There Are No Children Here (18 page)

Pharoah sent Terence a black-and-white photo of himself. He was wearing a button-down shirt, standing in front of the building, smiling, his head cocked to one side like a puppy’s, similar to the pose he had assumed in the Boys Club brochure. On the back, he wrote in clear, crisp block letters: “
TERENCE I’M TO LITTLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPING. BUT I WANT TO TELL YOU I MISS AND LOVE YOU. PHAROAH
.”

Twelve

   
PHAROAH would have liked Rickey to root him on at the school spelling bee, but his friend spent the period in the principal’s office, where he sat out most assemblies. Ms. Barone had sent him there as a precaution, because, if he felt moved to, he could have disrupted the entire proceedings. Lafeyette couldn’t make it either, since the contest was only for the middle grades.

Pharoah prepared diligently for the annual spring event, which pitted the school’s top third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders against one another. A dozen students competed, two from each
classroom. Ms. Barone had conducted her own class bee to choose two representatives. Pharoah was one; the other was a boy named Jimmy. Clarise, the class’s star pupil, was absent the day Ms. Barone chose the contestants.

Pharoah wanted badly to do well, but he knew that to do so he’d have to control his stammer, which had worsened with his family’s troubles. He wanted to succeed at everything he took on. He liked to stand out. He relished the attention. And, he figured, if he tried hard enough, everything would work out okay. (He was just as hard on others as he was on himself. A loyal Chicago Cubs fan, Pharoah would berate players if they didn’t get a hit in a critical situation. “Man,” he’d say, “Andre Dawson didn’t try hard enough.”) He felt confident that he would at least place second or third in the spelling bee.

He established a routine for himself in which he’d first sound the word out in his head, pause a moment to remind himself to take his time, and then spell it, drawing out each letter slowly and deliberately so as not to stutter. For over three weeks, he had studied fourteen mimeographed sheets of words.

On the day of the competition, Ms. Barone asked the two young contestants to come to the head of the classroom. “We wish you lots of luck,” she said to the two nervous boys. “I know you can do it. I know you can win. Remember the rules. You have to say the word. Spell it. And then say it again. Good luck.” Their classmates applauded and on the way to the auditorium tugged at their arms and told them to do well.

Pharoah and the other eleven contestants lined up on the small wooden stage in the school’s gymnasium, which doubled as an auditorium. They faced the judges, who sat to the side, so that their right shoulders were turned to the audience. Pharoah was bright, Ms. Barone thought. He’ll do okay. He looked handsome in his freshly pressed turquoise cotton shirt, buttoned at the collar. The name tag she’d printed for him stood out as she hoped it would. Made of bright yellow construction paper, it read
PHAROAH RIVERS
in huge block letters. It looked weighty on his tiny frame; he was considerably shorter than the other contestants.

Pharoah was much more nervous than anyone knew. He was praying that he wouldn’t stutter. If he did, people would laugh and make jokes. It would be humiliating. Not in front of all
these people. Please. He started wringing his hands in apprehension.

The head judge took the lecturn and explained the rules, repeating Ms. Barone’s instructions. Pharoah, though fidgety, listened attentively. There was a stool for those, like Pharoah, who couldn’t reach the microphone. If a word sounded unfamiliar, the students could ask to hear it used in a sentence. Few, though, ever made that request. If a student misspelled a word, a buzzer would sound and he or she had to leave the stage.

Pharoah was so focused on controlling his speech and spelling the words right that he paid little attention to the other contestants. The first few rounds were a blur. All he remembers were words like
Catholic
and
abandonment, adjust
, and
Appalachian
. He knew how to spell them all. As student after student walked off the stage in defeat, Pharoah realized he was getting closer and closer to winning. He spelled
kangaroo
, a word he knew but had never seen in print before. His classmates, who were asked to hold their applause, clapped their hands silently.

But as the contestants were whittled down to five, Pharoah’s nerves began catching up with him. He could feel himself losing the self-control he’d fought so hard to retain. He had unconsciously untucked his shirt. His hands balled up beneath it, playing with the fabric. His next turn came around quickly.

“Endurance
,” the teacher announced.
“Endurance.”

Pharoah felt his heart pumping fast and loud. He knew how to spell the word. He knew, in fact, what it meant. He couldn’t restrain his joy, and, abandoning his usual routine, he spoke in a rush, quicker than he should have. His eyes darted around excitedly.

He repeated the word.
“Endurance
,” he said, spitting out the three syllables as if they were one. He then started to spell it: “E-N-D-U …” He couldn’t hear a thing. Nothing came out of his mouth. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. His stutter, which had gotten worse in recent months, devoured him. The letters knotted up in his throat; the veins in his neck strained as he tried to get them out. The buzzer sounded. Pharoah’s lips quivered in disappointment. He did all he could to keep from crying in front of his friends.

When he went to sit down with his class to watch the rest of the bee, Ms. Barone put her arm around him and pulled him to
her. “You did a good job, Pharoah,” she told him. “We’re proud of you.”

When Pharoah got home from school that day, he walked straight back to his room. LaJoe, who was at the sink washing dishes, knew something must be wrong; he always greeted her. She went back to see him. He was lying on his bed.

“How’d you do today, Pharoah?” she asked. He told her. LaJoe assured him there was nothing to be ashamed of. “It’s going to be all right. You okay in my book.” She tried to soothe him, stroking his head. “I love you. You can spell for me whenever you get ready to.” He had tried his hardest.

“Pharoah is Pharoah. He’s going to be something,” she would tell friends. “When he was a baby, I held him up and asked him if he’d be the one. I’ve always wanted to see one of my kids graduate from high school. I asked him if he’d be the one to get me a diploma.”

But for Pharoah that wasn’t good enough. He knew how to spell better than most kids his age. He should have won, or at least placed second. He was just going to have to work harder. Pharoah promised his mother he’d do better next year. Pharoah was not one to break his word.

Summer 1988

Thirteen

   
IN HINDSIGHT, it was a summer of disappointment and, ultimately, of tragedy. At the time, though, LaJoe thought it a season of hope, an unusually calm, even radiant few months, certainly a respite from the family’s recent troubles. It was a dramatic change from what she now referred to as “the war-zone summer” of last year.

On this blistering, humid May afternoon—the thermometer would top 100 degrees seven times this summer—the plaintive
falsetto of pop singer Keith Sweat floated from a record player placed outside Lafeyette and Pharoah’s building.

Please, LaJoe thought to herself, make this moment last forever. Over fifty adults and children had gathered by the front entrance of 1920 West Washington, their bodies jiggling and pulsating to Sweat’s hit tune. It was an unusual sight at Henry Horner—a large crowd of people mingling and laughing together, as if they hadn’t a worry in the world. Even Lafeyette, who stood to the side, his back and shoulders rattling rhythmically, smiled at the scene. His mother noted that she had never seen him so at ease.

The young man responsible for this musical gathering was Craig Davis, a good-natured eighteen-year-old who didn’t even live at Horner, but at another public housing complex, the ABLA Homes. (ABLA, a mile and a half southeast of Horner, is a complex of four developments: the Jane Addams Homes, the Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts, and the Abbott Homes.) Craig’s girlfriend lived with her mother on the second floor of Lafeyette’s building, and Craig visited her regularly after school. He spent a great deal of time in the building, and though it took a few weeks before the Vice Lords and Stones were assured that Craig didn’t belong to a rival gang, he quickly won the hearts of the younger children. When he walked the distance from Horner to ABLA, he usually stopped to shoot baskets on the jungle gym with Lafeyette and others.