There Are No Children Here

by Alex Kotlowitz

  The two met for fifteen minutes in a back room, where Audrey took out her legal pad and wrote four numbers—14, 12, 10, and 8. She circled the 14 and explained that if Terence were convicted of two armed robberies, he would in all likelihood get that many years. She then circled the 12. If he didn’t get 14, she explained, the judge would, at the very least, give him 12 if he were found guilty. She then circled the 10. That’s what the state’s attorney had first offered. And then she drew the 8. That’s what was currently being offered. She felt it was a pretty fair deal. It might, she told him, be the best she could get for him.

  Terence remained silent through much of Audrey’s explanation, his eyes focused on the yellow legal pad. “Why don’t you try to get me seven years,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think I can, Terence. The best deal they’re offering is eight,” Audrey patiently explained.

  “I can’t even bear with eight years. Maaan.” He turned his head away from his attorney.

  “What’s six months extra?” she asked. Many prisoners in Illinois serve only half their sentence, since they’re given one day off for each day of good behavior. “Judge Mahan, he’ll punish defendants who turn down deals. He’s just that kind of judge.” Audrey noticed that Terence’s eyes were red. She thought he was about to cry.

  Audrey couldn’t bring herself to urge him to take the eight years. “I can’t get excited for him,” she said shortly after Terence was led back to jail. “If he was being charged with murder and they were reducing it to armed robbery, that’d be something else.” Audrey looked downcast. She had seen Terence change in the year she had known him. He had hardened. The weight lifting made him look older and more menacing. He seemed more defiant. “When I first saw him he was a little kid. He was soft-looking and soft-spoken,” she said. She didn’t think a long stint in jail would do him any good. But she wished that he were older, a little more seasoned, so that he could see that it was in his best interests to take the eight years. She suspected that a fellow inmate in the county jail had convinced him that he’d be crazy to take more than seven.

  She felt that Terence believed she was trying to trick him into something. Her clients generally mistrusted “the system,” even those who were intent on helping them. Audrey told Terence to talk with LaJoe about the offer. She felt his mother might give some sound advice. He agreed.

  The judge granted Terence a two-week continuance so that he could talk to his mother about the eight-year offer.

  LaJoe waited that day to hear from Terence, but he never called. She figured he’d taken the ten years. It demoralized her to think that her son might be locked up for so long. So it didn’t surprise her that day when she spun out of control.

  There was a man, perhaps in his early forties, who had been coming on to her in recent weeks. She didn’t like it. She told him to stop, that she didn’t want to see him around her. The man, whom she knew only as Keith, frightened her. He was often high on PCP, or happy stick, a potent hallucinogen that could cause disorientation, schizophrenia, and psychotic violence.

  Later that day, Keith beckoned LaJoe over to his car. “I’m gonna bust your head,” he told her, clearly high on PCP and frustrated by LaJoe’s refusal to talk with him.

  “Get out and bust my head now,” LaJoe goaded him. “Come on, get outta your car. Bust my head.” LaJoe concealed a nail file in her coat sleeve. “I was going to stab him dead in the eye,” she said later. Keith wouldn’t leave the safety of his car, but he continued to taunt LaJoe, telling her that if he got her alone, he would bust her head.

  LaJoe hadn’t told anyone about Keith’s threats, but when she got back inside the house, she couldn’t contain herself. She confided in Rochelle, who was over visiting. Her son Weasel overheard her.

  There are many things you can do and get away with at Horner, because people, fearful that retaliation may spiral out of control, keep their anger and fury to themselves. But when it comes to family, particularly mothers, nothing, no one, is beyond revenge. Pharoah would often say that “if I die, if someone shoots me, they’ll die. Someone in my family will kill them.” Such was the case with the threats against LaJoe.

  Weasel, who was about to turn twenty-two, went looking for Keith. About ten minutes later, he dragged into the breezeway a man who cut a pitiful profile: sunken shoulders, unkempt hair, his eyes bloodshot and vacant. He looked too high to be scared. “Is this him?” he asked LaJoe. She nodded. Weasel began punching him with short, powerful blows to his face and body. The crushing sound of flesh against flesh echoed in the narrow hallway, giving the effect of a much fiercer fight than actually was taking place.

  “No. No. Stop,” Keith pleaded. His was a high-pitched, almost childlike voice. Weasel stopped, and Keith, who stood about six feet, crawled on his hands and knees to the door. Blood ran from his nose. He got up and wobbled across the trampled lawn.

  LaJoe wandered back into the apartment, herself shaky and dazed. She paced between the kitchen and the living room, her face twisted. “He told me he’d bust my head. Well, bust it. I ain’t going to put up with this.” Her voice started to rise as she raged at no one in particular. “YOU HEAR ME? I AIN’T GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS!”

  The children filed home from school. They tried to enter unnoticed, to stay out of their mother’s path. Tyisha and Pharoah set up a Monopoly game on the kitchen table and pretended to play. Lafeyette slumped down in the red lounge chair, sad and silent, his eyes focused intently on his mother.

  LaJoe kept pacing, mumbling to herself. “Mama,” Lafeyette asked meekly, “can we get our Easter clothes?” LaJoe whirled toward her son. “Can’t you see I’m upset!” she snapped. Lafeyette sank deeper into the chair.

  LaJoe continued to seethe. “What’s he trying to do to me?” she muttered. “What if Weasel wasn’t here? Then what? I should of hit him myself. I need a gun. I already lost two fingers trying to fight. I already lost two fingers.” Tears streaked down her smooth cheeks. “I don’t need another man to ruin my life! I got my man! He ruined it!”

  Now LaJoe sobbed uncontrollably. Weasel hugged her. “It be okay,” he assured her. “It be okay.” He rubbed her arched back as she buried her head in his shoulder. “No one got any reason to talk to you like that. No one.”

  LaJoe pushed away. Her voice rose. “I GOT TO GET OUT OF THIS GHETTO LIFE. WHO DO HE THINK HE IS? PEOPLE AROUND HERE ARE CRAZY!” She caught her breath. Her posture softened. “What if Weasel wasn’t here? I should of kicked him.” And as she began sobbing again, those in the apartment came and hugged her. First Rochelle. Then a friend of Weasel’s. Then LaShawn. Then Weasel again.

  Pharoah remained fixed in his seat, the Monopoly game untouched. His buck teeth seemed to hold his lips apart even farther as his eyes darted around the room in dismay. He didn’t want to hug his mother because, he explained later, “when my mama cry, sometime it make you cry. I was gonna cry.” But he didn’t. Nor did Lafeyette, who grabbed the broom and started sweeping.

  The commotion began to subside. LaJoe sat at the kitchen table, an occasional tear running down her cheeks, apologizing to her friends and family for her outburst. Larry, Brian’s brother, walked through the door. “Clean the kitchen floor,” Lafeyette ordered. “Shut up, man,” Larry retorted. Lafeyette turned to his mother. “Pharoah and I ain’t the only people living here,” he told her.

  LaJoe began privately to entertain the idea of leaving, of running away with her five youngest, Lafeyette on down. But she had nowhere to go. She couldn’t afford the rents outside public housing. LaJoe had once described her three oldest children as red roses whose petals had wilted and fallen off. She wished she could give new life to those flowers. But she was tired of trying. And now she worried that her younger buds might never bloom.

  But LaJoe, too, was wilting like an undernourished rose. Looking for a respite from her crowded household, she spent more nights away from the family, sometimes playing cards with her women friends, other times sitting up all night talking with R
ochelle and her mother, drinking soda pop and smoking cigarettes. LaJoe often leaned on Rochelle and her mother for support, usually when she felt overwhelmed by her family’s problems. The card playing helped supplement her meager income, she reasoned. And being away gave her a chance to relax and pull herself together. It was her escape, the only way she knew how to recharge herself. At least, she thought, she’d be rested for her children.

  The children understood, or so they said. In the mornings, if LaJoe had not yet returned, they managed without her. Weasel’s girlfriend fixed oatmeal for the kids. Lafeyette ironed his clothes and did the same for the triplets, whom he walked to school. LaJoe would be there for them when they got out of school—and they knew that. But the children felt her absence on the nights she was away. They remembered how she’d been mugged and her fingers slashed. They worried that something even worse might happen to her. Their mother, after all, was all they had.

  On Tuesday, April 4, Terence was sentenced, and Richard M. Daley, the son of the infamous Richard J. Daley, was elected mayor. Not that the two had anything to do with each other. But LaJoe could remember the date. Sentencing Day and Election Day. The two had absolutely nothing to do with each other, and that’s what bothered LaJoe. Maybe if the politicians cared, some of the neighborhood’s lost children might have been saved. The politicians’ silence upset her greatly.

  LaJoe had gone to the county jail a couple of weeks earlier to talk with Terence. She encouraged him to take the eight years, to get it over with. She thought it would be easier on everybody. She couldn’t endure a trial and the possibility that he might be sent away for a longer time. Besides, she told Terence, with an eight-year sentence he could get out in four years, maybe three and a half years, if they counted the time already served. Terence listened to his mother. Always. He took the eight years.

  Three days before his sentencing, Lafeyette and Pharoah, along with Tammie, Tiffany, Snuggles, Sir Baldheaded, and their father, visited Terence to say their good-byes. LaJoe went later in the day. Lafeyette donned Terence’s suit, the same one he had worn to Craig’s funeral. He wanted to show Terence that he was older, that he could take care of himself and the family, particularly their mother.

  It tickled Terence to see his brother so grown. The suit made him look like a young man. He asked Lafeyette to back up against the wall so that he could view him in it. “It looks sharp, Laf,” he mouthed through the thick glass. All Lafeyette could bring himself to say to Terence was “I’m straight.” He sat and listened to Terence for the rest of the visit, his eyes fixed on his brother behind the glass. Pharoah told Terence, “I love you.” The visit, which was filled with awkward pauses, lasted maybe half an hour.

  Terence insisted that no one come to his sentencing; he didn’t want them to see him sent away. He originally asked the judge if he would give him an extra two weeks in the jail so that his family might visit him once more, but then changed his mind and asked to be shipped off immediately. Other inmates had told him that had he stayed, he would have had to remain in prison two weeks longer.

  LaJoe couldn’t stop thinking of Terence. She tried to rationalize his imprisonment. It would be good for him to get off the streets, to get away from the drugs and the shootings. If he were out here, he might just get in more serious trouble. He might get hurt, maybe even killed. But she knew, in her heart of hearts, that prison wasn’t much of an option. It would change Terence. He would lose his softness, his gentleness. In her efforts to hold on to Terence, she measured Lafeyette and Pharoah against him. She had expected so much from him, and he had disappointed her. Not Pharoah or Lafeyette, she assured herself. She could see the differences.

  “Terence was quiet, almost like Pharoah,” she would say. “But the difference between Terence and Pharoah is that Pharoah’s more open. If Pharoah do something wrong, he won’t let you forget it even though you forgived him.” Or, she would note, “Lafie ain’t going to be like that, he ain’t going to be like that. If anything Lafie do, he going to leave the projects if he has to leave on his own. I’m not worried about that. The only thing I worry about Lafie is getting hurt.”

  LaJoe kept her grief to herself. She had no one, except Rochelle, to share it with. She didn’t talk to her husband. And she no longer wanted to burden Lafeyette with her worries. Her insides, she said, “don’t be nothing but threads.

  “My children are my strength. They’re my love. They’re what I didn’t have and I had them in order to get it. And when they go away, it’s like taking from me a part of me. Like, now, I’m getting real weak. You know, I don’t feel good. My heart broke ’cause of what happened to Terence. It ain’t too much more I could take.”

  Three days later, after his arrival at the Joliet Correctional Center, a maximum security facility an hour’s drive south of Chicago, Terence wrote to his mother. She showed the letter to Lafeyette and Pharoah.

  April 7, 1989

  Dear Mom,

  How are you and the family doing? Fine I hope. Well, I just made it to Joliet and I want you to no that I love you and them good things you did for me. And another thing. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to be fine … When you send me some money, make sure it be 50 dollars money order so I can get my tv and radio … Be strong. I would like some pictures of the family and some pictures of my kids … Don’t never worry about me. You got 7 other kids to worry about. I’m going to be okay.

  From your truly son, Terence. I U. Write back soon.

  Both Lafeyette and Pharoah missed Terence. But they both now realized he was gone for a while. They stopped asking when he was coming home, though Pharoah had a dream.

  “I dreamed every time I did something like when I get married Terence’d get married. Then a monster was chasing me. My brother was the only one who controlled the monster, so he told the monster to settle down. I woke up and started to call my brother’s name but remembered he was in jail and I started worrying again.”

  Twenty-five

  PHAROAH WARNED FRIENDS of the human-headed cats in his building’s basement. It didn’t take much, given all that was found down there, to make that leap of imagination.

  When Gwen Anderson, the newly appointed housing manager of Horner who had been entrusted to help turn the troubled complex around, ventured into the basements of Horner’s high-rises, she vomited. On April 20, Ms. Anderson wrote the following memo to her superiors at the CHA:

  During inspection of basements of buildings (6) in Henry Horner Homes Project by the Manager, Assistant Manager, and Maintenance Superintendent, the following was found:

  An estimated two thousand (2000) appliances:

  Refrigerators—some new, with the insulation pulled out, missing motors, aluminum freezer compartments missing, electrical cords ripped out, some standing in pool of water and rusting away.

  Ranges—some stacked wall to wall—floor to ceiling and barring entry into the storage room, parts missing (doors, burners, grates, boiler trays, knobs, panels, etc.), standing in the pools of water and rusting away.

  It should be noted also that these appliances were heavily infested with roaches, fleas. Cats were bedding and walking the rafters (pipes) and dead rodents and animals were lying in the storage areas, stench and putrid odor abounded. (The manager became nauseated to the point of intensely vomiting for relief, and could not continue the inspection until after being revived.) Soiled female undergarments and paraphernalia with foul odors were lying around. No equipment presently in use by staff could be used to withstand this odor beyond a minute! In most storage areas, the electrical fixtures had been ripped out and any security devices (locks, chains, gates, etc.) had been removed or severely damaged.

  Kitchen cabinets—new cabinets, with some still in cartons—were sitting in pools of water, rusted beyond use. These cabinets were amidst dead animals, rodents, human and animal excrement, garbage and junk items, and the odors were overwhelming!

  According to one of the long-time employed resident janitors, most of the aforementio
ned have been in basements in Henry Horner Homes at least 15 years.

  Further, that one of the areas was designated as a fall-out shelter and it contained—besides the aforementioned appliances and junk—hundreds of barrels of survival items. It should be further noted that due to the absence of security in this development and the constant vandalism and crime acts, in spite of our intensive efforts to secure them, these storage areas continue to be accessible to anyone …

  It was anybody’s worst nightmare, a basement full of scurrying rats and dead cats and dogs. For fifteen years, people had been living over this stench, and the CHA had only now discovered it. These were the basements where LaJoe and her sisters learned to sew with the Girl Scouts. As children, they had attended dances and roller-skating parties here. Politicians had visited with residents in these basements to listen to their complaints and to get their votes. Now these were the last places on earth anyone would want to spend time.

  The rotting carcasses explained the putrid odor rising from the Riverses’ toilet. It wasn’t aborted fetuses, as LaJoe had thought. It was dead animals, the stench of rotting flesh rising through the pipes.

  The pools of water in the basement explained LaJoe’s backed-up kitchen sink. Sewage had risen up through the pipes and been regurgitated into the sink. A maintenance man rigged a temporary stopper for LaJoe. He wedged a three-foot-long plank of wood between a pot, which covered the drain, and the cabinets above. The secured pot kept the raw sewage from escaping into the sink. For two weeks, this ugly sculpture remained; LaJoe washed the dishes in the bathtub.

  But what most infuriated LaJoe were the brand-new ranges wasting away just a floor below her. For nearly a year, her oven and broiler rarely worked. She had no toaster, so when the broiler was out, the children toasted bread in a skillet. It was a long while since she had made corn bread or cakes, since she couldn’t rely on the oven. And to think, just a floor below her sat possible replacements. But they were now beyond repair. The CHA would have to throw them all out.