SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C7
and Papa.”
Vinnie joined in. “God bless
the child,” they sang, their voices
blending as the voices of close
relatives do.
Next month, Vinnie has a Sun-
day brunch-time singing engage-
ment at His & Hers, a restaurant
near Zena’s apartment, and she
plans to have Zena join her on-
stage. Eating lunch there on
Thursday, Zena ordered fried
chicken and french fries. Vinnie
got salmon bites, catfish, and
fried cauliflower, and placed piec-
es on her daughter’s plate, urging
her to try them.
“Looks like you been crying,”
she said, inspecting her daugh-
ter’s cheek. “You may need to go
to the eye doctor, because you
may have dry eye.”
From the outdoor table, Zena
noticed a man at a bus stop and
said she was going to go ask him
for a cigarette; her mother
stopped her.
“She still has some of the symp-
toms of living on the street,” Vin-
nie said. “I say, ‘Don’t do that, you
don’t need to do that, I’ll take you
over to the Family Dollar and buy
you a pack.’ I’m trying to get her to
do things properly in society.”
The catfish morsels, the eye
doctor, the cigarettes — each
moment reminded Zena what it
means to have a mother.
“That I’m somebody that has
one,” she marveled, comparing
life now to before their reunion.
“I didn’t feel like I feel now,
uplifted, like a whole thing just
fell off my back. I didn’t feel like
living. Now, I feel like living.”Zena since the reunification. “Her
eye contact has improved, she
meets her appointments more. ...
Now she has a place in the world
because she’s found her mama. It
shows all the bad things that have
happened to her in the world
haven’t destroyed her.”
Walking up the two flights of
stairs to her apartment on Thurs-
day, Zena moved slowly, wincing
at each step. “Arthritis,” she said;
she also has sciatica, high blood
pressure and depression. But
stepping through the door to
where Vinnie sat, her face wid-
ened into a big smile.
Zena opened kitchen cabinets
stocked with food her mother
knows she likes, such as pink
salmon in a can. “My mom
bought me a coffeepot,” she said.
“She bought me this microwave.”
In the bedroom, she said, “She
bought me this beautiful blanket.
... Here’s my closet, my closet is
full now.” She pulled out a leopard
print hat. “Here’s a hat she
bought me. I only had one outfit
by the time she got here.”
Sitting together at the kitchen
table, their divergent life experi-
ence showed. Zena’s face and
hands look rough while her
mother’s are smooth and mani-
cured. But the resemblances
showed, too. “We’re built the
same, got the same knockers,”
Vinnie said, chuckling.
Recalling her time on the
street, Zena began to sing.
“ ‘Them that’s got, they’ll get.
Them that’s not, they’ll lose.
Mama may have, Papa may have’
— and I’m thinking about Mamaset up a new life. She has bought
her medications and a new bed,
and connected Zena to her own
daughter, Kachurie, and Kachu-
rie’s children.
“I said to myself and God that I
will do everything I can as long as
I’m on this earth to help this
child,” Vinnie said. “Because she
has family. It’s not like she doesn’t
have family.”
Williams noted differences inVinnie’s manager, Reggie Sands,
drove her the four hours to Wash-
ington. The apartment was full of
trash, a couple of people (since
evicted) were squatting there,
and Zena’s clothes were filthy.
“She looked so bad at that time, I
could have just fainted. All I
could do was hug her and cry.”
Since then, Sands has been
driving Vinnie to the District
once a week so she can help Zenawanted to find her mother.
“I got on Facebook on my phone
and saw that Vinnie had a Face-
book page,” Williams said. She
and Zena practiced some mock
conversations before Zena called.
“She found this picture and
said, ‘Is that your mom?’ ” Zena
recalled. “I look, looked again,
and I say, ‘That’s her! It’s her!’ As
soon as Len left, I called.”
Two weeks after the phone call,going on?’ I told her how much I
missed her. ... I was just dumb-
founded, but happy, but over-
joyed, because she was, just, my
child is alive.”
Zena had left the streets a
couple of years earlier after con-
necting with Pathways to Hous-
ing DC, a nonprofit organization
that helps chronically homeless
people in the District and Mont-
gomery County move into their
own apartments using a model
that seeks to first secure perma-
nent housing and then address
clients’ medical, mental health,
substance abuse and other needs.
Reconnecting with family is
frequently part of the process,
said Pathways Executive Director
Christy Respress.
“Oftentimes people have fam-
ily connections, but when they
experience homelessness those
connections have become frayed,”
she said, adding that some stop
communicating because they
don’t want relatives to know they
are on the street. “Moving into
housing ends homelessness right
away and then there’s the ‘What
next? Do you have a support
system? Do you have family?’ ...
That request and desire to recon-
nect with family, it’s one of the
first things people say.”
Zena wasn’t homeless any-
more. But her house wasn’t yet a
home. After moving in 2020 into
a two-bedroom apartment in a
complex in Brookland, Zena told
her service coordinator at Path-
ways, Len Williams, that she
MOTHER FROM C1
Once homeless and considered solitary, a daughter reconnects with her mother
BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST
V innie Knight, left, wasn’t even sure if Zena was alive. “It was brutal. I cried many nights,” she said.
Now Vinnie comes up once a week from Virginia Beach to help her daughter set up her new home.knowing I’m not the only one.”
Another email came from a
woman who described herself as
a “worried mother of a daughter
who had a similar fall 3 days
before.”
“We have checked with doctors
and they sent us home after keep-
ing her overnight just like your
son,” she wrote. “I just wanted to
check how is he doing now?”
How is he?
I have come to expect that
question. They are asking about
my son, but really, they are
asking about their own chil-
dren. They want to know if he is
okay, so that they can know
whether their children have a
chance at being okay —
t omorrow, next month, seven
years from now.
I tell them all the same thing. I
tell them that the baby I wrote
about is now a curly-haired boy
who loves to draw, reads above
grade level and makes his brother
laugh harder than anyone. I tell
them that he amazes me con-
stantly.
“When I was in the hospital
with him, I wish someone had
told me that would be the case,” I
wrote to the woman who
e xpressed feeling like the worst
mom in the world. “I would have
probably forgiven myself a lot
sooner. Please be gentle to
y ourself.”Seven years have passed since
that piece published, and I
c ontinue to get emails from par-
ents across the country. Most
have been mothers, and more
than a few have described punish-
ing themselves.
This Mother’s Day, those moms
will likely get gifts from people in
their lives, but I hope they also
give themselves something — a
break. I hope as their children
heal, they do, too.
“This weekend, I tripped and
fell walking into our family room,
and in the process, dropped my
almost 4-month old son,” reads
one email. The mother who wrote
it said her family went to the
emergency room and a doctor
determined that everything
looked normal. “On Monday at a
follow-up with the pediatrician’s
office, they, to put it plainly, felt
the bump, freaked, and sent him
for an X-ray, followed by a CT. It
showed a linear fracture, and I
felt like the worst mom in the
world.”
“Of course, thanks to Dr.
Google, I have felt more shame
(so many articles that say ‘Likely
no fracture or other brain injury!
It’s not common!’) but came
across your article, and it has
made me feel better,” she wrote. “I
wish our sons didn’t have to go
through the experience of a skull
fracture, but I do have comfortBut the chances that there are
going to be any problems at all
with development, neurological
development, just from a skull
fracture is very unlikely.”
I decided to write about my
experience in 2015 to let other
parents who might find them-
selves in those anguishing mo-
ments know they weren’t alone.
What I didn’t expect was how
many would need to hear that.aging information while
G oogling.
“The problem with most online
searches is the people who write
the stuff are also trying to protect
themselves, so they are going to
be on the aggressive side about
bad things that can happen,” he
said. “Is little Jill going to have
problems in algebra in seventh
grade, well, I don’t know and I
can’t speculate and I can’t guess.incidents happen more often
than anyone talks about. At a
time when I felt most alone, they
let me know that I wasn’t.
“It happens a lot,” John Myse-
ros, a neurosurgeon at Children’s
National and the doctor who
a ttended to my son, said when I
spoke to him recently about
i nfant head injuries. He said he
sees infants with linear skull frac-
tures, the type my son had, at
least once a week and that the
vast majority of those are the
result of falls: “They are falls out
of cribs. They are falls off of beds.
They are falls out of grocery carts
at Walmart or Target.... They are
parents who fall themselves with
their kids in their arms. That
happens a fair amount.”
There are, of course, also infant
head injuries that occur because
of the intentional actions of
adults. Those are criminal acts
and deserving of charges. But
those weren’t the kind I reached
out to Myseros to talk about. I
wanted to ask him about the
accidental kind that leave parents
filled with guilt and worry and
emailing strangers in search of
comfort they can’t find online.
Myseros said that while some
infant head injuries require sur-
gery and have serious medical
outcomes, most don’t. He also
said he was not surprised that
parents don’t find much encour-than 12 hours without a drop of
milk and be satiated by a pacifier
dipped in sugar water. The day I
broke my baby started like every
other since his birth three weeks
earlier — with me admiring his
perfection.”
I almost didn’t write that piece.
At the hospital, I was so worried
about my son that I wouldn’t let
anyone even clean my bloody
knees. I was told he had a linear
skull fracture and we would have
to stay overnight so that doctors
could determine if he would need
surgery. He didn’t, thankfully.
A fter we got home, I wanted to
take all the traumatic memories
of that day and tuck them into the
deepest, darkest nook of my
brain. Since I couldn’t rewind
time and make the fall not hap-
pen, trying to forget it seemed the
best alternative.
But as the months passed, and
I watched him grow, I couldn’t
stop thinking about what I had
heard from hospital staff
m embers. We initially went to the
emergency room at Virginia Hos-
pital Center in Arlington because
it was closest, and from there, we
were taken by ambulance to
C hildren’s National Hospital in
the District.
At both places, doctors and
nurses told me that these types of
VARGAS FROM C1
THERESA VARGAS
To all anguished moms who’ve fallen with a baby: Please be gentle to yourself
ISTOCK
A linear skull fracture caused by a parent falling while holding an
infant “happens a fair amount,” says the neurosurgeon who
attended the author’s 3-week-old son after she fell with him.BY PETER HERMANND.C. police on Friday arrested
a man and charged him with
fatally shooting a former friend
11 times as the victim walked
along a sidewalk in Northeast
Washington holding hands with
his 5-year-old child and carrying
an infant in a car seat.
Authorities said in an affida-
vit filed in court Saturday that
Sedrick Miller, 42, was taking
his older child to school the
morning of March 4 in the
2300 block of 18th Street NE,
along the border of the Lang-
don and Brentwood neighbor-
hoods.
Members of the U.S. Mar-
shals Capital Area Regional
Fugitive Task Force arrested
Jarrell David Harris, 27, of
Southeast Washington on a
warrant charging him with
first-degree murder while
armed. His first name is also
spelled in court documents as
Jarell.
A D.C. Superior Court judge
ordered Harris detained follow-
ing a hearing on Saturday.
The morning of the s hooting,
a senior police commander
called the attack outside an
apartment complex “disturb-
ing.” D.C. Council member Ken-
yan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5)
urged new efforts to find violent
criminals “and keep them off our
streets.”
In court on Saturday, Assis-
tant U.S. Attorney Prava
Palacharla called for the defen-
dant to be detained, noting Mil-
ler was struck several times in
the head and neck and that the
shooter continued firing after
the victim had collapsed and
dropped the car seat and the
infant.
The arrest affidavit filed in
D.C. Superior Court on Saturday
quotes a woman running toward
the gunshots screaming, “The
baby, the baby, the baby.”
That affidavit describes two
witnesses identifying Harris as
the shooter. Police said in the
affidavit it appears Harris and
Miller had been friends but had a
falling out, though no details
were provided.
Harris’s attorney, Jacqueline
Cadman, argued police had in-
sufficient probable cause to
make an arrest, saying “there is
no forensic evidence whatso-
ever tying Mr. Harris to this
case.”
Cadman also questioned the
veracity of one of the witnesses.She said that person provided
police at the scene with a de-
scription of the shooter, even
though that witness is related to
Harris and knew his name.
Cadman said it was only later,
while with police, that the wit-
ness identified her client by
name.
The shooting of Miller was
among several this year in which
a person was fatally shot in front
of children in the District. None
of the children were physically
harmed.
In January, police said a
gunman shot 27-year-old Sier-
ra Johnson in a vehicle on
Georgia Avenue in Northwest
Washington as her 2- and 4-
year-old children were in the
back seat. Police said the
shooting was the result of a
domestic dispute and an arrest
was made; Johnson was preg-
nant at the time.
In February, Pamela Thomas
was fatally struck by a stray
bullet while riding in the back of
an SUV with her 8-year-old son
on their way to a birthday party.
Police have made an arrest in
that case as well.
And in March, police said
Deshaun Cupid, 30, was fatally
shot while in her vehicle in the
1800 block of Benning Road NE
with two toddlers, ages 1 and 2,
in the back seat. No arrest has
been made in that case.THE DISTRICT
Suspect arrested, charged with
shooting man in front of his children
Victim in Northeast
was holding hands with
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