A Hope in the Unseen (7 page)

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.

B
arbara 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 when 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.

He thrusts his arms into the wet dishes and muck. Barbara sees him from the corner of her eye. She knows there’s nothing worse than doing dishes when you’re hungry.

“This is completely disgusting,” he mumbles, and looks toward the couch. She heard him but looks straight ahead at the TV, deciding she’s not going to respond.

She feels herself start to simmer. She would have gotten a beating for saying that to her father, much less her mother. A bad beating. A switch seems to flip in her gut, starting a familiar internal monologue: she’s been working like a slave her whole damn life and
she
never complains …. She’s been killing herself, her lifeblood channeled through scriptural pieties and long-shot hopes for Cedric’s future, leaving her own urges untended and volatile.

“I hate doing these damn dishes,” he says, this time too loud to ignore.

She jumps up, thumping across the room, fast, right up into his face. “I pay the rent here. I support you. I give everything to you. You don’t want to do your part? You don’t like it? When you complain it makes me want to kill you! You hear me?”

He’s stunned and begins to cry. His hands, full of grease and congealed fat, stay plunged in the water.

The switch now flips back, the fury gone, and she looks away, ashamed. An apology rises toward her lips, but she bites it off. No, no. Can’t apologize. She goes back to the couch.

Cedric gathers himself, silently finishes the dishes, and then gets the bucket and Ajax under the sink to scrub the bathroom.

Barbara Jennings will lie out here tonight, like every night (her double bed long ago buried under a mountain of clothes), hating that she erupted, wondering how Jesus might help her with her anger, wondering where it springs from. For now, though, she flips the channels fast, barely able to make sense of the flashing pictures.

T
he sun rises at 6:12
A.M.
on a March morning a few days before the start of spring. In the dewy dawn mist, a shadowy figure descends the crumbling concrete stairs outside 1635 V Street, two steps at a time.

Cedric Jennings has been sleeping fitfully for the past few weeks, waking up briefly to check his digital clock at 4
A.M.
, then 5
A.M.
, and finally at 5:30. That’s when he bounds into the shower. By 6, he’s dressed.

A few nights ago, Barbara told him that she thought he was losing his mind getting up at such crazy hours, and he just laughed. There’s nothing he needs to talk to her about. It just feels better to get up, head to school, and start working. At least then he’s not just sitting around worrying about MIT, or his all-important junior year grades, or the upcoming SATs, or some fuzzy notion of his future. He’s actually doing something about it.

Yesterday after school he tried to explain this swelling anxiety and his desire to meet it head on. “It’s like I’m at this crossroads,” he told Mr. Taylor once he was convinced that a few other kids milling around the chemistry class weren’t listening. “Like it’s going to happen now or it’s not, like I’m gonna either make it or crash.”

Mr. Taylor looked at him nervously.

“It’s not like I’m planning to do anything—it’s just a feeling,” Cedric said, exasperated. “Oh, whatever.”

This morning, as he cuts across the apartment building’s moist front lawn and skips onto the street, he thinks about that conversation with Taylor. He decides it’s better not to talk about this sense of urgency
with anyone. No one understands that this is the crucial moment for a show of academic force, a display of pure will. He feels himself getting riled up. Now is the time!