by Miles Harvey
When Julian’s mother, Myrna Roman, tells the story of the murder and its aftermath, tears fill her eyes as Julian jumps in to console her. Afterward, the energetic and articulate boy settles in the kitchen. Occasionally breaking his story to hum or draw or play with a tiny toy skateboard, Julian begins to discuss life without Manny.
Can I show you something? It’s in my backpack. You’ll probably think it is just a binder, but I will tell you the story. I know I kind of doodled on it, but I will always, always, always treasure this binder. This is the last thing Manny gave me on the day he died.
Manny was like “Hey Juj!”—he called me Juj that time—“Come here! Come here!” I said, “What’s up?” And he was like, “Here.”
“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.
I got a gun when I was 13. The chiefs of the block, the upper generals of the block, they buy the guns. And as soon as you walk up there on the street, they gonna tell you that you going to need one. They say “You protected?” And you be like, “No” and they be like, “Hold up” and they give you their gun, and they’ll go get another one. It’s that simple.
I don’t have a gun anymore, but I used to keep it in a shoebox. Or, then I had got me a tackle-box, like fish tackle-box, and I put a lock on it because I know my little brothers come in my room to play. And I would slide it under the far end of my bed, and I’d throw some dirty clothes on it or something, to make it look just like my room’s junky.
I was basically dragged into gangbanging. Because if you related to this person, and they in a gang, their enemies are going to assume that you’re in a gang, too. Like, so, you get forced into it. You have no choice. You got to protect yourself somehow. You gotta…if you out there by yourself, if you not claimed by a gang…basically, that gang is not going to help you. If this other gang attacks you, because they think you in a gang, you out there by yourself. You’re out there alone.
The area I live in has always been rough. That violence—everything just got out of hand. The streets aren’t really safe no more, like there’s more gun violence, more gang violence, drug violence. People getting beaten half to death—or beaten to death. This side of the street don’t like that side of the street. I don’t know why, it’s just been like that all this time.
When I walk at night, it’s like walking through Baghdad or something. You don’t know when somebody might pop out or shoot at you. I was standing, and the streetlights all got cut off for some reason—every now and then they get cut off. When that happens, that’s when everybody starts shooting.
One time, somebody shot in my grandma’s house and a bullet missed two inches from my head. Hit the couch pillow. Another time, when I was 19 years old, I was at my house, and my mom was around the corner at my grandmother’s house. I was in the house playing a game. I heard the gunshots, but they sound far away, so I can’t really tell where they coming from. So I’m thinking, they could probably be coming from over there by my grandma’s block. So I’m like, “Nobody’s really getting to it, so what could have happened?” As I’m walking up the street, I see one of my friends and I ask him, “Did you hear some gun
shots coming from this direction?” He was like, “Yeah, they was shooting on your grandma’s block.” So as I was walking down there, I was thinking in my head, “Please, nobody hurt. Nobody shot.”
But it was my mom. She was just sitting on the porch. They just came right through, shooting. At first we thought she was shot in her stomach—though later we realized she got shot in the hand. So everybody’s mad and angry and upset. Then everybody just went looking for guns.
It escalated to a big, all-out war. They would come by and shoot inside my grandma’s house. All the windows were shot out, with bullet holes in the walls. None of the kids could stay there because of what happened, so we had to get them out. But my grandma—they still stayed, I don’t know why, but luckily nothing ever happened to them. They come, they shoot, and then we’ll go back and shoot at them.
Nobody knows what the original argument is. It’s been like that for years. Since my parents, it’s been like that. Since my mom lived there, nobody on that side of the street likes this side. And my mom told everybody to leave it alone, let the police handle it. We were just leaving it alone because she said it. But they kept shooting at us.
It’s basically all about territory. In this neighborhood, all the gangs be on the same block. There’s Vice Lords on this block, Latin Kings on the other block—each block got their own gang. Whether you gangbang or not, if they see you on that block, they gonna assume you a Vice Lord or something, especially if you a male. They’re just going to assume.
