Redeeming Justice Read online

  Buddy fought at D-day in the Allied invasion at Normandy, part of the initial surge of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, an all-African-American unit that hit the sand first. The 320th sent up hydrogen-filled balloons designed as cover to protect the Allied infantrymen from being mowed down by enemy aircraft fire as they charged onto the beach. My grandfather’s platoon succeeded in sending up the balloons, but they did without any cover for themselves. Enemy gunfire raked through them. Only my grandfather and one other soldier survived.

  A bullet pierced Buddy’s chest right next to his lung. Eventually, a medic found him bleeding in the sand and managed to get him to a hospital where doctors determined if they removed the bullet, he would bleed to death. Unable to treat him, the army shipped Buddy to a stateside hospital. He not only made it back in one piece but came home a hero. He eventually got out of bed and walked out of the hospital—carefully. He knew that any strenuous activity could dislodge the bullet and cause it to puncture his lung.

  Buddy took a job at a meatpacking plant and lived hard, except for an aversion to climbing stairs, which he took slowly and deliberately. He refused most medication, instead using drink to dull any pain he felt around his chest. He loved to dance, loved going to nightclubs, and he loved his wife, my grandmother Lane. Soon they had their eighth child, my mother. “My miracle child,” Buddy called her.

  “And that’s why I call you my miracle grandchild,” Buddy tells me as I sit on his lap, getting ready to watch the game.

  Nothing against any of my cousins, but I feel a special bond with Buddy. He keeps his eye on me, even when he seems to focus all his attention on the Cubs, and I keep my eye on him. Seventy years old and he’s up at the crack of dawn, puttering around the house, tending Lane’s rosebushes, or mowing the lawn. The Big House’s big corner lawn has grass that’s as manicured and as green as a golf course. Buddy is always busy. Aunt Sugar says, “Daddy, Buddy, you never sleep. You need to sleep.”

  Buddy says, “Sugar, if that bullet moves, I’ll have plenty of time to sleep.”

  In the fall, Buddy drives me to school in his beloved Oldsmobile, light blue and clean, the size of a boat. I’m too short to see through the windshield, so he has me sit on the center armrest. He’s not breaking the law. Children under eight don’t have to wear seatbelts. I sit on that armrest proudly, riding shotgun, on the same level as my grandfather.

  When the bell rings at the end of the day, I see the Oldsmobile parked outside my elementary school and Buddy, all six feet four of him, leaning on the hood, waiting for me. He grabs me when I come out of school, scoops me up, kisses me, and plops me down on that armrest, my special seat. When I get older, enter first grade, then second grade, I start to feel embarrassed seeing my grandfather outside school. I finally break the news to him one afternoon.

  “Man, Granddad, why you always waiting for me after school? And don’t kiss me in front of my friends. I want to walk home with them.”

  Of course, I can’t know that I’ve hurt his feelings just by growing up. He stops coming around in his Oldsmobile after school, but he still watches over me. As I peel away from my friends walking home and approach the Big House, I see him standing in the picture window, waiting for me to arrive, some days his Purple Heart wrapped around his wrist.

  My grandmother Lane oversees the comings and goings in the Big House like a benevolent general. She controls the kitchen and nurtures her eight children with nothing but love. As for me, I know I get into things that deserve a spanking. But nobody raises a hand to me. Not as long as my grandmother stays within shouting distance.

  Lane always has something on the stove or in the oven. In the summer, she leaves the screen door open, and when I turn the corner onto our street, the smell of freshly baked butter cookies hits me so hard my mouth waters. My grandmother is so good in the kitchen she has taken a job as a cook for one of the local schools.

  I want to learn. I start asking questions about how she made this dish and why she put that ingredient in that pot. Before I know it, Lane puts me to work. She teaches me the names and varieties of vegetables, and I taste each one raw and cooked. She teaches me the difference between pots and pans, instructs me about burners and the oven. She introduces me to spices. I sprinkle salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne appropriately over our food, and soon she has me standing on a chair, stirring a stew or a casserole. Before long, I’m stationed next to her, her sous chef, chopping, dicing, concocting a thick beef stew, chicken noodle soup, and, my favorite, chili.

  After teaching me to cook, my grandmother teaches me to read. I’m intensely inquisitive, some say annoyingly nosy because I want to know—why? What does this say? What does that mean? After making dinner for sometimes a dozen people, my grandmother relaxes by reading Our Daily Bread, a pamphlet of Bible verses. She begins by reading a verse to me, and then she starts having me read the verse to her. At first, I struggle to sound out the words, but I learn quickly, retain everything, and soon I can read the verses to her fluently. Reading provides me with even more questions to ask, countless questions, a torrent of questions, probably driving my grandmother crazy.

  “Look it up in a book,” she usually says.

  She gives me books, sends me off to read them and report back to her. When we run out of books at home, she takes me to the library. Thanks to my grandmother, I develop what will become a lifelong love of reading. I don’t know then that reading—and writing—will one day save my life.

  My grandmother also makes sure that I accompany her to church. I don’t mind. I like going to our small local church a few blocks away, and I definitely like sitting next to her. She understands children and knows how restless and bored I get during the services and sermon. She takes her seat in her regular pew, and I eagerly scoot next to her. She tries not to laugh. She knows what I’m after. She keeps a virtual candy store in her purse and parcels candies into my eagerly awaiting palm during the service. The candy comes with a cost, though. I have to agree to attend church without complaining, read the hymns aloud and enthusiastically, and promise to give the idea of faith at least some thought.

  When summertime comes, the kids in our neighborhood don’t go to camp or take music lessons. We climb the fence and sneak into the pool at Chicago State, which is closed for the summer. Then the summer before I enter fourth grade, my brother Jamal teaches me to play basketball.

  We have no parks with hoops, no inside gyms, no rec centers, so we have to improvise. We lift a discarded wooden crate out of the dumpster behind a grocery store, saw out the bottom, and nail the crate to a light pole in an alley near the house, between a row of garages. We sweep all the debris out of the alley, Jamal rounds up a few of his friends, and we play two-on-two or sometimes three-on-three games of crate ball. The game resembles “army ball,” a vicious version of basketball that feels closer to tackle football. You fight for position, literally, and if you call a foul, you better be bleeding. I learn inside moves, how to muscle up bigger guys, create a variety of effective fakes and a serious handle that allows me to maneuver in very tight spaces, and because it’s ridiculously hard to make a shot into a crate, I develop an extremely soft touch on my mid-range jumper. I go from being the last guy picked to a gritty point guard, someone you want on your team.

  * * *

  —

  My mother keeps me busy by putting me to work at church. I serve on the usher board, and she gets me in the “Sunbeams Choir,” a group of kids that meets every day for practice. I don’t know what strings she pulls, because I cannot sing. At all. Despite my off-key voice and hopeless sense of tone, I stay in the choir for the rest of the summer.

  I am unaware of their motives then, but my mother and my aunties know exactly what they are doing. They are determined to keep me occupied at all times. They triple-team me, these smart, strong, caring, spiritual women: Honey, the thicker-set, softer-spoken, oldest sister; Sugar, tall, thin, an ebony-ski
nned beauty, unafraid to express an opinion; and Peaches, my mother, the baby of the family, quiet, but clear and direct. They warn me, even at the age of nine, to stay close to the house, announce where I’m going, watch my surroundings, and always avoid putting myself in any compromising situations, especially with the police. They impose a strict rule at night: as soon as the streetlights come on, I have to come inside. Don’t give them a reason, my mother says. She repeats that phrase as often as “Brush your teeth” and “Wash your hands.”

  * * *

  —

  My mother, aunties, and grandmother insist that they have to know where I am at all times. I don’t understand. Not at first. But these women know the history of young Black men in our city, in our country, in our society, and on the South Side. They tell me about a neighborhood only a couple miles away, Greater Grand Crossing, where the largest and most elaborate amusement park in the country opened in 1905—White City. The city gave the park that name because of the thousands of white lights that adorned the buildings in the park. But they could’ve given the park that name because they allowed white patrons only—except for a game called the African Dip. In this “game,” park goers threw balls at Black men sitting on flimsy chairs above a water tank, aiming to hit them in the head. If they succeeded, the person working the game would tip the chairs and dunk the Black men into the water.

  After the Depression, the park closed, and the city built a public housing project on the land called Parkway Gardens. By the 1970s, whites had moved out of the neighborhood, the city cut off funding, and Parkway Gardens fell into disrepair. In the early 1980s, gangs came into the neighborhood, bringing with them drugs and guns. The gangs took over Greater Grand Crossing and started moving into our part of the South Side.

  Toward the end of the 1980s, I hear about a drug called crack coming into our neighborhood. I notice more and more families without fathers, and I see more kids my age coming to live with their grandmothers. Then I see grandmothers moving out as the neighborhood begins to deteriorate. Stores closing up and buildings becoming dilapidated. On summer days now, my grandmother keeps the screen door closed. I hear about people stealing cars on the street and houses being broken into. I hear about a guy on our street who got shot in the neck. A charge of energy crackles through our grid of a dozen or so blocks—an undercurrent of nervousness and fear. My mother, my aunties, and my grandmother huddle over coffee or tea at the kitchen table, whispering urgently about the state of our neighborhood and its uncertain future. They use a phrase I overhear too many times to ignore—“disposable young Black boys.”

  They talk about kids—sons, grandsons, and nephews of women they know—who have had interactions with the police. Young Black boys getting picked up for crimes they didn’t commit, or being picked up just because they were out at night. That’s all they did. They were out at night.

  That can’t be right, I think. That’s not normal.

  It isn’t right. And it is normal.

  I begin to see that young Black boys my age fall into two categories.

  Those who are sheltered, overprotected, and kept inside the house, safe.

  And those who are out on the streets, exposed, in danger.

  My mother will do anything she can to keep me in that first category.

  * * *

  —

  Right before my tenth birthday, my grandfather dies.

  His death, the loss of our patriarch—Buddy, my buddy—leaves a gaping hole in my heart and in our family, a presence that I know cannot be replaced.

  He dies from cancer, of all things, not from the bullet lodged in his chest.

  To this day, I remain inspired by his toughness and his spirit. If I feel a cold coming on or have a slight fever, my instinct is to get into bed. Then I think of Buddy. This man walked around with a bullet in his chest. He kept his motor running, no matter what. Nothing slowed him down. If he felt pain, he never complained, never showed it. He’d take a shot of whiskey and keep going. I keep seeing images of myself with him—sitting on the armrest next to him in his beloved pale blue Oldsmobile; sitting with him in his recliner, watching the Cubs; playing with his Purple Heart, rubbing the ribbon, pressing the embossed face on the medal, George Washington’s face, our first president. The army gives you a medal for getting hurt and for making it home. For surviving. My grandfather and his Purple Heart taught me this: a hero is someone who survives.

  * * *

  —

  A year later, Lane goes with him.

  My grandmother, the matriarch, the glue of our family, the woman who taught me to read and to cook, and who insisted that I have faith and keep my faith, dies of a broken heart. She succumbs to life without Buddy. That may not be the official medical diagnosis, but that’s how I see it. That’s what I believe.

  My godmother, Sugar, steps up as best as she can. I know money is tight for my mother, and Sugar, who has a good job as an auditor, contributes to our household. My mother still makes that killer drive to work way past O’Hare, but even with financial help from her family she struggles to make ends meet. And I still hear her crying in the bathtub. One night, her sobs don’t stop and her crying turns into something deeper, more primal. When she gets out of the bath and puts on her robe, I pad into her bedroom and quietly ask what’s wrong. I have some sense of the answer, or answers. Money troubles, raising two kids as a single mom, feeling lonely and exhausted, and losing both of her parents in the space of a year. I’m ten years old and I cannot fathom the emotional upheaval she must be feeling, but I am in no way prepared for her response.

  “Life is so hard,” she says, breaking into a wail. “It’s too much.”

  I think of Buddy on the Normandy beach, bleeding but surviving. I picture threading the ribbon of his Purple Heart through my fingers and I say, “You can’t give up. You can’t.”

  I don’t know if my mother hears me. But she looks at me and sighs so heavily her shoulders shake. She pulls me into her and hugs me. I hold on for my life—for her life. Eventually, she releases me, calms herself, and swipes at the tears on her cheek with the back of her hand. She puts on a tiny smile, kisses me, and goes into her bedroom. I don’t remember hearing her crying in the bathtub again.

  * * *

  —

  The neighborhood turns hard, grim, dangerous. For practically my whole life, gangs have roamed the streets, but I’ve never felt afraid. The gangs now seem angrier, a current of rage and violence thrumming through the clusters of kids, most of them older, some I know or have seen around. Rivalries emerge. A kid selling drugs on one corner competes with someone else on the next corner. I see beatings, I hear gunshots. I see vacant houses with plywood nailed over windows. I see cars abandoned on the street, stripped, hollowed out. Someone even tries to steal my mother’s car. She hears a loud noise outside and, without even thinking, runs into the garage, grabs a strung-out-looking intruder by the sleeve, forces him into a corner, and calls the police. He tears himself away from her and runs off. A few days later, the same guy breaks into another garage. The car’s owner appears with a gun and shoots the thief in the chest.

  Then I witness two incidents—one involving drugs, the other violence—that suggest the neighborhood has turned so dramatically it may never turn back.

  One cold winter night, a family down the street holds a wedding reception at their house for their daughter and new son-in-law. They invite everyone in the neighborhood, a common practice.

  I go to the reception with some friends. On our way out, I see a guy smoking what looks like a cigarette. Either the guy smokes too much or the cigarette has been laced with something toxic, because he starts to convulse. Someone tends to him and my friends and I walk away. The guy recovers, but the next day the neighborhood buzzes with speculation about what the guy had been smoking and his spastic reaction to the drug.

  “He’s on that crack,” a friend says. T
urns out, the guy was smoking a “wicked stick,” a cigarette stuffed with crack and dipped in embalming fluid.

  “I keep hearing about that,” I say.

  “It’s serious, man. You get hooked. You get crazy. It’s real bad.”

  I bank the memory. A few months later, on a summer night while friends and I play Piggy outside on our street—a version of baseball played with a bat and a tennis ball but without running bases—a car roars around the corner; then another car follows on its tail. We scramble out of the way, dash onto lawns and porches, and then the first car slams into a tree. The car’s doors fly open. The guy who smoked the wicked stick at the wedding reception jumps out, and a gun clatters onto the street behind him. The second car screeches to a stop, two guys burst out and start chasing the wicked stick guy. Seconds later, police cars, sirens blaring, race down the block and skid to a stop, and cops flood the neighborhood. I don’t know if the police or the guys from the second car catch the wicked stick guy, but from this point on—every day, sometimes every other hour—police come around. They hassle every young Black man they see. They hassle my friends. And one afternoon, in broad daylight, they hassle me.

  “You look like somebody,” they say. “A person of interest, a guy involved in a shooting.”

  I shake my head, scared mute. Somehow that convinces them.

  “You can go,” one of the cops says. “This time.”

  After these two incidents, change in our neighborhood goes from incremental to pervasive. The streets become home to crack dealers, gangbangers, hustlers, invasions by cops. The night, once filled with the sounds of crickets and cats and barking dogs, becomes filled with an orchestra of gunfire.