How Long Will I Cry?

by Miles Harvey

  We had a big wedding. Then I lost the marriage license, so we had to marry again. My uncle was a pastor. He married us twice, and he was like, “When are you all going to get this thing right?”

  We filed for divorce in 1997, and it was final in April of ’98. He did his thing, his life with someone else, and I had someone. We ended up back together because the man I was with died in 2000, out of the blue. Actually, the day that he died Juan said, “What do you want to do? Do you want to get back together?” Isn’t that funny?

  Juan: Actually, the third wedding was the best wedding.

  Esther: It was the best one. It was outside. I wanted that island look, so we had tropical trees. We had a waterfall we had put in. We had so many people, even the people we didn’t send invitations to were there. It was really nice.

  Esther: My godmother was a foster parent and Juan worked with her. She kept pressing on us to be foster parents. She said, “Get a place and do it.”

  Juan: When she closed her group home down, all the kids just went out of the house crying, because some of them had to go back into the shelter. They didn’t have any place to go. And that’s when I told Esther that, if we get a house, let’s consider doing this.

  Esther: We took in a family of four girls, and they would say, “We don’t want to leave here.” When it was time for them to go, it was so heartbreaking. We had to take us a vacation because it hurt us so bad.

  Then Hull House67 called us like three days later saying, “Can you take another family in?” I told them no, I’m not. And then, about two weeks later, they said, “Can you please take them in, because you all have available housing and you’re good.” So we took them in, another family of four. After we divorced, I ended up adopting three of them.

  Juan: I kept being a foster parent, too. First, I adopted two brothers from foster care, one of them being Carnell, and then I adopted Kendrick a year later. He was 8 when I got him. He was born into the system.

  Esther: So when we remarried, we brought the kids together. I first got the townhouse, and he bought the adjoining one. We ended up knocking the wall out and raising four boys and four girls together.

  During the time we were divorced, God had called me. I woke up on my couch and there was a note: Matthew 10:22. It reads, “And you shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved.” I understood that to mean even though you won’t be accepted by a lot of people, you still push.

  God told me to start a Bible class, so I started it in our house. I was in the process of being licensed and ordained. And we had all these kids come over, it would be like 54 kids, spending the night on the weekends to go to church. There were so many kids came out to that house, they would be sitting up the stairway, all over the living room and the dining room.

  We work with kids and whatever bad that’s within them—I don’t mean to say bad, but whatever disturbs them, we get to the root of that. I never, ever believed in whupping them—but what I did say is, if you do wrong, you’re going to be washing these walls or you’ll be doing dishes. We call it the KP—kitchen patrol. I can find chores for you all day long. And, I promise you, things would be different by the time they finished those chores. I think we did a pretty good job with God in the house, because all our kids graduated from high school.

  Juan: We had a deck on the outside. While she was out there ministering to the kids, I’d be in the house cooking for them. I’d just make all types of appetizers and little fancy things for them; stuff that they probably have never seen. I loved it. Actually, it kind of, like, took over our life, because we was in church just about every day.

  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 Defender68 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.

  The teenagers that we tend to examine are usually non-natural deaths. You know, traffic accidents, gunshot wounds and suicides. Most teenagers are relatively healthy, so in a typical week, there aren’t many teenagers. If there are, they are usually suicides and homicides.

  When I started working in the 1980s, most of our homicide victims were in their late 20s, early 30s. Over the years, the ages have been creeping down. We even have cases where 12- and 13-year-olds were homicide victims, but 12- and 13-year-olds were also the offenders. The gangs were using the 12- and 13-year-olds to carry the guns and to deliver the drugs. They were using the younger members, recruiting them younger, because they figured the police wouldn’t hassle them as much.

  On Saturday, I did two homicide cases. Both single, simple gunshot wounds. One was a 16-year-old Hispanic male and the other was a 16-year-old black male. One of the kids was just sitting with his friends and they heard what sounded like firecrackers. They turned to look and he got hit in the right side of the head. Totally innocent bystander. Never been in trouble a day of his life. The other one was a gang member. He had been arrested at least twice: one for a stolen vehicle and one for drugs. But, of course, I’m sure his family is saying that he was an angel and that he has never been in trouble a day in his life.