“Right now?” Michael piped, his eyes wide, and I thought, well, sure. Why not? Why not right now? I walked out into the main room and found Denise.
“Is it okay with you if I take the boys out for a little while?” I asked. “I thought I’d take them over to the library and teach them a little bit about reading.”
She looked up at me with eyes so exhausted they seemed varnished, and I could see her making all the calculations: Who is this white man? What’s he want with my boys? She’d have seen a wiry guy with a rough, pock-marked face hidden by a sharply trimmed dark beard. She also, apparently, saw something she trusted.
She knew my buddy John; he’d been kind to her. And maybe my suggestion that I, a perfect stranger, immediately take her kids to read at the library was so strange that no self-respecting kidnapper or child molester would think of such a thing. She agreed to let me take the boys for a few hours. Michael and James scampered down the stairs two at a time. Something different! Something new! We didn’t so much walk to the library as play our way there. Who can jump up and touch that sign? Who can leap frog over the fire hydrant? Who can find a leaf with the most red in it? Who can walk backward the farthest without falling down? I was being my dad—every kid’s clown. They were so hungry for play that we’d finish up one little game and they’d be, “What’s next? What’s next?”
The nearest library was a pretty little branch office in a brownstone, and I got down on one knee to explain that we couldn’t play in there, that it’s a library where people go to read quietly. I was a little nervous taking them in there; they were so busy and noisy and full of energy. I figured it would take about two minutes for us to get thrown out. But the two of them—tiny little guys, holding hands—walked in there like explorers happening on some elaborate underground golden temple. Their eyes rolled around as we tip-toed through, utterly rapt at all the books, the shiny polished wood, the immaculate, learned silence that enveloped the room. I sat them at a table and retrieved a picture book, and they fixated on it as though it was a magical artifact from another dimension. The boys had to have seen books in school, but I got the impression that nobody had ever sat with them and thoroughly directed their attention into one. They turned the pages with their mouths hanging open, visibly dumbstruck by some of the stories I was reading them.
I started teaching them how to sound out the letters, and it was a whole new game for them. If I expected them to resist, I couldn’t have been more wrong, because making sounds out of the squiggles on the page was as fresh and fun as crab walking on the grass or playing “I Spy.” Watching them puzzling over how a t and an h together make that hissing sound, or the way one makes an o with one’s lips when making the sound of the letter, I felt as though I was watching a fast-motion film of seeds landing on fertile earth, germinating and sprouting into green shoots. Michael and James had such fresh, ready, unspoiled minds—despite what must have been such a disorienting and sometimes harrowing experience as living from shelter to shelter—that my heart began banging around inside my chest. Until this moment, I’d been focused on the problems of poverty, and I hadn’t allowed myself to think about actual solutions for real people. But watching Michael and James, I found myself thinking: Anything is possible.
I was taking them page by page through a children’s book. I felt lucky that I could introduce them to a world of pictures and words that had fired my imagination when I was their age. On one page was a picture of a family standing outside their house, and before I could turn to the next, Michael slapped his plump little hand down on it. “I’m going to get my mom a house,” he said in a low tone I hadn’t heard before. I look over at him, and his face had utterly changed. His eyebrows, which had ridden excitedly around his hairline all day, were scrunched down around his nose. He looked, suddenly, like a tiny grownup. “Someday soon, I’m going to buy my mom a house and take care of our family.”
“Michael,” I said. “You’re just a kid.”
Michael (left) and James
“That don’t matter,” he said. He looked at the picture a long time, and then slowly turned the page. His face relaxed, the eyebrows floated up. After another couple of pages, he was back to his smiley self, and that dark little interlude might never have happened.
From there I took them to McDonald’s to fill up their bellies for a couple bucks, which is probably all I had in my pocket at the time, and then back to the shelter. They thundered up the stairs yelling to their mother about all the things they’d done, and I went in to John’s room to say goodbye. Before I could leave, Michael came bouncing over and grabbed my hand. “When you coming back?” he asked, his shiny face tilted up toward mine. “When we doing this again?”
2. “Come to Save the Day”
MICHAEL MATTOCKS
Every time we moved from one shelter to another that summer, I’d worry that J.P. wouldn’t be able to find us. But then one day, there he’d be. I don’t know how he found us every time; he’d just show up, and off we’d go. It was like being with a big kid; he’d make up little games as we walked along, duck-walking and one-foot hopping. For the longest time he had this ugly station wagon, kind of a tan color, and he’d put me and James in the back and drive us around. We’d usually go get a McDonald’s or a Roy Rogers or a Pizza Hut, because we were always hungry, and then to the library. It was funny; I couldn’t have cared less about learning to read in school, but with J.P. it was fun. We’d sit up at one of those long tables, the three of us, and go through book after book.
The best thing we did, though, was fishing. We’d go down to the Potomac, back behind the Watergate Hotel. J.P. always had these busted-up rods. There was a little business back there, Thompson Boats, that had a vending machine where you’d put in quarters and out would come little cups of dirt with worms in them, for bait. J.P., James, and I would stand on the docks catching catfish, rockfish, even striped bass. We wouldn’t keep them, though—you didn’t want to eat fish out of that nasty-ass river. We’d throw them back.
Right across from Thompson Boats was an island, maybe half a mile long, with no houses or roads on it or nothing. Just woods. Sometimes when J.P. had a little money, he’d rent a canoe or a rowboat, and we’d go over there—we had to row like a motherfucker to keep from getting carried off by the current—and we’d play explorers or Indians or something out there all damn day. J.P. got totally into playing like a kid. Not like some adults who just go along with it and get tired right quick. J.P. got into it. He became a kid when he was with us.
At the same time, though, J.P. always had books with him, always had big stacks of papers and files. He’d fish a while with me and James, or play, and then I’d look over and he’d be sitting on a rock with a book open. Sometimes he’d take us back to his apartment, which wasn’t any nicer than the shelter, really, and we’d eat Honey Combs and play around, and J.P. would be in on his little typewriter with all these books open all around him. Man, he’d be going at it. He’d be working those books and that typewriter as hard as he played with us. We’d let him at it a while, and then we’d say, “Hey, J.P., take a break.” He’d jump up and come play with us for an hour—roll around on the floor wrestling, or playing hide-and-seek out in the streets. Then I’d look up and J.P. would have his nose back in those books, or he’d be banging at his typewriter.
Sooner or later he’d take us home, and the day would be over. J.P. would drive off, and we wouldn’t know if we’d ever see him again. Sometimes it felt like our times with J.P. was a dream, like they weren’t real.
We had relatives in Southeast D.C., and we’d go out there sometimes when we were homeless. When I was about eight or nine, my mom found us a place to live on Savannah Terrace in Southeast. I don’t really know how she did it, but it was nice down there, even though we were ten people living in a two-room apartment: Mom, me, and my brothers and sisters Sabrina, James, David, Elsie, André (who was born in the shelter), two of Aunt Evelyn’s kids, and Uncle Artie. Sabrina, James, and I could ride ou
r bikes down to the river, and throw rocks, catch tadpoles—and crayfish the size of lobsters! There were backyards, and parks, where we’d play football. I taught James how to catch big-ass bees off them flowering bushes; we’d trap them in bottles. There were plum trees we’d climb to get plums, and apple trees we’d pick apples from.
James and I were always together. I could beat him up because I was bigger, but he’d always get me back; I could count on that. Like I said before, James had a temper on him, even when he was a little kid. Take something off him, pick him last for a team, even look at him the wrong way, and he’d go off. It didn’t bother me when we were little; that’s just how James was. Later on, I made use of that side of James; I’ll admit that. Now I just wish I’d been able to turn that side of him off.
Sabrina was still no joke either. There was this boy named Quinton one day that was bullying me and James in a way Sabrina didn’t like. He had this slingshot hanging around his neck, and Sabrina grabbed it, pulled it way back, and let it go. Then for good measure, while old Quinton was gasping and choking, Sabrina ran inside and got a big-ass butcher knife. She probably would have stuck it in him if we hadn’t pulled her off. Sabrina wasn’t but about ten years old at the time.
It’s good James and Sabrina were tough that way, because while we were living down there, the Jamaicans starting moving in, and they were bad motherfuckers. It was like they all arrived at once; suddenly the streets were full of them. They were trying to take over, and them niggers down in Southeast weren’t having any of it. There was a lot of killing around then. One summer day Sabrina, James, and I were walking down a side street near our apartment and smelled something nasty. We look up, and there’s a dead body sitting in a parked car right there. Hot as a motherfucker and this guy’s all swole up behind the wheel.
I used to have dreams about that. I’d see that swollen up man, and then he’d turn his head and look at me. At night, that shit would snap me right out of bed.
Our uncle Artie came to live with us down in Southeast; his wife had died of cancer up in New Jersey, and he was all by himself. He was scary and funny at the same time. He drank pretty much all day, but that was normal for people in my family. We were never afraid of him because we knew he was harmless. He always had pockets full of snacks, and he’d play games with us, reaching out for our faces and saying, “Gimme that eeeeeeye,” and “Gimme that nooooooose.” Bony, skinny motherfucker was Artie; a good dude. You could sit in a room and talk to him and he’d listen, even if he didn’t know what it was you were talking about. I used to watch him give himself insulin shots.
Uncle Artie didn’t work, but nobody we knew worked. My mom wasn’t working at all then. She wasn’t into the drugs, and I’m not sure she was even drinking then; that came later. But it’s not like anybody was looking after us kids; we’d make ourselves a sandwich for dinner. I don’t think one person in our whole family had a decent job. Everybody was always freeloading off of somebody else, conning a little money off them, nobody pulling their own weight. Looking back on it now, it was fucked up. We kids didn’t have one grownup in the entire family we could look up to and see how to live right. And I wasn’t but about eight, nine years old then.
People in Southeast would come up to me and say, “Tell your father ‘hi.’ I grew up with him.” At first, I thought they were talking about Willie, but after a while I started piecing it together that they were talking about somebody else. The somebody else they were talking about had been a prizefighter. People would say to me, “Your dad knocked me out; holler at him for me.” I figured out too that he was a gambler, a stone gangster. I even had a guy come up and say, “Your dad, he shot me one time; you tell him ‘hi’ for me.” That shit confused me.
One day there were people over at the house for some kind of party. The door opened and I looked over. A man I’d never seen stood there. He was dressed snappy—slacks and a white shirt, with a tan leather jacket and a fedora hat. I heard my aunt whisper to someone, “That’s their dad,” but I knew it already, the second I saw him. When I seen him, I seen me. Except for recently, my whole life I’d thought Willie was my dad, and this stranger walks in and I know right away that he’s my real father. I don’t know why he showed up right then; I guess he was waiting until we had a place he could stay. He had that I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. He stayed that day and lived with us for about a minute—just long enough to get my mother pregnant with Tyrell. Me and Sabrina, at the start of the lineup, and Tyrell, at the tail end, we all had the same father. James, David, and Elsie were Willie’s children. André was born in 1984 while we were in the shelter; I don’t know who the hell his father is. It’s not like any of these dudes was around. My dad was gone again as slick and easy as he’d come.
I was hurt, I really was. It was so good having my dad around. He bought us beds and a kitchen table. He was tough too. I really looked up to him. One day my mom and him got in a really big argument, and he left right then. I felt like a big part of us just left.
And suddenly out of nowhere, J.P. would appear there on Savannah Terrace. Even though my dad left, we had J.P. We was so happy when he would come. That big ugly car of his would roll up, and we’d be off on another one of our adventures. Busting out of that house with J.P. was like getting air into our lungs. It wasn’t just fun. It was good for us. J.P. did shit with his life, you hear what I’m saying? He had things going on—jobs, and school. And he cared about us in a way even my mom and my aunts didn’t know how to. He’d ask us about our lives, and talk to us about things like being responsible, and working hard, and setting our sights on dreams and shit like that. Nobody in our world talked to us about that. And here’s the thing: J.P. didn’t judge us. He didn’t judge my mom or Uncle Artie. They was what they was, and J.P. accepted that.
My aunts would say to my mom, “Why you letting that white man go with your kids?” and my mom would say, “He ain’t doing nothing to them kids.” My mom loved us, and she knew what was best even if she couldn’t always do what was best. She never said we couldn’t go with J.P. There was something about J.P. she trusted. And I think my aunts were jealous, and maybe Mom liked that a little bit. James and me, we’d come back saying, “We did this! We did that.” Had our bellies all full; sometimes we even had on new shoes.
Left to right: James, David, Michael, Tyrell, Denise, and Elsie
There were times back then that I didn’t want to be around where I was at all. What I really wanted was to be living with J.P.
JOHN PRENDERGAST
My peculiar upbringing had both set me up for this relationship with Michael and James and also left me completely unprepared for it. I was a white, middle-class American. My nuclear family hadn’t split up. I had a supportive extended family. I was blessed with the ability to attend the country’s best universities. To bend all that advantage toward promoting myself—to get rich for its own sake—was unthinkable. I walked around as my skull rang, twenty-four hours a day, with a humanistic and theological compulsion to add value to the world. I was finally the big boy in the Boys’ Town tableau, ready to carry the little one uncomplainingly on my back. In my head, I was the comic book-turned-real-life superhero, come to help save the day.
But notice: I was really all about me—how I was going to learn about the poor, how I was going to redeem myself through service, how I was going to be the superhero. Often the people who needed help were more like props in my play.
I was spreading myself incredibly thin that summer of 1983—taking courses at George Washington University, working at the Robert Kennedy Memorial Youth Policy Institute, volunteering as a kids’ basketball coach. It was as though I couldn’t do enough to fight unfairness, or stuff my head fast enough with information and experience about urban poverty and its causes. Was I doing any good? Maybe not; I didn’t stay with anything long enough. And was I learning? Perhaps in some superficial way. But I’d driven myself into such a frenzy of activity that it was almost as though the point wasn’t to do good or
learn; the point was to check off boxes. Did this, did this, did this, did this …
And maybe also to feed this growing addiction to achievement, as well as the increasing tendency to fill the hole in my heart with spiraling amounts of frenetic activity, never stopping long enough to let the demons of loneliness and lack of self-worth catch up to me.
In a way, it was a terrible burden. Work had become a compulsion I couldn’t control, and it was driving me to do things I really didn’t feel like doing. I was twenty years old; I wanted to play basketball all day. I wanted to sit on the couch and watch sports. I wanted to be a sportswriter, not a saint. And the more I felt myself yearning to relax, have fun, enjoy my own life, the more I felt compelled to add one more task of service to my already overloaded dance card. And even that served my overheated and guilt-ridden sense of self: The more I denied myself, the more I jammed in another book, another course, another little piece of service work, the more self-righteous I felt.
At first, I simply folded my relationship with Michael and James into this spin cycle of feverish service. It was the injustice of their circumstances that drew me in—how they could never seem to get out of the shelters. The issues were legion: unmet criteria; late buses; unsympathetic program officers. The list went on and on. The thing the family probably needed most from me I had none of: money.
Denise was full of contrasts, and no stereotype would ever capture her completely. She was the ultimate mother hen, taking in children from her extended family even when she was living in a homeless shelter. But she was also overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for all these little kids on her own. So at times my guess is she retreated into heavy drinking to cope. But she never let go of her kids’ hands. She was fantastically devoted to them.
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