There Are No Children Here (37 page)

“LaJoe, here, put it up here,” Rochelle urged. LaJoe pulled the last of the banners from the package. They read, “It’s a Boy.” LaJoe and Rochelle laughed. They hoped Pharoah wouldn’t notice.

A few weeks earlier, after Pharoah had attended a birthday celebration for a friend, he mentioned to his mother that he’d never had a party. So she decided to throw him one—and to keep it a surprise. Rochelle had helped her buy the decorations and the cake. She seemed nearly as excited as LaJoe.

Since the incident the month before in which she lost control of herself, LaJoe had slowed down and tried to pull herself and her family together. With summer fast approaching, she wanted to be prepared. She did what she could to lift her spirits and her children’s. She had finally made the last of the down payments on the five bunk beds, so Lafeyette, Pharoah, and the triplets now each had one. The wooden bunks were used but in good condition. LaJoe had paid $479 for them. Lafeyette and Pharoah kept the plastic covering on their mattresses. “It keeps them clean,” Pharoah explained. They dreamed about what they would do now to decorate their room. Lafeyette wanted to paint it black “ ’cause then it won’t get dirty so easy.” He had taken a steel door off a vacant apartment to replace their broken wooden one, and he had installed a new lock so that only he and Pharoah could enter. They had hung a torn Venetian blind over the windows, which kept the room dark but private.

LaJoe also bought a handsome wooden table and chairs from the same used-furniture dealer who had sold her the beds. The storekeeper liked LaJoe and gave her a good buy—$80 for the table and chairs—and even delivered the goods, though he refused to carry the items into the building, because he feared for his safety. Neighbors helped haul the furniture from the truck into the apartment. Pharoah particularly loved the new wooden table; he told his mother that it was the kind they had in mansions.

The triplets and Lafeyette traipsed home from school, wet from the spring downpour. Other youngsters soon arrived, mostly children the triplets’ age. They awaited the birthday boy. Someone knocked on the door. The children, giggling, put their fingers to their lips. “Shh. Shh. Shh.” The knocking got
louder and more forceful. Lafeyette moved to the side of the door and undid its lock.

“SURPRISE
!” Lafeyette slapped the back of Pharoah’s head with his open palm. In all the excitement, he didn’t quite know how to greet his brother. Pharoah shuffled into the living room, surprised and embarrassed by the attention. Just as he had done during the first spelling bee, he balled his hands up under the fold of his shimmery green raincoat, where he nervously played with the plastic. The children, about ten in all, quickly scattered, many running into the kitchen for hot dogs. Pharoah stood by the door, his toothy smile lighting his face. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he walked back to his room and sat on the plastic-covered mattress, trying to take it all in. Lafeyette sat with him.

“I thought you forgot it,” he told his mother, who poked her head through the door. She rubbed the back of his head and gave him his present, a green shorts set. Pharoah put it on. With the suspenders and knee-length shorts, he looked quite handsome. He silently readied himself for the party: he found a new pair of white socks, and scrubbed his face and hands; he ran jell through his long, curly hair and then secured the gold paper crown on his head. And as he did almost everything, he did it all slowly and with great deliberation. The dressing and preening took him half an hour—and when he was done he wasn’t fully satisfied. “I should have greased my legs,” he told his brother.

“You look proper,” Lafeyette told his brother. Rickey, who had been invited to the party by Lafeyette, wandered into the bedroom. With his hands in his pocket, he looked uncomfortable. He often did. “You look straight, Pharoah,” he assured him. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” Pharoah said. He didn’t say much that afternoon. He mostly grinned and giggled. In Polaroid photos of the day, his smile seems to cover his face; his big grin forces his cheeks into plump balls and squeezes his eyes neatly shut. In one photo, he stands behind his seated grandmother, who has come over for the party, with his arm affectionately around her neck. In another, he sits behind the cake in one of the new chairs, his paper crown sliding off his head, looking pleased with the festivities.
In yet another, LaJoe steadies Pharoah’s small hands as he cuts the cake with a big kitchen knife.

Once Pharoah was dressed and had made his entrance into the party amid the screaming gaggle of kids, Lafeyette and Rickey sneaked out the door. Lafeyette told his mother he didn’t want to hang around “no children’s party.” It was LaJoe’s one disappointment. All the guests were much younger than Pharoah; no one Pharoah’s age came. He didn’t have many good friends, except for his cousin Porkchop. But even he wasn’t there. Throughout the festivities, Pharoah asked, “Where’s Porkchop?” or could be heard muttering, “I hope Porkchop comes.” Porkchop showed up two hours after the party began; he’d forgotten all about it. The two, as usual, embraced. “Happy Birthday,” Porkchop mumbled through his soft giggles.

The children, with half-eaten hot dogs squirting out of their hands, danced to the rap music of L. L. Cool J. Pharoah, who sat with his mother and grandmother and his Aunt LaVerne as they admired his new outfit, mouthed the words to one of his favorite songs.

“Keep the kids inside,” a panicky voice hollered to LaJoe, distracting Pharoah from the rap music. “Keep them here. Someone’s figuring to get killed at four trey.” Dawn had come by with her four kids. Four trey was how everyone referred to the building next door, whose address was 1943 West Lake. LaJoe locked the door.

“Y’all stay inside, you hear,” she told the children, who had momentarily stopped their dancing, knowing that something was wrong. Apparently there had been an altercation between drug dealers in the building, and Dawn was worried it might erupt into something more. Nothing, though, happened. The children resumed dancing. Dawn gave Pharoah a hug.

Just as Pharoah blew out the candles—after an off-key, half-shouted
rendition of “Happy Birthday”—something heavy fell in the living room. The crash startled everyone. A relative of LaJoe’s, who had passed out on the couch and had been there throughout the noisy party, had tried to get up to go to the bathroom. He didn’t make it. He lay face down, urine seeping through his blue jeans onto the linoleum floor.

Pharoah took Porkchop’s hand and the two went outside to get away from their drunken relative and the screaming kids. As they walked out the building’s back door, they stopped. A teenage girl stood there vomiting. The two boys quietly walked around her. Pharoah hadn’t stopped smiling.

It was a good few weeks for Pharoah. Not only did he celebrate his birthday, but he had been picked to recite a short poem at Suder’s year-end assembly. Pharoah had gotten his stammer under control. It wasn’t gone entirely, but he managed it better, having learned, when necessary, to slow down before he spoke. And so this was a big honor for him; it was as if his teachers were recognizing Pharoah for conquering his stutter.

As soon as Pharoah got a copy of the rhyme he was to recite, he set it to memory. He felt so confident that he eventually threw away the crumpled piece of paper he’d been carrying around in his back pocket for weeks. He wouldn’t forget it.

He wanted to look tidy for the assembly, so he had his hair shorn. He also cleaned and ironed a black-striped sport coat that his mother had bought for him two Easters ago. He didn’t have many occasions to wear it. With his neatly pressed white pants and olive-green shirt buttoned at the collar, LaJoe thought, he looked very handsome.

LaJoe got to the school’s gymnasium early. She was as excited as Pharoah. When she saw her son on stage, she couldn’t help thinking, There’s the one. There’s the one. I’m going to get it back.

Lafeyette sat with his class. He too was “happy for my little brother.” Ms. Barone was so proud of her former student that she took a snapshot of him in his new clothes and haircut.

Pharoah had been on this platform before for the spelling bees, so he knew what to expect. He knew that he had to speak loud and clear, and that he needed to speak deliberately so as not to stumble. But in his excitement, as he stretched to reach
the microphone, he realized that he had to go to the bathroom something awful. His bladder felt ready to burst. Not here, he told himself. He locked his knees together, tensing his bladder muscles. He wasn’t going to pee on himself, not in front of all these people. He tried to look relaxed.

He spotted his mother in the crowd, with her full and open grin. But he tried to avoid her eyes and fixed his stare at the back of the auditorium. That way, he’d been told, it would look as if he were talking to everyone.

“Uh-uh-uh … uh.” Pharoah paused. He wasn’t going to stutter. Not here. Not now. Slow down, he told himself. Take your time.

“Try, try, try, try, that’s what special effort means.” His soft, amplified voice rang through the auditorium; once he got through the first line, his confidence returned. His heart was in it. He indeed believed hard work could overcome all.

The applause rang in Pharoah’s ears. He looked over to his mother. She winked. Lafeyette clapped so hard and long that his teacher had to ask him to stop. “Nice job,” Ms. Daigre, the principal, whispered to Pharoah. He thanked her, stepped off the stage, and then sprinted for the bathroom.

That morning Pharoah received two certificates: one for placing second in the school’s spelling bee, the other for special effort in math and reading. His brother Timothy got three, including the much coveted principal’s list as well as one for scholastic achievement and another for excellent conduct. Tammie received one for outstanding student, another for excellent conduct. Tiffany got one for special effort in handwriting. “The only person who didn’t get a ribbon was Lafie,” Pharoah said later. “That made me feel bad.” Along with the certificates came ribbons. LaJoe was so proud of her children’s accomplishments that she pinned all eight of them to her white sweatshirt.
She paraded around the neighborhood all day with a rainbow of green, purple, white, and red ribbons hanging from her chest; she looked like a decorated war hero.

After the assembly, Pharoah and his mother attended a meeting at which it was announced that Pharoah was one of twenty-five Suder students chosen for Project Upward Bound, a summer school designed to assist minority students in bringing up their math and reading scores. Primarily a program for high school students, this Upward Bound, which operated at the University of Illinois, had in recent years begun to focus some of its efforts on sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders with the hope of following them through their four years of high school, working with them on Saturdays and during the summers.

The Upward Bound staff described the Summer Scholars program and then asked the assembled children what they wanted to be when they grew up. Pharoah knew. A congressman.

“I want to change a lot of rules,” he told the others. “I want to change them and everybody move out of the projects. I’ll pay people to build housing. Let the people who live in the projects live in other houses. Any gang member who has their hat turned, they’d go directly to jail. Stop stealing and stuff. A little kid got to come into a store with their parent or guardian or they can’t come in. They’d probably steal.”

He paused, then added, “If you be a congressman, there be people guarding me so you won’t get hurt. I like that.”

LaJoe and the children got caught up in the warmth and beauty of those first few days of summer. The children shot baskets on the jungle gym. At night, they wandered over to the stadium to watch cars and make a few dollars. Pharoah’s and the triplets’ awards at school had brightened the family’s outlook. LaJoe displayed them on the wobbly shelves in the living room. They offered some promise of a better tomorrow. And everyone was thrilled with Pharoah for being picked to participate in the summer program. Pharoah would come back with tales of the University of Illinois campus that delighted LaJoe. He talked of the footbridges and the big glass buildings and of the students who seemed to be everywhere, always carrying books. Pharoah would tell LaJoe that he planned to attend college there. But it
wasn’t long before LaJoe was rudely reminded of summer’s true character at Horner.

One afternoon, she and Rochelle were walking down Washington Boulevard to a corner store. She waved to two teenage boys she knew who were walking on the other side of the street; both wore red, the Vice Lords’ color, in Disciples’ territory. LaJoe noticed that two children, one no bigger than Pharoah, and a young man were tailing the two teens. They’d duck into alleys and behind the porches of the two-family homes on Washington. LaJoe yelled to the two teens that they were being followed. Then she watched in horror as the man handed a pistol to the little boy who reminded LaJoe of Pharoah in his small size and bobbing gait.

“Go kill the motherfucker,” LaJoe overheard him say. The boy aimed the pistol, his entire body straining just to hold it straight, and opened fire on the two teens.
POW. POW
. LaJoe and Rochelle ducked into the corner store for cover. The two teens ran. They escaped unharmed.

The incident angered and frightened LaJoe. How did that little boy even know whom he was shooting at? All he saw was a couple of people wearing red and their hats turned to the left. From the back, they could have been girls. Later that day, LaJoe ripped the red Louisville cap off Lafeyette’s head and told him he couldn’t wear any hats. No earrings, either, she told him. That was that. She was putting her foot down. That could have been Lafeyette the boy was shooting at.