It was on a warm summer day that Bobby Norman paraded his 8-month-old son, Jabbar, around the playground.
The boy was outfitted in the latest in baby-wear, a little baseball cap tilted jauntily to one side.
The tilt of a baby`s hat is normally not a subject of much concern. But this was Cabrini-Green, and here even infant headgear can signify something sinister.
There are rules here that must be respected, rules that people in other neighborhoods would never imagine. One is that the slant of an infant`s cap is considered proof of a father`s gang allegiance.
So on this day, a gang member approached Norman and warned him: ”Man, I think you better turn that baby`s hat.”
Norman heeded the advice.
Though Jabbar is now a rambunctious preschooler, the rules of survival haven`t changed much at Cabrini. Now, whenever Jabbar steps outside, his mother, Cheryl Savage, makes sure the boy`s cap is on straight.
There are other rules.
Walking to school means taking the long route to avoid the high-rise buildings where gunshots can ring out at any hour. Mothers coach their young ones to ”drop and roll” at the sound of gunfire. And because of the danger from crossing gang turf lines, teenagers from the southeast side of the development think twice about venturing to the northwest side.
To many Chicagoans, Cabrini-Green is 70 acres of prison-style high-rises and rowhouses raked by constant gang warfare. Last week, many of those stereotypes were confirmed when a 7-year-old died at the hands of a sniper.
Dantrell Davis` slaying again turned the spotlight on this 20-block island and seemed to reinforce the notion that Cabrini-Green is a place that can be controlled only by sending in the National Guard, as Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Vincent Lane suggested almost immediately after Dantrell`s killing.
And yet, there is another Cabrini, one that residents know, one where people decorate their homes, tend their gardens, raise their children and apply to college. For Cheryl Savage, her family and the 6,985 others who call the housing development home, Cabrini-Green is filled with contradictions.
Since 1954, four generations of the Savage family have lived in a two-block radius within the confines of Cabrini-Green. Through a combination of grit, faith and luck, they have found a way to be in the world of Cabrini-Green but not of it.
”This is a beautiful place, really,” says Cheryl Savage, the 43-year-old mother of Jackie, 25, Felicia, 24, Brandon, 20, Brian, 18, Jermaine, 16, and Jabbar, 4, and grandmother of 1-year-old Terisha. ”I just hate the violence.”
Last week, following the shooting of Dantrell, the Savages allowed two reporters into their home from sundown Wednesday through Friday morning. Inside the cramped two-bedroom rowhouse filled with stuffed animals, hand-sewn pillows and photographs of proms, football teams and high school graduations, it is easy to forget that the family lives in one of the nation`s most notorious public housing complexes.
Outside, there are plenty of reminders. Just a few feet from the Savages` front steps, gang members guard their turf. Music booms from cars that block traffic as the occupants buy drugs. Patrol cars barrel the wrong way down one- way streets.
”I`m just a typical person trying to survive,” said Cheryl, who pays $49 a month in rent because she is on public aid. ”And I`m just lucky things aren`t as bad as I thought they would be.”
For years, Cheryl, a high school dropout, had predicted a grim future for her three oldest sons. She was certain they would turn out like their father, who she said beat her for years and is serving an 80-year prison sentence for his role in the killing of an 11-year-old.
”They fooled me,” Cheryl said of her children.
Brandon, a sophomore at Trinity College in Deerfield, wants to be a computer programmer. And if the next six months pass without incident, Cheryl will see her next two boys off to college with the help of grant money from a private foundation.
Felicia is stationed in the Navy in Hawaii and has dreams of someday helping her mother move out of Cabrini.
But everyone knows that life at Cabrini can defy tidy plans.
The routine in the Savage household, as it is with countless American families, is unwavering.
At 5 each morning, the blast of Jermaine`s stereo awakens the family. While the latest R&B hits blare, family members sing along.
”I turn on music. It does something to you,” Cheryl said. ”It keeps you going.”
Since the kitchen stove doesn`t work, they skip breakfast. Jabbar will eat later at the day-care center.
More Top Picks Best Reading Wedges For Bed
In the tiny upstairs hallway, Jermaine stuffs his football gear into a large duffel bag and talks about how football has helped him avoid gangs and make preparations for a life outside of Cabrini.
”I see a lot of old friends; they don`t associate me with gangs because they know I love football,” Jermaine said. ”With football, you have to have discipline.”
Hoisting his football gear over his shoulders, Jermaine heads out the door. Each day, the running back commutes 1 1/2 hours each way to Sullivan High School in Rogers Park. The commute is worth it, he said; it takes him out of Cabrini and out of trouble.
Still, he said, being from Cabrini has its advantages.
”I know I have to work harder to get out of here,” Jermaine said. ”I want to go to college and major in architecture. Maybe I will be able to design some better projects.”
Outside Sullivan, students line up waiting for the main door to open at 8 a.m. Dressed in a sweatshirt, black pants and sneakers, Jermaine looks like any other student enrolled at Sullivan. Most of his classmates are shocked when he tells them that he lives in Cabrini, he said.
”They expect a hoodlum or someone real wild,” he said. ”They asked me how I survived. They have heard these little rumors, and most have never been there. I don`t get offended. I know what they hear on the news, and I expect that. Maybe I can show them everyone is not like that.”
Back at the apartment, there`s a knock at the door. It is Cheryl`s best friend, Sharon Robinson, who drops off her 3-year-old twins, Shaun and Shelton, before heading off to her job as a packer at the Stiffel Lamp Co. Every weekday, while Robinson is at work, Cheryl takes the boys to a Cabrini day-care center and picks them up at the end of the day.
”I have this dream,” said Robinson, who lived in Cabrini for 20 years before moving to the West Side eight years ago. She has since bought a townhouse.
”Oh, I would love to win the lottery so I could get people out of here,” Robinson said. ”I had a hard time getting out. People wanted no kids, no single moms. When they found out where you lived, they would say the place was no longer for rent.”
For now, Cabrini suits Cheryl`s oldest daughter, Jackie, just fine. In one of the tiny bedrooms, a restless Terisha lies on her lap. Jackie braids her daughter`s curly hair into an intricate hairstyle.
”Cabrini-Green is OK with me,” said Jackie, who plans to move soon to a Cabrini high-rise. ”I`ll stay here for a while. It`s not really dangerous. But then I don`t hang out outside. I don`t hang out around here at all. I`m usually just with my baby.”
Meanwhile, Cheryl stuffs Jabbar into his overcoat, grabs the twins and heads outside. She doesn`t lock the door.
Her path is carefully mapped out. It winds through the alleys linking the rowhouses, clear of what the residents call the ”blacktop,” the wide-open expanse of asphalt that connects the high-rises to one another.
Still, as Cheryl approaches the Lower North Childhood Development Center, where Jabbar and the twins will spend their day, she can`t avoid walking near Jenner Elementary School, where Dantrell was shot two days earlier.
Rumors that the killing would be followed by all-out gang warfare proved false. ”I think it will be settled down for now,” Cheryl said. ”Things were quiet for a change last night.”
Inside the day-care center, a 3-year-old boy stands in the middle of the room, twirling two wooden spoons over his head like a miniature Ninja warrior in a frenzy of motion.
”Living in Cabrini is a big problem for these children,” said the boy`s teacher, Desiaree Shenaurlt. ”We can`t go outside on the playground most days because of the shooting. That deprives them. They come to school, telling me about police and fights. And instead of building houses out of Lego blocks, they build guns. We tell them we don`t use guns here.”
Cheryl takes a stroll through the neighborhood, greeting neighbors and old friends. She stops in on her niece, Marlene Longino. It is not unusual for several generations of a family to live in Cabrini. The average resident has lived in the development for eight years, and few are employed, according to the Lower North center.
As Marlene and Cheryl catch up, the events of the past week are fresh in their minds. They interrupt each other, eagerly recounting their own brushes with violence.
Last summer, Marlene, a 24-year-old mother of three, spent the night on the floor in her high-rise Cabrini apartment after gunfire ripped a hole through her 7-year-old son`s room. She and her children left the next day and moved into her sister`s Cabrini apartment. It`s now October, and she`s too afraid to move back in the apartment even though she owes $900 in back rent and everything she owns is still there.
”My kids hear firecrackers now and they think someone`s shooting,”
Marlene said.
A block away from them, Cheryl`s mother, Arzula Longino, sits inside her apartment, watching ”Oprah” on TV.
Life, she said, has changed a great deal since Arzula moved Cheryl and her two other children into a Cabrini rowhouse in 1954. People looked out for one another then. Wayward children had as much to fear from the neighbor`s switch as they did from their parents. Block parties and after-school dance classes were common. Young men resolved their differences through fistfights, not gunfights.
But things change. Now, chivalry is embodied by a young gang member, who recently approached Viola Longino, Arzula`s daughter-in-law, moments before a gang shootout.
”Ma`am,” he advised her, ”you better leave. Your car will get shot up.”
There is still some respect granted the elderly, Arzula said. Last year, as she walked outside a currency exchange near her home, a young thug tried to rob her.
”I said, `You can`t hurt me, hon,` ” the 68-year-old recounts indignantly. ”I said, `So you kill me, so what? You can`t kill my soul.` He looked at me real funny, and he said, `OK, miss, I`m sorry.` ”
Later, Cheryl returns to the center for a class. Along with four other women, Cheryl listens raptly as Catherine Gottfred, a white volunteer from north suburban Golf, teaches them how to shed their African-American dialect for standard American English.
Gottfred, who has a doctorate in speech pathology and runs Gottfred Speech Associates in Northbrook, has been coming to Cabrini for four years. Dantrell`s slaying made her even more determined to continue.
”I said, `There must be a way I can do something,` ” Gottfred said.
”The more you stay away, the more afraid you get. Some say you shouldn`t go there. I say you should go more.”
Cheryl is glad the classes will continue. ”It helps me further my education. It helps me pronounce a lot of words I don`t know. It makes me motivated.”
Motivation is important to her. Again and again, she talks about finding a better life outside Cabrini. But she is patient. It might be too late for her, she said, but at least her children have a chance.
More Top Picks Instant Pot Duo60
Cheryl plans one day at a time. She struggles to make ends meet on a $414 public assistance check. She has gone without heat, when she couldn`t afford to pay the bills.
”I don`t have the best in life, but I am just thankful my sons are not in jail and people are not banging at my door looking for my sons,” she said. ”In a way, I am blessed. It could be worse that what it is. My kids could be on drugs; I could be on drugs. I think I am blessed in many ways.”
Cheryl has lived in Cabrini since she was 6. Rarely does she venture beyond the neighborhood. She has no car. Everything in her life is within walking distance. When she needs to get away, she gets a ride from a friend to a mall or to Michigan Avenue.
Her first stay outside Chicago came three weeks ago when she drove with a friend to Kansas City.
”I really enjoyed myself; I`m glad I went,” Cheryl said. ”I stayed in a hotel. That felt good. Now they talk about going to New York. I don`t know. They say it is worse than here.”
Sometimes she visits friends in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. ”When I go to the West Side, I feel more content,” she said. ”When you come back, you get that feeling again. I feel depressed, sad. Why do I have to come back in here?”