Charles sauntered up. He tried to explain to Paul that if this was what Terence wanted to do, Paul should let him do it.
Paul felt his temper rising, and he began to shake. His stomach churned. “What you mean, this what he want to do? You’re taking advantage of him. The boy can’t think for himself. He’s only twelve years old. He don’t know what to do for hisself.” Paul paused. “Man, if you put some more drugs in my son’s hands, I’m going to do something to you.”
Charles just stood there. People began to surround the two men. To Paul they seemed to appear out of nowhere. From the barbershop. From a nearby fish market. From the diner. And from across the street. One had a hand buried in a brown paper bag. “Hey, bro,” he asked Charles, “you want me to pop him?” Charles waved him away. He didn’t say anything more. He just cleared a path and let Paul leave with a sullen and scared Terence. Paul felt so weak, his knees nearly gave out. As for Terence, “he slowed down for a long time after that,” recalled Paul, “but then Terence, he at times would disappear. He would just disappear and stay with friends.”
LaJoe and Paul lost Terence to the neighborhood. It is not unusual for parents to lose out to the lure of the gangs and drug dealers. And the reasons aren’t always clear. In one Horner family, a son has become a big drug dealer, a daughter a social worker. In another, one boy is in jail on a gang-related murder, another has set up a neighborhood youth program. Some parents simply won’t let their children leave the apartment even to play in the playground. A common expression among the mothers at Horner is “He ain’t my child no more.” Micki, James Howard’s mother, would tell LaJoe, “Thank God I got a thirteen-year-old child who’s still mine.”
Lafeyette, who was six at the time, knew only that his brother sold T’s and Blues, though he didn’t understand until later years what that meant. Lafeyette considered Terence his favorite brother, and remembers Terence giving him $5.00 to $10.00 whenever he saw him. Lafeyette would see Terence in the street and, in full run, throw his arms around him.
“C’mon, Terry, let’s go home.”
“Naw, man, I gotta take care of my business,” Terence would reply.
“C’mon, brother.”
“Here’s five dollars. Now go on. Tell Mama and them I say hi.”
“Okay, I’m gonna tell Mama and them what you said.” Lafeyette would pause again, still hopeful. “You gonna come home tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’ll come to see how they be doing.”
“You gonna come?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna come.”
Sometimes Terence would feel guilty and return home for a night or two. But mostly he kept on about his business, selling drugs. Sometimes when he ran into Lafeyette, he would treat him to a hot dog and french fries at a local diner. Lafeyette would be perched on one of the diner’s stools, his legs dangling, while Terence went outside to sell his drugs. Pharoah, who was only three at the time, was too young to remember Terence’s wanderings.
Terence missed his family. The first Christmas away, he heard from friends that his father had been robbed of several hundred dollars. A few days later, a young boy showed up at LaJoe’s doorstep and asked for LaJoe Rivers. “That’s me,” she told him. The boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten, thrust an envelope into her hand and then dashed out of the building. LaJoe, sensing that he might be a friend of Terence’s, gave chase but quickly lost him. When she opened the envelope, she found $500 and a note from Terence, telling her that he’d heard of the robbery. The note asked her not to come looking for him.
Terence eventually grew tired of belonging to Charles; he wanted to be with his family again. What finally brought him home was an incident that at the time seemed minor to LaJoe but that Terence would talk about in later years as if it had happened the day before.
“My mom, she give me anything I want,” he recalled. “She wasn’t doing that no more. She stopped giving me anything. She just got fed up. There was one particular day, I didn’t have no money. I just had all drugs on me, and I told her to give me ten dollars. She was at the bus stop, getting ready to go shopping, I’ll never forget, on Damen and Lake Street. She told me no. She just said, ‘I ain’t got no money.’ I said, ‘Okay, okay, Mama.’ She got on the bus. I sat there, you know, like, man, my mama just forgot about me. It was just she was fed up with me.
“Yeah, I’ll never forget it ’cause I caught her coming back. She had some grocery bags with her. I helped her carry the bags. That’s when I got to slacking up. I started staying home. My mama started talking to me. That was just a little lesson there. My mama was giving me everything I wanted. I was getting everything I wanted. Then she told me no. She was real aggravated, real angry at me, frustrated. She said, ‘You don’t listen to me no more.’ And that hurted me. That was the first time she ever turned me down.”
Terence returned home. But the troubles didn’t end. He ran with a fast crowd. He and his friends shoplifted and broke into video games. He became the one who would jimmy open the machines. Some of the money went to drugs. Terence had started dabbling first with marijuana and then Karachi, the smokable heroin mixture.
He briefly joined the Disciples, who at that point oversaw his end of Horner. He got caught up in a few gun fights and had at least one friend killed. But he abandoned the gang because, while he was serving one month-long stint in detention, the members didn’t visit him. He still has tattooed on his right arm the gang’s insignia: a six-pointed star and a pitchfork.
Also, like many of his teenage friends, he became a father; he had three children in all, a boy and two girls. Like his mother, he had his first child when he was fourteen. As tradition dictated, the child was named after his dad, Terence, though everyone called him Snuggles.
There were times when Terence tried to slow down, and, for a while, he shined shoes at the airport or just hung around at home. But by the time he turned eighteen, he had been arrested forty-six times for crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to purse snatching.
For six months, from the summer of 1987 through January of 1988, fifteen taverns in the Nineteenth Police District on the city’s mostly white north side reported robberies, sometimes as many as two a month. Two to four black males would pry open video games and run off with the change. In one instance, it amounted to $1500 from one machine, though usually it came to somewhere between $200 and $500 per game. The police say that in that same time period as many as thirty other taverns in adjacent districts reported similar crimes.
The robbers almost always worked the same way. Two teenagers would find a working-class neighborhood tavern where, early in the day—they never worked at night so as to avoid crowds—the clientele would be older and less likely to resist. The thieves concentrated on video poker games, a popular sport in many a bar even though it was played only for the thrill; the game returned winners no money. Since these machines took one-dollar and five-dollar bills, they tended to hold more money than other video games. While one of the youths would dance and shout in false excitement to allay any fears that they were in the bar for a purpose other than to play the game, his cohort would insert a long screwdriver into a narrow crack that ran down the front of the machine, and, using it as a lever, jimmy open the coin box. They would empty the coins into their pockets—they wore oversize overcoats for the purpose—and then race for the door, escaping by car or bus or the El. When four teenagers instead of two pulled off the theft, one sat down at the bar for a drink—usually a soda pop, since he was under age—and distracted the bartender with conversation while the others pried open the machines.
The police considered these “nuisance” crimes, because no one was hurt or, for that matter, even threatened. Also, the robberies didn’t involve huge amounts of money. Nor was any other property taken. But north side barkeepers had been complaining regularly to the police, at one point even calling a community meeting. The police said to alert them if any suspicious people came into the taverns.
On January 15, the police receiv
ed such a call from Lawry’s Tavern on Lincoln Avenue, a street that had had four thefts over the previous two days. Two young black males had come in, one of whom ordered a Coca-Cola. Neither looked old enough to order a drink. Three plainclothesmen hurriedly drove to Lawry’s, entering separately so as not to arouse suspicion. A few minutes later, as the three men watched from different ends of the bar, the two boys walked over to the video poker machine and began to play it. Then, suspecting that the three new customers might be police, they surreptitiously stashed their screwdriver behind a nearby radiator. They played two games, but as they started to leave, the police stopped them at the door and placed them under arrest. From one of the boys, they recovered a set of keys to other video machines; they also found the screwdriver. The police drove the boys to the precinct house, charged them with a misdemeanor, and took pictures of them in the hope that if they continued their robberies, bartenders would be able to identify them. The younger of the two, Terence Rivers, was the more easily identifiable: he wore his long hair combed straight back and down to his shoulders, at the time an unusual hairstyle. Moreover, Terence was slightly built, rangy and short.
When, two weeks later, four black males robbed Ann’s Longhorn Saloon and one of them was identified as Terence, it was reasonable to conclude that, in fact, he had broken into yet another video poker game. Only now he was an adult, which meant that the penalty would be much stiffer than a month or two in the juvenile home.
Ann’s Longhorn Saloon fit the profile: a working-class tavern in a sleepy, north side residential section of the city. The bar sits on a two-block commercial strip with another tavern and assorted small businesses; the El tracks cross at street level with automatic barriers that rise and fall with the coming of each train; they give the area the feeling of a small town.
Rebecca Mitchell, or Ann, as she preferred to be called, the bar’s tender and owner of eight years, was a large, buxom redhead who retained her Alabama drawl. She had decorated the walls with life-size posters of scantily clad, busty women, an American flag, and, above the cash register, a Confederate flag. Beneath the Southern emblem and above the register protruded the bar’s trademark: a set of longhorns measuring about seven feet from tip to tip.
The storefront was deeper than it was wide. The counter, almost twenty feet in length, extended from the door to the rear. It was to the right, just as patrons walked in. On the opposite wall sat the jukebox, which played mostly country and western music, and two video poker games. They had been burglarized five times in the past two years.
On the afternoon of January 28, Johnny Adams, a youth not much older than Terence, walked into Ann’s Longhorn Saloon, sat down at the bar, and ordered a 7-Up and a bag of potato chips. He had been in once before, just briefly, a few days earlier, so he knew the layout of the tavern. A few minutes later, another black youth walked in.
“Hey, man, what’s up. You still standing around here?” he asked Johnny. They pretended they hadn’t seen each other in a while. Johnny “lent” him some quarters to play the video game. Two more friends entered the bar and joined him.
Ann Mitchell knew what they were planning. She had seen them nervously walk by the tavern just a few minutes earlier. They had been whispering to each other, most likely detailing how they would pull off the heist. As Johnny’s friends started playing the poker game, Ann told him she had called the police. He ran to his friends, who had already cut open the padlock with bolt cutters and taken $200 from the machine. (Ann, like some of the other bar owners, had padlocked the machines to make them more difficult to pry open.) They emptied the change into their pockets, and as they raced out the door, one of the two patrons jumped off his bar stool.
“Get your ass back!” Johnny yelled at him. Ann says Johnny brandished a knife and nearly stabbed the patron in the back. Johnny denies having a weapon. The four youths sprinted out of the tavern into a waiting car, returning to their home, Henry Horner.
Three days later, on January 31, someone knocked on LaJoe’s door. “It’s the police,” a voice said. LaJoe let them in. “We’re looking for a Bobby Anderson. He here?” one of the officers asked. Terence used an alias; Anderson was LaJoe’s maiden name.
Terence sauntered out of a back room. He told LaJoe he hadn’t done anything. She asked the officers not to handcuff her son in front of Lafeyette and Pharoah, but they did so anyway. When the cuffs clicked behind his back, Terence’s head dropped as if it had been held up by a string. “They ain’t gonna bring you back,” Lafeyette muttered. Pharoah said nothing. And as Terence was led out of the building, Snuggles, then two, yelled from a second-floor window where he lived with his mother, “Chumps, let my daddy go! Let my daddy go!”
The charge was armed robbery. Ann Mitchell had identified him from the Polaroid photograph taken earlier. He was also charged with theft of a video game at another tavern, a less serious offense than the armed robbery.
* The Chicago school system has since changed the way it computes its dropout rate, so a child who leaves school before sixteen is now considered a dropout and not “lost.”
Ten
WELFARE RECIPIENTS call it “the interrogation room.” It is tucked away on the second floor of the local welfare office, an expansive brick building on Western Avenue, directly across the street from Henry Horner. In 1987, this Department of Public Aid office paid out $31,720,194 in benefits to 23,247 west side recipients of such grants as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, General Assistance, and Medicaid.
To reach the room, one must walk through the building’s front entrance, past the security guard, and up a flight of stairs. Then, a quick right turn places you in the waiting area. It’s filled with plastic chairs—red, yellow, green, and brown—and decorated with posters on child abuse, nutrition, and teenage pregnancy. One announces the celebration of Illinois Arts Week for 1985, three years previous.
On this windy April day, when it alternately snowed and rained, the waiting area was half filled. LaJoe, dressed neatly in jeans and a blue denim coat, waited nervously. She eyed a poster in a nearby cubicle. As if to mock the poverty of the clients, it advertised a Bermuda vacation, portraying a smiling, wet couple reclining on a beach, the tide lapping at their feet.
“Jesse Thomas,” a caseworker announced. No one answered. “Jessseeee Thomas.” With each appeal, the caseworker drew out the name more, her voice rising with a growing impatience. “Jesssseeee Thomas?”
LaJoe began to think that if Jesse Thomas was, in fact, there, slumped in one of the plastic chairs, he would do well to keep his identity to himself. Finally, the caseworker shouted the name so loud that other caseworkers chuckled at their clearly frazzled colleague. A middle-aged, unkempt man, wearing a red wool cap, snapped up from his sleep.
“Who’s that?” the startled man asked.
“Jesse Thomas?” she curtly asked.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Thomas sheepishly conceded.
The caseworker shot him a look of rebuke. Others giggled as a chagrined Thomas shuffled off behind the woman into the bowels of the building. Don’t get the caseworkers angry, LaJoe thought. If they aren’t your allies, at the very least you want to make sure you don’t antagonize them.
It was clear that no one wanted to be here. Of the dozen or so people waiting, none looked up from their laps—except to catch a glimpse of Thomas. They all kept on their heavy coats, as if they were on their way out rather on their way in. LaJoe kept her denim jacket on, even during the hearing.
“LaJoe Rivers,” a caseworker finally called. LaJoe, clearly thinking of Jesse Thomas, punched her hand into the air, and then got up to follow the caseworker through a tangled maze of desks and dividers to the interrogation room. It was not one office but rather a bank of windowless rooms that lined the far wall. It was where recipients were questioned about their eligibility.
A few months earlier, LaJoe had received notice from the Department of Public Aid that it had launched an investigation into her eligibility. She knew nothi
ng more than that. The $931 she received each month, a combination of both welfare and food stamps, was her only income. She spent most of the money within three days of receiving it: nearly $400 for groceries, which she bought in one shopping trip; $80 for burial insurance; $122 for rent, and $8.00 to cash the check at the currency exchange. She used the remaining $300 or so to purchase clothes for the children, most of which had been placed on layaway. She planned it so that she finished the payments on the clothes three times a year: Easter, the beginning of school in September, and Christmas. She also used the remaining cash to buy small items that she couldn’t purchase with her food stamps, such as school supplies for the children, laundry detergent, hair grease, soap, and other cosmetics. The money also went to buy food as needed during the month. What remained had to last the family until the next check, four weeks later.
A handwritten sign adorned the door where LaJoe was led:
HEARING ROOM ONLY
OTHERS KEEP OUT
The room itself was small, perhaps eight feet by eight feet. The combination of its fluorescent lights, four strategically placed metal chairs—one facing the other three—and a large metal desk, devoid of papers, pencils, or books, gave the room the appearance of a place meant for interrogation. There was nothing to distract the inquisitor or accused, no windows or clocks to give any sense of location or time, no pictures or posters to give the room any personality.
LaJoe sat in the chair clearly meant for her, the one standing apart from the others. She folded her hands and waited: Someone brought in one more chair and lined it up with the other three. “All of them on one little old me?” she whispered to herself. Ten minutes later, three women and a man filed in. They did not introduce themselves.
The oldest of the three women, Edith Rogers, whose job it was to investigate welfare fraud, explained to LaJoe that she was here for a “pre-appeal hearing” in which she would get a chance to hear the charges being brought against her and, if she desired, to respond to them. Another of the women then took over.
There Are No Children Here Page 10