FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- The cry pierced the black silence inside apartment 229G, waking Dennis Smith Sr.
How could it not? The Smith family's second-floor confines at Tera Gardens, a Section 8 complex, measured 1,000 square feet. Dennis Sr. was the sole parent, a reality that Dennis Jr. and sister De'Aira couldn't yet comprehend.
"I want my momma!" came the cry from Dennis Jr.'s bedroom.
Yes, being a single parent was difficult, Dennis Sr., now 47, recalls, but that still-vivid episode was one of the few times he felt helpless.
"Junior didn't know where she was at," he says "I didn't know where she was at, so I didn't know how to give her to him.