by Julia Dahl
It was Redmond who suggested they apply to become foster parents.
“You don’t have to make any long-term commitments,” he said to Malcolm one Sunday after church service. The tiny flock he was assembling met in Red and Barbara’s living room then. They didn’t need much. Everyone had their own Bible, of course, and Barbara led songs on a Casio keyboard. Worship led to Bible study, which led to what Pastor Green called “community action.” The congregation was mostly couples with young children looking for a church that preached a living gospel, a gospel that encouraged civic engagement. Pastor Green’s parishioners weren’t going to leave the fate of their community to the drug dealers or the police officers. They knew that they had to be organized and active to make a difference, and as they sipped Maxwell House and nibbled baked goods while the children napped, they discussed how to best focus their efforts. Everyone had a bugaboo: graffiti, prostitution, substandard housing, crumbing school buildings, easy access to drugs. They started small. One Sunday afternoon in May 1974, Pastor Green led about a dozen people with garbage bags and gardening gloves and sandwiches through St. John’s Park, and together they picked up trash and passed out peanut butter and jelly to the men on benches and beneath trees. They repeated their mission each week, and the work brought the congregation closer to each other and to God. As the months and years passed, they named themselves Glorious Gospel and focused their efforts on improving the physical environment around their homes, and supporting and educating the next generation.
“I don’t say this lightly, Malcolm,” Redmond said. “But perhaps God has chosen you and Sabrina to be caretakers for children who are not your own. For children whose own parents cannot be parents.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sabrina adores every child she sees. And they adore her. But I don’t know if I can love somebody else’s kid.”
“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a challenge,” said Redmond. “But I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think you were capable. Think about it, will you? There are so many children in need, Malcolm. It would be a sin for two people as righteous and strong as you and Sabrina not to share your love.”
Six months later, the Davises brought home their first foster child, a seven-year-old boy named Philip who was taken away from his mother when he arrived on the first day of first grade weighing less than a child half his age. The school called child welfare, and when social workers went to the boy’s apartment they found bare cupboards, rat droppings, and three people packaging heroin into baggies in the kitchen. When they were approved as foster parents, Sabrina painted the spare bedroom mint green—suitable for boys or girls—and Malcolm assembled a bunk bed. But the Davises soon found that many of the children they opened their home to ended up sleeping in their bed, driven from sleep by nightmares and unable to soothe themselves. DeShawn had done the same when the Davises first took him in. And Kenya, of course.
Sitting in his office after visiting DeShawn at Rikers, Pastor Green couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t to blame for what happened to Malcolm and Sabrina and that beautiful, innocent little girl. He knew becoming foster parents would be difficult, but it never occurred to him that it would be dangerous. The Davises had been fostering for more than a decade when they brought DeShawn home. He was six, and had been in a group home since watching his mother’s boyfriend crush her skull with a cast-iron frying pan. The poor boy stayed with her body for three days before finally knocking on the neighbor’s door when he ran out of food. Sabrina and Malcolm found him a therapist, and by fifth grade, he was reading at two years above grade level and playing third base for the neighborhood youth league. It took a while, but DeShawn blossomed into the kind of funny, caring kid Pastor Green imagined Malcolm and Sabrina would have created had God blessed them with their own children. But when DeShawn turned fifteen, things began to change. Malcolm and Sabrina had never parented a teenager. Most of the children they fostered were young and ended up back with their parents or a relative appointed by the courts. They decided to begin adoption proceedings when DeShawn was twelve. It took two years to find his father, and when they did, the man put up a stink. He wanted to see the boy, but missed every scheduled appointment. Finally, he demanded money to sign over parental rights. DeShawn pretended the man’s machinations didn’t bother him, but when his grades started dropping, Malcolm and Sabrina knew they were taking a toll. And this time, DeShawn was old enough to refuse the therapy they arranged for him.
Pastor Green blew his nose and filled a big glass of water in the church’s bathroom, drank it down in front of the mirror. He had gone to the precinct and spoken with the Italian detective as soon as he learned they arrested DeShawn. He listened, mute, as the man told him a witness picked the boy he had known for ten years out of a lineup and that DeShawn had changed his story multiple times before finally confessing. When he got home that night, Barbara was in the living room with Abel and Dorothy Norris. They were planning the funeral, making lists of people to call, arranging for burial and flowers and agonizing over what would happen to Ontario. Redmond relayed what the detective told him, and they all held hands to pray. As they lay in bed that night, he and Barbara whispered in the dark. Should they have seen this coming? It wasn’t unusual for teens to break away from the church—and their parents—as they struggled to forge their own identity. And it wasn’t unusual for teens in Crown Heights to do some of the things DeShawn had been doing: smoking pot, skipping school, even stealing. But Malcolm hadn’t said anything about DeShawn getting into fights. Where could this violence have come from? What could possibly have sparked such an insane slaughter? He knew Malcolm was frustrated with DeShawn, and concerned, but had he been afraid of the boy in his home? And would he have said anything if he was?
Pastor Green wasn’t sure what he expected, seeing DeShawn at Rikers. He felt obligated to visit the boy, of course. He owed him that. And yes, perhaps he was hoping for some sort of explanation—as if there could be any reason to do what he had done. He expected, at least, that DeShawn would show remorse. Beg forgiveness. Weep and shake and repent and wail that he’d smoked some of that crack that was everywhere and just gone crazy. What he really wanted was for DeShawn not to have done what the detective said he did. And yet, when the boy professed his innocence, Pastor Green could not believe him. Who else could have done this? Malcolm and Sabrina had no enemies.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At a little after noon on Saturday, my phone rings with a 917 number I don’t recognize.
“Hi, it’s Rebekah,” I say.
“Rebekah, it’s Ontario Amos. You came by my work a couple days ago.”
“Hi, Ontario. How are you?”
“Tired. Listen, if you want to know what was going on with Malcolm and Sabrina, you should talk to the people at Glorious Gospel. Pastor Green’s retired but he’s still around. His son, Red Jr., is the pastor now. Him and Dorothy Norris probably knew them better than anybody.”
I grab a pen. “Dorothy Norris?”
“She was the church secretary. She took me in for a little while, after.”
“Are you in touch?”
“Not really,” he says. “But I think she still lives in the same place.”
“Would you mind giving me her address?”
“I’ll give you her phone number,” he says. “If you talk to her, tell her I said hello. Tell her I been meaning to call.”
“I will.”
“I been thinking a lot about that night since you came by. We spent the day in the park and I got a stomachache because I’d eaten a bunch of junk food. Cotton candy and popcorn and soda and stuff. Sabrina always read to me before bed, and that night I remember she sat with me and rubbed my belly, too. She was a real good mom. She was always patient. And we weren’t easy, you know? I told you about Kenya. She would have these screaming nightmares. Wake everybody up. And I was really hyper. And DeShawn. I mean, he was always in a bad mood. Always saying mean stuff about Sabrina’s cookin
g or something. Now that I got my own kids, I don’t know how she put up with some of the shit we did when we weren’t her blood.”
“Was Malcolm that way, too?”
“Yeah. I remember feeling like I was really important ’cause I was in their family. Like, they’d picked me so I must be pretty, I don’t know, almost special. I don’t remember a lot. But I remember feeling that way.”
I scribble what he’s saying into my notebook.
“Have you thought any more about whether you think DeShawn might not have done it?” I ask.
“Yeah, but … I don’t know. I didn’t like him. I mean, I did at first. But by the time I was starting school he was making things real hard in the house. I remember I tried to be really good. Helping Sabrina in the kitchen and cleaning up my room. I see it in my kids, too. When me and Tammy fight, they get all sweet. They just want calm, you know?”
“When we talked at your restaurant, you said DeShawn scared you. Did he ever threaten you? Did you ever see him, like, get violent?”
“No. He was just … unpredictable. Like I said, always in a bad mood.”
Sounds like a teenager, I think. Or, I suppose, a murderer.
“Thanks for calling,” I say. “I’ll reach out to Pastor Green and Dorothy Norris.”
“You really think DeShawn didn’t do it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I can’t tell Ontario that half the reason I’m looking into his family’s murders is that I need a project—and that my mother happens to be dating one of the cops who actually saw their bodies. “I think it’s worth asking some questions.”
The Web site for Glorious Gospel is impressive, with video elements and tabs for worship and Sunday school, events, prayer, and a newsletter. I click into the August newsletter and scan. At the corner of the second page is an advertisement for The Davis-Gregory Activism Fund. A short paragraph below reads:
The Fund in honor of Malcolm and Sabrina Davis, and Kenya Gregory, seeks donations and volunteers to further Glorious Gospel’s mission of peace and social justice in our community. For more information on the Fund’s current projects, contact Pastor Green.
I call the main number for the church and a woman answers.
“Glorious Gospel.”
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Rebekah Roberts and I am a reporter with … the Center on Culture, Crime and the Media. I’m working on an article about Malcolm and Sabrina Davis and I was wondering if I could speak with Pastor Green.”
“The Center on what?”
“Culture, Crime and the Media,” I say. “It’s a non-profit organization. I’m a freelancer. I also work for the Trib.”
“All right. Let me see if I can find him. Can you hold?”
“Sure,” I say.
Two minutes later: “This is Pastor Green. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Pastor Green, thanks for taking my call. I’m working on an article about the deaths of Malcolm and Sabrina Davis, and their foster daughter.” I decide not to go into detail about my specific angle. “I was hoping maybe I could speak to you—or your father, if he’s available. Ontario Amos, the Davises’ foster son, told me that he and a woman named Dorothy Norris were close with the Davises and that they were very kind to him after their deaths.”
“How is Ontario?”
“He’s good,” I say. “I don’t know if you’ve read about it, but the restaurant where he cooks has gotten a lot of praise. And he’s a dad.”
“That’s wonderful.”
I wait. After a moment, he continues.
“What sort of information are you looking for?”
“I just wanted to get a sense of what kind of people they were. What things they were involved in. I saw the church has a memorial fund in their name. I’d love to learn about that.”
“And you say you’d like to talk to my father and Dorothy Norris?”
“That’s who Ontario suggested.”
“Would your article make mention of the Davis Fund?”
“Um, sure,” I say. “I could probably do that.”
“It’s not essential. But we’re doing a lot of positive things. Your readers might be interested in getting involved.”
“Totally,” I say.
“I’ll contact Mrs. Norris and my father to see if they’re willing to talk to you. Of course, I can’t promise anything.”
“Of course,” I say. “I really appreciate it.”
Two hours later, Pastor Green calls and invites me to come to Glorious Gospel tomorrow at noon, after worship.
I take the R train from my apartment and transfer to the 3 at Atlantic Terminal. At the Kingston Avenue station I climb the stairs up to the street and find myself at the corner of Eastern Parkway, and on the sidewalk in front of the World Headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. I’ve spent almost two years reporting in the Hasidic world, but I don’t know much about Chabad. I’ve heard them described as the evangelicals of the Jewish world. They wear the black hats and wigs like my mom’s family in Borough Park, but aren’t quite as insular or as contemptful of modern life. Their mission is to bring non-practicing Jews back into observance, so they routinely interact with people outside their sect. I actually follow a Chabad PR guy on Twitter. He posts a lot of inspirational quotes from Rebbe Menachem Schneerson—who died in the 1990s but is still their spiritual leader—and articles about the gentrification of Crown Heights. Apparently, just as the black and Latino and Chinese residents of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy and Sunset Park are being pushed out, the Jews of Crown Heights are finding it harder and harder to rent apartments in “their” neighborhood, too.
And indeed, here at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, it’s like an advertisement for the new Brooklyn melting pot: women in long skirts and flat shoes pushing strollers outside the Jewish Children’s Museum; construction workers carrying drywall from a brownstone undergoing renovation (and, according to the sign out front, being offered for sale “exclusively” by Corcoran); a skinny white boy in pristine high-top sneakers carrying a leather satchel and sporting Beats by Dre headphones over his CROWN HEIGHTS ball cap; a black man with waist-length, half-gray dreadlocks selling water bottles out of a cooler; yeshiva students in black hats and pants, walking in packs; a modern Orthodox businessman talking into his Bluetooth headset; a light brown-skinned woman, bra-less and stunning in a maxi dress and gold jewelry, looking around and then down at her phone, lost apparently, hand over her eyes to shade the brutal sun. Bakeries and banks, cafés, cell phone stores, taquerías. I fucking love it, but living here doesn’t come cheap. Iris and I looked at listings in Crown Heights last year when we were deciding whether to renew the lease on our shitty place in Gowanus: $2,500 for a two-bedroom walk-up; no laundry.
North of Eastern Parkway the black hats all but disappear. The bodegas advertise lottery tickets and beer instead of kosher food, and the rowhouses are far less pristine than those just a few blocks south. Glorious Gospel is a stone building on a corner lot. There is a gated playground on one side and a handful of parking spaces on the other. At my dad’s church in Orlando, people wear flip-flops and shorts to Sunday service, but the men and women filing out here have put real effort into their appearance. Dresses, hats, heels, even suits on a day that’s forecasted to reach a hundred degrees. I enter the door marked OFFICE and a woman behind a desk tells me to wait.
“Pastor Green should be here shortly,” she says. “He always has a little coffee and some cookies after worship.”
About ten minutes later the office door opens again and an impeccably dressed thirty-something man enters, followed by an older man and an older couple.
The youngest man extends his hand.
“You must be Rebekah,” he says. “Pastor Redmond Green Jr.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
He takes out a key ring and unlocks an unmarked door, motions for us to enter. Inside is a small conference room: blue carpet, a dining room table and chairs.
We all sit down an
d Pastor Green makes the introductions.
“This is Dorothy and Abel Norris,” he says. “And my father, Pastor Redmond Green Sr.”
“Thank you all so much for taking the time to meet with me,” I say. “As Pastor Green probably told you, I’m working on a possible article about Malcolm and Sabrina Davis. I spoke with Ontario Amos recently, and he said that if I wanted to know what was going on in their lives, you were the people to talk to.”
Dorothy Norris is sitting up very straight at the edge of her chair, her elbows tucked to her chest and her hands folded on the table in front of her. Her gray-and-black hair is swept up from her face and cut short. I can picture her sleeping in pink foam curlers beneath a scarf like my grandma does, combing and fluffing each morning. Her dress is a tan-and-blue flower print with tiny buttons running from the prim collar to her shins. She wears a gold cross around her neck and small gold hoops in her ears. Pastor Green Sr. is in a gray striped suit with a blue tie. His hair is thinning, and mostly gray.