creek.  I was really badly injured- paralyzed from the waist down. I still have a scar on my spine.  The doctors told my mother I would never walk again and I remember being bedridden all the time- I couldn’t even move my feet.

 

I didn’t have a seat belt on when it happened.  I was sitting on my mothers lap and she said I bounced around inside the car like a pinball.  The jaws of life had to cut us out of the car- I remember bits and pieces of this.  My mother thinks that, in the process, they cut my back.

 

So, I was on disability and social security early.  My mother has a mental disability and she is on disability.  I was paralyzed for a couple years and I didn’t go to school.  My grandmother and relatives took care of me.  After a few years I was able to move my feet and I started taking small steps.  My grandmother and uncles were doing something like physical therapy with me- helping me move my legs.  It was hard to deal with: being cooped up in the house all the time. I wanted to go out and play with my cousins and everyone, but I couldn’t go outside, I just had to watch everyone go out. They would move me by the window and I would watch everyone play outside.

 

I remember finally going back to school on the yellow school bus. It was exciting! I had a favorite teacher named Ms Emerson, but she died on me.  I think she had a heart attack.  I think that was fourth or fifth grade.  I used to love school until she died: when she died I lost my love for school.  In her class I was a straight A student and on the honor roll.  I found her easy to understand.  They sent a replacement teacher and I wasn’t having it.

 

I stopped going to class, I was getting paddled by the principal for getting into fights.  That was at Nystrom School in Richmond, then I went to Portola Middle School in El Cerrito.  I was having a lot of behavioral and mental issues.  I got so far out of control- all because I was having a lot of problems at home.

 

I lived with my mom and sometimes my grandma.  When I was 5 or 6 my mom hooked up with a guy in the military (not my dad, who was also in the military). This guy used to get loaded and beat my mom. I would go to my grandma’s house and complain and cry. She went up there a couple times and told them to knock it off.  I had a couple gangster uncles who threatened to kill him if he didn’t cut it out.

 

One day I was playing with his lighters under the bed and I caught the mattress on fire.  He came home mad and drunk and he ended up beating my mother and he beat me real bad.  I was able to get out of the house and went to go tell my grandmother. One of my uncles was there.  He put me in his Cadillac and drove me back to my mother’s house, and he confronted my stepfather.  He and my uncle got into a fight.  My uncle took out a gun and killed the guy right in front of us.  He went to San Quentin for years: 10- 15 years.

 

My mother was cold. She never sent my uncle any letters.  No thank you letters, no visits. No packages, no nothing.  That was my first experience to death.

 

When I was around seven years old I was at a sleepover with my friends. There was a bunch of us boys jumping on the beds, playing cops and robbers and then the boy who’s house it was went and got his dad’s gun to play with. He accidentally shot and killed his brother right there in front of us.  We were all alone. I’ll never forget that, or when we all went later to the funeral home and were peering into the casket.  After that we weren’t allowed to have any sleepovers, or play with each other. That was the end of our childhood right there.

 

My mother had a lot of disabilities. Learning and mental. She wasn’t a good provider.  On top of that she was using drugs and drinking. She didn’t work, she lived off of disability. It would have been enough if she didn’t smoke it all up on dope.  We got lots of food from government programs: big blocks of cheese, honey and bread.  I grew up on hella grilled cheese sandwiches.  My sister and I loved grilled cheese sandwiches.

 

We all had these mental disabilities. Different agencies couldn’t figure out if they were learning or behavioral, but I had a lot of both going on.  I kinda figure they dropped the ball on me- the welfare department: they told me I had a disability but didn’t do anything to help. I got money from the SSI, but my mother used that money for drugs.  My mom took care of her disabilities herself with drinking and drugging.

 

I never had none of that prom stuff. I was always in trouble. Deeply so. I was at a point that I was uncontrollable.  I was sent to Lion’s Gate, a protective custody institution, and I was there on and off for several years.  I ended up in Juvenile Hall a couple times for stealing cars and motorcycles, breaking into impound yards to retrieve guns from dope dealers impounded cars for them.  I was used by other people my whole life.

 

My mom and dad are both drug addicts and my mother has mental disabilities. My dad had sex with her, but never really wanted to acknowledge me. I remember when I was younger I met him a few times, and I had to deal with the rejection, because he didn’t want to believe I was his. He took me to his house once, and I so desperately wanted to fit in and belong. I remember trying to memorize the way to his house.  When we got there there were other kids there- his kids- he had a wife and she was shocked when she saw me because I look just like him.  I couldn’t really figure it out, it was hard for me to understand that I wasn’t the only one.  I remember thinking “Ok, I’m in now, we’re going to have Christmas.” But then when Christmas came he told me he was Jehovah's Witness and they did not celebrate Christmas.  I think that was bullshit.  I tried to keep a relationship with him over the years. I remember walking on the railroad tracks, trying to find his house again. I found it and I remember his wife was looking around wondering how I got there.

 

When I was 12 my aunt gave me a big ball of cocaine and I was like “What the hell is this?” and she was like “You can get rich selling that!”. What  a thing to say to a kid who’d been displaced his whole life. It was like a Pandora’s box of dreams.  I sold until I was about 15 years old, then I got arrested for robbing a liquor store.  I was tried as an adult and found guilty of robbery with a handgun (211 and 212b.) and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

 

My first son, Tyreese, was born right before I went to prison. I had a lot of girlfriends, but I was in love with my son’s mother.  I was elated, he looked just like me when he was born, but light skinned. It was exciting to be a new father, but I had no examples- no one to show me the ropes.  I never really had a father and I told myself I was going to be a good father. Never neglect my kids.  The last time I cried I think I was 11 or 12, when my father told my grandmother and mother that he was coming over to throw me a birthday party- cake and ice cream and everything. This was special because my father was going to be there, and I even talked to him on the phone. Then came that day and I was telling everyone my dad was coming.  I waited all day, then eight, nine PM rolled around and my grandmother ended up making me a cake that night and told me to be strong and learn how to live without him and not to put trust in people.  I cried that whole day and night. I never cried again.

 

I spent about 5 or 6 years in prison- first at San Quentin, then Tracy, then Solano.  You have to grow up quick when you grow up in prison; you learn a lot just to survive. When I came out (at 22) I felt more in control of myself. I wanted to get a life, I wanted things to be different. I wanted a regular life and a real family, knowing that my poster board of a family was not the real thing.  I had learned that most families were not like my mine.  The loneliness of wanting, of growing up without a mother figure or a father…  I was mentally disturbed by so many things: the sleepover, my uncle killing a man in front of me.

 

I got out of prison in 2001 and Tyreese was already 6 years old. I reconciled with his mother, even though she had had a second baby while I was in prison.  I wasn’t ready to take on that second baby, but I tried.  I got a good job at the Chevron refinery, worked 12 hour days, and made good money. But it didn’t last long- maybe two years.  The “ready-made family” didn’t feel right to me, so I moved on.

 

I tried to stay in touch with Tyreese, but I lost my phone in a shelter and after that I lost touch with everyone.  I hear he’s working construction. He’s 21 or 22 now.  I can’t look for him because I can’t go back to Richmond.  I had to leave Richmond because of the war zone I was born into. I was forced into, in the Iron Triangle.

 

I tried to make it work for a while, with the kids, I’d buy them clothes and go see them.  But then I left my troubles in Richmond and moved to San Jose.  After the refinery I got odd jobs, driving jobs. I drove for UPS for a while.  I married a woman who worked as a receptionist.  She had had troubles getting pregnant, but then she got pregnant and then the baby was stillborn. That fucked us up. She was a cute little girl, beautiful. She was born with long hair and long nails and black, black hair.  We named her Jalaya.

 

We took the chance to try getting pregnant again- came to San Francisco to get help.  My wife became pregnant with Jacob, who was born in 2011.  Before Jacob was born I found out I was HIV+.  I Contemplated suicide- I was very distraught.  I had cheated on my wife and the woman I was sleeping with called my wife and told her she had been diagnosed. My wife got tested and she was positive, too, but Jacob was born negative.

 

My wife moved four people from her family in with us, because they had lost their home, but they were doing drugs and causing more conflict for us.  They started stealing and selling our things.  I asked my wife to choose between them or me. I thought she would choose me, because I was like “Mr. Mom”- I was the caretaker of Jacob for his first two years.  But she chose her family and I left.  I went homeless in 2013.

 

I was at rock bottom. My wife was not an ally, my family couldn’t help me, I didn’t have health insurance, and no HIV medication.  I got really ill. At one point my t cell count was down to 31.  I was sleeping on the streets, spending all my time looking for shelter by the train tracks or under bushes.  I didn’t know how to live like that.

 

It was a new experience: HUNGER. HOMELESSNESS.  I lived like this for years, with no medical attention, no contact with my family.  They tried to find me, but I was hard to find.  It was really frightening, I was always searching for food, searching for shelter every single day.  I was lost in a fog, I was new to homelessness. I would go to bakeries to ask for food because my pride was too big to dig in the garbage.  I went to Berkeley to panhandle. I was fishing- I’ve always fished- but one day I was at a pier and I heard voices telling me to jump in the water and I climbed up onto the post, but I was able to get myself to climb down and I went for help, because I know I have these mental disabilities.

 

I started wising up and going to Glide and St. Anthony’s for help. I could write a handbook now for how to be homeless in San Francisco.  You have to know who provides what services. I should write that book.  I got hooked up with shelters and was able to sleep and eat properly again.  I moved around shelters for about 1 ½ years, but by then my t cell count was so low, I made new connections to doctors and people who were able to help manage me: educated me about AIDS and HIV and how to stay healthy and alive.

 

I want to see my family- my son and daughter in the Richmond, but I can’t go back there.  I see Jacob all the time though- I just saw him last week- my ex-wife brings him to see me.   A couple of my siblings know where I am and that I’m doing better- I haven’t told them exactly where I am, so they can’t find me.  It’s been such a long time since I pushed everyone away.  I’m not ready to have them back in my life.  

 

I’ve been at the Leland House for about 7 or 8 months now. It’s swell, it’s way better than being on the streets.  I’m going to stay here until I’m well- mentally and physically. I’m going to address my psychological issues.