How Long Will I Cry? (14 page)

That’s the environment that I was growing up
in. And not knowing how to deal with that anger was just building
and building inside of me to the point that, I just didn’t care no
more about my father. I didn’t care for my dad. I hated my dad.
There was a time in my life where I wanted to kill my dad, when I
started hitting my teenage years. And I started standing up for my
mom. One time, I went at him and I hit him with a bat and he hit me
with a two-by-four. This is a kind of violence that we both
experienced with each other. But that was the last time that he hit
my mom, because I stood up for my mom. And so I went through a
period in my life where I got involved with the street gang in
Little Village. That’s where I learned to let out a lot of my
aggression and anger.

I did my thing. I wasn’t really into the drug
dealing. I’m not a good salesperson. I’m not a good marketer, and
so I did other things to make money. I didn’t steal. I didn’t like
stealing cars or car rims and stuff, but some other people make
money stealing radios. I made some of the money dealing weaponry.
Because, part of this lifestyle, there’s weekly meetings you have
to go. There’s your weekly dues you have to pay, just like being
part of the Rotary Club, you know? You have to pay your weekly dues
when you’re part of that.

What I don’t want people to think is that
gang members are just monsters and they’re out to just get anyone
or anybody. There are rules and regulations at each gang and bylaws
that they have to abide by. And so some of these street gangs do
not let you steal in your own neighborhood, do not let you tag or
write in your own neighborhood. Of course, you’ve got some renegade
youth out there that don’t follow rules, but there are consequences
for breaking some of those bylaws.

So I was lost for a while. I was blinded in
believing that that was the right way in dealing with your personal
issues or the way of coping with things in your life. But you know
what? My mom wouldn’t give up. I was out there on the street
corner, and she would stand out there until I came home. So my
friends didn’t want me out there. They would say, “Leave already.
You’d better run home. Your mom’s coming. Your mom’s going to stay
out here on the street corner with us.”

And my mom would be like, “Either you let him
go, or I’m going to stand out here with you guys and not let you
guys do your activities, whatever those were.”

And they’d go, “Mrs. Roque, we promise you
your son—we’ll have him there in 30 minutes.” They knew my mom by
her name.

And she’d go, “Thirty minutes, guys. If he
don’t come home, I’m going to come right back!”

It was like my mom became one of the
enforcers. She’s one of the reasons I started getting away from
gangbanging.

There’s this one corner, I was out there one
night and a rival gang member passed by. He saw me out there, me
and my friend that were on that corner saw him coming, and we knew
what gang they were from. They passed by and I threw a brick
through their window and dented up their hood. And there’s one
individual who I did that to, he was known as a killer, as one of
those crazy killers. And they chased me.

There’s a thing called security out there, so
supposedly we had security. We got individuals in gangways or on
corners with guns protecting, making sure that any intruders don’t
come in, and then they react. And at that moment, our security
supposedly was just on something different that night. I tell my
friend, “Run, run, run!” And so he runs and he tries to jump the
fence and I try to jump the fence, and I get caught up in the
fence. My shoelaces get stuck on the fence.

And so this individual that I did the damage
to his car, he looked at me, and he goes, “Man, you’re just, you’re
just a kid.” And his friends there were like, “Who cares? Who
cares? Look at what he did to the car. Look at what he did!” He was
in his 20s, I was in my teens. I was about 15 at the time. And he
had the gun to my head. His guys were like, “Man, kill him. Man,
look at what he did to your car!” And for whatever reason—you know,
that’s why I say God works in mysterious ways—one of my friends was
passing by and he jumps out with a weapon. He’s like, “Don’t shoot
him! Don’t shoot him!” He was the brother of my friend that was
with me on the corner running.

Earlier that day, that same day, I remember
my mom and my dad telling me, “Don’t go out.” And so I thought of
my mom’s words, you know: “I dreamt you were in a coffin. I dreamt
you were dead.” Her words start, in my mind, and I’m like, “I’m
going to die here.”

And so while they’re negotiating, I get away,
I cut loose. And all my guys, the guys on security, came out and
they’re all trying to negotiate. We knew them from the neighborhood
so we grew up around them, around this gang. And so they did not
shoot, they did not kill me, thank God.

I ran home that night, telling my mom, “Mom,
I almost got killed” with tears in my eyes, remembering her words.
And she’s like, “Don’t worry, you’re alive. But what about you
taking some time off from the community, from the neighborhood? I
talked to your uncle today. And I was telling him all the things
you were going through.” And he’s in Kansas, but she’s like, “Go
for a month! Get away. Think about what you’re doing to yourself.
Think about getting some breathing space.”

Liberal, Kansas. Small. Where they filmed
Wizard of Oz
. They have a museum of
Wizard of Oz
there. I arrive there, and I’m looking around, and you’ve got to
understand, I know the city, the big city. But all I saw was
nothing but wheat fields. Nothing but wheat fields.

Then my uncle tells me, “There’s rules here.
We don’t have women here, so guess who’s going to do the cooking,
who’s going to do the laundry? We go to church here at my house two
times a week.” I looked at him like, “Are you crazy?” I mean, I
only went to church three times a year: Easter, Thanksgiving and
Christmas. So I always say that I was in my uncle’s boot camp.
Because what my own father should have maybe taught me, he taught
me. He became a very, very important person in my life.

My clothes—I was still in my street uniform.
This was before hip-hop culture hit, so I was wearing long socks,
cut-off baggies to my knees, and Chucks—Converse All-Stars. I went
to my uncle’s church dressed that way, but people accepted me the
way I was, and they allowed me to be myself. I liked that. Because
I was so used to so many churches in the city closing their doors
on us—just because maybe them not understanding the young Latino
culture, especially the street culture, the gang culture. And over
there in Kansas, they treated me so different.

I spent close to a year there, and I learned
a lot. They talked about a loving God, a God who doesn’t judge, a
God who’s about equality and respect and justice. They showed it
and that they practiced it. And they practiced it with me. Knowing
where I was coming from, knowing my background, knowing how I
looked on the outside shell, and they still didn’t see me
any different.

I felt this big load on me. I was at the
church on New Year’s. The preacher was preaching that we only go to
God when we need Him. And he was saying, “Any one of you who is
right now hurting and wants to experience that loving God, come to
the altar. Who’s tired of their way of living?” I didn’t know that
God. I wanted to feel that peace. I wanted to forgive my dad. I
wanted to get rid of the anger towards him. And I wanted to even
forgive myself because of what problems I might have caused to
others, guys that were hurt, you know. I wanted to be forgiven from
that, and I wanted to feel that peace and joy that they were
talking about. I remember being at the altar for like three or four
hours, crying and sobbing and just letting God know to forgive me.
It was like a relief. It was like this thing came out of me, like a
thousand pounds came off my shoulder.

I ended up coming back to Chicago in spring
of 1993, when I was just turning 17, and I told my mom, “Ma, find a
church, because we’re going to church.” I got to Chicago, and she
found a church right around the corner, a Baptist church. I started
going there and I started getting involved in the youth group. For
six months, I was doing very well. I started going to GED classes,
because they had kicked me out of Kelly High School for
fighting.

I told my friends, “You know what, guys? I’m
going to just focus on school, my education and church.”

And a lot of them were like, “Man, why you
want to get out when you recruited us? You got us into this.” There
was a lot of pressure. Then, my youth pastor at the time, he fell.
The guy that I looked up to so much, he slipped. He was going to
get divorced from his wife. And that discouraged me. I was a baby
believer, you know, and so I was new to this stuff. I did not stop
going to church, but I started slipping myself.

I caught myself holding guns again on the
block with these guys. But I did not feel happy. It was hard
because I had experienced that change. And so it was like me taking
10 steps back. I wasn’t happy doing it. I didn’t have peace. I
couldn’t sleep. But I never stopped going to church.

And then one night, something happened that
made me say, “You know what? Somebody’s trying to get my attention
here.” Four guys got shot right in front of my mother’s house. Good
friends of mine.

It was just part of the retaliation back and
forth between the Two-Sixes and the Latin Kings that had been
happening for decades. We’re talking about a war that’s been going
on from the late ’70s, the ’80s, ’90s, until the present. It’s a
war that’s gone on for like four or five decades. And it’s been
retaliation after retaliation.

I was in my mom’s house. I had just gotten
in. It was about two or three in the morning, and these guys were
all standing two houses away. It was real loud. A drive-by, a real
crazy drive-by. Two cars. They unloaded like three or four guns on
my friends. And then one of my friends ran, and just fell in front
of my mom’s house. And the other guy was in a gangway, shot up.
They got hit with deer slugs. Like, the 30-30 bullets.

Everybody came out, my mom, everybody. She’s
like, “Don’t go out, don’t go out.” But I came out because I seen
my friend lying there. We were grabbing the guys who got shot and
putting the bodies in cars and taking them to the hospital. You
wait for the ambulance, and some of these guys are going to
die.

One of them was very critical and it looked
like he was going to lose his life. He’s alive. He pulled through.
But that was the night where I said, “Lookit, man—God, are you
trying to get my attention?” And ever since then, I’ve come a long
way.

Staying in Little Village after I left the
gang was the hard part. Imagine, coming from church and my friends
making fun of me with my Bible in my hand. “Ha ha ha! Look at you,
church boy.” Imagine the pressure. I used to make guys do things
when I was in the gang, and now they’re making fun of me! My old
friends from the neighborhood, man. But guess what? I went through
it. I went through the pressure and the temptations.

I get emotional after all these years because
a lot of my friends are coming back around and now they’re helping
me, they’re supporting me. The guys with influence are making my
job a little easier. In 2010, we were able to detach 10 youths from
the gang. And so it’s like, yeah we work with 60-something youth,
but people may say, 10 youth? Even if I have one youth leave the
gang, that’s something.

A lot of people get stuck in gang life. A lot
of my friends are locked up and shot up. But I knew I was created
for something better—to help people, not hurt people.

—
Interviewed by Miles Harvey

Endnotes

31 Roque left the YMCA shortly before this
book went to press. He now works for CeaseFire and for New Life
Community Church in Little Village, where he mentors young people
who are on probation.

A MESSAGE FOR STUPID
PEOPLE

REGGIE

Reggie—not his real name—is a 19-year-old
who grew up in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, which
takes its name from its location east and west of the old Union
Stockyards. Once the center of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, this
Southwest Side community is now filled with abandoned buildings and
vacant lots. Reggie and his twin brother were raised by their
maternal grandmother in a household that included several cousins
and uncles. More recently, it includes the boys’ 2-year-old sister.
They also have three siblings they do not know who grew up in
foster care, as well as some half-sisters through their father.

Reggie’s interviews took place at the
Precious Blood Community Center at South 51st and Elizabeth
Streets, near Sherman Park. Housed in a former school building,
only yards from the border separating one gang’s territory from
another, Precious Blood serves as a kind of peace zone—providing
young people with a safe place to hang out, while offering them
creative outlets in music, art, video and writing. The center also
regularly conducts peacemaking circles—a practice of restorative
justice that seeks to address and repair the harm that has been
done to the victim and to the community, without giving up on the
offender. 

Although he still frequents the center,
Reggie no longer lives in the neighborhood. After he survived a
gang-related shooting in 2010, his grandmother moved the family
about 20 blocks south to keep the boys away from their former
associates in the Black P Stone Rangers, an organization that
controls Sherman Park and the surrounding blocks.

When speaking, Reggie rarely opens his eyes
all the way; most of the time, they are mere slits in his face. But
when he laughs, they open wide and he suddenly appears much
younger.