Authors: Ardella Garland
“Let’s go, my man.”
August in Chicago is nothing to play with. Outside, the blistering white rays were putting a real hurting on everything they touched. Trip and I stood on the shady porch for a couple of minutes trying to get up our courage to venture out farther.
Next door a battle of checkers was going on. Both men were sitting on plastic milk crates, their skin a deep chocolate brown. Both were bald, one by nature, the other by razor. The older man had a neat, ice white beard and he wore blunt-legged khaki shorts and a sleeveless cotton undershirt. As he studied the board, he squeezed the ends of a white terry-cloth towel that was roped around his neck.
His young rival had on long-legged shorts four sizes too big belted as low as they could go on his hips to show off the waistband of his white Calvin Klein briefs. He was shirtless and looked too cool given how hot it was.
Trip spoke to the young brother. “You beatin’, T-Bob?”
T-Bob smiled and touched his chin.
“Don’t you got something to do, Trip?” the elderly man barked. “G’on to it.”
Trip grinned at me and said, “Let’s go!”
Two steps outside of the front gate and both of us were using the back of our hands to wipe away the sweat from our faces. We were only walking three blocks to a corner store but the heat bench-pressing against our bodies slowed us down considerably.
People in the neighborhood watched us walk down the street. The few people sitting outside were stretched out beneath double awnings or large trees.
“Butter… .” Trip pointed at a Xeroxed flyer with his cousin’s picture on it. Handwritten below the picture were the words:
MISSING GIRL
and a brief description of Butter. The flyer was taped to a light pole. Everyone was helping to look for Butter.
“The folks around here must really love Butter.”
“Yep,” Trip responded, then waved at a group of little boys around his age.
They shouted, “Where y’all goin’, Trip?”
“Sto’!”
“Cobs!” one of the boys yelled, the South Side slang for “gimme some.” “Man, cobs on whatever it is you get!”
“You got enough money for ’em? They’re my friends.”
“Sure,” I said and placed my hand on Trip’s shoulder. He shook it off and looked up at me. “Sissy stuff.”
I got the sense that Trip was trying very hard to be a man before his time. “You like living here, Trip? I mean, are you scared sometimes with all the shooting and stuff that goes on?”
“Scared! I ain’t scared of nothing and nobody. Ain’t no sissy walking with you.”
“Trip, it’s not sissy to be afraid. Sometimes it’s smart. Fear can tell you when to stay away from something. Fear can keep you safe sometimes. If you’re afraid of something or somebody, it’s best to get away from it as fast as you can.”
“Sounds sissy to me. I’ve gotta watch out for my mama, grandma, auntie, and Butter.”
“That’s good, and you have to study hard in school, that’s a way of helping, too, making sure you go to college and …”
Trip shrugged, then started throwing punches in the air. “I’ma be a boxer like Holyfield or some of them. I can beat anybody ’round here my size or a little bigger.”
“You still need to hit those books,” I said, and playfully grabbed Trip around the neck. He smiled.
“Say, you know Oprah?” Trip asked. “I wanna have dinner with Oprah—but real food, not that diet stuff she always talkin’ ’bout.”
“No, I don’t know Oprah.” Everybody in Chicago thinks everybody else in TV knows Oprah. “But I can get you tickets to see one of her shows, how about that? When this is all over, how ’bout that, huh? Me, you, Butter … all of us will go, huh?”
That cheered Trip up, and we finally made it to the store. Thank you, Jesus! Trip opened the big white freezer nestled against the tan metal counter and a gush of arctic air made us both moan with exhausted relief.
“I could climb in there now and just go to sleep,” I said.
“Me, too,” Trip agreed. He grabbed a box of Eskimo bars. “Six in here. Umh, there’s Grandma, Auntie Kelly, Zeke, you, and two for me! Get another box for my friends, that’s theirs, okay?”
“Done.”
We left the store, each carrying a box, but just as we cleared the doorway, Trip stopped suddenly. The boy didn’t move and his face drained of color as he clutched the box of Eskimo bars.
“Trip? What is it?”
Then I knelt down and followed his line of vision across the street to an abandoned building. And there I saw what he saw and a question popped into my head as I tried to calm down Trip. Where had I seen that T-shirt before?
I
saw two people in the doorway. One of them wore a black T-shirt with white letters that said
BE
something. Where had I seen that shirt before?
Trip was running toward the doorway, staring straight ahead, not even blinking, clutching the box of Eskimo bars he was holding.
I reached for him and missed. “Trip!”
The two people, a man and a woman, were huddled together, hunched over in the doorway. The wooden beams obstructed their faces by creating a black fan of shade. The woman leaned back to reveal the full lettering on the back of the shirt:
BE NO
. 1 it read.
I reached the doorway a few steps behind Trip, panting as the heat billowed steam from my lungs and sweat dropped down my chin. Then the woman turned and looked out, the sunlight catching her face. It was Trip’s mother, Angel, wearing the T-shirt Butter had won at the spelling contest. She was sitting cross-legged with her head bobbing slowly. Angel was high as a telephone pole.
The man with her had on a torn button-down shirt with a long piece hanging down in the back that was shaped like the closing flap of an envelope. His hipbones jutted out just half a palm’s length beneath the tiny spiral bands of his rib cage. A salty crust of mucus rimmed his nostrils as he periodically looked up and down. He was high, too, but apparently not as waxed as Angel.
“Why you gotta be wearin’ Butter’s favorite shirt, doin’ your dirty business?” Trip yelled at his mother.
Startled, Angel’s hands shook and she looked up at Trip and moaned groggily. “G’on Trip!”
The man turned toward Trip and said firmly, “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
That’s when I saw the eyes that I knew, the ones that had made me giggle with my girlfriends at the pep rally over how cute he was… . The ones that had looked understanding but disappointed when I refused to cut class and go home with him for my first sexual experience.
“A.J.?” I asked. He looked so bad, my heart ached for him. A.J. used to be
fine
and the smartest boy on the block. “A.J., it’s Georgia.”
“Hey, girl,” he summoned up after he looked at me for a long time without blinking. “How’d you get out of the TV set?”
I winced. “A.J., what-what …”
“I’m cool. I’m just hanging out here with Angel. Everything is cool.”
Trip was now begging his mother, “Let’s go home, Mama! Let’s go home!”
Angel was shaking her head no. A.J. spoke to me: “Georgia, I see you. You’ve done good. Mama watches you all the time.”
“Thanks, A.J. What can I do to help you, huh?”
“Mama, get up and let’s go, Mama!”
“Give me some money,” A.J. said. “I don’t have nothing.”
“I can’t give you any money, A.J., but here, take my card and if you want to get some help for this drug thing, call me. You’re better than this, A.J.”
A.J. took the card reluctantly.
Good, there’s hope
. Then he began picking his teeth with it. I dropped my eyes.
At first Angel only seemed to see Trip, and then her gaze included me, and her face melted into this mass of hatred. Trip backed away and stood directly in front of me. I felt his back against my stomach. The box of Eskimo bars I held cracked, and I could feel their coolness through the paper box.
“Don’t you look at me!” Angel yelled at me.
But how could I not look? Her face was ugly with the scorn it was showing, uglier than any of the keloid tissue covering her drug-scarred arms.
How could I not look? She had Trip’s eyes. And was wearing Butter’s favorite shirt, which she had won at the spelling contest.
How could I not look? Even though I’d done stories, been on the street and knew I was no novice, the emotion and fear, anger and helplessness of this woman was more real and more personal to me than anything I’d ever reported.
A.J. touched Angel’s arm. “Quiet, baby. Quiet down.” But she yelled at me again, “Don’t look at me!”
The gooey, sticky wetness of the melting ice cream pressed against my hands. I started pulling Trip away, backing out of the doorway.
“That’s right, take my baby on home.”
I pulled him away and forced him to walk down the street. “Forget it. Let’s just go, Trip.”
Trip mumbled as we walked away, “Messin’ up Butter’s stuff.”
And that’s all he said as we walked back to the house. Our silence was as dense as the heat around us. I looked back twice at A.J. This man was wasted, his life off course.
I looked down at Trip and wondered about what he could be. I didn’t want the same ugly thing to happen to him. I wanted to help Trip but I knew he wouldn’t accept that from me. I didn’t know him well enough right now to really reach him.
“Hey, man, cobs!” the group of boys shouted at us as we neared the house. “We already said it, cobs!”
Trip played them off cold-bloodedly. He just kept walking.
I handed the boys the box of Eskimo bars I was carrying. They tore it open and one of the boys yelled, “They busted!”
“Shut up before I bust your head!” Trip yelled over his shoulder as he went through the gate and back into the house.
I stayed a few steps behind, trying to give Trip his mental and physical space.
Zeke was all set up for the interview, his lights in place. “What’s wrong with Mighty Mouse?” Zeke asked as Trip blew right past him.
“Nothing, just the heat,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell Trip’s business. If Trip wanted outsiders to know, let him tell them. Miss Mabel and Kelly looked at me; they knew. I didn’t have to say. Neither did Trip.
“Well.” Zeke shrugged. “I’m about ready to do this interview. Let’s go. Say, you didn’t bring your cameraman any ice cream?” Zeke turned around and yelled toward the kitchen where Trip had disappeared. “Hey, kid, how about sharing some of that ice cream?”
Zeke checked his lights again and when Trip didn’t bring the ice cream he asked me, “Get me a bar, would you, Georgia?”
Zeke liked to be catered to and because he was such a good shooter nearly all the reporters obliged him. I went into the kitchen and Trip … was gone. I opened the back door and looked out. He was nowhere to be seen.
The box of Eskimo bars was on the counter. I grabbed the box,went out to the front room, and gave Zeke one; Miss Mabel and Kelly said no thank you. I did the interview, asking the two women how they felt now that Butter had been missing for three days. I asked about their hopes and their dreams. I wanted the audience not only to know Butter but to get a feel for her family as well. We set up a signal in the truck, beamed back my interview plus the video and the cop interview from the ride-along that Manning had done.
I’d have everything that everyone else had except maybe a neighbor sound bite, a quick quote. No big deal. And you know what? I decided to bag it all. Just forget it.
Next
. I called the producer and told him that I wanted him to do the firebombing story as a long voice-over to a sound bite from the police before tossing to me live. That would be the transition for me to do a live interview with Miss Mabel and Kelly from inside Butter’s own room.
I didn’t want to go live from outside the house as I knew everyone else was doing. Even though Channel 8’s primary audience is 180 degrees different from Butter’s family—mostly older white viewers with money—I wanted to let them know that Butter could be
their
missing child. I wanted them to know that a poor African-American grandmother and mother hurt and worry over a missing child just as much as well-to-do parents like the college professor and his wife.
This story wasn’t just about gangs in the ghetto snatching an eyewitness. To Channel 8’s core audience, that’s something that happens to
those people
. But a grandmother worrying about her little girl? A mother looking for a child whom she can’t find? Those things hit home with everyone.
That’s what television news should be. But TV news is getting away from the guts of a story, the people, the human side of a story. That’s ground zero. And that’s where I decided to be. I was going there.
Zeke bitched awhile about laying all that cable from the truck into the house. But he figured a way to go through the window to shorten the distance. I called over the little boys I had given the ice cream to, gave them three dollars apiece and told them not to let anyone go near the truck while I was on-air.
Zeke took the camera off the tripod that holds it steady during a sit-down interview. I told him to shoulder it and just go with us. I had him put clip mikes on Miss Mabel’s and Kelly’s collars so they could move around with me.
The director back at the station told me that my hit time, the exact time I was to air during the five o’clock show was five-0-one-ten. One minute and ten seconds after five. I told Kelly and Miss Mabel not to be nervous and to talk about Butter and move around the kids’ room. I told them to be natural, to just talk to me as they had been doing all day. I prayed that this would work.