Soon the state people were making plans to take over all of my mother's children

　　Soon the state people were making plans to take over all of my mother's children. She talked to herselfnearly all of the time now, and there was a crowd of new white people entering the picture-alwaysasking questions. They would even visit me at the Gohannases',cheap jeremy scott adidas wings. They would ask me questions out onthe porch, or sitting out in their cars.
　　Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. Theytook her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo.
　　It was seventy-some miles from Lansing, about an hour and a half on the bus. A Judge McClellan inLansing had authority over me and all of my brothers and sisters,fake chanel bags. We were "state children," courtwards; he had the full say-so over us. A white man in charge of a black man's children! Nothing butlegal, modern slavery-however kindly intentioned.
　　 My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about twenty-six years. Later, when I wasstill growing up in Michigan, I would go to visit her every so often. Nothing that I can imagine couldhave moved me as deeply as seeing her pitiful state. In 1963, we got my mother out of the hospital,and she now lives there in Lansing with Philbert and his family.
　　It was so much worse than if it had been a physical sickness, for which a cause might be known,medicine given, a cure effected. Every time I visited her, when finally they led her-a case, a number-back inside from where we had been sitting together, I felt worse.
　　My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven.
　　My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots," hesaid.
　　But she didn't recognize me at all.
　　She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
　　Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know whatday it is?"She said, staring, "All the people have gone."I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, andadvised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me. It was as if I was trying to walk up theside of a hill of feathers. I looked at her. I listened to her "talk." But there was nothing I could do.
　　 I truly believe that if ever a state social agency destroyed a family,fake rolex watches, it destroyed ours. We wanted andtried to stay together. Our home didn't have to be destroyed. But the Welfare, the courts, and theirdoctor, gave us the one-two-three punch. And ours was not the only case of this kind.
　　I knew I wouldn't be back to see my mother again because it could make me a very vicious anddangerous person-knowing how they had looked at us as numbers and as a case in their book, not ashuman beings. And knowing that my mother in there was a statistic that didn't have to be, that existedbecause of a society's failure, hypocrisy, greed, and lack of mercy and compassion. Hence I have nomercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people,replica chanel bags, and then penalize them for not beingable to stand up under the weight.
　　I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person,without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So Ipurposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into.