NEW YORK, NY July 10, 2009 —When she was 16, Janesse Nieves said she and her mother have one thing in common—they were both betrayed by Janesse's father. She took her microphone and went to his house to try to convince him he should stop using heroin. A clinical expert told her there was nothing she could do about his addiction, but she found that hard to believe. After the story, Marianne McCune calls up Janesse to hear how she's doing now, 8 years later.

HOST INTRO: I’m Marianne McCune and you’re listening to Growing Up, Getting By, a special from Radio Rookies. It’s been ten years since we taught the first group of teenagers to use a microphone and recorder and tell the world about their lives. I’m a reporter here at WNYC, but I also started Radio Rookies – and I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the team ever since. You have to be courageous to be a Radio Rookie. Obviously, they’re Rookies – so just making radio is a challenge. But they also dare to tell some of the most difficult stories – stories they’re right in the middle of, whether or not they want to be. More often than not, they move listeners with their tales of real life. But then they continue with their lives and you don’t know what happened. This hour you’ll meet some of the Rookies of the past – and get a chance to catch up with them (as young adults? Now? In their 20s?).

It’s possible these stories will make you uncomfortable -- because most of us have some little corner of our minds ... or our hearts ... that still suffers from the wounds of adolescence. That is what this hour is about -- how we survive those wounds and learn the tactics of adulthood.

We’ll hear first from a young woman named Janesse Nieves -- we call her Nesse. She survived childhood with a father who was addicted to heroin. And she told us this story at age 16.

NARRATION: My father’s block is full of memories. When I went over there to find him, it was hot. A fire hydrant was open, and kids were just splashing and playing. I just told myself, "Okay, let's keep it moving. It's time to go upstairs, so we can do this.”

JANESSE: I'm at the door.

NARRATION: I stood there for about a half an hour, and he never showed.

JANESSE: (Knocking.) Pop?

NARRATION: My mom and I don’t always see eye to eye. But we do have one thing in common. And that’s Papi.

MOTHER: He betrayed you guys, too. Just like he did Mommy.

NARRATION: I caught my mom in the kitchen while she was cooking chicken and fries.

JANESSE: What was his personality like?

MOTHER: He’s always been a good person...very lovable ... understanding... very attentive.

NARRATION: Basically the kind of person you wouldn’t think one day, they would actually...use drugs. I can't remember when exactly when it all started. What I do remember is the park we used to play in. There was this gate that was always locked. We had to climb over to get in. I always had this scare because I hated climbing that gate. I would get laughed at because I was too heavy to push my own weight. But my daddy would come give me a push and I would always make it. And I loved him for that, I loved being daddy's little girl. Maybe that's why my mother didn't tell me about my dad’s drug problem.

MOTHER: I thought you were never going to believe me because your father had you brainwashed.

NARRATION: I remember my father asked me to pee in a vitamin bottle one day. At the time, I didn't know why, I really didn’t want to question him neither. Later I found out it was because he was on drugs and he needed clean pee to prove he was drug-free.

BROTHER: Uh! Uh! Uh! Cookin' my spaghetti in the sauce....!

NARRATION: Now my brother and I, try laugh about the situation. We try to act like everything’s all right.

JANESSE: With cheese! With cheese!

BROTHER: Cooking my spaghetti in the sauce! Comin' through....Lookin' at this issue...

JANESSE: With cheese!

JANESSE: Guess what? Omar goes to a military school upstate. We were having a ball in the car on his way back to school. Omar doesn’t see Pop a lot now.

JANESSE: You saw Papi yesterday?

OMAR: Yeah.

JANESSE: And how was he doing?

OMAR: He was all right you know he was skinny, like you said? He’s probably my size or even a little bit skinnier.

NARRATION: There are times where I don’t want to be seen with him in the street. He looks crazy, with his shopping cart full of cans.

JANESSE: But that’s not the only way he gets his money.

ROBERT: He maintains all the buildings on the block.

JANESSE: I ran into my cousin Robert when I went back to find Papi the second time.

ROBERT: He mops all of them.

JANESSE: Wow, he mops all the buildings! Maybe I should bring him to like a career day and I could have stand in front of the class. “What do you do? I mop all the buildings.”

JANESSE: Let’s pray somebody’s there. Pop? I just want to talk!

JANESSE: This time, Papi was there. While he was in the bathroom, I saw his shopping cart.

JANESSE: These are his -- slow down, my goodness. Mistake, I don’t really want to touch it. He got Poland Springs, Pepsi, King Cobra beer...and a square box. It’s kind of stinky so I’m going to walk away now.

NARRATION: When he finally came out of the bathroom, I went at it. I wasted no time.

JANESSE: Hey Pa. How you feeling?

POP: I’m feeling good.

JANESSE: Are you serious?

POP: Yes.

JANESSE: But you’re, you know, a heroin addict. That makes you feel good?

POP: Yes.

JANESSE: So, how do you feel when I see you like this?

POP: See me like what?

JANESSE: What makes you wanna go out and get cans from the garbage and take it to the supermarket? What makes you want to do that?

POP: Because I have to make money.

JANESSE: But that’s not the only way you can make money.

POP: No? Which other way?

JANESSE: Well you can get clean and you know get other jobs --

POP: Clean -- I’m dirty? Clean --

JANESSE: Okay, that’s the wrong word, I’m sorry.

POP: -- the way I look, dress, the shirt, the pants?

JANESSE: No, no...I’m talking about you doing drugs and thinking it’s okay.

POP: What do you mean okay, thinking it’s okay?

JANEESE: I mean --

POP: -- it's how I feel.

JANESSE: Yeah, but why you can’t just go into a program, why you gotta keep doing it and doing it, I know it’s addictive, but why you gotta keep doing it?

NARRATION: My plan was to go in there and let Papi know that I love him and I wanted to help. But I let my anger take over instead.

JANESSE: I visited a drug facility and you can do it, it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want to do it, that’s the best word, you should say that, you don’t want to do it --

NARRATION: See, I went to see this doctor at Albert Einstein College of medicine to help me understand how heroin addiction works. Dr. Roy Cohen told me a person has to WANT to stop taking drugs to quit.

DR. COHEN: That desire depends on a lot of different things. It depends, for some people, whether they hit rock bottom. And usually hitting rock bottom means losing a job, losing a family, getting back an HIV positive test.

POP: I like the drug. Now you don’t want to come, I understand, you know. You supposed to love me no matter what. No matter what, you supposed to love me. You gonna be there or you not gonna be. You know?

JANESSE: If you was healthier, trust me, I be here every day. But I'm not gonna sit here and look at you, knowing that you do it, and not say anything about it. I'm not gonna stay shut, because it's not right. Don't you know this can kill you, does that even, you know --

POP: Anything can kill you, Janesse, anything can kill you.

NARRATION: He had that “Yeah, whatever” attitude. Finally, I was telling him the truth, and he didn’t want to hear it. So it just ended.

POP: I don’t want to talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it.

JANESSE: So you don’t want to talk to me.

POP: No, it's not like I don't wanna talk to you. I don't wanna talk about it. The drug issue is out.

JANESSE: So that’s it, that's the --

POP: That’s the interview.

JANESSE: Are you mad?

POP: No I am not. The interview is over, alright? For today.

NARRATION: I just stood there for a long time. After all that, like nothing happened, Papi told me he wanted to buy me some cookies. But he didn’t have the money. I never expected him to tell me he didn’t care about what he was doing. That’s when I got angry.

NARRATION: He doesn’t care. And it’s funny 'cause he talks about how he wants to have a normal life. What kind of, what kind of normal life? I’m a go over there to sit down to see him look all high. And then he thinks it’s all right because there’s some 70 year olds, that they still do it and they’re all right. They have a normal life. For him, I got to understand what it’s like. I don’t have time for that shit, I don’t.

NARRATION: You know, my mother, she doesn’t understand why I even try to talk to Papi.

MOTHER: I don't think he should be your first priority.

JANESSE: I’m not making him my number one priority. I’m just taking the time to figure out how to get over his problem. My mother’s father had a drinking problem, and he died years ago. Now, that seems like the only memory she has of him. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want this...

POP: Anything can kill you Janesse, anything can kill you.

JANESSE: ...to be my last memory of my father

NARRATION: I do want to remember laughing and playing with my brother, while my father videotaped us. Everybody was happy! I do want to remember the day Papi’s mother died, when I was six months old. My mother says he grabbed me, he hugged me so hard, and he didn’t want to let me go. I don’t want to let him go, neither. But I don’t want to go around feeling like it’s my fault anymore. Dr. Cohen says that’s what people like me have to get over.

DR. COHEN: You didn’t cause it. You're not responsible for it...

JANESSE: There’s nothing I can do. The problem is, I don’t know if I’ll ever really believe that.

(MUSIC IN)

MARIANNE: Radio Rookie Janesse Nieves when she was 16.

MARIANNE: Are you there Neese?

NESSE: Yeah, whooo!

MARIANNE: It’s been a long time since Nesse recorded her dad. Her story aired in 2001 now she’s in her twenties. We called her up to see how she’s doing, and what she thinks of her story now.

NESSE: I never heard it like I did today. I actually loved it.

MARIANNE: What did you love about it?

NESSE: I had enough guts to be honest with him and to ask him the things I asked him. And really find out that, hey, there was just nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t my fault. It’s not even his fault. It’s just something that happened, and we both gotta live with it.

MARIANNE: Do you think confronting him helped you get over it?

NESSE: I don’t even think-- I know it did. Because I didn’t have any more questions lingering in my mind. I didn’t think about where was he or what was he doing. I just threw it back there on the back burner and let it burn.

MARIANNE: Nesse didn’t stay in the Bronx with her mom. She moved to Louisiana, where her brother was living. She’s working and slowly making her way towards a college degree. But she says it hasn’t been easy. She’s grappled both with her father’s drug addiction, and her own.

NESSE: Anything that would get me anywhere else but here, I wanted to do it. I remember one time my father telling me about this numbness that he got. It was like you get high and you go into your own world, it’s like a fantasy. You just feel good. That was my addiction. My mother said something to me, I’m gonna go get high. I want to forget every little thing she said. I wanted to forget everything.

MARIANNE: What helped you the most to get out of that?

NESSE: It got bad to the point that I needed to go to rehab. And they chewed me out. They chewed me out! And they screwed my head back on straight. And I decided it was time for me to be an adult.

MARIANNE: So what are things you find hard to survive now?

NESSE: Keeping my focus. Because I get motivated, and then something happens, and I can fall off so quick. For instance, school. I can be going to school and everything is fine. But I can go in one day and have a lesson- if I have no idea what you’re talking about and I still ask you after class and I still don’t get it, I start to feel like I’m never going to get it. And why am I taking this class? And you know what I’m gonna’ skip this lesson and I’m gonna’ just go ahead and take the whole class over again. It’s like one little disappointment that I let myself feel for something so small can throw me off.

MARIANNE: Janesse Nieves these days she says she’s staying on track. She’s a customer service rep for a phone company and she takes photographs for fun. Nesse says she’s a survivor.

NESSE: Definitely a survivor. Definitely a survivor.

MARIANNE: As for Nesse’s dad, after years of using drugs, doing time, going to rehab, and coming in and out of her life, she says he’s now been clean for three straight years and he’s even quit smoking cigarettes.

Go to the Radio Rookies site for bios and audio segments of the stories