Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

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, always in need of a baby-sitter, but I could hardly complain about the access I’d been granted into a world that was so radically different from anything I’d ever seen.

Ms. Mae introduced me to the many people who stopped by to visit. In their eyes I was just a student, a bit of an oddball to be sure; sometimes they jokingly called me “Mr. Professor,” as they’d heard J.T. say. Several of J.T.’s aunts and cousins also lived in the building, and they warmed to me as well. They all seemed fairly close, sharing food and helping one another with errands or hanging out together on the gallery during the hot summer days.

Life on the gallery tended to be pretty lively. In the evenings families often set up a barbecue grill, pulling chairs or milk crates from their apartments to sit on. I probably could have made friends a lot more quickly if I hadn’t been a vegetarian.

Little kids and teenage girls liked to tug my ponytail when I walked past. Others would chant “Gandhi” or “Julio” or “Ay-rab” in my direction. I was still enamored of the view of the city, and still nervous about the fencing that ran around the gallery.

Whenever a child ran toward the railing, I’d instinctively jump up and grab him. Once, a little boy’s mother laughed at me. “Take it easy, Sudhir,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. It’s not like the old days.” In “the old days,” I found out, some children did fall to their deaths off the Robert Taylor galleries, prompting the CHA to install a safety fence. But it was obvious that the first mistake had been building exterior hallways in windy, cold Chicago.

After dinner parents sent their kids inside the apartments and brought out tables and chairs, cards and poker chips, food and drink. They turned the galleries into dance floors and gambling dens; it could become carnivalesque.

I loved the nightlife on the galleries. And the tenants were generally in a good mood at night, willing to tell me about their lives if they weren’t too high or too busy trying to make money. It was gettingeasier for me to determine when people were high. They’d stagger a bit, as if they were drunk, but their eyes sank back in their heads, giving them a look that was both dreamy and sinister.

It was hard to figure out the extent of crack use among the tenants. A lot of people pointed out that other people smoked crack- calling them “rock star” or “user” or “hype”-while insinuating that they themselves never did. Aside from a few older women, like J.T.’s mother, just about everyone was accused of smoking crack at one time or another.

After a while it became clear to me that crack use in the projects was much like the use of alcohol in the suburbs where I grew up: there was a small group of hard-core addicts and a much larger group of functional users who smoked a little crack a few days a week. Many of the crack users in Robert Taylor took care of their families and went about their business, but when they saved up ten or twenty dollars, they’d go ahead and get high. Over time I’d learn enough to estimate that 15 percent of the tenants were hardcore addicts while another 25 percent were casual users.

One of the first people I got to know on the gallery was named Clarisse. She was in her mid-thirties but looked considerably older. Beneath her worn and bruised skin, you could see a beautiful and thoughtful woman who nearly always had a smile ready. She worked as a prostitute in the building-“hustler” was the standard euphemism-and called herself “Clarisse the Mankiller,” because, as she put it, “my love knocks ’ em dead.” Clarisse often hung around with J.T.’s family on their gallery. This surprised me, since I had heard J.T. and Ms. Mae openly disparage the prostitutes in their building.

“That’s part of life around here,” Ms. Mae had said, “but we keep away from them and I keep the kids away from them. We don’t socialize together.”

One quiet evening, as J.T.’s family was getting ready to barbecue, I was leaning against the gallery fence, looking out at the dusk, when Clarisse came up beside me. “You never tell me about the kind of women you like,” she said, smiling, and opened a beer. By now I was used to Clarisse teasing me about my love life.

“I told you,” I said, “my girlfriend is in California.”

“Then you must get lonely! Maybe Clarisse can help.”

I blushed and tried to change the subject. “How long have you been in the building, and how did you get to know J.T.?”

“They never told you!” Clarisse yelped. “I knew it! They just embarrassed, they don’t like to admit I’m family.”

“You’re part of their family?”

“Man, I’m J.T.’s cousin. That’s why I’m around. I live upstairs on the fifteenth floor with my man. And I work in the building, too. I’m the one in the family they don’t like to talk about, because I’m open about what I do. I’m a very open person-I don’t hide nothing from nobody. Ms. Mae knows that. Shit, everyone knows it. But, like I said, they don’t always come clean about it.”

“How can you live and work in the building?” I asked.

“You see these men?” Clarisse pointed at some of the tenants along the galley, hanging out in front of their own apartments. “You should see how they treat women.” I didn’t understand what Clarisse meant; when she saw my face blank, she laughed. “Oh! We have a lot to talk about. Clarisse will educate you.”

She then gestured toward a few women sitting on chairs. “See, all of them are hos. They all hustle. It’s just that they do it quietly, like me. We have regulars, and we live here. We’re not hypes who just come and go.”

What’s the difference, I asked her, between a “hype” and a “regular”?

“Regulars like me, we hustle to make our money, but we only go with guys we know. We don’t do it full-time, but if we have to feed our kids, we may make a little money on the side. I got two kids I need to feed, and my man don’t always help out. Then you got hypes that are just in it for the drugs. They don’t live around here, but J.T. lets them work here, and they give him a cut. I don’t hang around with them. They’re the ones that cause trouble. Some of them have pimps, some of them work for the gang, but they’re all in it for the drugs. Clarisse don’t mess with drugs. And that’s why a lot of people accept us-even if they say things behind our back. They know we’re only trying to take care of our families, just like them.”

“Are you working now?” I said.

“Baby, I’m always working if the price is right!” She laughed. “But J.T. probably don’t want me working tonight, so I won’t be hustling.”