by Elly Fishman
This morning, the group passes McDonald’s just before 7:30 a.m. If the boys pick up their pace, they can still make it to Sullivan for the free breakfast. Belenge and his friends are among the 90 percent of Sullivan students whose family incomes are low enough to qualify them for free or reduced-cost school meals. Usually, the boys arrive minutes before one of the cafeteria women rolls their mobile cart back toward the industrial kitchen. Belenge doesn’t care much for the free breakfast. It usually comes with a limp, lukewarm Eggo waffle or English muffin paired with fruit and small carton of milk. In any case, Belenge prefers not to eat during the school day. He reasons that the more he eats, the hungrier he gets. In Nyarugusu, where food was always in short supply, Belenge would eat only one midday meal. He’s grown accustomed to going hours on end without food.
Belenge’s first class is English, his favorite. He’s taken a liking to his teacher, Annmarie Handley. After that first week of waiting in the library while the school worked on his schedule, Belenge was placed in Annmarie’s English language learner 1-B class. That section was tailored to students who speak very little English. Annmarie’s classroom sits directly across from the library and about a hundred yards from the front doors. Even if Belenge arrives late to school, he can go from door to chair in seconds.
Sullivan is an old school, and in Annmarie’s classroom the vintage school desks are made from blonde wood and sturdy metal legs. The seating chart that Annmarie gave to everyone on the first day put Belenge between two Rohingya classmates. When Annmarie asks the students to work in groups, Belenge communicates with these neighbors through the Google Translate app. The classroom is covered in flags and posters from countries all over the world. When Belenge first walked in, he immediately spotted the blue, green, and black stripes of Tanzania as well as the red, yellow, and green of the Congolese flag.
The school day passes slowly. When the bell rings at 3:04 p.m., Belenge rushes out the door. He plants himself just beyond the school’s front steps. He knows he won’t be allowed to stand here for long. Antoine Livingston, the dean of students at Sullivan, never lets students linger. Belenge stands on the sidewalk where his classmates gather in clusters. Just a few feet away, a group of girls, their hijabs an array of primary colors, climb into a car parked on the opposite side of the street. Mariah walks by and nods to the girls. She’s cordial, but less than friendly. Up the block, several students make their way toward Devon Avenue. Shahina, and her closest friend, Aishah, are among them. The boys walk with a pronounced strut, exaggerated by their loose, topstitched jeans and low-hanging backpacks, while Shahina and Aishah shuffle behind, their arms linked.
While students newer to America tend to stick together, and to their native languages, those who have lived in Chicago longer boast broader groups of friends. One Syrian junior, a star of the wrestling team, mills around with his teammates, a crew made up of a mix of refugee and American-born students. The boys huddle around a cell phone that plays a You-Tube compilation of wrestling hip throws. Impressed by the athlete’s acumen, the boys release a collective howl. A few feet over, a senior, whose unofficial uniform is a denim jacket, well-worn T-shirt, and frayed but fitted jeans, holds his guitar as he chats with his bandmates. He arrived in Chicago four years ago after fleeing Myanmar when the military tried to recruit his father and older brother as battlefield porters in the country’s civil war. He laughs with Lauren, a Black American senior with short, tight curls and a warm, mezzo voice. Lauren participates in a variety of school clubs: Math, Newspaper, Magic the Gathering, Cooking, and the National Honor Society among others. The school rock band, though, despite the complicated web of crushes and broken hearts, remains her favorite. As a self-described outsider, Lauren finds that the band gives her a sense of confidence and place. Plus, she likes that the group counts refugee and immigrant students among its members. She chose Sullivan over better ranked selective-enrollment high schools because of the diversity. Behind Lauren, Alejandro, who always heads directly home, keeps his head down as he slips past a group of boys huddling at the corner. They exchange handshakes with guys Belenge doesn’t recognize. Antoine Livingston’s commanding baritone directs the boys, “Keep it moving, guys.”
Belenge smells a coming rain in the air. He doesn’t mind. Getting a little wet in hard-paved Chicago hardly compares to suffering the wet, gooey sludge brought by a heavy rainfall in Nyarugusu. When Felix and Asani arrive at the sidewalk’s edge, Belenge hurries them along.
“Where have you been?” he asks in Swahili, agitated. “Let’s go.”
When the boys land at the Birchwood Avenue Apartments, they smell sombe, a cassava-leaf stew that is cooked with palm oil, eggplants, and peanuts. Children, some barefoot, others in oversized shoes, run from room to room. Toys and stuffed animals dot the floor, but they aren’t always the favorite playthings. There are small balls of tinfoil and cloth that the children love to toss back and forth across the room. The tinny sounds of Tanzanian pop music playing from one cell phone speaker clashes with the loud canned laughter of Mr. Bean coming from another. Mama Sakina, the family and neighborhood matriarch, stands in the small kitchen hovered over the stove. Her turquoise zebra print and orange and red Kitenge cloth brightens the room. Her four-month-old baby, strapped against her back, bounces while she rolls cornmeal for fufu the Congolese way.
Felix and Belenge greet Mama Sakina politely, then retreat to their bedroom. Plopping themselves down on the bed, they each cue up a FIFA game on their phones. For all the distractions America can offer, nothing matches the enthusiasm for soccer the boys brought with them. Soccer was, and remains, their Hollywood, baseball, football, and basketball all in one. In the digital versions, Felix always plays Real Madrid while Belenge prefers Arsenal. For Belenge, no one stands up to German player Mesut Özil. The two boys have a committed rivalry, though Belenge knows Felix remains the better player. The two play for the rest of the afternoon.
At 6 p.m., Felix gets a phone call from Esengo, his friend and fellow Congolese refugee. Can Felix help him with a pencil portrait for his art class? Felix is a skilled and disciplined artist. He spends entire days working on his portraiture. Felix’s drawings remind Belenge of photographs. On Instagram, where Felix posts his work, he gets dozens of comments filled with fire and heart emojis.
Felix leaves for Esengo’s apartment. The walk north will take him fifteen minutes. Belenge pauses the FIFA game and switches over to WhatsApp, the messaging platform preferred by the Africans he stays in touch with. He scrolls through a series of recent conversations. Belenge, a clotheshorse, likes to share photographs of his outfits. In one, Belenge pairs a white tuxedo jacket with black lapels and a white bowtie with a pair of marbled black-and-white cowboy boots. It’s a low-angle power shot with Belenge staring down on the lens with a serious, tight frown. In another, he wears a fire-engine-red suit atop faux suede penny loafers accented by gold medallions. He stares down at the sidewalk, his head casting a shadow beneath him. One such photo showed Belenge after he broke his leg during an indoor volleyball game his first winter in Chicago. He asked everyone who entered his hospital room to take his picture. He wanted “all of Africa” to see him in the American hospital on an American hospital bed, leg propped and wrapped in tidy plaster.
Belenge spends the next two hours in the bedroom texting with a rotation of teenage girls whom he met online. He likes to flirt. He sends them episodes from the YouTube comedy show, Mafundi, about a plumber with big dreams starring one of Belenge’s favorite young Kenyan actors, Jaymondy. He will also send love songs by Bongo Flava Tanzanian pop singer Diamond Platnumz. His favorite song, “The One,” a profession of love, is also one of Platnumz most popular. He might also share Platnumz’s song “Marry You,” which he recorded with Neyo, the American singer known for his sweet, dulcet singing. Belenge, who sings in his church choir, has sung the song so many times he has it memorized. Maybe one day he’ll sing it to a girl himself.
Just past 9 p.m., Felix returns home. Belenge
sees his friend is frustrated.
“Esengo wasn’t home,” Felix says in Swahili, plopping himself into a chair. “I waited for two hours. He never came back.”
Felix explains that he called Esengo when he arrived at his friend’s apartment. Esengo’s sister had let Felix in. He was wet from walking in the rain. When Esengo answered the phone he told Felix that he was headed to Walgreens because his father asked him to get some juice. The pharmacy was only a few blocks from Esengo’s apartment, so Felix figured it wouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes.
“Maybe he went somewhere else,” suggests Belenge.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Later that night, as the boys begin to drift in and out of sleep, Felix’s phone buzzes. He holds it up to his face examining the number. When he answers, Belenge can’t quite decipher his friend’s expression in the glow of his phone screen. Felix is quiet and stoic and doesn’t emote much.
“Felix, this is Joseph, Esengo’s father,” Belenge hears the man explain in Swahili. “Have you seen Esengo? I haven’t heard from him since I sent him to the store earlier today.”
“No, I haven’t,” says Felix. “You should call the police. Say you lost someone. Describe maybe what clothes he was wearing and how tall he is. Tell them he’s been gone all night. Maybe they can help.”
Belenge sits up. He feels pangs of fear punching against his chest. Like Felix, Belenge learned from teachers at Sullivan that calling 911 was the first step in an emergency. He can hear Joseph crying.
“Esengo has never done anything like this before,” he says.
“Don’t cry,” Felix says, trying to reassure him. “The police can be a big help. They can help find Esengo.”
Belenge’s entire body tells him something terrible has happened to Esengo.
A little over a week ago, when Belenge was walking his usual route home, a group of boys, who he recognized from Sullivan, surrounded him just before crossing onto Clark Street. One of the boys, barely taller than Belenge, started speaking to him in English. Belenge froze. He wasn’t used to talking with his American-born classmates. The sophomore rarely interacted with classmates outside of the ELL population. In school, new refugee students only mixed with the rest of the school population in a select number of classes: art, gym, and music. There, activities like volleying a ball and learning to play a simple song offered a bridge for Belenge. Outside of those spaces, however, Belenge had trouble tracking conversations in English.
While Belenge couldn’t understand the boys’ words, he recognized the threatening tone. Belenge, who had his bike with him, gripped the handlebars as the group inched closer. Lifting his bike so it stood straight up on the back wheel, Belenge started shouting at them in Swahili. The gesture startled the boys just enough that Belenge managed to push his way between two of the boys and pedal the rest of the way home.
The following day at Sullivan, Belenge noticed one of the same boys glaring at him from across the lunchroom. Belenge asked one of the school’s security staff stationed at the doors if he could leave and go to the library. The man told him he needed a pass to leave the lunchroom before the period ended. Belenge understood, but he didn’t have a pass. He returned to his table, sliding onto the attached thin blue bench. He pulled out his phone and didn’t look up again until he heard the bell ring.
A few days later, Asani told Belenge that he and Esengo had been chased after school. Asani reported to his older brother that the two had been walking through Touhy Park when they were approached by four boys. Esengo, who spoke more English than Asani, confronted them. Then Esengo started to run. He only made it half a block before one of the boys grabbed him and clocked him in the face. But before the boy could land a second punch, Esengo managed to scramble away. By that point, Asani was running, too. Asani didn’t stop running until he reached Mama Sakina’s apartment on Birchwood Avenue.
The two incidents scared the brothers. But more than a week had passed since they were approached. Belenge figured the worst was behind him. But now, Belenge feels certain Esengo’s disappearance is related.
Just past midnight. Felix gets another call. This time, it’s Esengo’s younger sister. By now, everyone has emerged from their bedrooms. Several neighbors, some clad in their pajamas, others still in their uniforms from their late-night shifts, have come over and stationed themselves around the living room.
“We found Esengo,” she says over speakerphone. Her brother had been found at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. He’d been shot.
Mama Sakina, on the couch cradling her baby, cries out.
Esengo’s sister continues to explain that Esengo cannot speak. A bullet had collapsed his left lung. They’ll have to wait for more information.
3
OCTOBER
Matt Fasana
Matt Fasana, Sullivan’s assistant principal, arrives at school earlier than usual on Monday morning, October 16. Friday’s shooting has left him with a pit in his stomach. He spent the weekend turning over the news, replaying the scene in his mind.
The forty-year-old had been sitting on his couch when he received a text from Chad on the night of October 13. He had just queued up the NBC drama, This Is Us, when his phone dinged.
One of our students has been shot. Living. Critical condition.
“Shit,” Matt said, the word slipping out.
“What’s wrong?” his wife asked, looking out from the kitchen where she was preparing her sugar-free, gluten-free, and what Matt considers “fun-free” lunch for the following day.
“One of our kids got shot.”
“Shit.”
Matt’s cell phone dinged again. Another text from Chad.
The student’s name is Esengo.
_______
New information about the shooting has trickled in over the last forty-eight hours. According to a police report generated in the days following the shooting, fifteen-year-old Esengo emerged from the Walgreens pharmacy on Friday evening and noticed two young men standing in front of the store entrance. When the two boys called out to Esengo, he ran. He sprinted through the gangway and zigzagged through the neighborhood. As he turned into a nearby alley, one boy fired several rounds of 9-millimeter bullets. One of them struck Esengo in the back, piercing his upper-left scapula and lung. With blood beginning to soak through his multiple layers, Esengo managed to run to a busy street corner where he collapsed on the sidewalk. A woman standing outside the nearby Pockets Express noticed the boy fall. When she approached him, he looked up at the stranger.
“Help,” he whispered, barely audible.
When the emergency medical technicians brought Esengo to St. Francis Hospital, a small pool of blood remained on the corner where he fell. At the hospital, the boy was listed as in critical condition. His left lung had collapsed. Indeed, doctors at the first emergency room that received him transferred him to a bigger, tertiary care hospital that handles harder cases. There, he was sent immediately into surgery where they removed blood from his lungs and the bullet from his upper-left back. After surgery, Esengo was reported in critical, but stable, condition.
When the detectives questioned Esengo at the hospital, he wrote his responses on paper as he struggled to speak. Before he was shot, Esengo moved with an air of confidence. He was not intimidated by the crowded hallways or classmates who towered over him. He was stubborn and headstrong and often played leader among his friends. But as he lay in the sterile, bright hospital room, pain, fear, and confusion took hold.
At the hospital, everything Esengo reported was filtered through translators. When Esengo’s telling eventually reached Matt, one piece of information particularly alarmed the assistant principal: Esengo claimed he was beat up by a group of Sullivan students just a few days before he was shot.
Pushing back in his office chair, Matt pulls up an email from Chad. The note, which Chad sent late the previous evening, outlines an After Action Review, or AAR. Chad learned this technique, a planning and discussion model used by
the military in the wake of a destabilizing event—a bombing, for example—while working at Harper High School on the city’s South Side. At Harper, gun violence permeated the school. The email outlines the basic facts of the event and Chad’s short- and long-term plans to address it:
Student Review: Esengo, a Congolese refugee and freshman at Sullivan High School.
Crisis Incident: On Friday, October 13. Shot at Ridge and Touhy.
Condition of Victim: Esengo is currently being treated at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital for a collapsed lung.
The plan includes sending Sarah and Josh, the social worker at Sullivan who works with refugees and their families, to visit Sullivan’s ELL classrooms where they are to discuss the shooting with students. Matt and Antoine Livingston are to help the Chicago Police Department with its investigation.
In recent years, Rogers Park, like much of the city, has turned into a complicated mix of block-level gang territories run by young men who have splintered off from the long-standing “super” gangs such as Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords. Kids who have spent their lives navigating the city have intimate knowledge of shifting gang activity. Like all neighborhood schools, Sullivan has students who affiliate with local gangs. Passing periods in the hallways include handshakes and hand symbols, but these are intricate, complicated codes difficult to decipher at first pass. Such gestures also exist among a sea of private languages that unfold inside Sullivan. Each time the bell rings, students stream into the hallways. Boys race toward the cafeteria as they tug on one another’s backpacks. Young couples find hallway nooks where they whisper private messages in each other’s ears. Class comedians loudly quote snippets from viral videos and employ creative jabs to poke fun at their teachers. Friends challenge one another to impromptu flossing and Benny Whip dance competitions while others pose for photos, each one meticulously edited to blurred-pore perfection. All while Sullivan’s six full-time security staff belt out “Get to class” over the crowds. How is it then, Matt wonders, that refugee teenagers, new to the country and culture, are getting pulled into a violent web?
