Another Day in the Death of America

by Gary Younge

  So when Marlyn, looking for evidence of why he was behaving badly at school, brought his hands to her nose and smelled marijuana, it was a surprise only to her. She says Edwin cried and asked for forgiveness. He told her his hands smelled like that because he was helping Camilla roll a joint. It’s the kind of story a mother believes because she wants to. But then there were other stories few mothers could reasonably imagine. That summer, Edwin and Camilla had become embroiled in a feud with a boy called Stevie G. (not his real name), who was affiliated with a rival gang, La Primera (LP). His girlfriend had moved into the Bellaire Gardens apartments to live with her aunt and tried to befriend Edwin and Camilla. But they neither liked nor trusted her. She was in LP, and they figured she was feeding information back to her boyfriend. “We talked a lot of mess about her on the Internet,” says Camilla. When Stevie G. heard about their insults, he was livid. Earlier in the fall he’d come to Camilla’s apartment, had threatened her, and had trash-talked Edwin. Not long before that, he’d shot at Camilla’s brother when he was hanging out on Bissonnet Street. Camilla and Edwin thought they needed to protect themselves if Stevie G. ever came back. So they pooled what little cash they had and bought a gun, which they stashed at Camilla’s house. “But we were thinking like little kids,” says Camilla. “I didn’t really know anything about guns. I just know you shoot with it and that’s it.”

  On Saturday morning, November 23, as Kenneth and Stanley’s deaths lit up social media, Edwin slept in. Marlyn had made flour tortillas, which were his favorite, but he said he didn’t feel like eating them and asked for sausages and a couple of eggs instead. He was a picky eater, and Marlyn wasn’t interested in wasting food. “You’d better eat them both,” she told him. He said he would, and as he ate he took some sausage from his plate and put it in her mouth. They chatted about school and his friends. He’d just met a new girl and claimed he was going to ask her out on Monday. He asked Marlyn for ten dollars so he could buy the girl a burger. “What about Joanna?” his mother asked, referring to another girl he was interested in. “She’s with somebody else,” he said.

  For the rest of the afternoon, he lazed around the apartment, going upstairs to play PlayStation and then returning to his mother’s room, where he lay with his legs over hers, while his phone charged and Marlyn watched television. It was unseasonably chilly that night for Houston—overcast and breezy with winds gusting at twenty-seven miles per hour. Edwin was cold and snuggled with Marlyn, coaxing her phone from her so he could check his Facebook page.

  Around 5:30 p.m., just as Brandon was calling for a pizza in Marlette, Edwin put on his socks and asked if he could go to hang out with Kevin on Bissonnet Avenue. Marlyn said no, it was too cold and it was getting dark. Then his younger siblings had another idea. At the back of the Bellaire Gardens complex were some abandoned apartments where they’d recently found some puppies. Edwin hadn’t seen the puppies yet, and the kids asked Marlyn if they could go and feed them. Marlyn agreed, so long as they all went together. She prepared some rice and shredded meat to feed to the dogs. They all left together, and she stood at the door watching them as they turned the corner. “Be careful, and don’t go anywhere else,” she shouted after them. But as soon as the door was closed, Edwin peeled off, telling his siblings he was going back to get his coat but instead doubling back to visit Camilla. “He knew if he’d asked me I’d have said no,” says Marlyn.

  When he arrived at Camilla’s he looked like he’d just woken up. “I’ve come to see my best friend,” he told her. “Your best friend’s on Bissonnet,” she told him, teasing him in the knowledge that his first choice had been to hang with Kevin.

  They chatted for a while, and then Edwin asked where the gun was. She thought her brother had taken it because of Stevie G., but when she checked it was still there. She gave it to him. Neither was remotely familiar with guns. He cocked it and then took the clip out. For a lark he pointed it at her and made out like he was going to shoot her. Then he gave it to her. “Make out like you’re gonna shoot me,” he said.

  Although Ms. Thomas cannot speak to the veracity of anything that happened that night, from what she knows of Edwin this scenario rings true. She refers to Edwin as a “What if? kid,” chasing hypotheticals as a dog would chase a car. “He’d say, ‘Miss, what if I drop out of school?’” Ms. Thomas recalled. “And I’d say, ‘What if you live under a bridge?’ ‘Hey Miss, what if I walk out this door right now?’ ‘What if you get suspended?’ That was where his mind was at.”

  But Camilla obliged. She held the gun at an angle, as though it were an extension of her arm, gangster-style. They assumed that because the clip was out the gun was empty. They didn’t realize that when he’d cocked it he’d put a bullet in the chamber. “I didn’t really know how to clear out the chamber,” says Camilla. “I didn’t really know it would go in there. Because it was my first gun.” She pressed it against his chest and pulled the trigger. Pop. Then silence. Edwin’s eyes widened in shock and pain; Camilla’s eyes widened in disbelief as she felt the gun recoil. “Oh shit, you shot me,” he said. “Oh, sorry,” said Camilla. They stared at each other in a suspended moment, each realizing they could not turn the clock back and that Edwin had little time left. “I picked him up to carry him downstairs. But when I looked at him his eyes were rolling back already,” says Camilla. “Basically he was already dying.”

  Camilla panicked. “I didn’t know what to tell my mom or anybody,” she said. “Because nobody knew that we had a gun. Not even my mom. We hadn’t had it for even a month. I didn’t know how to tell them.” She hid the clip in the bed and the gun elsewhere and told her mom that Stevie G. had shot Edwin through the window.

  Across the courtyard, Marlyn was getting anxious. It was close to seven p.m., and the kids had been away for close to half an hour. “If they don’t come back in ten minutes, I’m going to find them,” she told herself. She went to get some shoes and a sweater, but before she could get herself ready she heard them climbing the stairs. Trouble was, there were only three of them. “Where’s Edwin?” she asked. “We don’t know,” the children said. “He never came with us.”

  Marlyn knew he’d gone to Camilla’s. She told Victor to go fetch him, but Victor refused, saying he hated going to Camilla’s house because it was gross. Giovanni volunteered. “Tell him if he doesn’t come now I’ll go over there and bring him back by the ear,” she told Giovanni. Giovanni left, only to come back alone, breathless and with, as Marlyn recalls, “terror in his face.” “Mom, come quickly, Edwin is dying at Camilla’s house.”

  Sandra was the first to get there. She found Camilla crying on the stairs while her mother tried to revive Edwin at the top of the stairs, just outside Camilla’s room. Camilla kept to her story—Edwin had been looking out the window when she’d heard gunfire and saw him fall back. Marlyn was fast on Sandra’s heels, springing into life and sprinting across the courtyard, after briefly being paralyzed by shock. She flew up the stairs and pushed Camilla’s mom out of the way. Thinking he had reacted badly to some kind of drug, she yelled at Camilla’s mom, “What did you give him, he has asthma.” “No,” Camilla’s mom said. “He has a bullet wound.”

  Marlyn searched in vain but could see no blood. Camilla had shot him at such close range it was not immediately obvious where the wound was. Then Marlyn opened his jacket and there was the hole. She heard a noise in his chest, like a gurgling—the same kind of noise Nicole had heard as she held Jaiden. When Marlyn pushed, some blood spurted out. She held him in her arms, the whole time screaming, “Edwin, what did they do to you? What did they do to you? Answer me!”

  He’d been there for about half an hour, and no one had called emergency services. She knew he was dead. His skin was purple, his eyes were rolled back high under his lids. But she hoped for a miracle. She called 911. When the paramedics arrived, they told everyone to clear out. When they finally carried him down on the stretcher, they told her it was too late. He was gone.

  Camilla told Ma
rlyn the story about Stevie G. and the bullet through the window. Marlyn didn’t buy it, but at first the media did. The local ABC news affiliate ran a piece on its website later that night stating, “The shooter is still at large and the case remains under investigation.” The local ABC news anchor, Foti Kallergis, was tweeting that police thought the shooting was gang related.5

  Meanwhile, Camilla’s story was unraveling fast. The police found the clip on the bed and the shell in the room. And it didn’t take a ballistics expert to realize that Edwin was shot close up rather than from a distance. “I knew I had to tell them the truth,” says Camilla. “They found the clip and they found the shell. So they knew the shooting happened inside the house.” She eventually confessed all at the police station. She didn’t get back home until five a.m. on Sunday morning.

  MS. THOMAS WAS GETTING ready for church when she got a call from her former secretary saying Edwin was on the news. She wouldn’t tell her why. Ms. Thomas assumed he had done something stupid. But when she turned on the television, there was no mention of it. News of his death had not lasted all the way through the overnight news cycle on local network television. So she went online and saw that he’d been involved in a deadly shooting. Even then it took her a while to figure out what had happened. He’d just been in her office two days before; his paperwork was in her briefcase. Now she had to call her superiors and cancel Monday morning’s meeting. Edwin would not be transitioning to behavior class. He was dead. It just didn’t make sense.

  On Monday morning, Gabriel arrived at school still refusing to believe the rumors. All through the weekend he’d heard people talking about it, but he thought Edwin was involved in an almighty, sick hoax. He was in Edwin’s class for the first period, and he planned to confront him about playing such a tasteless prank. Usually he would come in late to see Edwin sitting at his usual desk with his head resting on his folded arms as though he were asleep. But the desk was empty, and he could deny it no longer. He sat in Edwin’s empty chair and started to weep.

  By that time, Ms. Thomas had managed to get in touch with most of the special-ed teachers who knew Edwin. A small convoy of educators and counselors from school took the eight-minute drive to Bellaire Gardens to see how they could help. It was a crazy scene, with detectives and police swarming throughout, a family mourning in one apartment, and a young girl in shock across the courtyard.

  As they walked up the stairs to Edwin’s apartment, they met his sister, Sandra, who sat zoned out on the front porch, listening to the songs kids were posting on Facebook to memorialize her brother. Inside, Marlyn sat clutching a small five-by-seven-inch framed photo of Edwin, muttering tender words in Spanish to herself. Up the narrow staircase, in the room Edwin shared with his two younger brothers, Giovanni and Victor played video games, avoiding the eyes of yet more visitors. On Edwin’s bed lay his school uniform—pants, shirt, and socks on the bed, along with his inhaler, and shoes on the floor. Ready to go.

  “Who did this?” asked Ms. Thomas. “Mama,” the younger brothers said, and went back to their gaming. Across the courtyard, Camilla stared at a huge flat-screen television, which was on mute, while a pit bull barked in its cage. One of the counselors sat with her for a while. Eventually Camilla spoke. “I can’t talk right now,” she said and then continued to sit in silence. She was more communicative on Facebook, where she grieved openly. Solipsistic, raw, desperate for affirmation, her first posting—the day after she’d shot Edwin—reads, “Whyy !!?? Why does shit like dis allways have to happen to me :,,( I’m soo sorry Edwin Martinez [Edwin’s Facebook name] :’’’( I love you homie RIP:(( I hope I see you soon. . . . ”

  The second post, written on the same day, reads, “Listening to Bob Marley reminds me of you Edwin Martinez [cry emoticon] homie goodnight I love you you’ll allways be on my mind <3 I’m sorry it end like dis :’’( :’’’( Rest In Paradise ! [heart emoticon].” She tagged his brother Victor and his sister Sandra.

  A couple of days later, on November 26, she reached out in one posting to the Rajo family. “I just wanna say thanks to everybody whos been here for me all my family & Edwin Martinez family [heart emoticon] thank yall and all my freinds thanks yall really help me a lot [cry emoticon] [cry emoticon] even the people that bearly know me thanks [cry emoticon]

  “I miss you my Mclovin my best friend . . . [cry emoticon] I’m sorry [cry emoticon] [cry emoticon] REST IN PEACE I love you even doe I never told you I know you knew <3 [cry emoticon].”

  Marlyn, meanwhile, was struggling with the practicalities. Ms. Thomas had offered to raise money to help bury Edwin, but Marlyn said they would be okay. They sold T-shirts and applied for public funds for funeral costs, but when you speak no English, are grieving, and have to rely on traumatized children to translate for you, these things take time. She says she was told that because his shooting was accidental, he was not eligible for public assistance. She was stumped. Over a week later she called Ms. Thomas to take her up on her offer of help. Ms. Thomas put out an e-mail. There is money in Houston, an oil-rich city; it’s just not immediately accessible to the likes of the Rajos. But before the day was out, Ms. Thomas and her colleagues had collected $1,800, which was enough to lay Edwin to rest. His body would lie in the morgue for more than two weeks. Marlyn was also struggling emotionally. When Ms. Thomas arrived at the wake at the family’s apartment, she wondered if Marlyn was going to make it. She walked in to find her leaning over the coffin, holding onto Edwin as a slideshow beamed pictures of him on the wall. She pried Ms. Rajo gently away and led her to the nearest seat, where the mother put her head on Ms. Thomas’s lap and wept, asking, “Why?” over and over again. Someone who’d recently undergone a root canal slipped her a Vicodin. It was the first night she’d slept in weeks.

  They finally buried Edwin on December 13. The funeral, held at the Santana funeral home, was almost exactly the same: Ms. Rajo leaning over the coffin, Ms. Thomas acting as her emotional caretaker. “When I saw him in the coffin,” says Marlyn, “I wanted to go with him. But I know my other kids needed me.” No preacher showed up. So there was no service. No prayer. No scripture was read. A couple of family members said a few words, but otherwise nothing. “We just sat there staring at the body for two hours. It was just like another wake,” said Ms. Thomas. Finally they closed the casket. As people left the funeral home to make their way to the burial site, Marlyn asked if she could travel in the hearse with the coffin. “No,” said Ms. Thomas, and with the help of her assistant they bundled her into the first car they saw. When they got to the burial site the funeral directors opened the coffin again. It was like the torment was never going to end.

  For a while afterward, Marlyn thought she was going crazy. She imagined that maybe Edwin was hidden somewhere and would come back. The doctor gave her sleeping pills, but in the end she fell back on her religion. Raised Catholic, she is now Evangelical. “Church has helped me get through the pain. It’s made me more religious. But even though I say that, sometimes I still feel the pain, and every day there is more pain. Then I start praying.” When I met her, fifteen months after Edwin’s death, she started crying before I’d asked a single question.

  As happened in the tiny hamlet of Marlette, Michigan, where Tyler Dunn was shot by a friend, Edwin’s death divided families and friends. So long as Marlyn remained in the Bellaire Gardens apartments, she would bump into Camilla’s family all the time. When she did, she yelled at them, “Why? Why did you kill my son?” They responded with insults. They told her she was going crazy and even blamed her. “You should have let him smoke weed in your house, then he wouldn’t have had to come here,” they said. They accused Edwin of bringing the weapon into the house and asking them to hide it for him. “But that’s not true,” says Marlyn. “I know that Edwin did not have a weapon. Only God knows the truth, and Edwin’s not here to deny it. . . . I told her mother it’s her fault. She the one selling drugs and having weapons in her house.”

  At one point, she and Camilla came to blows. �
��I was on drugs,” explains Camilla, “and she was shouting at me, ‘You killed my son.’ You know, that really hurts me,” Camilla continues, “because he was my friend.” “Hey, that was an accident, man,” Camilla told her. “You can’t say that kind of shit to me every time I pass by.” According to Camilla, Marlyn threw a can at her, and so Camilla tried to beat her up. “She kept calling me ‘devil’ or ‘murderer’ and shit like that.”

  Camilla was also struggling. She wanted to kill herself. “I wish Edwin had shot me or I’d shot myself or something. Edwin’s resting in peace right now, and I’ve still got to do everything. I still got to deal with people looking at me wrong because they know what happened. I wanted to kill myself, but I didn’t have the guts to do it, so I thought, man, I’m just gonna be in the gang and I’m just gonna come out for Edwin because Edwin was a Cholo. That’s how I was planning on dying. I was lost in my mind. I just messed up my whole life. I only smoked weed with Edwin. But after he died I got really into the bars [Xanax, prescription painkillers]. I started drinking beer and taking coke.”

  More than a year after the shooting, she is acutely aware of her fragile emotional state, even if she is unable to do much about it. “I was a mess. I tried almost everything. Just to be high and forget about all my problems. But the next day, I wake up and they’re still there. The only reason I didn’t shoot myself is because I started reading the Bible and stuff. I used to be an atheist, but that’s the only thing that gave me hope. Because it’s hard to live with something like that. Because everybody throws it in your face once in a while. ‘You know what you did.’ Sometimes when my mom gets mad she says, ‘It’s because of you that we have all these fucking problems.’”

  Camilla had some counseling and was even committed to a psychiatric ward for a while. “I’ve never been to the hospital for more than two weeks. Because they made me feel like I’m crazy. And I’m not crazy. They made me take off my shoelaces. They made me take off my headband. And I don’t like that.” Her promise in school evaporated. When she wasn’t high, she was belligerent, and sometimes both simultaneously. “I just thought, Fuck school. I didn’t care about it no more. They kicked me out because I’m in a gang and I saw someone in school who was repping for someone else and so I tried to fight them. But I didn’t care. I thought any of these days I could die. One my friends could die. One of my family members could die. Just like Edwin died out of nowhere. That day, I didn’t know that was going to happen. Your friends die every year. I don’t know when it’s my last day with the people I love. I don’t care about the future because it’s not here yet.”