three shots rang out nearby; they’re such everyday sounds that the postman paused for a moment and then continued along his route. Thomas liked to tell stories of the block’s waywardness. Once, he recalled, a drug dealer offered money or drugs to anyone who would dismantle a police camera that had been erected at the top of a lamppost. Thomas and others doubled over in laughter as a desperate addict rammed his pickup into the lamppost, knocking the camera down and doing untold damage to his truck. Thomas was amazed that the driver emerged unscathed.
Thomas had just completed his junior year at Harper High School, where Anita was one of two social workers. He had failed Spanish and English, and so Anita helped enroll him in summer school, paying the $50 fee. But he had already missed the first week of classes, and Anita knew that if he was to graduate, he needed to complete this summer session. She tried calling Thomas on his cell phone, but he refused to answer. Thomas could be petulant, so much so that Anita and her colleague at Harper had taken to calling him “Big Baby.” As in Hey, Big Baby, get over here or Big Baby, I hear you’re giving your math teacher trouble.
As Anita trudged up the rickety front stairs of Thomas’s grandmother’s house, she laughed to herself. Too early for Thomas or his brothers, she thought. She relished the quiet. Often when she came by in the afternoons or evenings, Thomas’s older brothers, twins Leon and Deon, would be on the porch with him. Like Thomas, they didn’t talk much. Their faces revealed little. Leon, who was in a wheelchair after being shot two years earlier, looked angry, but it could just as easily have been well-earned sadness. He had recently lost his left leg to an infection. They had a lift installed outside so that he didn’t need to be carried down the stairs every time he went out. But this morning the porch was empty. Anita knocked, and Thomas’s sister, Stella, answered. Thomas, she said, was still sleeping. She went upstairs to his attic bedroom to rouse him.
Anita could hear Thomas lumbering down the stairs. She smiled. His jeans and shirt were rumpled, his long dreads hanging over his face like a beaded curtain. She suspected he’d slept in his clothes. Where you been? she asked.
I ain’t going nowhere. His voice rang with a defiance hard to square with the early hour.
Yes, you are.
I ain’t going. You hear me. I already told you, man. The pitch of his voice rose, as it always did when he got agitated.
I’m not a man, Anita replied.
I already told you I’m not going.
Anita had learned to remain firm with Thomas. And patient.
You are going. I’ll wait in the car—and you can put some new clothes on.
I told you I ain’t going. He paused in resignation. You get on my nerves.
Anita chuckled to herself and returned to her car to wait.
* * *
—
When Anita first met Thomas three years earlier, she thought he might be a little off. Maybe, she thought, he heard voices. Her first day at Harper —a struggling and deeply proud school in Englewood—she had stepped into a freshman algebra class and noticed Thomas right away. A broad-shouldered, sad-looking boy, he seemed on edge. His head bowed, he was slowly pacing, while class was in session, from an open window to his desk and back again, as if he were contemplating jumping. Back and forth. Back and forth, muttering to himself, Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Anita, who had just been hired as the school’s second social worker, reached out to him like she was trying to touch a ghost, her fingers trying to find a place to land. Don’t touch me, he warned, brushing aside her hand.
Come away from the window, she urged gently. Come sit with me. She had at least got his attention. What’s your name? she asked. He told her, and silently followed Anita to a nearby desk, where they sat across from each other.
Where d’ya live? Anita asked.
Seventieth Place.
I grew up in Englewood, Anita said.
You did?
Anita thought she might not be able to engage him. He seemed to move and talk slowly, his voice distant and garbled, as if he were speaking from deep within a cave.
What school did you go to? she continued.
Vernon Johns.
A connection, Anita thought.
Guess what, I went to Vernon Johns! Do you know Cheap Charlie’s? Thomas nodded. Cheap Charlie owned the