The Los Angeles youth’s grandparents, Paul and Kenny Jones, had raised him since he was about a year old, at the request of Kenny’s son from an earlier marriage, who became the boy’s father when he was only 17. Marquise’s teenage mother did the best she could, Kenny said, but was simply unable to provide for him and her daughter.

The aging couple was uniquely qualified for their unexpected new parenthood of their grandson. Before retiring, both worked with young people. Kenny directed an at-risk youth center and Paul managed a gang intervention program in L.A.’s low-income and largely African American South Central section.

Marquise and his grandparents lived comfortably until Kenny, now in her late 60s, became ill, and Paul, in his mid 70s, died of a heart attack a year ago.

Prior to Paul’s death, he and Kenny relied on their two Social Security checks, and both Kenny and Marquise earned money through motivational speaking engagements and the sale of books they’d each written.

An Author at 7

By age 7, Marquise achieved recognition worthy of a child prodigy. To occupy himself on the weekends and stay out of trouble, the child entrepreneur bought wholesale products and created a company to sell them called Unique Treasures. At the same age, he wrote the book, I Am Not a Problem Child (Milligan Books, 2002), about how he successfully fought his school’s plan to put him on medication and in special education classes.

Marquise was secure financially, mentally and spiritually in a home with two loving grandparents. He and Kenny were inseparable.

Then, in August 2009, Kenny began bleeding from her brain. About three weeks after she returned home, she was hospitalized again due to a severe allergic reaction to medication she took for an unrelated infection. Kenny found she’d developed arare condition called Steven Johnson Syndrome, which causes severe allergic reactions to medication. She fell into a coma for 21 days, and emerged from it partially blind. Today, she continues receiving treatment.

Marquise’s stability, was shaken. Kenny was everything to him – grandmother, caregiver, publicist, manager, transporter and cheerleader. His grandparents meant a lot to him. The proud grandmother chronicled his life and accomplishments in several large-sized photo albums and scrapbooks, volumes that eventually took on special meaning for him.

“To go from where I was has been very, very difficult for me because I can’t see,” Kenny said. “I’m not able to get around like I used to, and I do things around my house based on memorization.”

Payday Loan “Hell”

Kenny detailed how her life with Marquise spiraled downward after Paul’s death. “Here I am, basically handicapped. I don’t have any money.”

Besides the emotional blow, Paul’s death slashed the household income by $3,000 a month – Paul’s Social Security and disability checks.

Her remaining income “doesn’t go very far,” she said: “It totals $1,164, and I still have a grandson I need to take care of.”
Kenny worried over costs, such as her past-due gas bill of $94 and utility bills. “I’m not able to help Marquise buy anything like I used to, nor take him around where he was very independent and earned his own money,” she said, adding: “Sometimes I feel very inept and inadequate. But I say, to God be the glory.”

A devout person, Kenny stressed that she doesn’t throw “pity parties,” and doesn’t blame God for her troubles. Kenny tried to hold on to the home she and her husband had rented for years, but her reduced income made that hard.

Now, living at a low-income housing unit for seniors, she recalled, “When I came in here, I was so behind in debt due in part to medical bills after my husband died, I started getting payday loans, and that is bondage. That is straight out of the pit of hell! I found myself having to go back and continuously get a payday loan to pay off another payday loan, and another, and that’s how I had to balance it for a while to pay off all the payday loans,” she said.

Although Kenny was able to move into the senior complex, her lease agreement restricts the number of days visitors can stay overnight As a result, Marquise must shuttle between her apartment and the homes of his maternal grandmother- who is also stretched thin helping both him and her other grandchildren.