“Can someone come and get you? An adult?”
The place seemed unfamiliar. “This Kings County?”
She shook her head. “Brookdale,” she said. Brookdale was in Brownsville, the roughest section of Brooklyn, the reigning murder capital of New York. She checked all my vitals.
“Are you religious?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but I believe in God.”
“Well, you should be thanking him. Profusely,” she said. “What are you, thirteen? Ten more minutes and the coroner would’ve been there to pick up your body.” Her eyes peered into me, tired and haunting. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
Looking back, that summer was like a solid gate closing behind me. Nothing felt like a crisis; I had become so inured to it that it all just rolled off. Jay had been my tether to an actual future but as I got into more dealing and boosting, I pushed him away. I couldn’t wrap my head around his life, which seemed distant to me. Kids’ brains are wired toward instant gratification. Jay’s talk about the future clashed with everything my friends were doing—squeezing every last drop out of the day. And with that attitude came arrogance and greed and fearlessness.
We put value in everyone knowing who we were. Punks and sissies weren’t worth knowing because they didn’t “put in work” selling drugs, toting weapons, getting girls you didn’t care about, taking from those who had what you didn’t, punishing those who posed a threat, standing your ground when things got ugly, and holding your own when consequences arrived.
One way we got our names out there was literally—by tagging. Putting our names on the surfaces of the neighborhood in spray paint or big fat permanent markers. Graffiti is about rebellion and adolescent mischief, but it’s also about staking claim. My clique would travel all over Brooklyn, writing our street names over everything. I tagged “Buffet”—misspelling it—on stop signs, gates, alleyways, cars, storefronts, benches, public restrooms, subways, elevators. Part of the rush was the chase—that’s where the danger was. My friend T, a prolific tagger, was shot at multiple times for tagging on someone’s van. Another time my cousin Breeze was chased by a guy with a knife after he got caught tagging around his front gate. Few of us had any artistic talent. It was solely about name recognition. No one gave us a voice so we had to declare ourselves. I was here. I’m here now. I may come back.
Across the street at Medgar Evers College, we used to hang among the stone buildings and open spaces after hours. One night some of us were out tagging and on our way back we hopped the locked fence and snuck back to get high by the trailers that were used as classrooms during the day. For whatever reason, we got revved up and started kicking in doors and smashing locks. We ransacked those trailers—tossing drawers and papers, kicking everything over, tagging the walls and blackboards in the classroom in black spray paint, “Buffet” and “Fuck You” on just about every surface. My friend P smashed the glass for the fire extinguisher and started spraying the windows and doors in thick white foam. Outside we heard radio chatter and then saw a shadow creeping toward us, so we lit off through the courtyard. I was too dumb to realize I’d written my name just about everywhere.
A couple of days later cops approached my landlord, a short and heavyset Puerto Rican. Once he heard the name Buffett he described me, said I lived on the second floor with my grandmother. He told the cops he had just kicked me and my friends out that morning for smoking in the hallway. The cops went to talk to my grandmother and my sister, Geraldine, who was about eighteen at the time. She told them my real name and gave them a photo.
A few hours later, while I was cutting school on my block with Fernando, two officers approached me and told me to come with them to the 71st Precinct. Once there, they sat me at a table while they called my dad and found a cop who spoke Creole to translate for him. Hours later, when my dad finally arrived, the officer laid out what they found: broken doors, graffiti, “Buffet” everywhere. At the sound of that name, my dad’s eyes popped.
“Eh, Buffett! Buffett Buffett! He writes Buffett all over! Everywhere!”
“Calm down, sir—” the officer said, trying to ease him.
“I knew you were a lost case! I am tired of this!” my dad said, hitting the table. “Maybe you should be in jail! Vagabond hanging out with other vagabonds.”
“Sir—”
“Embarrassing me, your grandmother, everyone.”
My father kept at it, the cops nodding patiently, the way other parents would. He talked about sending me back to Haiti, how he should’ve done it already, how Colin should go with me. All the anger poured out of him like from a burst valve. Once they got my dad’s permission to speak to me, one of the cops read me my rights. The kindness extended to my dad faded, and the cop lit into me.
“You use the name Buffett?” he asked me.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “People call me that.” My dad’s eyes were inflamed. I was more concerned about him hitting me than anything else.
The cop showed me a photo of the blackboard with “BUFFET” in black spray paint.
“Did you write this?”
I looked at my dad.
“Don’t look at me!” my dad said in Creole. “I didn’t do it! Answer their questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You wrote it?” the cop asked.
“I think so?”
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone with you?”
Silence. I looked again at my dad, but this time, the cop snapped, “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
I stared into his eyes, beady and tight.
“Jim,” the cop said, “was anyone with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you break into the school?”
“What? No!”
“Then how—”
“I didn’t! I wasn’t even—”
“How’d you get in?”
“It was open,” I said.
“We have a security guard,” he said, “and a witness saying the gates were all locked. And we found six locks broken by the trailers.”
“I told you I don’t know nothing,” I said, not convincingly. They arrested me for trespassing and burglary, even though nothing was missing. I told them just enough to incriminate myself but not enough to be helpful or cooperative.
I ended up missing a court date, and then another, until cops came one morning to take me down to Brooklyn Family Court. When I arrived, a petite white woman with black hair and brown glasses on a pointy nose introduced herself. “Hi,” she said, smiling, “I’m Christine,” and she stuck out her hand.
“Jim,” I said, taking it.
“Let’s talk in here. Get some privacy,” she said. She brought me into a side room and we sat at a small table. In her clipped New York accent she asked me how I was, if I needed anything, and then tried to walk me through the particulars of my case. I nodded, though I didn’t understand much of what she was saying.
“I mean nothing was stolen so the prosecutor will drop the burglary,” Christine said. “And the trespassing charge is just ridiculous.”
“It is?”
“Well, you were across the street from your house, right?”
I was hesitant. She saw it in my eyes.
“It’s okay. I’m your lawyer. You can tell me anything.”
“Okay.”
“Plus, it’s right here,” she pointed to her papers.
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s across from my building.”
“See, that’s ridiculous. In the suburbs that would never have gotten you all the way to court. It’s the problem with city policing. Ticks me off.”
It wasn’t just what Christine said to me—my understanding of the law was close to nothing. It was how she said it: the eye contact, asking questions about my life, listening to my answers, the tone of her voice, the language of her body. She treated me like an individual, not as a cas
e or a problem to be solved. I assumed professional white people were all one thing and she shattered that.
I didn’t know it but I was sitting across from a guardian angel, sent to me by the randomness of the juvenile court system. But at the time her generosity was confusing, even a bit suspicious. I had little interaction with the white world and was led to believe there was a wall meant to keep people like me out. But here was this woman, whom I had nothing in common with, who acted almost like a mother to me. Or how I imagined a mother would act.
“Okay, this is a misdemeanor,” she said. “So it’s going to be fine. Now, what I care about is how do we make sure you walk out the door and go home.
“So,” she said, shuffling through her bag for a pen. “When we see the judge, we need to tell him we’ll put you in the care of a responsible adult who can take you home. Who can make sure you make the next court date. You live with your dad? Your grandmother? Can they come get you?”
“I doubt it.” I gave her my home number. “You can try.”
It rang and rang until someone picked up, probably my grandmother. For whatever reason, she couldn’t come.
“Is there any adult we can call?”
She tried Jay, Pierre’s uncle, and a few others. Then I thought of my neighbor, whom we called Black, who worked downtown. Christine tracked him down and convinced him to show up at my hearing. I didn’t tell Christine that Black was a regular customer of mine. We’d smoke together in his apartment, and I’d sit there rapt as he told me stories about his well-connected days up in Harlem.
Black came down to the courthouse and talked to Christine, telling her what he knew about my home situation, how I’d come knock on his door sometimes for food. Christine later told me that was the first red flag that things were tough at home: I was reaching out to other adults for basic needs like being fed.
After a few more court dates that fall Christine got the judge to drop the case. After one of our court sessions, I was on my way down the steps of the courthouse and she yelled after me. “Jim!” She came closer. “How are you getting home?”
“The 3,” I said, pointing to the station. “Taking the 3 train.”
A slight smirk because she knew I’d be jumping the turnstile. She reached into her purse and put five dollars in my hand. “Look at me,” she said. “Use this to pay your ride.”
“Okay, thanks.”
That was the pattern with her for all the court dates. If she could tell I hadn’t eaten, and it was going to be a long wait to see the judge, she’d give me money for breakfast or lunch, sometimes money to get home. Before court or during breaks she’d ask about my home life—not really prying, but poking around. I remember once she mentioned something about a group home, which I’d heard of. Andre and Frank had both been in group homes, as had some of Devon’s friends. I said it sounded like a good idea and asked how to get into one. She looked surprised. She hadn’t been recommending it, she said, she was just talking about various services provided by the city. I was the first kid she met who actually requested to be remanded; it raised even more flags for her. She talked me out of going into the juvenile system that time, saying that it wasn’t always the best idea. So once the case was dismissed, we hugged good-bye, and that was it. I was released back to the street.
But I’d see Christine again soon enough.
5
Survival Mode
It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.
—LENA HORNE
Once the court proceedings ended, my dad made good on his threat, buying plane tickets to send Colin and me back to Haiti. He knew a family friend—Jacqueline or Louloun—would take us in. It was a strategy to keep me from getting killed or going to prison, though I couldn’t see his reasoning. And I couldn’t even conceive of returning to La Plaine. I was a New Yorker now. There was no way I was going back. I’d rather take my chances here, even with nothing, than climb mango trees for food and work the back of the tap tap again.
The night before our flight, my brother and I were packing our bags, Colin seesawing between yelling and crying, cursing out my dad, throwing a tantrum. My grandmother and sister were crying too, but still acknowledging this was just better for everyone. My father would peek into the room once in a while, flash us a look like he was about to say something, and then walk off. That apartment was overflowing with bad feelings, grudges, and no room to breathe.
I was calm, while formulating an escape plan in my head. When no one was looking, I dropped my bag in the hallway, then approached my dad, who was heating something up in the kitchen.
“I got to pick up some shirts,” I said.
“Where?”
“The dry cleaner. I got my jerseys there. Can I get ten dollars?”
Dad hesitated, looking suspicious, but pulled out his wallet and gave me a twenty.
“Be right back,” I said.
When I got into the hallway, I grabbed my bag and took off for the stairs. My building had a lot of abandoned apartments; my friends and I would often hang in them, drinking and smoking, trying to bring girls by. On the other side of our building there was an abandoned apartment on the fourth floor where I’d been getting high with Devon and Fernando. The lock was busted and no one had lived there for a while. That night I emptied out some clothes on the floor for a pillow, plugged in my portable radio, and claimed my new home.
Winter was creeping in and that place was hollow, empty walls staring back at me, hardwood echoing in the night like the sound of death. At night I welcomed the sirens piercing the air; they pointed to a life outside, even a treacherous one. I holed up in that apartment, in a strange no-man’s-land. My friends came by with food, liquor, and weed and kept me occupied. All I had to do was wait it out until the plane ticket was no longer good and then deal with the fallout.
When I strolled back into my grandmother’s apartment a week later, everyone was furious: my grandmother for giving her more heartache than she could hold, my father for wasting his money, my cousins and aunt for making their household so combative.
My grandmother sat me down on the side of her bed. “You can’t live here anymore,” she said, apologetic but firm. “It’s too hard. Your grandfather’s not around and I can’t do this. You don’t care and you don’t listen. You’re on your own.” Looking into her eyes, weary and aged, I felt bad. She had given me a life in America and I had spit it back at her.
So I took all my stuff into that abandoned apartment and just continued my day-to-day. I still popped in on school once in a while. My friends were there; there was drama and girls and dice games. Soon enough, word about my home life leaked out. One morning Mr. Walton found me during first period and brought me to his office.
“Have a seat, big son. Where you living now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I know you’re not with your grandmother. I hear things. You on your own?”
“I’m fine. It’s good,” I said. I was embarrassed that things had deteriorated so badly at home. School was a respite, a place where I didn’t have to deal with that world.
“I’m not asking how you are, son. I’m asking where you’re living. Where are you staying?”
“Here and there. I got a place.”
“Wait, which is it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“ ‘Here and there’ or your own place?”
Mr. Walton was good at catching people in contradictions. He had the confidence of a lawyer mixed with the experience of the street. It’s what made him so effective as a dean.
“I’m good,” I insisted.
“Yeah? Where do you sleep?”
“I got a place.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Am I in trouble, sir?”
“What place?”
“An apartment in my building.” Mr. Walton’s face dropped. “No, it’s like no one’s apartment but it like belongs to everyone.”
“An abandoned apartment?”
“Kind of. It’s—”
He shook his head. “I can’t have one of my students homeless.” At first, I thought he was going to kick me out of school for having no home. But it was the opposite. “You’re coming home with me today,” he said.
“What?”
“Meet me here after school.”
At the end of the day, Mr. Walton drove me to his one-bedroom house in Rosedale, Queens. He let me sleep on an air mattress in his front room for a couple of weeks. It was unspoken that I shouldn’t tell anyone.
This was a huge risk, endangering his career, and I was too walled off to even appreciate it. While living with him I made it to school every day so in that sense, it was good for me. But eventually I couldn’t stay there anymore; people at school were talking and he just couldn’t risk it.
Even my brief stint of being homeless didn’t turn me around. I crashed with Pierre, with Jay, a night here and there with others, until my grandmother eventually let me back in. But it was different. I was different. I was my own broken limb now, hardening and settling into place. And I was throwing off helpful people and second chances like they were chains slowing me down.
The decision to push me along to high school the next year was baffling. Though I’d always had a share of natural intelligence, I was practically illiterate when I started at Lafayette High School. But like thousands of unprepared kids, I got promoted to high school because of the system’s momentum. For kids of color in poor neighborhoods, it’s like signing their death warrant at fourteen. The factory mentality pushes kids along, the clock ticking down on their adolescence, the chances for a meaningful intervention narrowing to nothing. The solution was to pass us on to another failed institution, become someone else’s headache.
Lafayette High School was in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, and it was a ninety-minute trek to get out there. I’d take the 2 train to Atlantic Avenue, hop on the Brooklyn-bound D-train express, and get off at Ninety-Fifth Street.
Bensonhurst was a dramatic shift in environment. A quiet, well-kept neighborhood consisting mostly of family homes filled with elderly residents and immigrants who’d been there for generations. Asian and Russian women watering gardens, sweeping porches, lining trash cans on the sidewalk. It looked closer to the streets of Home Alone than anything I’d seen yet in New York.
A Stone of Hope Page 7
