Grandma Takes the Place of a Damaged Mom
May 26, 2005 -- -- On the streets of Newark, N.J., parents are too often high on drugs, drifting in and out of their children's lives.
"My mommy is sick and my daddy is sick and sometimes they make me feel like they don't want to take care of me anymore," Ayesha, 12, told "Primetime Live."
The problem for Ayesha and her brother, Michael, 10, is not a mother who has abandoned them, but a mother who's too often a frightening presence.
Fortunately, they have their grandmother, Martha Spencer.
"They help me as much as I help them," Spencer said. "And that's why God give them to me, 'cause he knows I needed them as much as they needed me."
During Michael's last birthday, his mother, Tina, who is also mentally ill, showed up claiming she was not on drugs that night. But the pizza had hardly been finished when Tina got up to leave and head back to the streets.
Spencer tried to save the party by pulling her daughter aside and telling her, "Remember what you promised." Tina left.
Spencer consoled her granddaughter, telling her: "She'll be OK. She [is] going to get it together, Ayesha. It will take a little while, but she's going to get it together."
Ayesha knew better, but clung to the dream of a happy ending. "My perfect place would be living with my mom and dad. I would make them better," she said.
Years ago, Spencer, who is 66 years old, realized Michael and Ayesha could no longer live with their mother.
"I am at the point where when I see my daughter high that I feel like I am beginning to hate her, and I don't want that," she said, crying. "I can't take it any longer."
But they couldn't live with Spencer either. Her building was for seniors only and did not allow children. So Spencer hid Michael and Ayesha while she searched for a new place to live openly with them.
Spencer was asked what she thought now about how she had raised her children.
"I had to go wrong somewhere," she said. "I never used drugs. I've never smoked marijuana and I've always taught them against it. I had to do something wrong in order for them to go to drugs."
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