One Boy, A Family's Dream Times Picayune 02-04-1998 "Life After Death" 4 Of 6 Part Series ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Charles Cloud sits at the round classroom table caught in a fit of giggles so intense that he keels over, clutching his stomach with one hand and muffling the eruption with the other. "Charles! That's enough!" the reading teacher warns. He straightens up momentarily, then succumbs again. "That's it, Charles. Go back to your class." Instantly contrite, he pleads his case. "Please, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he says, a quick, gappy smile revealing four prominent front teeth. "One more chance?" he asks, holding up his index finger. "No," she says. He is out of chances. Head down, shoulders hunched, he starts out of the class with his slow, loping gait. If his grandmother, Barbara Shelley, had witnessed the episode, she would have fussed at him, as she often does, for having play on his mind instead of school. She has raised him off and on from when he was an infant, at her apartment in the B.W. Cooper public housing complex. When he was 6, he came to live with her permanently. His mother, who was 16 when she gave birth, wasn't ready for motherhood, Shelley says. Now 12, Charles does not yet realize that two generations of deferred dreams have been stacked squarely on his stocky shoulders. Shelley hopes that he will be the first in the family to earn a high school diploma and graduate out of public housing. None of her five children has done so. Not her eldest, Charles' father, who was killed at 18 three months before his son was born. Not her second, who got pregnant and dropped out of high school. Not her third, who recently moved back in with her. Not her fourth, who was murdered in a barrage of gunfire. And not her youngest, who is in jail on drug charges. She wants her grandson to travel a different road. She tells him over and over that education is the way. "My concern for Charles is that he doesn't get caught up in a ball of confusion," she says. "I want him to get his education. I want him to be able to support himself if anything ever happens to me." But Charles' education has already hit some roadblocks. He is repeating the fifth grade, he has difficulty reading and he often falls asleep in class. "I be tired," he says. "I just put my head on the desk and go to sleep." Last year, in an effort to focus Charles' attention on his schoolwork, Shelley enrolled him at Robert R. Moton Elementary, a year-round public school in Uptown New Orleans, where his grades have improved substantially, his reading skills have been polished and he has secured a spot in the school band. "Charles just needs to be pushed," she says. "He just has too much playing on his mind." *** Charles at 12 *** Although he is verging on his teens, Charles' guileless ways and innocent view of the world make him seem younger than many of his street-savvy neighborhood friends. His family worries that sooner or later his naivete may cost him. One day last summer, they were horrified to learn, he and a cousin went into a neighborhood store wearing Halloween masks, trying to scare some of their friends. "They were in that store with masks on!" says his aunt, Chariese Shelley. "I had to explain to him that anything could have happened. I told him, 'Your life was on the line.' " In spite of such occasional bursts of rowdiness, Charles is a reserved child, reticent and subdued even when he's playing with his friends. But the shyness doesn't quite mask his unruly streak. "He's real quiet, but don't get me wrong now; he's bad," his grandmother is fond of saying. "He does his little stuff." Like gambling, for instance. One of Charles' favorite pastimes is a card game called Tonk. On a recent afternoon, as they frequently do, he and his friends have commandeered a neighbor's stoop and hunkered down around a nickel-and-dime game. "He knows I've told him about that," Shelley says while waiting for him to come home. "That's probably where he is now." As dusk starts to settle, Charles comes bounding through the door, announcing his good luck. "I won $2," he says, rattling a pocketful of coins. "I started out with 15 cents." "Hmmph, haven't I told you about that?" Shelley says. "I'm going to break you from that." But her rough speech and tough tone camouflage affection. In one breath, she takes Charles to task for not making his bed; in the next, she says he's her heart. "Having Charles helped me get through my son's death," Shelley says softly. "I don't know what I'd do without him." Charles knows just how far to push his grandmother. When she puts her foot down, he typically resorts to sulking. One night, sunk low into the sofa, with his arms crossed and his lips in a pout, he gives the family the silent treatment. "Grandma won't let me go outside," he finally mumbles in answer to his uncle's inquiry. Shelley is within earshot. "You don't need to be out there," she says. "It's too dark." *** Death of a dad *** On Aug. 28, 1985, Charles Shelley - "Pooh," as his family called him - was beckoned from his mother's apartment to his death. He was sleeping that evening when a friend stopped by and they headed out to join two others on North Miro Street. A gunman approached them, looking for a gold medallion he claimed Shelley had stolen from him, police and family members say. He pointed the gun at Shelley and pulled the trigger. The gun only clicked, but Shelley passed out. Then the gunman stood over him and shot again. This time the gun fired, sending a bullet into the unconscious man's skull. The shooter, a teen-ager from the neighborhood, is serving a life sentence. "To this day, my brother doesn't know what happened to him," Chariese Shelley says. "That's why we say Pooh's life was stolen from him. "I can look out my window and still see the spot," she says. Like his son, Shelley was quiet and kept to himself. Even as a boy, he didn't hang out with kids in bunches. He was a loner, respectful of his elders, restrained. "Quiet as a mouse," his mother says. Growing up, he had a favorite perch: sitting in the window, looking out on the comings and goings in the courtyard below. He never gave his mother trouble. He smoked, but not around her. "All he did was stay in, eat and look at television," she says. "I never had anybody knock on my door and tell me he did this or he did that. I always heard he was a respectable young man. He was a good child." When he was 18, Shelley announced proudly to his mother that his girlfriend was pregnant. "He had his chest all stuck out," Barbara Shelley recalls. She told him he'd have to get a job and support them. He told her he hoped it would be a boy. It was, but the young father never got to see him. "I went to my brother's funeral on my 16th birthday," Chariese Shelley says. *** A day in the life *** "Get off my bike!" Charles roars at Arthesha Shelley, his cousin and frequent sparring partner. Charles' bike is precious to him. A black, banged-up, paint-peeling Huffy missing its kickstand, it's a treasure he crafted out of parts he found and put together himself. The hand grips are made of masking tape and a wrench is attached to the back tire for emergency repairs. Arthesha, 8, giggles and takes off, pedaling furiously. Charles chases her around the building. Another friend follows. "Oooooh, Charles said a bad word," the girl reports. "He said, 'Bitch, get off my bike.' " Arthesha shrugs. "He's always saying we're working his nerves," she says, rolling her eyes skyward. "I tell him he ain't got no job and he ain't got no nerves." Charles denies the charges. "I didn't tell her nothing that time," he says. "My little cousins, they be messing with me and I get mad. They're always jumping on my bike without asking." Later that day, with two of his friends in tow, Charles spots a purple bike with sky-high handlebars near a parking-lot Dumpster. There was some passing conversation about whether the bike was discarded or not, but Charles already had plans for it. "Go get it," he tells Ren, the youngest of the trio. "It's on a flat," Ren hedges. "Go get it. I'm going to fix it. It will be for you." Ren hesitates. "Hurry up, boy!" Charles says. They give the scruffy bike, with its wobbly wheels and dented rim, a test ride. "Man, you can't do nothing with that raggedy thing," Lloyd says. "Watch," Charles says. "You'll see." But Charles never gets a chance to refurbish this one. Instead, the three boys play crash derby, running over the bike and banging into it until they get bored and go home. Girls on a nearby stoop giggle at their antics. *** Dreams of success *** Charles and Arthesha are playing in their grandmother's long, blue station wagon. Charles is in the front seat pretending to drive. Arthesha's in the back seat, barking questions. "Where's the brake?" Arthesha quizzes. "Where's the gas?" Charles ignores her. HE's the one who once was allowed to drive around the parking lot, not her. "Right there," Charles finally answers in an exasperated voice. They "ride" in silence for awhile. Charles pretends to turn on the radio and Arthesha's thoughts drift to her career plans. "I'm going to be a doctor," she says. "My mama and everybody's always telling me that I should be a doctor or a teacher because I like helping people." Not to be outdone, Charles cuts in. "I'm going to be a lawyer. They're rich and have fun," he says. Neither youngster is exactly sure how to accomplish these goals, but they know it will take education. "I gotta finish high school," Charles says, punctuating his words with little nods to the beat of an imagined song. "Then I'm going to be a lawyer. I got to get my education, got to get my school diploma." *** Missing a father figure *** "I want Charles to concentrate on having a childhood," Barbara Shelley says, explaining why she doesn't discuss her son's death with her grandson. "I don't want him dwelling on it and getting depressed." Charles knows his father was shot. He knows the killer is in jail. He doesn't know many of the details. The only picture he has seen of his father shows him in a casket; the others were lost in moving, his grandmother says. "I don't bring it up. Charles is satisfied just like he is, right here with me," Barbara Shelley says. It's not a subject Charles likes to visit, growing withdrawn and monosyllabic when it comes up. "He died before I was even born," Charles says quietly. He imagines what his life would be like if his father were alive. "We'd have fun. We'd go to the show and to Macy's," he says, referring not to the store but to a nearby arcade in the mall where he likes to hang out. Occasionally, Charles talks to his Aunt Chariese about a certain sense of loneliness. "He hangs around my children's father a lot," Chariese says. "But sometimes I feel that he's just lost. He knows we love him and he knows we're here for him. Me and Mama, being women, we can raise him. But we still can't raise him up to be a man like a man could, like a father could." *** Words that wound *** After school one day, Charles and Arthesha are playing in front of the house. As usual, they fall into a fussing match over something trivial and soon forgotten. As it reaches a crescendo, Arthesha hurls words that still sting later, when the two are recounting the tussle. "She told me that's why my daddy was dead," Charles says. Arthesha says different. "Uh-uh. I said that's why your MAMA doesn't take care of you." "You said my DADDY!" Charles shouts. "I said that's why your MAMA doesn't take care of you. Then I said that's why your daddy is dead," she admits, looking down. Afterwards, Charles is withdrawn, although he can't put into words just why. Lying on his living room floor, hiding his face, he cries. *** Rough neighborhood *** About 3,200 people call the Cooper development home. Most of them are children younger than 15. The vast majority live in households headed by single mothers. Barbara Shelley is one of those mothers. Her apartment is small and tidy. In the living room is a floor-model TV and a curved sofa covered with towels to keep it clean. The kitchen table is usually laden with cookies, crackers and chips. In one of the bedrooms, there is a bullet hole in the wall stuffed with tissue, a legacy left by her son, Patrick, from a shootout. Originally named after Calliope, the muse of poetry, the buildings today bear their own odes and epics on their graffiti-covered walls. The seven-block complex was the scene of a dozen murders in one recent year. Although the newly installed police substation has cut crime significantly, there are still times when to sit on the porch, especially at night, is to risk catching a stray bullet. At the base of some buildings, vents have been removed, opening the way for a veritable landfill of beer cans, bottles and miscellaneous debris. Some stoops exude the putrid odor of stale liquor or urine. The dark doorways, their bare light bulbs stolen or burned out, are magnets for trouble. "This hallway stays dark," Barbara Shelley grumbles one night when she finds her bulb missing. "They work on my nerves with these lights off. When it's dark, that's where they plot and smoke their s--. But they won't smoke it in this hallway." Living in Cooper and working in its maintenance department, Shelley feels, is the price she pays for not having an education. Her parents pushed their four daughters to go to school, she says, but she chose a different route. She was 16 and pregnant when she got married. Her husband was 19. Less than a year into the marriage, she decided it was a mistake. "We were just too young," she says. "I always based it on my dad and mom staying together. I thought, well, we can make it too." But they couldn't. And when the arguing got too hot and too frequent, she took the baby and headed home to her parents. Her mother would have none of it. "She said, 'Uh-uh, you can't do that. You can't just leave,' Shelley remembers. "So I wound up going back to my husband, wound up having two more children and wound up in the projects." She has spent 25 years in Cooper and has no foreseeable way out. "I'm 47 years old and it took me all this time to reach, to halfway reach, where I want to go," she says. "But I made my own choices. You lay your bed hard, so you've got to deal with it. You lay it hard, you live it." *** Taking gunfire in stride *** It is a scorching August afternoon and Charles is sitting on his back stoop, eating Cheetos and slurping blue punch. A neighbor is hanging her laundry on a clothesline. In contrast to his grandmother, with her dark view of the place, Charles is carefree at home, tooling around Cooper on his bike, wandering its paths at will. "It's all right. They don't shoot anymore back here," he says. "They used to shoot a lot. A long time ago, over there in the courtway." The courtway, an open lot that runs the length of the complex, is nearly empty on this day, save for a group of teen-agers chattering and horsing around. In the distance, the familiar tune of an ice-cream truck can be heard. "My uncle died back there," he says, pointing a few blocks down. "He was shot." And then, as though conjured up, popping sounds louder than firecrackers split the air. Someone screams. For seconds, there is an uneasy stillness, broken only by the tinkling ice-cream truck rolling past. "I told you," Charles says matter-of-factly. "I told you they shoot back there." Charles ventures off the stoop as clusters of children suddenly appear in the courtway, all of them curious in the aftermath. "I'm used to it," Charles shrugs. "Ain't nothing to be afraid for. You don't have to be afraid if the bullets don't hit you."