in the stairwell. He had wanted to see how they handled this stranger. Did they remain calm? Did they ask the right questions? Or did they get out of control and do something to attract the attention of tenants and the police?
“So what was going on with Ms. Easley?” I asked.
“You mean why did I give her money?” J.T. said. “That’s what you want to know, right?”
I nodded, a little embarrassed that he could see through my line of indirect questioning.
“Tenant Patrol runs after-school parties for kids, and they buy school supplies. I give them money for that. It keeps them off our ass.”
This was the first time J.T. had mentioned having to deal with tenants who might not like his gang’s behavior. I asked what Ms. Easley might not like about his gang.
“I wouldn’t say that she doesn’t like us,” he said. “She just wants to know that kids can walk around and not get hurt. And she just wants to keep things safe for the women. Lot of these crackheads are looking for sex, too, and they beat up women. It gets wild up in here at night. So we try to keep things calm. That’s about it. We just help them, you know, keep the peace.”
“So she lets you do what you want as long as you help her deal with people causing trouble? It’s a give-and- take? There’s nothing that you guys do that pisses her off?”
“We just keep the peace, that’s all,” he muttered, and walked away.
J.T. sometimes spoke vaguely like this, which I took as a sign to stop asking questions. At times he could be extraordinarily open about his life and his business; at other times he gave roundabout or evasive answers. It was something I’d learn to live with.
We kept climbing until we reached the top floor, the sixteenth. I followed J.T. down the hallway till we came to an apartment without a front door. J.T. told our foot soldier escort to stand guard outside. The young man nodded obediently.
Following J.T. inside, I was hit by a noxious odor of vomit, urine, and burned crack. It was so dark that I could barely see. There were several mattresses spread about, some with bodies on them, and piles of dirty clothing and fast-food wrappers. The holes in the walls were stuffed with rags to keep out the rats.
“Sudhir, come over here!” J.T. shouted. I followed a dim light that came from the rear of the apartment. “See this?” he said, pointing to a row of beat-up refrigerators. “This is where the squatters keep their food.” Each fridge was draped with a heavy chain and padlock.
“Where do they get the fridges?” I asked.
“From the housing authority!” J.T. said, laughing. “The CHA managers sell fridges to the squatters for a few bucks instead of taking them back to get them fixed. Everyone is in on it. That’s one thing you’ll learn about the projects.”
J.T. explained that this apartment was a “regular” squat, which meant that the people sleeping there paid the gang a rental fee and were therefore allowed to keep food and clothes inside. Ten people stayed in this apartment. A squatter known as C-Note, who had been in the community for more than two decades, was their leader. It was his duty to screen other squatters who wanted to take up quarters, help them find food and shelter, and make sure they obeyed all J.T.’s rules. “We let him run things inside,” J.T. said, “as long as he pays us and does what we say.”
There were other, less stable squats in the building, J.T. explained.
“We got a lot of apartments that are just basically for the hos and the crackheads. They get high and spend a few nights and then they leave. They’re the ones that end up causing trouble around here. That’s when the police come by, so we have to be tight with them.”
Outside the squat I sat down on the gallery floor, finally able to take a clear breath. I felt overwhelmed by all the new information hitting me. I told J.T. I needed a rest. He smiled, seeming to understand, and told me he’d survey the other two buildings by himself. When I started to resist, worried I might not have this chance again, J.T. read my mind. “Don’t worry, Mr. Professor. I do this every week.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll meet you back at your place. I’ve got to go write some of this down.”
My heart froze after I realized what I’d just said. I had never actually told J.T. that I was keeping notes on all our conversations; I always waited until we split up before writing down what had transpired. Suddenly I feared he would think about everything we’d just witnessed and discussed, including all the illegal activities, and shut me down.
But he didn’t even blink.
“Shorty, take Sudhir back to Mama’s place,” he told the young man who’d been standing guard outside the squat. “I’ll be over there in an hour.”
I quietly walked down the sixteen flights of stairs and over to Ms. Mae’s building. The elevators in Robert Taylor worked inconsistently at best, so the only people who bothered to wait for them were old people and mothers with small children. The foot soldier accompanied me all the way to Ms. Mae’s door, but we didn’t talk; I tended never to talk to foot soldiers, since they never talked to me- which led me to think they’d probably been told not to.
I wound up sitting at the living room table in Ms. Mae’s apartment, writing up my notes. In a short time the apartment had becomethe place I went whenever I needed a break or wanted to write up some field notes. J.T.’s family grew comfortable with my sitting quietly by myself or even napping on the couch if J.T. was busy.
Sometimes the apartment was peaceful and sometimes it was busy. At the moment J.T.’s cousin and her two children were staying there, as was one of J.T.’s sisters. But the living arrangements were very fluid. Like a lot of the more established households in the projects, Ms. Mae’s apartment was a respite for a network of poor and needy relatives who might stay for a night, a month, or longer. Some of them weren’t actually relatives at all but were “strays” who just needed a place to stay. It could be hard to sort out J.T.’s relatives from the strays. Several of his uncles, I learned, were high-ranking gang members. But I didn’t even know how many siblings he had. I’d often hear him talk about “my sister” or “a brother of mine on the West Side,” but I couldn’t tell if these people were blood relatives or just friends of the family.
Still, they all seemed content to let me hang out at Ms. Mae’s. And they all knew that J.T. didn’t want me wandering through the neighborhood by myself. Sometimes Ms. Mae would wordlessly set down a plate of food for me as I wrote, her Christian radio station playing in the background. No one in the family, including J.T., ever asked to see my notes-although once in a while he’d stand over me and joke about whether I was describing him as “handsome.” He loved the idea that I might be writing his biography. But in general everyone respected my privacy and let me do my work.
Eventually Ms. Mae even cleared out a space for me in the apartment to keep some clothes and books. Often, during a break from writing up my notes, I would start conversations with Ms. Mae and others in her apartment. They all seemed hesitant to answer specific questions-I’d already witnessed how tenants shied away from interviews with journalists or social workers-but they were more than willing to explain basic aspects of their lives and their community. Like Old Time and his friends in Washington Park, they talked openly about their family histories, Chicago politics, the behavior of the CHA and other city agencies, and life in the projects. As long as I didn’t get too nosy-say, by asking about their income or who was living in an apartment illegally-they talked my head off. Just as important, I found I didn’t have to hide my ignorance-which wasn’t hard, since I was quite naive about politics and race in urban America. My naivete about these basic issues actually seemed to endear me to them.
In my brief exposure to J.T. and others in his building, I had already grown dismayed by the gap between their thoughtfulness and the denigrating portrayals of the poor I’d read in sociological studies. They were generally portrayed as hapless dupes with little awareness or foresight. The hospitality that Ms. Mae showed and the tenants’ willingness to teach me not only surprised me but left me feeling extraordinarily grateful. I began to think I would never be able to repay their generosity. I took some solace in the hope that if I produced good, objective academic research, it could lead to social policy improvements, which might then better their living conditions. But I also wondered how I might pay them back in a more direct fashion. Given that I was taking out student loans to get by, my options were fairly limited.
Once J.T. saw how much I enjoyed accompanying him on his surveys of the buildings, he took me along regularly. But he often had other work to do, work he didn’t invite me to see. And he wasn’t ready yet to turn me loose in the buildings on my own, so I generally hung out around Ms. Mae’s apartment. I felt a bit like a child,
