“What’s this?”
“You’ll see.”
I opened the binder. It had nine basketball
cards inside. Ron Mercer, Magic Johnson… He gave them to me. It was
the last thing he ever
gave anybody. After we left, we started collecting candy. Then we
went to dinner. He went out. He died. Simple as that. I treasure
this binder like it is my brother.
My name is Julian, my nickname is Juju, my
nickname for my nickname is Juju-man. And my nickname for my
nickname for my nickname is Juj. I am 9. I am in fourth grade at a
Montessori school. It is not like schools you watch on TV. I like
it because it is a unique school, and I’d rather be unique than
normal. Normal schools have desks and get tests every day. This
school we get a table with chairs and a work plan.
I like the kids I go to school with, but not
all of them. Some of them are bullies. One of them walks to the
corner, right? My grandma and I passed by, and we saw him with a
bunch of other kids, and their underwears were coming out. I could
tell they were bad by the way they sag their pants and act like
bullies. Becoming gangbangers, that scares kids.
One time I was at school, right? I saw these
kids playing basketball or whatever. This one kid wanted to play,
and they denied him. Simple as that. Like, “No!” Just because the
way he was. No one really likes him, except for me. I didn’t really
do anything to stop it, but I helped him. I told him, “Hey, come
here! Come play with us.” That’s what I did.
I know this for a
fact
. Bullying
starts off with a push, then somebody gets addicted. Then it starts
being a bunch of bullies and being a gang. A mini gang, then
becoming a big gang. Then they get older and become real
gangbangers. So it starts from something small to huge. Either way,
if you become a part of a gang you are just kidding yourself.
I could explain the day Manny got shot like
it was just a moment ago. It was Halloween, and I think I was The
Scream. But I am not a hundred percent sure. That day, I was like,
“Oh my God, it’s Halloween! It’s Halloween! It’s Halloween!” Then
we set sail. Me, my grandma, my mom, my dad and my two cousins went
trick-or-treating, along with Manny and his two sons. Manny was
nothing that year. One person thought he was, what do you call
that? They thought his Halloween costume was a “cute guy.” It was
funny.
One of Manny’s sons had a hole in his bag and
candy would go right down to the sidewalk. Well, some of it stayed
in the bag, but not all of it. It was our trail. We ate dinner. I
don’t remember where, but I remember it was Puerto Rican food. I
had pork chops and stuff like that. We had extra time because the
adults were eating slow, so we started eating some candy. Then we
decided to go home.
My mom said, “Hey, Manny, would you like to
hang out with your friends tonight?”
And Manny was like, “Yeah, sure.”
Then he jerked back. Like, you know the dance
“the jerk”? He went like that, and then he walked away, wearing
blue stripes, black hoodie and a white T-shirt. We were just on the
side of the houses. That was the last time I ever saw him
normal.
We all went home, and we all went to bed: me,
my mom and my dad. Manny went out, and they drove to the gas
station, then
boom, boom.
I heard,
roo-daa-loo
; that
was our old phone call. It just kept calling, calling, calling,
calling, calling, calling.
Dad was like, “What the—” And then he went to
pick it up, and he was like, “Hello?” It was my older brother on
the phone. He was like, “Damian just got shot! Manny, too! Manny,
too!”
Then my dad started yelling, “Tell me what
happened.” Sort of talking deep. I wasn’t sleeping. I was in my
room, lying down, and I heard a bunch of yelling. I started
listening. They went to the hospital, and my uncle came over before
they left. I just saw him looking at the TV. It was scary. And the
next morning, I heard about it. I don’t remember how…I don’t
remember when they told me. All I remember is thinking, “Manny got
shot. … Manny got shot. … Manny got shot
.
”
I was there the last day he was alive. Or the
day he was going to die. I was there the day that they said they
were going to unplug it. To let him go. It’s sad, man. Just
sad.
I heard my mom talking about Manny’s shooter.
The night he shot Manny, he had an argument with somebody; I think
it was his girlfriend. And he said, “Someone is going to die
tonight.” He went in a car, and went around looking in windows of
other cars that people were driving. He pulled out a gun at some
people and they said, “No, no, no, it’s me!” Because it was someone
he knew, someone from the ’hood. He kept going. Then he saw Manny.
Somebody was like, “Look, look, look!”—trying to point to the
shooter
.
Manny was good-looking, so he thought it was a girl
trying to say hi and stuff like that. He smiled at her. He got shot
right there, in the back of the neck.
Pow
. Simple as that.
Makes no sense. Anger, jealousy, greed and bullies. Doesn’t make
any sense. I mean, I don’t understand why. You kill them, for what?
You see them? They dress nice? You shoot them? Really? It is greed
and jealously. A lot of people get greedy. You can’t just shoot him
because you
think
he’s in a gang.
I really didn’t know how bad it was until
afterward. Before Manny got shot, I didn’t really notice there was
violence. I knew there was violence, but not bad like that. Then I
started paying attention and I was like, “What?” I started reading
articles because of my homework:
Forty-nine people got shot this
weekend.28
I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” It gets me so pissed
off. Violence is never the answer. If you want someone’s territory,
buy it. But, either way, you don’t
need
anyone’s territory.
You don’t need money to go into a neighborhood. Like, I could just
drive into Indiana. Do we have to fight over the whole Indiana or
can we just drive right into it? It’s stupid stuff.
Everywhere I go, I always am a little bit of
scared. I’m scared right now. Even when I’m in my own house. When I
go to sleep, I’m scared. Whenever there is a moment of silence, I
am scared. That reminds me. Like, a couple of times at my grandma’s
house, I heard
vroom-vroom
, and I heard yelling and people
arguing. When there is people yelling at each other, that is when
I’m most scared. And I always hear, like, an ambulance and cops
going by non-stop. Like, really? Can there be a day when there is
no violence?
Why are you guys killing each other? It doesn’t
make sense. I mean are they just killing each other for fun? Go out
and play video games about that stuff.
I’m not scared of ever joining a gang. I know
I am smarter than others. I get straight A’s all the time. Why
would I join a gang if my brother died by a gang? I am smarter than
that. I was never a bad person and I don’t want to be a bad person.
I don’t ever want to become bad in any way. Why would you be bad
just to become better than everyone? Kind of like a popularity
contest type thing. I would rather be the most hated kid in America
to
stop violence.
I like to sing and dance. I got that from
Manny. I think I’m better at dancing than singing. I’m like James
Brown. I am not one of those people who just sings. I’m one of
those people who
dances
.
I’d say I am creative, an epic,
epic
gamer and a big dreamer. I’m a big dreamer because every day I come
up with something different. Like, if I’m thinking about Manny,
which I do just about every day, I’m
thinking…thinking…thinking…then
boom
, I think about becoming
a doctor, because a doctor can always make a difference. I want to
do whatever I can to make the world better. You know what? I think
they should stop making guns in the first place. I mean, because
without a gun, the guy can’t shoot nobody. I mean there are people
legally selling guns on the street, right?29 If that is true, I’m
not sure if it is, but if it’s true, why would you give them a
permit for it? Even if only one bad guy got the guns himself, and
said, “I’ll sell these guns…Here.”
Pow, pow, pow, pow
. Like,
really? I mean, I
have
to blame the bad guys, but I
sometimes don’t blame the bad guys. I mean, I don’t 100 percent
blame the bad kids. I blame them for shooting them in the first
place, but I also blame a couple of other people for, like, giving
them the guns and making the guns.
If I could make a law, it would be that
everybody can go into anybody’s neighborhood if they wanted to.
They will have rights. Like, you can’t just say you can’t go in
here because you don’t live here. That’s stupid, that’s why. I
mean, it just doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you stop the whining
and just walk into the neighborhood and don’t be all gangster?
Just walk.
Do you see that picture right there wearing
the Gap sweatshirt? That was me when I was a baby. Me on top of my
brother Manny. You know how brothers are sometimes just brothers?
We had a dream of becoming best friends, too. We were already
friends, but we wanted to become best friends as brothers. One day,
he was downstairs mixing music and I ran down there to tell him to
lower it, because my dad told me to. I went downstairs, and he
said, “We could mix some music, and we should play some Xbox, and
just do it all day.” And I said, “Cool.” That dream never got to
happen. I was crushed. That’s why I say, “Killing
kills
dreams.”
—
Interviewed by Monica Schroeder
Endnotes
28 On the weekend of March 16-18, 2012, a
total of 49 people were shot citywide, 10 fatally. See Ashley
Rueff, Jeremy Gorner and Jason Meisner, “Shooting Death of Girl, 6,
Marks Lethal Weekend,” Chicago Tribune, March 20, 2012.
29 The city outlawed the sale and possession
of handguns in 1982. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the
handgun ban, saying it was in violation of the Second Amendment. In
2012, the city rewrote its firearms ordinance, but gun stores
within city limits remain outlawed. This has not, of course, kept
guns out of the city. Police confiscate an average of about 10,000
firearms each year. See Geoffrey Johnson, “Bullet Proof,” Chicago
Magazine, September 2012, 30.
LIKE WALKING THROUGH
BAGHDAD
DESHON McKNIGHT
Marillac House—a social outreach center for
the poor and the working poor—is located in East Garfield Park on
an inconspicuous side street right off the Eisenhower Expressway.
Established in 1947 by the Daughters of Charity, Marillac
originally served a mostly white clientele. By 1960, however, the
neighborhood had become mostly African-American. In the 1970s and
1980s, poverty and unemployment consumed the area, triggering a
surge of drug and gang activity.
Nineteen-year-old Deshon McKnight, who grew
up in the nearby neighborhood of Austin, sits on a sofa within the
Marillac House waiting room. His mannerisms are polite and
reserved; his tattooed arms seem at odds with his clean-cut style
of dress. His face is young, but his expression is intently
serious, his gaze straight and unwavering. Born into a
gang-affiliated family, Deshon speaks about the dangers of his
neighborhood with deep and mature insight. His words are
unpolished, honest and poetic. Every syllable and inflection feels
deliberate.
What I remember from being little is gunshots
every night. Being in the house before the streetlights come on
‘cause that’s when all the action happens. Don’t stray too far from
the block. It was like my childhood was
contained
. The only
time I would go out, the only time I would get a chance to go
out—our parents had to take us out. Because, like, it wasn’t that
safe to go outside or ride the bikes, or go outside and play
basketball, or play hide-and-go-seek. I never really got a chance
to, like, hang out at the park, play at the park, with all the
other kids. I couldn’t do that. That’s in the enemy’s territory,
and my mom didn’t want anything happening to me. So basically, my
life was playing video games.
When you hear gunshots, the first thing they
tell you is get on the floor. And they cut all the lights off. I
don’t know why they cut all the lights off; I never got that point.
But I understood why to get on the floor, in case a bullet came
through the window. But, like, one day, when I was about 9 or 10,
me and my mom was watching TV in the front room, and we heard
gunshots. So she instantly pushes me on the floor and she runs to
the back to make sure all the other kids on the floor. But while
she was doing that, I creep to the window, and I peek out. And I
just see, like, a guy on this side of the street, and a guy on the
other side of the street, I just see them, like, shooting at each
other. Shooting at each other.
Then I see more guys run out shooting, more
guys from the other side, coming out shooting. Then the police came
on the block—and I just see my older cousin, running. He running
upstairs, and then he get in the hallway, and he fall—because he
got shot in his leg, and he got shot in his ear, and there’s just
blood everywhere. So I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on, but
that shocked me. You see all the blood, you see how much pain he
in, and you like, “This a grown man. He’s right here. He sounds
like he’s crying.” So you don’t want that. You scared. You don’t
know what’ll happen to you if you go outside.
After that, I was just more cautious. I was
suspicious of everybody. I was basically paranoid. I’m still like
that now, but when I was little it was even worse. Because there’s
people that knew my name, that I didn’t know. They know me because
of my parents, so I don’t know if… Is this the enemy talking or one
of my dad’s friends speaking to me? So I would just turn my head
down and act like I don’t hear them.