Three little boys, all younger than 4, thought their house had been robbed.

Their mother, Rose Etuka, knew better. She’d taken the boys to church while her now-ex–husband moved out.

“I didn’t prepare myself for what he was going to take,” she said. “We walked into a house that was gutted. The impact on (my boys) was devastating.”

Right then, Rose vowed to keep her children’s lives stable — as stable as she could for three kids with a single parent. She started that night by ordering pizza. She didn’t know that the separation set off a chain reaction, that things wouldn’t be normal for a long time. Soon would come the foreclosure, the eviction notice and the bank visitors. That night in December 1999, the boys only knew that, for the first time, they were allowed to eat in the sitting room. They did not know it was the same barren room they would soon live in illegally.

Sixteen years later, Rose Etuka’s middle child is sitting in his dorm room on a June day at Western New England University. His name is Braxton Obichukwu Anetochukwu Etuka, but everyone calls him “Obi.” He plays cornerback for the Western New England University Golden Bears football team. In 2014, he intercepted eight passes, tied for third-most in Division III. In the second game of his junior year on Friday, he set a school record with four interceptions.

Obi lives on campus, but is of that house in Middletown, Connecticut. Extraordinary people shaped Obi into a bolder man under its roof, his cousin tragically died there and Etuka’s family never left. They live there today.

“It’s seriously a miracle,” Obi said. “Honestly, I still don’t understand how I’m here right now. My mom kept herself together.”

***

Rose knew crisis from growing up in a Nigerian civil war. A refugee in Africa as a child to doubling-down at home in Connecticut, working long hours at the Department of Transportation and making time for the family to serve at church every Thursday and Sunday.

In Obi’s first two years of high school, he hung around people who didn’t study seriously and listened to music Rose wouldn’t allow. She spoke to him. He gradually became more serious and stayed out of trouble.

“If you do something illegal, you’re not coming back to my house,” Rose said she told her son. “I’m not afraid to lose you. I’m working so hard to give you a better life. I cannot afford to have a victim mentality and I cannot make excuses for failure. My standards were very, very high. Obi wasn’t a perfect person, for my standards, but he’s a good boy.”

Roland Etuka, Obi’s father, left a mortgage in his name that he hadn’t paid for some time. To pay the water and electricity bills, which Rose managed to get in her name, she sold most of her things and her church helped buy a storage unit for the rest. Obi, his two brothers and mother slept together on a mattress in the sitting room. They ate peanut butter and jelly “all the time.”

Rose told her children peanut butter was healthy. She didn’t tell them they couldn’t afford anything else. When Obi heard that, he retreated to his sitting room corner to write. He did that to think.

Obi was so quiet Rose worried about him becoming withdrawn.

He was timid, even on the football field. He started playing in seventh grade. For every pass he broke up or intercepted, he’d allow a long pass. He overthought his situation. Every receiver across from him was better, in his mind.

“I was so afraid that my coach would scream at me,” Obi said. “I acted like I had an asthma attack. I never told anyone that was fake.”

His overthinking may have hurt him, but it also helped him see the truth.

“Are you telling us that because you don’t want us to feel bad for ourselves,” he asked his mom, believing the PB&J diet wasn’t as healthy as she said.

Ninety days had passed since the eviction notice’s delivery. Time was up. Rose worked in banking for 12 years and knew protocol for changing locks on residents — squatters — who wouldn’t leave foreclosed-upon homes after that time. Every morning, she left a note on the door explaining her situation.

Rose sat in the DOT, fearing a bank agent would find her note. She worried someone might need that phone number scribbled at the bottom.

One day, someone did.

***

Obi and his brothers cried when Rose took them to see “The Stranger’s Place,” an apartment near church they might move to. The boys wanted home. Rose wanted that too, for all the reasons she wanted to boys to always live in the same house rather than splitting time between parents per court order, Rose said.

“There’s an African saying,” Rose said. “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.”

For stability’s sake, Rose offered Roland full custody. Roland wanted stability too. He forfeited his two weeks, Rose said.

Roland, who moved to Canada, could not be reached for comment.

“My heart hurts,” Rose said. “I know there’s a need for a father figure in their lives. I never dated because their stability was the number one thing in my life.”

In the following years, Rose relied on her church to help guide her sons. The pastor, Peter Leal, took the boys to lunch or sporting events four times per year.

Obi still leads half-a-dozen players in prayer before games, teammate Isaiah Berrios said.

***

In early 2003, Rose’s niece, Chinelo Obiamaka Anyakwo, moved from Nigeria into the Etuka’s house. She made the kids’ school lunches, brought them to the movies and attended Obi’s sports games. She became their confidant.

In February 2010, doctors diagnosed Chinelo with sarcoma cancer. A stomach tumor swelled until the girl who’d never dated looked “10 months pregnant”. Moving became painful.

At the same time she became hospitalized, Chinelo’s nursing finals arrived. The school offered to test her in the hospital. Chinelo refused preferential treatment, despite pain morphine couldn’t dull.

“I won’t let you leave,” a doctor said.

Chinelo signed herself out.

A few days later, inside the Etuka home, Chinelo died.

“Chinelo empowered (my children) with a boldness,” Rose said. “She instilled on them there’s never an excuse to not succeed.”

Obi, Rose and the Etukas accepted Chinelo’s diploma at Capital Community College’s 2011 graduation.

“She was my mom when my mom wasn’t there,” Obi said. “She meant the world to me.”

***

“Do you really live here?” the bank agent on the phone asked.

Rose rushed home. By law, the bank agent couldn’t change the locks. Rose had two weeks to vacate or the sheriff would forcibly remove the Etukas.

Rose called Wells Fargo — which held the Etuka’s house — to buy it back. The property listed for $120,000, with a 10-percent required down payment. Rose sold jewelry, savings bonds she’d bought her children and most things in storage.

“I didn’t have anything else left,” she said.

She was $7,000 short.

About a week before the deadline, Rose called her sister in Wisconsin, Nkiru Mbanugo-Nzegwu.

While on the phone, Mbanugo-Nzegwu sorted mail. From her credit card company sat an offer for a $10,000 loan at no interest for 24 months.

“You mean if I loan you $7,000 you can put a permanent roof over your children’s heads?” Mbanugo-Nzegwu asked. “Speak no more. It is done.”

***

Obi is now an orientation leader for the school and starts at cornerback for the football team.

He’s still the analyzing, thinking kid who wrote in his journal about peanut butter and jelly, but he’s more outgoing now. He doesn’t worry his mother by being quiet. His first day freshman year at Western New England, the team headed to Six Flags for a bonding trip. On a full team bus, Obi jumped up and spoke first.

“We really didn’t know anyone,” Berrios said. “He talked to random people and said, ‘Hey, I’m Obi.’ He pushes the comfort zone.”

Those words, along with his new mentoring role for younger guys on the football team, are telling.

For everyone in front of Obi hearing his advice, there are people in Obi’s past responsible for the man he is now.

 

Published on September 14, 2015 at 8:18 pm

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR