There Are No Children Here

by Alex Kotlowitz

  A woman sitting next to LaJoe was close to tears. She’d been late to court that morning, so they had taken her son into custody. If a child missed his case when it was called, a warrant was issued, and when he arrived, he was placed in lock-up for the day. She worried that they might keep him overnight. LaJoe panicked. She didn’t want them to take Lafeyette. She wondered if because of the switch in courtrooms she had somehow missed Lafeyette’s case. She beckoned to Lafeyette, and half walked, half ran to the front desk to make sure. She was okay. The case hadn’t been called. They returned to the waiting room.

  At five-thirty, four cases remained to be heard. The deputy sheriff asked LaJoe her name again. “Rivers,” she replied, holding back her exasperation. He flipped through his pile of papers.

  “What’s the name again?” he asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, he said, “I’ll take care of it.” It was clear to LaJoe that somewhere along the way they’d misplaced Lafeyette’s name. She and Lafeyette had been here for over four hours.

  Twenty minutes later, the deputy sheriff called the last case. “Walter Helgo. Walter Helgo.” LaJoe and Lafeyette were the only ones left on the benches. There was no Walter Helgo. “What’s your name?” the deputy sheriff asked Lafeyette for the fourth time that afternoon. “Rivers. Lafeyette Rivers.” The deputy sheriff disappeared into the courtroom.

  Finally, at six o’clock, Lafeyette’s case was called.

  The courtroom held only the judge, the court reporter, the state’s attorney, the public defender, and the deputy sheriff. Judge Robert E. Woolridge, a gray-haired man, had his head buried in papers. He never looked up. He never so much as glanced at Lafeyette. The questions started coming faster than Lafeyette could think, faster than even Mr. Smith could manage. “What’s your name? When were you born? What’s your address? Where does your father live? When did you last see him?” By the last question, Lafeyette was so flustered that LaJoe had to answer. “Three days ago,” she said. The judge handed out the trial date: September 8.

  As LaJoe and Lafeyette left the courtroom, LaJoe realized that the judge had given them a different court date from that of the other four boys, all of whom had since gone home. Had he made a mistake? Should she say something? She told the deputy sheriff. He told them to go back into the courtroom. They did. LaJoe explained the situation to the judge. She didn’t want to cause him any problem, but she worried that he might have given them the wrong court date. Judge Woolridge looked up from his papers. “What’s the name again?” he asked of Lafeyette, who had been before him only minutes earlier. “Lafeyette Rivers.”

  The judge looked bewildered. “Did we have a case by that name?” Someone in the courtroom stifled a giggle. Three minutes had passed and he didn’t even remember Lafeyette. LaJoe felt as if no one cared. It was as if they were invisible. No one saw them or heard them or cared enough to treat them like human beings.

  Lafeyette, though, was relieved. At least, he thought, he was going home. He could take his clothes out of the box. His case wouldn’t be heard until the fall.

  August 9

  Dear Mom,

  How are you and the family doing? Fine I hope. Well I’m fine, but I could be better if I was at home taking care of you, but it just got to be this way for now. You no what I’m saying but I no it’s just a momentary thing so I don’t let it get to me because only the strong shell survive. I no this a bad situation I’m in but I can handle myself because I’m only me. You understand. I’m just letting you no, mom, because your son is cooling … So mom how are my grandmother. Is she feeling better or what. Send me the address so I can write her because I haven’t heard from her in 11 month and I’m worry about her. So mom when you write me send me the address okay. Mom tell cameo [Weasel’s other nickname] and lashawn I said hi and dad, okay. Well mom I really don’t got to much to say but tell everyone to take of they self …

  So mom I guess I’m going to end this short brief but not never my love for you. From your son, Terence R. Rivers for sho!!

  P.S. When are you coming out here to see me. Write back soon.

  LaJoe read the letter to Lafeyette and Pharoah. Both boys liked to hear their brother’s letters. But they didn’t ask about him as they used to. They knew he would be away for a while. Their visits to him at the county jail had reassured them that he was okay. He always seemed happy then. “I can tell,” Pharoah told LaJoe. “I know he okay. I can see it in his face.”

  “I don’t like to see him in that predicament,” Lafeyette said. “But now he can get his time over with. Then he’ll be home with us again.” LaJoe had told both boys that she was going to try to move so that Terence wouldn’t have to come back to Horner.

  Twenty-nine

  EARLIER IN THE SUMMER, Weasel had brought home two pit bull puppies for Pharoah and Lafeyette. The boys kept them locked up in one of the bathrooms. Pharoah lost interest in his and eventually gave it away. But Lafeyette took a liking to his dog. Ever since his time with Bird Leg, he relished the thought of owning his own. He called his Blondie.

  One July afternoon, Lafeyette came inside after hanging out on the porch with some friends. He went straight to the bathroom to say hi to Blondie and to take her out for a walk. The puppy wasn’t there. “Anybody seen my dog? Where she at?” Lafeyette yelled out to no one in particular. He walked up and down the apartment’s long, narrow hallway, poking his head into each of the four bedrooms, calling, “Blondie, Blondie, Blondie.” He whistled for her, too, but got no response. “If my dog don’t show up, I’m gonna snap,” he muttered to himself, loud enough for his mother and father to hear. His father was sitting on the couch, watching a show on public television; his mother was sitting at the kitchen table. “Somebody took my dog.”

  “Laf, there’s nobody in here but me and and your father. Who you talking to?” LaJoe asked.

  “Mama, I ain’t talking to you,” Lafeyette said, politely.

  Paul knew what was going through his son’s mind. Lafeyette, Paul thought, suspected him of selling the puppy for drug money. He got up from the couch.

  “Son, if you continue to talk like that, to suspect me, I’m going to put you in your place.” Lafeyette sat down at the kitchen table and gulped down a glass of milk. He ignored his father’s protestations. It was a familiar scene. Lafeyette just pretended his father wasn’t there.

  “Who you going to snap on, son?” Paul asked.

  “Anybody that be selling my dog.”

  “Your dog is here in the house somewhere. You have to look for it.”

  “You probably got it and sold it,” Lafeyette accused.

  “If I had got it and sold it, ain’t nothing you could do about it,” Paul challenged.

  “I wish you’d stay out of our house. I don’t know what you be coming back for. You be on the corner with all those dope fiends, embarrassing us.”

  “What’d you call me?” Paul walked over to Lafeyette, placed a firm grip on his shoulder, and shook him. “What’d you say?”

  Lafeyette jumped up from his chair and, as Paul reached for him, backed up against the living room window. Paul reached for him again. “What’d you call me?”

  Lafeyette’s right fist came smashing into the side of his father’s temple. Paul, once the amateur boxer, reeled back as much out of shock as pain, and then assumed the fighter’s stance, his fists moving, circling his son.

  “You’re fourteen. You’re of age. You want to be a man, okay, you got a chance to be a man,” Paul told his son. Lafeyette could hold his own, but certainly not with his dad. The jabs hit Lafeyette sharply. In the shoulder. The chest. The armpit. The open-palmed slaps got Lafeyette across the head. Lafeyette didn’t try to fight. He just tried to soften the blows. His eyes glared menacingly at his father, never losing contact. His body rocked from his father’s stinging blows.

  “Y’all stop that,” LaJoe screamed as she jumped up from the couch to try to break up the fracas. “Y’all stop it.” She restrained Paul for a moment, enough time
for Lafeyette to grab his coat and run for the door. LaJoe and Paul said nothing to each other. LaJoe shared her son’s anger. Paul was hurt by such an affront from his son. Minutes later, Lafeyette appeared at the front door. He held a steel chain in his right hand.

  “C’mon outside. C’mon outside,” he yelled at his father. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  Paul, whose nerves got the better of him in such tense situations, jumped up from the couch and headed toward his son.

  “No, Paul!” LaJoe screamed. “Don’t go out there. Y’all cut that out.”

  Paul hesitated. So did Lafeyette. “Boy, you don’t know what you’re up against.” Paul pointed his finger at Lafeyette, who looked more scared than anything else. The last thing he wants is for me to come out there, Paul thought. He realized then that he had made a big mistake. He felt ashamed as much for how he had reacted as for putting Lafeyette in such a squeeze. Of course Lafeyette didn’t respect him. For good reason. He sometimes didn’t respect himself.

  “LaJoe, talk to your son ’cause I’m having problems getting anything across to him. He don’t want to, he at the point right now where he’s not going to listen to me.” Paul shrugged and sat back down. Lafeyette took a step into the apartment.

  “You dope fiend,” Lafeyette muttered. “That’s the reason why you ain’t working now, because you’re a dope fiend.” Paul’s shoulders shrank. He knew no son would hit his father over a lost dog. It was the drugs. They had destroyed his relationship with LaJoe and now with his son. He had never hit Lafeyette before except for occasional spankings when he was younger. It wasn’t his nature. Now, his own children were turning on him. The only reason he came around was to see his children. He loved them but knew that he was failing them. Lafeyette’s last remarks sapped what spirit and fight he had left. He sank onto the couch and didn’t say a thing. Nor did Lafeyette, who continued to look for Blondie. He found her hiding under the stove.

  Every morning, Pharoah went off to summer school at the University of Illinois. He awoke each morning with energy and verve and anticipation. He liked getting away from the neighborhood and the idea of being on a college campus. He also liked being considered a scholar. But his brother was tired. The long summer days dragged, and Lafeyette talked a lot about getting out of Horner. LaJoe told him again they’d move when Terence got out of prison. He and his father, who came around even less now, ignored each other. He kept to himself. He told his mother he’d stop hanging out with “the wrong people.” But he seemed on edge. Ever since Craig’s death in March he’d become more withdrawn. He stopped confiding in his mother. He stopped confiding in anybody.

  One early July evening, under a cool drizzle, a group of teenagers on Damen Avenue surrounded a fourteen-year-old boy. LaJoe happened to walk by and could hear the taunts and then the sound of fists smacking. Then she heard a familiar voice. It was Lafeyette’s. “Stop. Don’t hit him. Stop.” Lafeyette sounded frantic. He was in the middle of the fracas, trying to keep the others from beating his friend.

  LaJoe ran to the circle and started making her way through. “Mama, make them stop,” Lafeyette pleaded. His friend was doubled over, gripping his stomach.

  LaJoe was furious. She turned to the group of kids. “What y’all doing? What y’all doing? Get off of him. What do you accomplish by this? Ain’t you tired? What you beating on him for?” One boy said the surrounded youth had been fighting them. “How he beat on all of you?” LaJoe screamed. The teenagers seemed to listen to her only momentarily. One took a plank of wood and smacked the boy across the back. He doubled over again. It looked as if they might take on her and Lafeyette next.

  A familiar voice rang out. “Don’t hit my mama. Now y’all don’t hit my mama.” It was a friend of Weasel’s, a boy who, like others here, LaJoe had nurtured as a child. “Let ’em go. Ya hear me. They’re straight.” The other boys listened. They dispersed. LaJoe sent the beaten boy home. She and Lafeyette walked back to their building.

  LaJoe wiped Lafeyette’s forehead where he’d been nicked with a broken bottle. His face was without emotion: the eyes stared straight ahead, the head never bowed to one side or the other. He never cried. LaJoe would say, “When he laugh, you caught him off guard.” His face seemed incapable of expression.

  This evening, as they neared the porch, Lafeyette dropped to his knees. LaJoe wasn’t sure whether he had slipped or whether his legs had just given out. “I’m tired, Mama,” he said. She helped him to his feet. She wondered what he meant by tired. She remembered what Terence had once told her. She believed he was just tired of being.

  Dawn answered the knocks on her front door. There stood two housing authority security guards. They told her she was being evicted from her apartment. The CHA had discovered that she’d been living there on someone else’s lease. Dawn had known this would happen eventually, but nevertheless it caught her off guard. She spent the next two days moving what furniture she had back to her mother’s, just across the street. There, she and her four children packed into one room. Demetrius slept where he could, occasionally bedding down in the back seat of his car.

  Pharoah worried about growing up. “Maybe when I get a little older, I’ll understand,” he told a friend. “But,” he added after a short pause, “I feel good not understanding.”

  LaJoe just noticed it one day. Lafeyette hadn’t said anything about it. On his bedroom wall, he had hung the program from Craig’s funeral. On its cover was a picture of Craig in his mortarboard and graduation gown. LaJoe thought it a good sign. Other than a few asides here and there, he never talked about Craig. This was the first indication she had that he was still grieving for him, four months after his death. Maybe, she thought, it would help him get over the sudden loss of his friend.

  But two weeks later, LaJoe took the picture down. It had given Lafeyette nightmares. One in particular recurred a number of times, startling him awake, sometimes drenching him in sweat. It unnerved him just to talk about it. In the dream, someone—he didn’t know who—was chasing him. But because of a strong wind, he couldn’t run away. And when he tried to call for help, nothing came out of his mouth.

  Thirty

  THE RAINDROPS appeared incandescent in the midafternoon sun, like crystals falling from a chandelier. They looked as if they might shatter on hitting the ground. Pharoah stood by his bedroom window, mesmerized by them.

  “Pharoah, let’s get us some fries,” Lafeyette said. Pharoah didn’t hear. As was often the case, he was daydreaming, a prisoner of his thoughts. “Pharoah!” Lafeyette yelled, his adolescent voice rising. “Maaaan, Pharoah. You hear me? Let’s get us some fries.”

  In order to get Pharoah’s attention, Lafeyette started to reach across his bed to smack him. But Pharoah heard Lafeyette move up on him and turned around before any blow could be struck.

  “It be raining,” he said.

  Lafeyette stuck his hand out the open window. “It ain’t raining. Maan, you lying.” Pharoah looked back outside. The rain, indeed, had let up. Bright rays of sunlight tore through the clouds like powerful spotlights. The effect was an eerie one; even the muddiest of puddles seemed to sparkle.

  “Come on, you going?” Lafeyette asked.

  “Yeah,” Pharoah replied.

  The two boys told LaJoe they were going to get some food; they’d be back shortly. They began the two-block walk to a take-out hot dog stand on the corner of Damen and Madison called Main Street. On the way, they ran into Rickey, who asked whether he could join them. They hadn’t seen much of Rickey in recent weeks, especially after he had been arrested and then released a couple of weeks later. They’d heard rumors that Rickey was running drugs for the older boys, making as much as $600 a week. Nonetheless, both Lafeyette and Pharoah were fond of Rickey, as he was of the two brothers. They invited Rickey along.

  At Main Street, Rickey bought Pharoah a bag of cheese-coated french fries. Lafeyette bought his own. They stood in the parking lot in front of the hot dog stand, relishing the cool, crisp summer air.
Suddenly, Pharoah got excited. He couldn’t quite get the words out. His neck strained; his mouth worked hard. Finally, he just pointed. Arching over the downtown skyscrapers was a rainbow. Its colors were brilliant, as if they’d been painted on the sky’s canvas. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Red. It seemed to emerge out of Lake Michigan and arc over the Sears Tower, setting down again just a mile or so south of Horner. It was the first rainbow the boys had ever seen.

  All three—Pharoah, Rickey, and Lafeyette—stood in the middle of the parking lot, munching on their cheese fries, admiring the arc of colors.

  “Daaag,” Lafeyette muttered. “I thought it wasn’t any real rainbow.”

  “L-l-l …” Pharoah tried again. “Let’s-let’s-let’s …” Rickey and Lafeyette were too taken by the sky’s colors to notice Pharoah’s stutter. That made it easier for him to slow down, to take his time. If they didn’t see him or hear him or acknowledge his presence, they wouldn’t make fun of his stammer.

  “Letsgocbaseit.” He spat the words out so that they wouldn’t get caught in his throat. “Letsgochasetherainbow.”

  “Maaan, I ain’t gonna chase no rainbow,” Lafeyette said, deriding his brother’s loony scheme. “That’s kiddie stuff.”

  “It-it-it … pro-pro-probbably be some gold there,” Pharoah said. He was getting excited again. He tried to slow down. Maybe they could touch it. “Maybe,” he told Lafeyette and Rickey, “there be leprechauns.”