Esther:
We was a very tight-knit
family. We didn’t allow them to run the streets. If we’d go to
Walmart, they were there. If we went away, we did a whole family
thing for the weekend. If we go to Florida, they all went. And I’m
talking about 18 to 20 kids. For real. I’m telling you, we turned
some heads. People would say, “Did you actually have all these
kids?” I’d say, “It’s a long story.”
The kids always played so much. Some tears
over little things, but for the most part, it was a lot of
laughter. A lot of laughter.
Juan:
Of course, it took years for the
other kids to be close to Kendrick.
Esther:
‘Cause Kendrick was ripping
everybody off. He’d get their stuff—shoes, clothes, iPods, cell
phones, whatever he could find. And he’d stand there and say, “No,
I ain’t got it. I ain’t got it.” And later on he’d say, “Yeah, I
took it. And I sold it.”
Juan:
He was a good-hearted person. He
was the only one who would volunteer to help, like cutting the
grass. Only problem was, he just couldn’t keep his hands to
himself. If he’d see something he wanted, he believed that it was
his.
Esther:
We’d talk to him constantly
about this. He’d go to school; he’d do a petty theft. He’d go in
and out of court, in and out of the juvenile system.
Juan:
When he went to court, they just
kept giving him a smack on the hand and letting him go. So I went
to court, and I asked the judge to give him a couple of weeks up
there in juvenile detention and let him see where he was headed.
The judge gave him two weeks. Kendrick didn’t like it, but I did
what I thought was best.
He got back out, and took somebody’s gym
shoes at school, so he went right back in that same day. So he was
there for, like, three months. And then, when he got out, he was
like, “That’s it, I’m not doing nothing else. I’m turning it
around, I just want a job.” And for those 10 days he was out, he
actually started going to school.
Esther:
Every morning, from the time
he got out, he was sending me texts—“I love you, I love
you”—throughout the day. He was saying, “Mom, I love you,” every
morning before he left out the door. That specific morning, he was
late. He’s never late for school. So I said, “Why don’t you just
stay home? It’s after eight, you’re supposed to be at school at
seven.” He said, “I can’t, Mom. I got to go to school.”
I got a text that day from him at school,
saying, “I love you.” And I texted him back. I said, “Why are you
telling me you love me so much? Are you okay?” He said, “Yeah, I’m
okay.”
Three texts that day, the day he was
murdered.
Esther:
That afternoon, we was all at
home. And I had just walked away from the computer and went
upstairs. My daughter came screaming up the stairs and hollering
that Kendrick was dead. And I ran down the stairs, and she said
Carnell had just called her and he was crying so bad, saying that
Kendrick is on the ground dead.
Apparently, Kendrick was walking these
younger boys home, because one of the boys had an altercation with
another boy, and he was afraid. So Kendrick said, “Okay, I’ll walk
you home.” They never made it.
I guess when this 21-year-old shot them, he
shot the boys first, then he shot Kendrick. He chased them down in
a car. Kendrick was running for his life when he was killed. He was
protecting the other boy. Protecting him. Some of the kids saw that
Kendrick hid behind a dumpster, and then, when the shooter came
back, he tried to run. He didn’t make it far.
Juan:
I left and went to the area
where they said he was shot at. But police had it blocked like two
or three blocks each way, so you really couldn’t see him. They
wouldn’t let me in to identify the body or nothing. It wasn’t until
8 o’clock that night, and the reporter from the
Chicago
Defender
68 was at the house. He called the morgue for me. Then,
the next day I went down and identified him. The police never did
come to the house and say, “Okay, that is him.”
Esther:
It was all over the news.
Juan:
Oh, yeah, they swarmed our
house. For days.
Esther:
Two weeks later, I opened his
death certificate in the mail. It looked just like a birth
certificate. But it said “death certificate,” and Kendrick’s name
was on it. It stopped me for a while. I sat on the couch and looked
at it.
Esther:
The same day Kendrick’s death
certificate got to the house, Carnell was killed. He was killed
around 11:30 at night, after going to a party.
Juan:
He was shot. He actually made a
phone call to our oldest daughter...
Esther:
‘Cause they was really, really
close.
Juan:
...to tell her he got shot. And,
I guess, he was calling out for help...
Esther:
He was trying to talk...
Juan:
But he couldn’t talk, ‘cause he
got shot in the back...
Esther:
She couldn’t hear him...
Juan:
Well, he got shot multiple
times, but...
Esther:
Both of them were shot
multiple times.
Juan:
It was just unbelievable. You
know: not one, but two children? I just think I was in a daze for a
while, not even believing that it’s really happening. I haven’t
grieved yet, I don’t think. I haven’t even really cried yet.
Now, when I do my prayer at night, I pray for
everybody, even them. Then, I have to think, “Oh, wait a minute,
they’re not here no more.”
Esther:
God was really holding me,
keeping me, sustaining me during it. I did break down, when I was
at the computer a few weeks later, looking at their pictures on the
Internet. I’m still finding pictures that people are posting of
Carnell and Kendrick. Carnell was so smart. He was an honor roll
student; he stayed in “Who’s Who” every year. He won scholarships;
there’s pictures of him with Mayor Daley when he earned a
scholarship. Carnell was prom king, president of his class at Bowen
High School. He had dreams, expectations, he desired so much out of
life. He wanted to be a judge and make it to the Supreme Court. It
doesn’t make sense. Him being so young, he didn’t get to accomplish
the dreams that he wanted.
Esther:
I still don’t understand
whatever happened. I know there was something, because Kendrick,
three days before he was killed, three boys saw Kendrick on the
street. And they came up on him and they hit Kendrick in the back
of the head with a brick. And I know Kendrick told Carnell about
what happened. They left the house together, and they came back
later. I asked him, “Do you need to call the police?” “No, Mama,
don’t call the police.” So I don’t know if they went and made
matters worse.
From what I gathered from Carnell after
Kendrick was killed, he said, “Mama, the police knows, but they
wouldn’t do anything to stop it. I don’t trust nobody.”
I’m not going to say that I’m blind, that
they were perfect. I think they might have got involved in some
stuff, and God saw it, and they knew better, ‘cause they knew the
Word. I’m praying. I’m hoping that they made it to heaven. I just
love them so much, and I don’t want to think anything else outside
of that, but I’ve got to be real.
Juan:
At first, when it happened, I
tried to blame myself, you know. But then I have to think back:
“Well, they was raised, they knew better.” I had to let them go
‘cause they was grown. I can’t keep them with me every minute and
watch over them.
Esther:
I guess I never thought it
would happen with them. They were very active in church. Carnell
preached in church. Kendrick was doing the audio control of the PA
system. They were also on the young men’s drill team, and on the
hip-hop praise team. I had heard how it happened to other parents.
But you never, ever think that it will happen at your door.
It’s still hard. We was used to seeing our
kids out playing football and basketball in the streets, and
there’d be so many of the kids come together. And every time I look
out there now, there’s two vacant places.
The house is real dreary looking. It feels
like sometimes you can’t breathe in the house. You just want to
pack up and leave, and never come back. We’ve been talking about
moving to Florida for a while. I love Florida. It takes your mind
away from here. I always want to have the memories in my heart, but
I don’t want to keep looking.
Juan:
One of the kids from the first
set we fostered found us after Kendrick and Carnell were killed. We
were saying, “We don’t think we’re going to do this no more.” And
she said, “Oh, no. You all gotta do this. If it weren’t for you
all, we wouldn’t be the way we are.”
Esther:
She said, “You made me the
woman that I am today. And my sisters. I got to give honor where
honor is due. Please don’t, don’t let kids like us go.” It was a
blessing to hear that.
Juan:
Our youngest is 17. When you’re
used to be in a house with 21 kids, and now it’s getting down to
zero almost, it’s kind of hard. We’re definitely going to be foster
parents for some more kids.
Esther:
I’m going to Florida. That’s
what God wants me to do now. I’m going to open up a church in
Florida. But I think that God would eventually like me to come back
and open a church in Chicago, too, because the need for the youth
is heavy here. They need help.
—
Interviewed by Lisa Applegate
Endnotes
66 Jeffery Manor—which is sometimes spelled
“Jeffrey Manor”—went from an overwhelmingly white area to an
overwhelmingly black one in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
According to author Jason DeParle, “The first black family in
Jeffrey Manor encountered a burning cross.” See Jason DeParle,
American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End
Welfare (New York: Viking Books, 2004), 44-46.
67 Established by the legendary social
reformer Jane Addams in 1898, Hull House was the nation’s most
influential settlement house—an institution that provided community
services to underprivileged areas. In recent years, its
largest mission was to provide services for foster children.
Declining revenues forced Hull House to close for good in 2012. See
Liam Ford and Kate Thayer, “Hull House Association to Shut Door,”
Chicago Tribune, Jan. 22, 2012.
68 Founded in 1905, the Chicago Defender
quickly became one of the most
important African-American newspapers in the United States. In
recent years,
it has faced declining revenues and staff cuts.
When a Bullet Enters a
Body
NANCY L. JONES
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office is
located in the Illinois Medical District, west of downtown Chicago.
A large white building, the Medical Examiner’s Office is the
third-busiest in the country, processing 4,500 to 5,500 cases per
year. Anybody who dies in an unnatural, unusual or suspicious
way—suicide, homicide or accidental death, for instance—is brought
in.
Victims’ families or friends, who come in to
identify the body, enter through tinted doors. A woman sits behind
a protective, glass window where people check in before identifying
a body. After they fill out the required paperwork, they
are taken into a small room with a wide-screen television. In the
morgue,
the victim is placed underneath a camera attached to the ceiling.
The face is displayed for families or friends on the television
screen, which is how they make the identification.
Until July of 2012, when she retired as Cook
County’s chief medical examiner, the office was run by Dr. Nancy L.
Jones. During an extensive interview, conducted several months
before she stepped down, she offered a tour of the morgue. A petite
woman with fading red hair, she spoke with assurance and carried
herself with confidence.
Here is our cooler. You okay with this?
We can store up to 300 bodies in here.
Anybody who is dying from anything other than a natural disease
process has to be brought into our office to be examined and have a
death certificate issued by us.
These two bodies here—gang violence. Well,
actually—do you see the arms? See the wrists? This could well be a
suicide.
My first autopsy was a man in his 50s who
died of alcoholism. I was in residency at the University of
Chicago, and the mental preparation starts in anatomy lab when
you’re working on your cadaver. Although, with a cadaver, it’s a
lot easier to separate because they smell so much like chemicals
and the tissue is hard—it’s like working on a plastic doll.
That first autopsy was very hard, both
emotionally and physically. It took a few minutes for me to just
make the first incision with the scalpel blade. You don’t realize
how difficult it is to actually make that incision through human
skin. Human skin is pretty tough. It requires a lot more pressure
than you think, but it also requires a lot more mental stamina—at
least the first time you do it.
The problem was that I was focusing too much
on the fact that this was a human being. But once I made that first
incision, the scientist part of me took over. I did it, I dictated
it, and that was the end of it. You cannot dwell on these cases.
You can’t think about it.
The way we deal with what we do is very
similar to the way the police deal with what they do. In the
autopsy room when you’re doing the examination, you talk about
other things. Part of the separation process and part of
maintaining your sanity is actually carrying on conversations about
other things. It’s a survival instinct.
Nobody likes doing children.
Nobody
likes doing children. One of the things that makes us nervous is
when the economy starts to go bad, because we tend to see a lot
more infant deaths. We’re not sure why. We’re hoping they’re not
smothering or neglecting their babies. When the economy started
turning a couple of years ago, we had a little uptick in the number
of babies we were seeing, which was hard.