A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

  When Leslie and Nanette had gone off to live with relatives, Barbara and Cedric left the apartment on Benning Road to live with her sister Rose “Tiny” Jennings. One Friday night in the early spring of 1985, the phone rang at their apartment.

  “For you, Barbara,” Tiny called to her sister, “It’s some guy.” The two-bedroom apartment—shared by Barbara, her sister, Cedric, and his two cousins—was small, and Barbara got quickly to the phone.

  “Ummmm. Barbara? This is Cedric. Cedric Gilliam. I was wondering if I can see the boy.”

  “What’s the occasion?” she asked coolly, not skipping a beat. He explained that word of his fatherhood had gotten out—the one girlfriend of his who knew told another one who didn’t. “So what’s the point of hiding it? And, you know, I’d like to know him.”

  The next morning, Barbara sat Cedric down, turned off his cartoons, and explained that his father was coming. The child, just seven years old, was beside himself with joy.

  That day, Cedric Sr. took his son to the beautiful two-bedroom apartment he shared with a woman named Joyce, who seemed like a wife. There was the closet full of suits, the giant TV, the stereo, and the still plush green Cordoba. They had lunch and went to K-mart, where he bought his son a Bugs Bunny costume, with Halloween coming soon. The child wore it to bed that night and under his Sunday best the next day to church.

  There were a few other visits. Barbara would always be there when Cedric got home, seeming more anxious than ever. To calm her, Cedric told her of everything he and his father talked about and of all those silky possessions.

  Walking amid the plenty in his father’s apartment one Saturday, Cedric saw a pewter mug full of coins. He poured them into his pocket and later told his mother they were a gift. In fact, they were rare coins that a desperate customer had bartered in exchange for heroin. At the next week’s visit, Cedric Jr. walked into an ambush when his father, a lifelong thief, determined he would teach his newfound son a lesson about stealing. The boy was made to strip, and the whipping with a thick leather belt was ferocious, halted only when Joyce finally grabbed Gilliam’s arm and screamed for him to stop.

  Cedric had now learned about betrayal and misplaced trust. And, a few weeks later, about abandonment. Cedric Gilliam was picked up for heroin dealing and armed robbery. He disappeared for a term of twelve to thirty-six years into Lorton Correctional Institution, the D.C. Federal prison in northern Virginia.

  The shocks kept coming to his son, fast and steady. Barbara, concerned about both the risks Cedric faced in their treacherous neighborhood and the effects of his father’s beating, mustered a furious run at a better life for them both. She used all of her money to rent a four-bedroom apartment in grassy, suburban Landover, Maryland, a working-class area just across the District line. Neddy and Leslie, now teenagers, returned home. Cedric had his own bedroom, played in the complex’s landscaped courtyard with other children, and attended a mostly white elementary school, where his studiousness and good manners quickly ingratiated him to his teachers. The furniture was from Rent-a-Center.

  The apartment was far beyond Barbara’s minimum-wage means, and six months later the eviction crew arrived. All of it ended up on the street, picked over and hauled off by neighbors. Everything vanished, except maybe the psychological scar left on Cedric while he sat on the stoop and cried, watching as kids divvied up his beloved He-Man action figure collection.

  More apartments and more evictions followed for mother and son before a move back to the dreaded house on 15th Street. They made another move to a tiny apartment in a building that caught on fire while Cedric was home alone. Then finally they landed on V Street, Southeast, in a tiny, dank, one-bedroom near some of the city’s worst drug dealing. Always careful not to part the curtains more than a crack, Cedric would watch the dealers, guns sometimes visible, stash drugs in the alley beneath his window.

  Any parent surveying this wreckage would have been dispirited, and Barbara no doubt was. Everyone of every age in this neighborhood ingested gut-churning dread regularly. Gunshots. Arrests. Sirens all night. The chances of a boy emerging from here intact were almost nil. In desperation, Barbara tried to keep a tight grip on just the basics: strong physical discipline and tight scheduling. She made sure her son was either in school, in the locked apartment, or at church, visiting Scripture Cathedral four times a week.

  One Sunday, Barbara was, as usual, down in the church basement, cooking the congregation’s dinner, to be served after the midday service. It allowed her to get a meal for nothing, rather than paying $3, and to slip a free one to Cedric.

  One of the missionary ladies ran down to the kitchen. “Your baby is singing—front of everyone.”

  “What?” Barbara screamed, dropping the fried chicken tin and running upstairs.

  The children’s choir, about fifty strong, had been singing, with Cedric in his usual role anchoring a clutch of boy tenors, when something seemed to well up inside him and he suddenly stepped forward.

  “He will never leave me or forsake me,” Cedric sang, his voice rising above the others. “Please don’t let them hurt your children. Oh, God, please don’t let them hurt your children.”

  Watching this drama of the spirit, the crowd yelped with joy. “Do it! Sing it!” someone cried out.

  Barbara heard the cheers as she bounded up the stairs toward the sanctuary, wiping her hands on her skirt as she ran.

  “Please don’t let them hurt your children,” he sang out, growing, with each verse, more comfortable in front of the crowd. “Please, ooooh please, Jesus, don’t let them hurt your children.” His mother, bursting through the rear doors a moment too late, heard only the applause.

  After this breakthrough, Cedric seemed to nudge himself along. He learned to talk about Cedric Gilliam without getting upset, and, with Cedric Sr. safely in jail, Barbara felt freer to be candid about all that had gone sour in his father’s life. Soon enough, she became convinced that such knowledge actually motivated her son, only a fourth grader, to live in reaction to his father, using Cedric Gilliam’s rutted path to find coordinates for an opposing course he would carve.

  For both mother and son, one thing was certain: at the darkest moments, there was always the sanctuary of Scripture Cathedral. Like for so many inner-city blacks who left mainstream churches for Pentecostal congregations in the 1970s and 1980s (making it the fastest-growing denomination in the country), Scripture Cathedral offered Cedric and Barbara neat designations of good and evil and strict rules forbidding even common activities, like watching movies or dressing provocatively. For Barbara, who, like so many, came to fervent Pentecostalism from a life broken by poverty and neglect, the church provided both moral orderliness and an absolution for past failures that finally allowed her peace about all that had gone wrong over the years. Here, success was not an honor, nor privation a dishonor; the Lord assiduously threw up tests and kept score based solely on faith. Bishop Long, in his sermons, railed against the sins of pride and ambition.

  Yet one meritocracy was permitted: music. That was the path Cedric stumbled onto. Those who could sanctify God with their sweet or strong voices—a dozen adults and half that many children—were permitted a special place, front and center. Cedric became a youthful star of the children’s choir, a soloist. Where so much about life at Scripture Cathedral, indeed, meant a withdrawal from this world, the confidence infused in a young boy, standing before six hundred or so parishioners on a Sunday, was a single, buoying item an eleven-year-old Cedric, as a fifth grader, could carry beyond the church’s walls.

  At this age, Cedric aimed to please. He did his chores, which were many, with Barbara often telling him that she’d done her share when she was a kid and he would do his share. And he was obedient. Having felt Barbara’s wrath, he took seriously when she’d warn, “I tell you once. I don’t tell you twice.” By sixth grade, he was a skinny, earnest, straight arrow, a little taller than the other kids and mostly quiet—waiting to be noticed.

  Then cam
e a victory: acceptance into Jefferson Junior High School, a magnet junior high, an anointed place. Jefferson was the type of school that had sprouted from the urban landscape in the past few decades like a flower, nourished by the rich decay and detritus all around. One out of every twenty or so sixth-grade applicants made it in. Three years later, most of those students managed to be accepted into one of the District’s few top magnet high schools, which in turn sent almost all their graduates to college.

  Safely inside the gates of Jefferson, Cedric found for the first time something resembling a traditional American school. There were other smart, mostly well-behaved kids, sort of like him. Soon he was part of a group of boys—LaKeith Ellis, Torrence Parks, and Eric Welcher—from working-class, mostly two-parent black families. Barbara would sometimes overhear Cedric on the phone with one of them and pick up just the right mix of friendly jostling and competitiveness. At night, Cedric studied ardently. The expectations here were much higher than he’d been used to—the kids were motivated. The seventh-grade curriculum stressed memorization of basic concepts in math, English, and history. Cedric’s ardor and ability to focus helped him accumulate a loose-leaf notebook full of A papers.

  In the evenings, after he was asleep, Barbara would flip through the notebook, gently fingering the papers, memorizing the comments from teachers. Sitting there, she’d often think that she also had to do her part. She was thankful to the church for Cedric’s success, and she showed her gratitude with money in the Sunday basket. He needed better clothes and school supplies and maybe a little money to spend with his new friends. She needed to look presentable when she met with teachers or Vera White, the principal. One afternoon, she left work and strolled through fashionable shops in downtown D.C. She knew what she wanted, it would just take a while to find it. That night she brought home a crimson sweatshirt for Cedric, with “HARVARD” stamped across the chest.

  But, just like in Landover, when she pushed too hard or wanted too much or became too hopeful, a few small stumbles would upset her balance.

  Her finances on $5 an hour were, as always, precarious. Again, some of the furniture was rented. Tiny indulgences were enough to push some must-pay bills past thirty days. Old creditors, some collecting on bills dating back years, kept calling. Leslie was still sleeping at the apartment but running with a racier crowd. One of her boyfriends wound up at Lorton and called her collect from the prison pay phone to talk for hours on some evenings. The bill blossomed, and the phone got cut off.

  When the first cool days of autumn came in 1990, both mother and son felt it. The gas had been turned off, which meant hot plates for cooking and no heat. Barbara and Cedric taped plastic over the windows. Living without heat was harder than either of them could have expected. When winter arrived, Cedric slept in thermal underwear and thrift-store down jackets. Sometimes there was no food in the house. The electricity was cut off, restored, then cut off again. Cedric started showing up late for school, often hungry and wearing mismatched clothes.

  Barbara watched what was happening, helplessly, just like in the last days at Landover. Meanwhile, Cedric’s workload increased, as the eighth-grade curriculum stressed more analysis than memorization, and he began to resent having to study at night in the cold, sometimes dark apartment. One night in frustration, he yelled at her, “How can I compete? It’s like I’m living in a refrigerator!” She moved to hit him, to punish him for disrespecting her, but guilt held her back.

  Each Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday they went to church. Barbara still tithed her 10 percent, prayed for strength and faith, and usually dropped a $20 into the Sunday basket. One night, thinking about how Cedric would someday go to college, she prayed that men from the congregation would come forward to pay for it, and she dropped her last dollar in the basket.

  Like Barbara’s dammed-up debts that eventually broke in a flood of dunning calls and legal threats, Cedric, too, had built up a debt of sorts. His voice had won him an indulgence—years of dispensation—in the type of prideful individual achievement that the church otherwise frowned upon. In the tough winter of eighth grade, much of what kept him going was being on the bishop’s special TV choir, which sang on a local UHF station, and, most important, standing front and center on Sunday, reaffirmed by the congregation’s shouts of “Amen” and “Praise Jesus” as he sang out his faith.

  Quietly at first, the complaints were whispered to Bishop Long and other church leaders. Why him? He’s been up there so long, why not give some other kids a chance? Barbara heard the grumbles and tried to ferret out the sources. She knew how important the singing was to Cedric.

  But it was no use. On an early spring Saturday during choir practice, Steve Lawrence, Scripture’s young choir director, took Cedric aside. “Some people are complaining about you singing all the solos,” he told him. “It’s time for other people to have a try singing solo.”

  And so, on Sunday, Cedric stepped back. When people asked why, he wasn’t sure what to say, and it boiled inside him.

  Barbara tried to offer counsel. They talked often late into the night about it, as she tried to find passages from Scripture that would help ease his feelings of rejection and censure. “It’s like I’ve done something wrong for being proud to sing God’s praises,” he moaned one night. He said he was tired, too tired to do homework, and went to bed early.

  A month later, a call came from Maggie Brisbane, Cedric Gilliam’s mother, who was organizing a family visit to Lorton prison. She would take Cedric to visit his father, while another grandson would visit Cedric Gilliam’s brother, Darren, who was also serving time. Barbara, thinking it might be just the thing to restore her son’s drive, to remind him of why he must work hard and trust in God, agreed to allow it. But the visit went badly. Cedric Gilliam talked mostly to his nephew, a tough, self-possessed high school football star, and ignored his skinny, studious son. Cedric returned home dumbstruck and livid, with nowhere to turn.

  Near the end of the long winter, Barbara got a note about a minor altercation at school—just a push fight, but not something she’d expect from Cedric. After that, she heard complaints from teachers that Cedric was talking back, that his fuse was short and his tone disrespectful. He started to be kept after school to clean lockers or mop the cafeteria, the self-styled discipline program of the school’s tough principal. Because Barbara understood his resentment and frustration, she had trouble blaming him. And her reliable ally, the church, suddenly seemed to lack enough answers—or solace—to challenge all that beset her son.

  Come spring, a call came from Vera White’s office summoning Barbara to a meeting at school. On the way, she kept reminding herself that Ms. White called Cedric “one of our brightest students” at the previous fall’s PTA meeting. This time the message was different: it was no longer worthwhile to bus Cedric all the way to Jefferson. He wouldn’t be invited back for ninth grade. It was decided that he could go to Ballou, arguably the most troubled school in the District, despite its middling math/science program.

  For Cedric and Barbara Jennings, there was nothing left to say. After all their struggles, they both were certain they had been left behind.

  Barbara walks out the church’s double doors and onto the street, which is busy with nightlife now that the rain has stopped. On her way across the street to catch a ride home from a friend, she passes a clutch of female hookers hovering near the church. She sees the woman in a spangly blue dress who came up to Cedric last year after one Sunday worship and said, “You’re a cute one, you’re gonna drive them wild.”

  Barbara, who is alternately concerned and thankful that Cedric doesn’t have a girlfriend, tells this story often, always adding, “She’s a pro, she ought to know.” Cedric concurs, hopeful of this expert testimony about his impending sex appeal.

  Feeling charitable, like a Christian woman should, Barbara nods a greeting toward the prostitute, though the woman doesn’t notice.

  She gets home from church near midnight. Cedric is asleep, and whe
n she wakes up at 7:15 the next morning he has already gone. On her way to work, she carefully breaks the remaining $20, buying five days’ worth of bus tokens—$2.20 for a round trip—which costs $11. Today, she’ll eat no breakfast or lunch.

  At 6:10 P.M., Barbara walks heavily into the apartment, feeling tired and anxious.

  “How’s school today, Lavar?”

  “Fine,” he says, his voice high and solicitous, not looking up from the TV.

  “Choir practice Saturday, don’t forget. You know, I’ll be going all day too for missionary meeting.”

  He nods from the couch.

  “I hope you knew to eat a big lunch today?” she says as she moves to the bedroom to change. “You know, it’s the first week, with rent and all.”

  “Yeah,” he says softly. “I knew. Got seconds on salad. Ate all I could.”

  By the time she emerges in her white pullover house dress, he’s already in his room, having ceded her the couch. She slumps onto it, weak and bone-tired from a long day and no food.

  She begins to flip channels and figure out a five-day budget in her head. In the morning she’ll get some packs of Oodles of Noodles, a cheap, add-water noodle dish, for tomorrow night and maybe some macaroni and cheese for Saturday. That’ll about use up the $9 she’s got left but get them to Sunday dinner at church. She can write a check on Monday, which won’t arrive at the bank until Tuesday, when her weekly check will have been deposited.

  Relieved to have some sort of plan, she puts her head back and drifts off. At 10:15, she awakens with a jerk in the glow of the TV. She walks around the apartment to clear her head and grabs a glass of some flat Coke from the nearly empty refrigerator. She looks over at the overflowing sink.

  “Lavar?!” she calls out, loud and testy, as she makes for the couch. “What about these dishes?”

  Cedric stomps out of his room, takes off his gray wool polo shirt, torn at the elbow, and bellies up to the sink in his white undershirt.