Patricia McCray takes some time to share a moment with her six-year-old son, Dujon. - contributed

Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer

Patricia McCray was only a fourth-form student in high school when she became pregnant with her first child.

"I was only 17 years old, but the father of the baby was seven years older than me," she said.

He was employed and so could fulfil her needs. So, she dropped out of school and he took care of her and their child.

Two years later, she was pregnant again, and one year after that another child was born to the couple. Then her 'baby father' joined the growing ranks of the unemployed. What were once good times quickly became unbearable, and Patricia had to find ways to feed her three growing boys, an unemployed 'husband' and an elderly mother.

Sold in the market

"Me never giveup at the time. Me sell in the market, me work on construction site and do day's work," was her testimony as we sat and chatted in her home in Hannah Town.

"People never know what I was doing and them feel that you just sit down and money come to you," she continued.

She did one job after the other for years, but it became harder and harder for her to find work and soon she too joined the ranks of the unemployed.

By this time, she had given birth to a fourth son by another man, but though he was gainfully employed at the time, he too, would soon become unemployed.

Out of a job and with very little support, Patricia burned inside with fear and misery. She was afraid her children would never realise their dreams and it made her miserable that she saw no way she could make them come true. So, like a good mother, she did what she felt she had to. She swallowed 60 rubbery pellets of cocaine to be smuggled into England.

"Me say to me baby father: 'Me have to try a ting cause see it there, nothing not going on.' So I swallow 60 pellets and decide to take a chance," she said.

The hook-up was easy for her. She had cousins who were experienced in the business and through them, she was introduced to a dealer.

But though Patricia had made up her mind, she was a still afraid. She told her plight to a dear friend of hers who was a pastor. He tried to dissuade her, but the dealer persuaded her not to listen to him and do as they wished.

"Even as I was going to the airport, I pray inside the car. When I got there and check in, the immigration officer ask me how my suitcase so big and is little bit a clothes in there and is that time me a start fret," she related with embarrassed laughter.

"Then immigration came out and said the flight was full. I went back home and tell them and pass out the pellets. Them come fi me swallow more and I tell them a not going," she recalled.

Lucky for Patricia, the Ministry of National Security's Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) came to Hannah Town and in it, shefound gainful employment and a reservoir of opportunities that could lead her to her dream of becoming a celebrated actor one day, while at the same time making positive contributions to her community.

Patricia earned a food handlers permit with the help of the programme and got work as a caterer for at least five of the programmes run by the CSJP and the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC) in the community. She also acts with the popular community theatre group SISTREN.

So far, she has done one major production, with the group Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance and numerous skits focusing on issues within her own community and other inner-city communities in the Corporate Area. They are now looking to take their next production into Montego Bay where violence has reared its ugly head.

But while life is better for Patricia and her four boys now, it's still no bed of roses. She still lives in the same small two-bedroom house she's lived in for the last 12 years with her four sons and 77-year-old mother. The little she earns must stretch to feed the entire family, pay bills and send her children to school.

"I tell my children that I don't want them to drop out of school like me. I want them to be better than me. They mustn't beg; any begging that should be done, is me should do it," she said sternly.

"Children on the whole - I don't like to see them not going to school and me not going to see my children not going school. If them head a hurt them, me give them a pill and send them to school," she said.

Three of four sons are still in school. Her second son, Fabian is an upper-sixth student at Wolmer's High School for Boys in downtown Kingston, while her third, Marlon, is also an upper-sixth student at Camperdown High School also in downtown Kingston. Both boys are now hoping to attend university in September.

Her last child, six-year-old Dujon, attends a primary school in her community while her eldest son, Aidian is out of school and unemployed - a victim of circumstance.

"Him lose him job because him couldn't work overtime one night because of the violence in the area," Patricia explained. She pled with his employers to give him back his job, they promised to but they never did. Since then it has been difficult for him to find another job because of where he lives.

The challenges have been difficult to manage, but Patricia feels she has raised her boys well. In times of need they have been her source of comfort and joy.

"Sometimes me go there so, and go there so, and me cannot get through, and me go in me house and pray and cry, and them we come and say to me: 'Pat what happen to you?', and that brings her relief she said.

She was never strict with her four boys, but she kept them out of trouble.

"When they were growing, me never used to let them go to run up and down all over the place. I tell them when them go people place them must sit down one place," she said.

"When me see them on the corner, me reason with them and show them that when you sit down on the corner, police we come terrorise you. Me show them that you have two type of company - good and bad - and bad company will lead you astray," she continued.

But her four boys have not been the only recipients of her wisdom and grace. She took up the opportunity to raise other children as well in her community and others in her family.

She raised her brother's son as her own child from birth to 11 years old when he went join his mother abroad.

"If a quarter of bread everybody have to get a slice," she recalled with bit of triumph in her voice.

Now all she wishes for, is that her children's dreams will come true, and for her own dreams in the theatre to be realised.

"In the future, I want to have my own business, food business, and I want to be on Broadway," she says.