Lucille Bouges takes custody of six of her great-great-grandchildren. The reason is simple: "I want my babies to stay together."
By TOM ZUCCO
Published February 10, 2004
[Times photos: James Borchuck]
Lucille Bouges, 92, cradles her great-great-granddaughter Curtesha Hall, 2, in the drafty, three-bedroom house she rents in Lakeland for $700 a month. Until friends helped her get a washer and dryer, Mother Bouges did the laundry by hand in the bathtub.
Lucille Bouges attends church with her great-great grandson Curtis Hall, 6, left, and Curdaisya Hall, 3, right.
LAKELAND - Somebody has left the water running in the bathtub. All the clean socks have disappeared. And the 2-year-old is holed up at end of the hall, banging a coat hanger against the floor and wailing.
Most of the house is reasonably warm, but it's only about 60 degrees in the kitchen. So they set the oven on high, open the door and huddle around it.
"When you turn up the thermostat," warns Shambriele Harrison, 11, "the electric bill goes up."
It's Sunday morning, and 92-year-old Lucille Bouges - everyone calls her Mother Bouges - is skirting about the living room, getting some of the six children ready for church. She's wearing powder blue slippers and a brown top coat kept together by a safety pin. She has a child in her arms and another at her feet.
Her deep-set, piercing eyes miss nothing. But she picks her battles. Curtesha, the girl with the hanger, will calm down eventually, she says.
At a time when most people her age have forgotten what it's like to wipe a tiny nose or search for a missing sneaker with the school bus waiting outside, Mother Bouges is raising six of her great-great-grandchildren. Their ages are 2, 3, 6, 8, 10 and 11.
She's doing it because she wants to. And because for her, there is no other way.
Three months ago, she was living in a small house a few blocks away, settled into her role as family matriarch. Going to church and visiting relatives.
But on New Year's Eve, Tabatha Worlds, Mother Bouges' 26-year-old great-granddaughter, was arrested for the 10th time. Authorities said she violated her probation by getting caught with cocaine. She may be in custody until next year.
The state Department of Children and Families tried to place the children with relatives, but since no one could take all six, it was almost certain they would be separated.
"What else could I do?" Mother Bouges asks. "I want my babies to stay together."
So she asked for and got indefinite custody. And she moved here, a three-bedroom, pale yellow house with a tin roof on Peachtree Street. It's old and a little drafty, and rent is $700 a month. But it's clean and it has a back yard for the kids.
"At first I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent," she says. "But I knew if there was a way, the Lord would show me."
Worlds' children have four different fathers, but one is dead, and the others have little or no role in their children's lives. "One of them was sending a little money," says Mother Bouges. "But when Tabatha went to jail, he stopped."
She receives Social Security for herself and her late husband, and food stamps. The television and much of the furniture was donated by neighbors, friends and church and civic groups.
Her daughter and other relatives pitch in to help with the cooking and cleaning. But much of the time, it's just Mother Bouges and the kids.
She's up each morning at 6 and gets the children ready for school. They've been late only once. "And that," she says, shaking her head, "was because they just wouldn't get up."
While the children are in school or day care, she prepares meals and cleans the house. Until friends helped her get a washer and dryer, she did the laundry by hand in the bathtub.
"I used to take a rest in the afternoon," says Mother Bouges, whose only real health problem is arthritis. "But lately I've had appointments of my own. There isn't time."
She depends on relatives to take her to the doctor's or the grocery store. But something always comes up. Two weeks ago, she and her daughter spent an entire Monday afternoon hunting down a lost Social Security check.
The children, especially the older ones, seem to sense they have to be more responsible, and they help as best they can.
"She's taught us right from wrong and to be thankful for what we have," says Shambriele. "And how important family is and how we should stay together."
Lessons that came from experience.
As a child, Mother Bouges picked cotton for 35 cents a day and helped raise hogs and chickens near Fairfax, S.C. Her father died when she was 2; her mother six years later.
"My mother was a sharecropper, and after she died, I had to go live with other people."
She turns and watches three of the children drawing and giggling at the dining room table.
"That's why I don't want them split up," she says.
It's time for the 11:30 service at the Church of God by Faith.
"Are we ready?"
Shambriele and one of the younger children will stay home and straighten up the house.
"Now you go to my room and get your brace out of my closet," she quietly tells 6-year-old Curtis. She watches as he hurries to her room. "He has a condition that makes him fall down a lot," she says. "Look how skinny his legs are."
Steadying herself with her wooden cane, Mother Bouges and the four children arrive at church and find a seat in a pew up front. When it's time to bow their heads in prayer, the children watch their great-great-grandmother and do exactly as she does.
"She's a great example," says pastor Neal Phillips after the service. "She does everything without complaining, without begging. If she can do it, we can do it.
"And she's reminded us that you don't give up on people. No matter how bad the situation."
And then the family, with Mother Bouges leading the way, filled her daughter's sedan and went home.
The ranks of grandparents raising grandchildren has been rising for years - 2.2-million American children lived in a grandparent-headed household in 1970, while 3.9-million did in 1997, census figures show. But Mother Bouges is undoubtedly a rarity. Debbie Stuart, a district projects manager for DCF, isn't sure if she is the oldest person the state has given custody of a child. Let alone six.
"It's very unusual for us to place children with a woman her age," she says. "However, we do try to keep families together if we can assure the safety and well-being of the children."
Stuart declined to speculate about what would happen if Mother Bouges could no longer care for the children. "Normally, we would step in and try to locate family or other places for the children," Stuart says. Foster care would be a last resort.
If the children's mother sought custody upon her release, Stuart said DCF usually tries to help. "But," she adds, "the parent would have to demonstrate their ability to care for the children."
Mother Bouges simply wants her babies to stay together. All her babies.
"I hope I'm here when Tabatha gets back," she says.
