The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-08)

her GED.

Zena was born when Vinnie was 18 and trying

to study and support herself. Growing up, Zena

bounced between Vinnie, some aunts and foster

care. She ran away at 15, and at 17 had a baby on

her own, and then another.

As Zena’s life spiraled into addiction and

homelessness, Vinnie took her grandchildren to

live in Virginia Beach. But after she married a

man she said was abusive, her granddaughter

went to live with her father and her grandson

went into foster care. Meanwhile, Vinnie’s sing-

ing career took off, with engagements in Europe,

the Caribbean, Africa and Japan. She lost track of

Zena.

Zena’s adult son was killed at a party in 2013,

and Vinnie tried to find her. “A friend had

contacted me saying she was in jail in Florida. She

had a warrant in Kalamazoo.” She wrote to the

Florida jail. She reached out to relatives in

Michigan. She posted Zena’s picture on Facebook.

Eventually, she resigned herself to the idea that

Zena might have died. “I’m just done,” she

recalled thinking. “Only thing I can do is just pray

and leave her in the hands of God.”

Then, two months ago, her phone rang.

“Hi Ma, this is Zena.”

Vinnie’s body went weak. “I said, ‘Zena?’ I just

broke down in tears. I says, ‘How are you? What’s

SEE MOTHER ON C7

BY TARA BAHRAMPOUR

W

hen Zena Knight was homeless and

panhandling in D.C.’s Chinatown,

she would sing songs her mother

used to sing.

She was sleeping on the street,

in buses, in abandoned buildings. Acquaintances

saw her as solitary. “Nobody think I had anybody,

I was just a person, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a

family,’ ” said Zena, now 55. “Sometimes I’d lay

and I’d ask myself, what would I say if I saw my

mom again?”

Four hours south in Virginia Beach, Vinnie

Knight fretted about her daughter. It had been

over 20 years since they had met, and a decade

since Vinnie, now 74, had lost track of her only

child.

“I’d just feel so bad when people would call me

— ‘Oh, how’s Zena?’ I didn’t know where she was,”

said Vinnie, a jazz singer.

When it came to mothering, Vinnie hadn’t had

much of an example. Her own mother was single,

with 13 children who survived infancy, in addi-

tion to a half-dozen who did not. Growing up in

Harlem, Vinnie shuttled between youth homes

and an adult mental institution before returning

to her mother “to help her because she kept

having all these babies.” By 15 she was ironing

shirts by day while going to night school to get

KLMNO

METRO

SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCAL EZ RE C

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

The onetime retail giant

Toys R Us had humble

beginnings with a few

stores in Washington. C3

LOCAL OPINIONS

A ballot initiative could

deal D.C. restaurants

another financial setback

they can’t afford. C4

OBITUARIES

Ricardo Alarcón, 84, was a

senior Cuban official who

played a key role in the

46 ° 48 ° 50 ° 50 ° Elián González saga. C9

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 6 p.m.

51

°

Precip: 80%

Wind: NNE

8-16 mph

BY JUSTIN JOUVENAL

AND RACHEL WEINER

The Reccless Tigers gang built

one of Northern Virginia’s largest

drug rings by settling scores and

silencing enemies through beat-

ings, firebombings and the killing

of a government witness, prosecu-

tor Carina Cuellar said in court.

She called it a “reign of terror.”

On the eve of a major federal

racketeering trial for four Tigers

that started in April in Alexan-

dria, the prosecutor said a gang

leader brazenly plotted against

one final target: the trial itself.

Tony Le leaked a list of witness-

es in a call from jail and an associ-

ate then posted the names on

social media beneath what au-

thorities said was unmistakable

threat: “Come watch the snitches

snitching.”

U.S. District J udge Liam O’Gra-

dy sanctioned the Tigers and the

associate was arrested on allega-

tions of witness tampering. Fol-

lowing the posting, a father and

son who had linked Le to a fire-

bombing refused to do so in court.

The effort to disrupt the pro-

ceeding was ultimately unsuc-

cessful. The jury convicted the

gang members of various con-

spiracy charges for distributing

drugs, kidnapping, laundering

money and killing one person.

They also were implicated in a

second slaying. Some were found

not guilty o f lesser counts involv-

ing possession of explosive devic-

es and guns.

SEE TIGERS ON C6

Four in

Va. gang

found

guilty

RECCLESS TIGERS

RULED BY ‘TERROR’

Witness killed after he

testified in 2018 beating

BY EMILY DAVIES

At first, the neighbors walking

their dogs hardly noticed when a

new yard sign appeared down the

block.

In capital rainbow letters, it

read: “In this house we believe:

Black lives matter, women’s

rights are human rights, no hu-

man Is illegal, science Is real, love

Is love, kindness is everything.”

It was a little showy for some of

the people around Old Town Al-

exandria, who preferred to talk

about landscaping over politics.

But it fit with the way they saw

their neighborhood — as accept-

ing, inviting and polite.

Then another sign went up in

the front yard of the townhouse

next door. In similar rainbow

letters, just a few feet away, it

said: “In this house we believe

that simplistic platitudes, trite

tautologies and semantically

overloaded aphorisms are poor

substitutes for respectful and ra-

tional discussions about complex

issues.”

The neighbors on their morn-

ing walks started paying atten-

tion.

They started to wonder what

SEE SIGNS ON C8

Yard signs

unsettle

neighbors’

niceties

War of words reveals

tension in N.Va. area

proud of its liberalism

7 years later, moms still

write me about my son

The emails always

contain the same

question: How is

he?

He is my

younger son. The

people asking

about him have

never met him.

They have never met me. They

are emailing because they are

hoping to find some comfort

during one of the most painful

times in their lives: After they’ve

fallen with their babies.

Sometimes those parents

write from the hospital.

Sometimes they write from

home. Always they write after

they have scrolled, clicked and

read through one worst-case

scenario after another.

At some point during their

online search, they find a story I

wrote in 2015 about falling with

my son. It ran under the

headline, “The day I broke my

baby.”

In retrospect, I wish I had

chosen a different headline. The

word “broke” feels so

devastating, so complete. But

that’s how I felt after I fell in a

CVS parking lot during a

rainstorm with my newborn son

strapped to my chest —

devastated, completely.

“There are things I wish I

didn’t know,” I wrote in that 2015

piece. “I wish I didn’t know that

companies make tiny braces,

small enough to hold necks no

bigger than a wrist. I wish I

didn’t know that when babies are

transported in an ambulance,

they are stripped of their

powdery-smelling clothes and

strapped to adult-sized gurneys,

naked. I wish I didn’t know that

little bodies that are supposed to

eat every two hours can go more

SEE VARGAS ON C7

Theresa

Vargas

BY LAUREN LUMPKIN

Jajuan Johnson didn’t know

much about “Mr. Carter’s boy.”

The entry was listed in a

W illiam & Mary bursar’s report

from the 1754-55 academic year.

At that point in the school’s

history, it was not uncommon for

students to bring enslaved people

with them to campus.

“We didn’t expect to find any-

thing about this person,” said

Johnson, a postdoctoral research

associate with the Lemon Proj-

ect, an effort at the Virginia

university to understand its rela-

tionship with slavery. But clues

emerged in the will of George

Braxton II, revealing that he sent

his sons George and Carter to

William & Mary with a body

servant named London.

Lemon Project researchers

have been digging for this kind of

information for years, mining tax

records, wills, deeds and other

centuries-old documents for de-

tails about the 199 people who

were enslaved at William & Mary.

Those individuals — enslaved by

administrators, professors, stu-

SEE MEMORIAL ON C5

A dedication for enslaved people

William & Mary honors

those in bondage

in college’s early years

STEPHEN SALPUKAS/WILLIAM & MARY

William & Mary on Saturday dedicated a monument to the

199 people who were enslaved at the college in Williamsburg.

‘Hi Ma, this is Zena’

She hadn’t seen her daughter for over 20 years. Then the phone rang.

PHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: Vinnie Knight, left, and her daughter Zena

on Thursday at a D.C. restaurant. ABOVE: Zena

holds a family photo of her, right, at 17.