I wanted to write this because I think it speaks to how resilient young people can be, because I wanted to share the realities of someone specific, and because some shit in this world is more real than I generally imagine.
I wanted to share it here because you'd be one of the few people I'd actually tell the story to, and because no one besides you really ever looks at this blog---if this girl I'm calling "Jill" knew I wrote this stuff here she may be upset, but probably for not using her real name.
I don't know as much of Jill's life story as it may sound, but I'm pretty sure some bad shit happened by the by, assaults of a physical and/or sexual nature are my main guesses, but I don't have any actionable information. Mandatory reporting is serious and we're all trained on the process, but nothing to call on yet.
Jill was one of my kids my first year, and I saw plenty of intellectual potential, plus an attitude I respected. Other adults had issues with her, and usually I chalked it up to points of view clashes. For collaborative activities I usually made her the Boss.
She works at a Starbucks now and complains about having to be restrained with bitch-ass customers, to which all I can do is say, "Yeah...sucks, doesn't it," while I'm truly happy she has the maturity necessary to make jobs work.
She comes and talks to me before things get going in the morning. Topics range from being cursed out by her mom, about the general lack of respect from her mom and how it only happens after her dad leaves. I met this dad once at an evening event a few years back, and he was British where Jill is certainly not.
It was soon after I heard stories about her "birth mother" showing up and causing havoc, and how her adoptive dad is pretty supportive and one of the fellas in her life she can rely on. A broader picture began to form. The "mom" who is caustic and nasty in the stories I hear is her adoptive mom, and she thinks her adoptive dad should leave her.
The stories about the birth mother appearing occasionally have to do with one of her younger sisters whoring around and trying to get knocked up.
Jill once explained her siblings to me and it sounded like a "Match a Baby to a Daddy" game gone wrong and ended with, "...and oh yeah, there's that baby she had with that gas station guy..."
When work resumed again this August, the first day transpired like this:
(Me setting up powerpoint slides and general room preparations.)(Door Opens.)
Jill: Hey Sherwood.
Me: Jill! How the hell are you? How was summer?
Jill: (Smiling) We buried my brother!
Where does a conversation go from there? Compassionate humans who hear those words from a young person in their charge can only reel.
He was shot to death senselessly, and she wasn't able to tell him something very important to her before it happened, and it haunts her like a bad movie cliche. (She hasn't told me what that important thing is, and I certainly won't ask.)
Later this conversation happened:
J: Hey Sherwood.
M: Jill! How are things?
J: My dad's getting outta jail...at least that's what they're saying. My birth dad...
M: Well...(unsure of the realities) that's a good thing, right?
J: He's so fucking weird, Sherwood. He's like, 'I love you Jill, I'm so proud of you...' and inside I'm like, you don't know me...proud? What do you know about me?
It was about here that I realized she was talking to him while he was in prison (and probably not jail). I had my own emotional response to the idea of a locked up guy who hasn't seen his kid in too long, but what he can see (a mature and competent young adult) is enough for him to beam with pride, but I wasn't able to verbalize any of that. And I was sure she didn't need me defending him, so I said something like:
M: Well...maybe he wants to try to build an actual father-daughter relationship with you after he gets released.
J: Yeah...maybe...so, how's your son?
An easy diversionary trick...always successful.
And then we come to the the "Conversation" from the title of this post.
J: Hey Sherwood.
M: Jill! What's happening?
J: Turns out my dad isn't getting out of prison. Turns out they have a recording of him talking about the crime, which I didn't know about...
M: What!? A recording? Did the feds have a wiretap?
J: No, it was one of those prison phones...he was talking about it and they recorded it...
My face was buried in my laptop at that moment, but when I heard her say that what ran through my head was, "Fucking idiot sonofabitch no wonder you're in prison and not raising your kids you fucking dipshit!!!!" What I said was:
M: Hmm...that's something...
She said some other stuff that I was a little too busy to register, but I tried to ask a clarifying question, like about the severity or whatever, and she was a little too busy fiddling with her makeup at my big mirror on the back of the door of the work-issued closet, so she answered a question she thought I was asking:
J: Well, he's got the death penalty, so he ain't ever coming out.
My head whipped around from my spot at the laptop across the room.
M: What!? Death penalty is for, like, special circumstances...
She may have thought I was being too adult-y with the phrase "special circumstances" but I used it because that's the language of America's legal system. By now she was asking me to look it up online, the incident itself, to find the online news briefs about it.
(Sigh)
The guy---her dad---and his accomplice (see: dumbass buddy), both legit gangsters, went looking for a dude who owed them money for drugs. They couldn't find him, but heard he was staying out at one of the many homeless encampments that used to populate the LA River and freeway crossings. This was back in 2008 before the cops wiped them away like a squeegee.
These two guys grabbed some other guy and forced him at gunpoint to take them to the dude. Once they found him they shot and killed him. Then they shot the guy who took them to him as well as three other folks who were close by, two being a mom and her kid. Kill all witnesses, I guess the plan was.
Jill's dad was already in prison for another murder and kidnapping rap when he spoke about these particular killings ON THE GODDAMNED PRISON PHONE, and they had him again. Pretty cut and dry from a legal standpoint.
Kidnapping and murder as a way of dispatching witnesses represent special circumstances, and for this Jill's dad is up for death.
She had me click on the "Images" tab from google and a series of pictures came up.
J: There he is, that's him. That's my dad...
The way Jill phrased "That's my dad..." was the way a slightly embarrassed kid would explain an over-excited father at a ballgame, and not with the terror one might expect from one connecting the twin ideas of 'mostly apparition of a patriarch' to 'multiple murdering gangster.'
The picture was of a hardened gangster with obvious genetic connections to Jill. My laptop screen is so grimy that I tried wiping a smudge, but then realized that what I was seeing was not a smudge, but was, in fact, a tattoo across both cheeks of this 36 year old man.
"Nut Hood."
As in, this man had, on one cheek, "NUT," and on the other cheek "HOOD."
The Nut Hood Crips are a Watts area Crip-affiliated gang, holding from 108th to 111th streets between Alameda and maybe Willowbrook, and memories of my bike riding shenanigans from a few years back flood my present. I know right where all that is.
Is it just me, or is the idea of a "hardened gangster" clash with a guy with nut on his face? Sorry, "NUT"?
I joke, but because that's my only recourse. I feel like a surrogate father to many of these kids, Jill and and a few others maybe more than most, and I find it hard to reconcile my suburban upbringing and experiences with what can only be described as the horrors many of these kids just call...it...life...the world as they know it...
How would your imagination be warped by living through this kind of shit? Its kind of amazing anyone ever makes it out, and it's a testament to the drive and ability of young people to adapt.
And then, as a father, we come back to that last conversation with his daughter, how much he loves her and how proud he is of her, and a far more chilling and bleak scene is painted. He knew the realities of his case by that point, but took the time to tell his daughter he was proud of her, that he loved her.
And, as fathers, we know: The job of being a dad is more than just feeling it, or even saying it, you have to live it, every fucking day.
