ABSTRACT
Darlene Johson was born in Central Harlem in 1955, one of three
children born to a mother who was chronically homeless, leaving her
husband and children for long periods of time…. With no other means
of support, Darlene lived with her abusive brother until after eleventh
grade, when she married a “hardworking man.” The couple soon had
two children…. Things were often hard. The couple had many
problems. Chief among them was their mutual passion, not for each
other, but for heroin: “I didn’t love him,” she recalls. “He beat me,
sometimes in front of the kids. It was drugs.” After six years of abuse,
Darlene found a way to leave…(and) met her second husband. This
marriage was for love. Her husband, also a heroin user, worked. They
had two sons. Her two older children also loved this man, and things
were looking up.
