Gang Leader for a Day

by Sudhir Venkatesh

  One cold autumn evening, we congregated at a local diner. We found a large table in the back, where it was quiet. The owner was by now accustomed to our presence, and he didn’t mind that we stayed for hours. If business was particularly good, he’d feed us all night long and then waive the tab. He and I had struck up a friendship-I often came to the diner to write up my field notes- and he liked the fact that I was trying to help tenants.

  The theme of this week’s essay was “How I Survive.” Tanya was the first to read from her journal. She was twenty years old, a high-school dropout with two children. She’d stayed with her mother after the first child was born but eventually got her own apartment in the same building, then had a second baby. She didn’t know the whereabouts of the first father; the second had died in a gang shooting. In her essay she bragged about how she earned twice her welfare income by taking in boarders.

  “But sometimes it doesn’t go so well, Sudhir,” said one of the other women, Sarina, who liked to be the voice of reason. She stared down Tanya as she spoke. Sarina had three children, the fathers of whom were, respectively, in jail, dead, and unwilling to pay child support. So she, too, had taken in boarders. “I remember when my brother came into the house, he started dealing dope and they caught him. Almost took my lease away.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just because you didn’t pay the building manager enough money,” Tanya said. “Or I think that it was because you didn’t sleep with him!”

  “Well, I’m not doing either one of those things,” Sarina said in a moralistic tone, shaking her head.

  “You got some nerve,” interrupted Keisha. “Sarina, you put your ass out there for any man who comes looking.” At twenty-six, Keisha was one of the oldest women in the group. Even though she had grown angry with me for sharing information about hustlers with Ms. Bailey, she hadn’t held the grudge for long. She had two daughters and was the best writer in the group, a high-school graduate now planning to apply to Roosevelt College. “Hell, there ain’t no difference between some ho selling her shit and you taking some man in your house for money.”

  “Hey, that’s survival!” Tanya said. “I mean, that’s what we’re here to talk about, right?”

  “Okay,” I jumped in, trying to establish some order. “What’s the best way for you to take care of whatever you need to? Give me the top ten ways you survive.”

  Sarina began. “Always make sure you know someone at the CHA you can turn to when you can’t make rent. It helps, because you could get evicted.”

  “Yeah, and if you have to sleep with a nigger downtown, then you got to do it,” said Keisha. “Because if you don’t, they will put your kids on the street.”

  Sarina went on, ignoring Keisha. “You got to make sure you can get clothes and food and diapers for your kids,” she said. “Even if you don’t have money. So you need to have good relations with stores.”

  “Make sure Ms. Bailey’s always getting some dick!” Keisha shouted, laughing hard.

  “You know, one time I had to let her sleep with my man so I wouldn’t get kicked out of the building,” Chantelle said.

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Chantelle said. “And he almost left me, too, when he found out that Ms. Bailey could get him a job and would let him stay up there and eat all her food.” Chantelle was twenty-one. Her son had learning disabilities, so she was struggling to find a school that could help him. She worked part-time at a fast-food restaurant and depended on her mother and grandmother for day care and cash.

  Chantelle’s hardships weren’t uncommon in the projects. Unfortunately, neither was her need to appease Ms. Bailey. The thought that a tenant had to let the building president sleep with her partner was alarming to me. But among these women such indignities weren’t rare. To keep your own household intact, they said, you had to keep Ms. Bailey happy and well paid. As I heard more stories similar to Chantelle’s, I found myself growing angry at Ms. Bailey and the other LAC officials. I asked Chantelle and the other women why they didn’t challenge Ms. Bailey. Their answer made perfect sense: When it became obvious that the housing authority supported a management system based on extortion and corruption, the women decided their best option was to shrug their shoulders and accept their fate.

  I found it unconscionable that such a regime existed, but I wasn’t going to confront Ms. Bailey either. She was too powerful. And so while the women’s anger turned into despair, my disgust began to morph into bitterness.

  The women’s list of survival techniques went well beyond ten. Keep cigarettes in your apartment so you can pay off a squatter to fix things when they break. Let your child pee in the stairwell to keep prostitutes from congregating there at night. Let the gangs pay you to store drugs and cash in your apartment. (The risk of apprehension, the women concurred, was slim.)

  Then there were all the resources to be procured in exchange for sex: groceries from the bodega owner, rent forgiveness from the CHA, assistance from a welfare bureaucrat, preferential treatment from a police officer for a jailed relative. The women’s explanation for using sex as currency was consistent and pragmatic: If your child was in danger of going hungry, then you did whatever it took to fix the problem. The women looked pained when they discussed using their bodies to obtain these necessities; it was clear that this wasn’t their first-or even their hundredth-preference.

  “Always know somebody at the hospital,” Tanya blurted out. “Always have somebody you can call, because that ambulance never comes. And when you get there, you need to pay somebody, or else you’ll be waiting in line forever!”

  “Yes, that’s true, and the people at the hospital can give you free baby food,” Sarina said. “Usually you need to meet them in the back alley. And I’d say you should keep a gun or a knife hidden, in case your man starts beating you. Because sometimes you have to do something to get him to stop.”

  “You’ve had to use a knife before?” I asked. No one had spoken or written about this yet. “How often?”

  “Many times!” Sarina looked at me as if I’d grown up on Mars. “When these men start drinking, you can’t talk to them. You just need to protect yourself-and don’t forget, they’ll beat up the kids, too.”

  Keisha started to cry. She dropped her head into her lap and covered up so no one could see. Sarina leaned over and hugged her.

  “The easiest time is when they’re asleep,” Tanya said. “They’re lying there, mostly because they’ve passed out drunk. That’s when it runs through your mind. You start thinking, ‘I could end it right here. I could kill the motherfucker, right now. Then he can’t beat me no more.’ I think about it a lot.”

  Keisha wiped her eyes. “I stabbed that nigger because I couldn’t take it no more. Wasn’t anybody helping me. Ms. Bailey said she couldn’t do nothing, the police said they couldn’t do nothing. And this man was coming around beating me and beating my baby for no reason. I couldn’t think of any other way, couldn’t think of nothing else to do…”

  She began to sob again. Sarina escorted her to the bathroom.

  “She sent her man to the hospital,” Tanya quietly explained. “Almost killed him. One night he was asleep on the couch-he had already sent her to the hospital a few times, broke her ribs, she got stitches and bruises all over her body. She grabbed that knife and kept putting it in his stomach. He got up and ran out the apartment. I think one of J.T.’s boys took him to the hospital. He’s a BK.”

  Because the boyfriend was a senior gang member, Tanya said, J.T. refused to pressure him to stop beating Keisha. She still lived in fear that the man would return.

  One day Ms. Bailey called and asked that I come to a building-wide meeting with her tenants. She hadn’t invited me to such a meeting in more than a year, so I figured something important was afoot.

  I hadn’t been keeping up with Ms. Bailey’s tenant meetings in part because I’d already amassed sufficient information on these gatherings and also because, in all honesty, I’d grown uncomfortable watch
ing the horse-trading schemes that she and other tenant leaders used to manage the community.

  My own life was also starting to evolve. I had moved in with my girlfriend, Katchen, and we were thinking about getting married. Visiting our relatives-mine in California and hers in Montana- took time away from my fieldwork, including much of our summers and vacations. My parents were thrilled, and they pushed me to think seriously about starting a family along with a career. Katchen was applying to law school; neither of us was ready for children just yet.

  And then there was the matter of my dissertation, which I still had to write. I began to meet more regularly with Bill Wilson and other advisers to see whether I could plausibly move toward wrapping up my graduate study.

  Ms. Bailey’s office was packed for the meeting when I arrived, with a few dozen people in attendance, all talking excitedly. As usual, most of them were older women, but there were also several men standing in the back. I recognized a couple of them as the partners of women in the building; it was unusual to see these men at a public meeting. Ms. Bailey waved me up front, pointing me to the chair next to hers.

  “Okay,” she said, “Sudhir has agreed to come here today so we can clear this up.”

  I was taken aback. Clear what up? Everyone was suddenly staring at me, and they didn’t look happy.

  “Why are you sleeping with my daughter?” shouted a woman I didn’t recognize. “Tell me, goddamn it! Why are you fucking my baby?”

  “Answer the woman!” someone else hollered. I couldn’t tell who was talking, but it didn’t matter: I was in a state of shock.

  One man, addressing me as “Arab,” told me I should get out of the neighborhood for good and especially leave alone their young women. Other people joined in:

  “Nigger, get out of here!”

  “Arab, go home!”

  “Get the fuck out, Julio!”

  Ms. Bailey tried to restore order. Amid the shouting she yelled out that I would explain myself.

  I was still confused. “Let Sudhir tell you why he’s meeting them!”

  Ms. Bailey said, and then I understood: It was the writing workshop. People had seen me picking up the young women and driving away with them. Apparently they thought I was sleeping with them, or maybe pimping them out.

  As I tried to explain the writing workshop, I kept getting drowned out. I began to feel scared. I had seen how a mob of tenants nearly tore apart the Middle Eastern shopkeeper who’d slept with Boo-Boo’s daughter.

  Ms. Bailey finally made herself heard above the riot. “He’s trying to tell you that he’s just helping them with homework!”

  That quieted everyone down a little bit. But still, I was stung: Why weren’t any of the women from the workshop in attendance? Why hadn’t anyone come to defend me, to tell the truth?

  After a few more minutes, things having calmed down a bit, Ms. Bailey told me to leave. There was other business to take care of, she said, laughing-at me-and clearly enjoying herself at my expense.

  Leaving the building that night, I wondered how much more time I could afford to spend in J.T.’s territory. It was hard to think of any tenants who weren’t angry with me.

  SEVEN. Black and Blue

  Of all the relationships I’d developed during my time at Robert Taylor, it turned out that the strongest one by far was my bond with J.T. As unusual and as morally murky as this relationship may have been, it was also undeniably powerful. Our years together had produced a close relationship. This bond would become even more intimate, to the point that J.T. felt personally indebted to me, when I had the opportunity to help save the life of one of his closest friends.

  It was a classic Chicago summer afternoon: a cloudless sky, the muggy air broken occasionally by a soft lake breeze. I was hanging around at Robert Taylor, outside J.T.’s building, along with perhaps a hundred other people. Tenants were barbecuing, playing softball, and taking comfort in the cool shadow of the building. Few apartments had a working air conditioner, so on a day like this the lawn got more and more crowded as the day wore on.

  I was sitting on the lawn next to Darryl Young, one of J.T.’s uncles,who relaxed on a lawn chair with a six-pack of beer. Since the beer was warm, Darryl sent a niece or nephew inside every now and then to fetch some ice for his cup. Darryl was in his late forties and had long ago lost most of his teeth. He had unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, walked with a stiff limp, and always wore his State of Illinois ID on a chain around his neck. He left the project grounds so rarely that his friends called him “a lifer.” He knew every inch of Robert Taylor, and he loved to tell stories about the most dramatic police busts and the most memorable baseball games between competing buildings. He told me about the project’s famous pimps and infamous murderers as well as about one tenant who tried to raise a tiger in his apartment and another who kept a hundred snakes in her apartment-until the day she let them loose in the building.

  Suddenly Darryl sat up, staring at an old beater of a Ford sedan cruising slowly past the building. The driver was a young white man, looking up at the building as if he expected someone to come down.

  “Get the fuck out of here, boy!” Darryl shouted. “We don’t need you around here. Go and sleep with your own women!” Darryl turned and hollered to a teenage boy playing basketball nearby. “Cheetah! Go and get Price, tell him to come here.”

  “Why do you want Price?” I asked.

  “Price is the only one who can take care of this,” Darryl said. His face was tight, and he kept his eyes on the Ford. By now the car had come to a stop.

  “Take care of what?” I asked.

  “Damn white boys come around here for our women,” Darryl said. “It’s disgusting. This ain’t no goddamn brothel.”

  “You think he’s a john?”

  “I know he’s a john,” Darryl said, scowling, and then went back to shouting at the Ford. “Boy! Hey, boy, get on home, we don’t want your money!”

  Price sauntered out of the building, trailed by a few other members of the BK security squad. Darryl stood up and hobbled over to Price.

  “Get that boy out of here, Price!” he said. “I’m tired of them coming around here. This ain’t no goddamn whorehouse!”

  “All right, old man,” Price said, irritated by Darryl’s enthusiasm but clearly a bit concerned. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of him.”

  Price and his entourage approached the car. I could hear Price speaking gruffly to the driver while the other BKs surrounded the car so that it couldn’t drive off. Then Price opened the door and gestured for the white guy to get out.

  Just then I heard the loud squeal of a car rounding the corner of Twenty-fifth and Federal. Some kids shouted at people to get out of its path. It was a gray sedan, and I could see it roaring toward us, but unsteadily, as if one of the wheels were loose.

  The first shots sounded like machine-gun fire. Everyone seemed to duck instinctively, except for me. I was frozen upright; my legs were stuck in place and everything turned to slow motion. The car came closer. Price and the other BK security men ran toward the building as more shots were fired. The car flew past, and I could see four people inside, all black. It looked as if two of them were shooting, one from either side.

  Price got hit and dropped to the ground. The rest of his entourage reached the lobby safely. Price wasn’t moving. I saw Darryl lying flat on the grass, while other tenants were crawling toward shelter-a car, a tree, the building itself-and grabbing children as they went. I was still standing, in shock, though I had managed to at least hunch over. The gray car had vanished.

  Then I heard a second car screeching down the back alleyway. I was puzzled. In most drive-by shootings, a gang wouldn’t risk a second pass, since the element of surprise had been used up. Indeed, looking around now at the expanse in front of the building, I saw perhaps a dozen young men with guns in their hands, crouching behind cars or along the sides of the building. I had never seen so many guns in Robert Taylor.

  Price still hadn’t gotten up
. I could see that he was gripping his leg. Somehow the sight of him lying motionless moved me to action. I headed toward him and saw that one of the BKs had come back outside to do the same. We grabbed Price and started to drag him toward the building.

  “Get Serena! Get Serena!” someone shouted down from an upper floor. “She’s out there with her baby!”

  The BK helping me with Price ran over to help Serena and her children to a safe spot. I dragged Price the rest of the way by myself and made it to the lobby just as the second car emerged from the alley. I heard some shouts and some more gunshots. I saw that the BK who’d gone to help Serena had draped his body atop her and her kids.

  In the dim light of the lobby, I could see that Price’s leg was bleeding badly, just above the knee. J.T.’s men pushed me out of the way. They carried Price farther inside the building, toward one of the ground-floor apartments. I wondered where J.T. was.

  “Sudhir, get inside, go upstairs to Ms. Mae’s-now!” It was Ms. Bailey. I gestured toward Price, to show that I wanted to help. She just yelled at me again to get upstairs.

  About five flights up the stairs, I ran into a group of J.T.’s men on the gallery, looking out. “I don’t see no more!” one of them shouted to some BKs on the ground outside. “It don’t look like there’s any more! Just get everyone inside and put four in the lobby.”

  I heard a stream of footsteps in the stairwell. Parents yelled at their children to hurry up, and a few mothers asked for help carrying their strollers. I heard someone say that J.T. was in the lobby, so I hustled back downstairs.

  He stood at the center of a small mob, taking reports from his men. There was a lot of commotion, all of them talking past one another:

  “Niggers will do it again, I know they will!”

  “We need to get Price to the hospital, he’s still bleeding.”