by Miles Harvey
Growing up, it was terrible. It was all I saw, all I knew. I think that I was scared that I might end up in a gang or something. I look back now, and all I can say is, “I am thankful.” I hate the lives that were taken, but I just thank God for the lives that were changed because they were given a chance to look at the positive and the negative and decided not to get involved.
I grew up not even a whole block away from Marillac House, where they have different social service agencies inside the building. Their main purpose is to make a safe environment for kids, so they don’t have to be out on the streets. My big cousins and my big sister actually went there first, but I was too young to go. They always had their jump-rope teams going, they had their cheerleading, and they had their dance groups, and it was like the spark of a movement or something. They would come home bragging, “We did this and we did that,” and I was just moping around, sad, because I wanted to do it.
That’s how I became involved, with my cousin Shavontay and my two sisters. We were the four young ones who begged and cried and whined, and they opened up the age range for us. I came in through Hope Junior, an after-school program. It went from just the basics of getting help with my homework to being involved in everything you can name, just to have something positive to do. I played basketball, I played volleyball, I did poetry, I did choir—you name it, I did it. As soon as I walked into Marillac, it felt like home, and you don’t get that everywhere you go. My Marillac family is like my second family, and the different things I’ve learned there, the many friendships I’ve gained there, are remarkable. I give them credit for me sitting here today. It’s made some of the violence in the neighborhood invisible, like it doesn’t exist.
My brother, my mother’s firstborn child, his name was Lamont. Lamont started out in a gang when he was about 13. He was heavily involved. Heavily. He did a lot of negative things, lived a very dangerous life, and it caught up with him. I was 10 years younger than him, and young when all this happened, but I did have a relationship with my brother. I knew that he would only be going out one way: through the jail or, you know, dead.
It makes me curious, every time I think about him. I think about the day when me and my aunt and my cousins had just come from eating out, and he walked up to the car and said, “When I die, I want to be buried right here in front of this house.” He lived to see about two or three more days, and then he was dead.
People said that he had killed somebody a week before that, and somebody was coming back for him. My family was telling him to leave town and just go lay low. He had been wearing a bulletproof vest for a week, but then to just take it off... Why was he wearing that bulletproof vest all the time and he all of a sudden took it off?
I was in sixth grade when it happened. It was a normal day, and I was in the house. Me and Shavontay were hanging out and watching TV, and I had fallen asleep. Then, she was shaking me: “Wake up, wake up. I just heard gunshots.”
Gunshots in our neighborhood was like hearing the ice-cream truck, as sad as that is to say. I guess, when she told me, I kinda was asleep. Before I could fully get up, I heard people upstairs running out the door. I got outside and my mom’s all broke down and fell out, and the mother of Lamont’s kids is out there lying down on the street and she’s crying, and my sister’s crying, and my cousin—so I knew something happened to someone close.
Lamont had been standing with my mom and sister and all these chicks, so obviously, none of them were holding any guns. These two boys came up through the empty lot next to our house and shot Lamont at close range, about 15 times. My uncle had gotten his pickup truck and put my brother in the back of it. There was a hospital up the street from us, and my uncle was just speeding. The police got behind him but he didn’t stop until he got to the hospital. The boys shot Lamont so many times, so I’m guessing my uncle already knew he was dead, but he still wanted to try and revive him.
I don’t understand why people do the things they do, but then, I have to realize my brother did a lot of bad things. I was just happy that my mom and my family didn’t do what some people do when they get on the TV news and act like their kids are innocent. My mom didn’t do any of that. I’m sad to say I lost a brother, but it’s just so much more than that. I’m sure that if he would have lived and been caught, he would have served time for more than just the murder. I’m sure they would have found all these guns somewhere, and probably drugs.
My cousin Andre was following in Lamont’s footsteps, because he started gangbanging so early. And then, when he was 17, the same thing happened to him as Lamont. Some boys came up through the exact same lot, and they shot Andre at close range.
I can’t forget that our other cousin Phillip was killed the year before Andre. So it was every year, we lost someone. It was emotional thing after emotional thing—a lot of death—and my grandmother was still standing at the top of us all. She raised them, she raised them all, and then to have to constantly bury them year after year? Everybody would look at her and say, “You are so strong.”
My cousin Shavontay and I went to an all-girls Catholic high school through a residential scholarship program that Marillac had set us up with. We moved to Evanston. We didn’t come home much, and my grandmother cried, but she thanked God for Marillac helping us get into the program. We had to get used to not seeing our family. It was hard, but I wanted to go to a good high school, get a real high-school education, because I wanted to go to college eventually. In my neighborhood, some people barely make it to high school, so you know how hard it is to go to college.
I ended up running for class president senior year and got it. So, by me having the top position in the school, I was the first to come out on graduation day. Graduation hadn’t started before I was crying. As I was preparing for our song to play, I was looking at everybody in my family that was in the audience. I will never forget it. When I got my diploma, I just stood on stage like the graduation was all about me. I raised my diploma, and my mother was the main one that I looked at. She had been in jail for my eighth-grade graduation, and none of her daughters had even gotten a diploma.
When I was younger, I was mad and I cried a lot and wondered why my mother couldn’t be involved in my life. She would stay at my grandmother’s some of the time, but she wasn’t stable. She was doing hard drugs, like crack, heroin, cocaine, stuff like that. I’d often see her, but she’d be hanging outside on the corner with the other drug addicts. It was like she’d rather spend time with them than me, and I always wondered if I did something wrong.
When I became old enough, I started writing her letters in jail—and as she started to better herself, she’d write me cute little cards back. As I got older, I got more of an understanding that this was just a problem she had. She had to take time to deal with it, to better herself when she was ready, not because everyone else wanted her to. I learned that it wasn’t my fault, and everybody goes through problems. It just takes some people a longer time than others.
Since my junior year of high school, my mother’s been doing good and has stayed clean. I wasn’t always proud to say, “That’s my mother,” because I’d see my friends with clean mothers with the nice clothes and the nice shoes and the job and everything. Today, I am proud. I say, “That’s my mother. Her name is Raquel. That’s who brought me into this world. I love her unconditionally.”
Her proudest moment was being at my high-school graduation and being able to say, “I’m here. I’m clean. I’m a mother. I’ve changed.”
Looking back, before high school, I would have never thought I’d even make it to high school because of where I lived and all the people I have lost. I thought that I would have given up a long time ago, but I’m still pushing and fighting and I plan on making it somewhere. I feel like, as long as you have faith and you have some motivation, it will take you a long way, a way that you would have never thought it would have taken you.
I’ve still never met anybody like my grandmother. I was 17 when she passed away, and it was
like Rosa Parks died or something. I would give it all up if she could be here now, but I know that she sees what I’m doing and I know she’s proud. That’s why, when I’m done getting my bachelor’s degree, I’m moving to get my master’s degree, so she can say, “Everything she’s doing, I taught her that. And she hasn’t given up yet.”
—Interviewed by Danielle Turney
TOMORROW IS NOT PROMISED
CHARLIE BROWN
Charlie Brown—an alias—is an 18-year-old who lives in the West Humboldt Park community on the West Side of Chicago. Residents of the area face high crime and poverty rates, struggling schools and “one of America’s biggest open-air drug markets,” in the words of a recent Chicago Reader article.53 Charlie describes his neighborhood as a place where you need to watch your back.
Charlie is a tall, charismatic young man who loves to write poetry. He describes himself as artistic, cocky and intelligent. Charlie was adopted by a woman who is raising six children, five of whom are adopted. His biological father dropped contact with Charlie suddenly when he was 10 years old.
Charlie spent his first two years of high school at King College Prep on the South Side. For his junior year, he transferred to Urban Prep Academy, an all-male charter school on the West Side that regularly helps get 100 percent of its graduating seniors accepted to college. Despite the academic excellence of the school, Charlie doesn’t like it. “The days are too long,” he says. “I also don’t like Urban Prep because of the uniform, which is a blazer, red tie and khaki pants. And I don’t like it because it’s all boys.”
But an even bigger problem for Charlie Brown is trying to imagine a future anywhere outside of his own violent community.
I know basically everybody in the neighborhood, so if I see unfamiliar people, I get cautious. “Who is that? Watch out!” I turn around every few steps. I watch my surroundings. If I see cars drive slowly down the street, I get paranoid. If I am sitting on the porch, I go in the house. Everyone operates like this, even the drug dealers. No matter how many dudes you have with you or how many guns you have on your waist, you have to watch your back.
I’m also cautious of the dudes who hang on the corner. When you pass them, they often say, “Hey, you wanna work?” And I always think, “No, nigga, you need to work. You need to get a job.” But I can’t snap on them like that because I don’t know what they got. Plus, I get kind of scared when I tell them no because I don’t want them to start looking for me. Sometimes they follow you and wait for you to fall just so they can say, “Yeah, you should have come and worked for me.”
I’m cool with a lot of the people around here, but my friends know that I’m not like them. You won’t catch me sagging my jeans or saying to every chick, “Hey, shorty!” I am not like that. So if they wear their pants down, if they are about to go smoke, or if they be like, “We are about to go to this party and do this or that,” they know I am not going to join them. So they just say, “All right, we will talk to you later.” But I do like to have fun, get my laughs and jokes in. I make sure I live life for today and not tomorrow. Tomorrow is not promised.
I have been writing poetry ever since I learned to write. I realized that poetry was my thing when I started reciting it in front of the class in fourth grade. We were told to recite memory pieces. That’s when you take somebody else’s poem, memorize and recite it. But I would write my own and recite it. People started saying “You’re real good,” and I loved the attention.
Art makes me happy. I can express myself and let me be seen. When you express yourself, you don’t want to be judged. You want somebody to listen and just hear what you have to say. You want them to see you for you, not how stereotypes see you or the media sees you.
At a poetry performance I had to write on the topic: What have my parents given me? The other kids said life, breath, lungs, beautiful eyelashes. I know my parents gave me those things, but I took it as, “What have they given me—given me?” My response was: nothing.
I never knew my real mother but my adopted mother has a picture of her in our house. I know how she looks, but I don’t know her. I just know what I see on that picture. I did know my dad. I can’t say I resemble him, but I’m tall like him; he wears glasses, I wear glasses; he always looks mean like I do. He stopped coming around when I was 10 so I only have a couple memories of him. What I do remember was he was my daddy until then.
My dad was a construction worker and had his own restaurant. One day, he took me and my granny there and we had spaghetti. When he picked me up he said, “You’re my little guy” and my granny was right there. When I say my granny, I’m talking about my adopted mother’s mom. I don’t know what happened, but I never saw or heard from him after that day. Even though I don’t talk to my dad anymore, that moment makes me smile because that was the last moment I remember having with him.
Sometimes I get mad and my granny will say, “Think about your dad.” She tells me this because she knows that last time together was a happy moment in life. I don’t know how to take it when she reminds me of my dad, because I’m like, “I don’t see him anymore.” But she says, “Don’t judge him. You’re still his little guy.” I don’t know what went on, so I don’t judge him, but I do feel like he could at least call or something.
My mother adopted me at the age of 3. I don’t even know where I lived before that. It’s not a lot that I remember from my childhood, but it was all right. I wasn’t getting beat up or nothing like that. She wasn’t a drunk or had me with stepdads. She took care of me like I was her own. As I got older and started thinking about it and seeing everyone else with their mothers and daddies, all being so happy, we did get into a lot of arguments. I would sometimes tell my mother, “I wish you didn’t adopt me. I don’t want to stay with you.” And I would walk out the house. I didn’t mean those things because she did take care of me like I was her own. But sometimes little things get to you. My mother was single when she adopted me and still is, so I don’t have a man around to say, “Don’t get in trouble with the law, don’t drink, strap up when you have sex” and things like that. But she raised me to the best of her ability and I’m not doing bad. I’ve never done drugs, been to jail or anything like that.
Sometimes I think about asking my mom and dad, “What happened?” But at the moment I just write a lot of poetry or I draw about it. If I’m in a real bad mood, where I can’t stay still, I turn on some music and just dance. Now that I am aware of my talents and what I can do, I go draw, paint, dance or whatever. This is my way to get my feelings out. I don’t go hit or yell at somebody, or smoke or sell drugs. Plus, if I do those things, that will just make me less of a person. I am going to be me. Peer pressure doesn’t get to me. I won’t let it.
There is not much I would change about me, with the exception of my social skills. I’m a good speaker. I perform poetry, but when certain people are talking to me, like if a white man or woman were talking to me right now, I wouldn’t be looking them in the face. I would be looking down or something. When a person of authority talks to me, a police officer or white person, I don’t look them in the face. Well, not just a white person. It depends on the type of authority and power. Like police officers, when I watch the news I see them get away with everything they do. They beat people for no reason, they can be crooked sometimes and then it is just like they get away with it. And then judges, they can send you to jail for X amount of years if you did the crime or if you didn’t do the crime. And I don’t want to spend my life behind bars.
I don’t know what would happen if I looked them in the eyes. That’s the part that scares me. I’m already placed in a box to be lower than them. If I go to school or if I don’t go to school, they still see me as a statistic. It doesn’t matter how many degrees I get, I would still be the minority to them, the black person, slave or whatever you want to call it. I can go to school and graduate and be at the top of my class, but it will always be that white man who has to hire me. Or, that college tuition that I would owe, how wo
uld I get it? There will always be that white man who has to put my life in order. Or, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that white man who has to hire me. It can be a black man, but what’s to say that he won’t hire the white man over me?
I started feeling this way when so many of my friends were being judged and sentenced before they even did a crime. No one gave them the chance to speak up or speak out. No one listened to them and what they had to say. It starts in school. When something happens in a lot of the schools in my area, they don’t suspend the kids or call their parents. They just throw them on the streets. Who’s to say, when they are thrown on the street, that a drug dealer won’t be standing there and say, “Do you want to make some quick money?” Before you know it, they are in gangs, they take this into the schools, it escalates, they get failing grades, are kicked out of school and are on the corner 24/7, and then jail time.
Trevon—like if someone was to ask, “Who is that?” I would say, “That is my brother.” We were that type of close.
One day, in April of 2010, I was walking home from the candy store with my other friend, Mikey. We were just walking and laughing—then we hear two gunshots. We hit the ground and duck, wondering, “Where is this coming from?” We run the opposite way into the alley, give it some time and then go back around. It was like there was nobody outside because we heard the gunshots but don’t hear any screams or anything. We turn the corner at Ridgeway and Iowa and see a body lying in the middle of the street. Then, we see dudes closing the doors of a car and driving off. There are people at their screen windows, staring, and others looking like they are calling the police. We walk toward the body and say, “Dang, who is that?” We go closer and we’re like, “That’s Trevon!”