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In Search of Respect
Selling Crack in El Barrio
Philippe Bourgois
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808562
Online ISBN: 9780511808562
Hardback ISBN: 9780521815628
Paperback ISBN: 9780521017114

Chapter
Epilogue 2003 pp. 339-351
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808562.013
Cambridge University Press

EPILOGUE 2003

I have maintained a warm friendship with Primo since publishing the first
edition of this book. I visit him at least once a year, usually over a period
of several weeks each summer. He tells me how everyone who used to sell
crack for Ray is doing, and we try to visit as many of our old friends and
acquaintances from the block as possible. As of my last visit during the
summer of 2002:
Primo's mother died and Primo was evicted from her housing project
apartment on the one-strike-you're-out ruling for an outstanding charge
of heroin possession (not sale!). For five years he lived in the project apartment of Candy's sister, Esperanza. He has maintained a stable relationship
with her daughter, Jasmine, who worked as a cashier in a discount store for
three years and then switched to becoming a teller with full benefits at a
neighborhood bank in the South Bronx. Primo continues to refrain from
drug dealing and from consuming alcohol or cocaine. An undocumented
Senegalese street vendor of bootleg videotapes converted him to the Muslim
religion and he no longer eats pork. He does, however, occasionally
sniff heroin and claims to still enjoy the high despite being on a new
semiexperimental heroin treatment medicine derived from a longer-acting
version of methadone, levo-alpha-acetyl-methadol (LAAM). He developed
a full-blown addiction to heroin when he was working during the summers as a night porter in a luxury high-rise building (Bourgois, 2000).
Primo now works off the books in construction for a small-time, unlicensed
contractor who specializes in renovating kitchens and bathrooms for a gay
clientele. His boss smokes marijuana chronically all day long and is disorganized: He owns few tools, often runs out of money, and forgets to order
materials and equipment on time. Consequently, Primo is trying to break
away to become an independent contractor on his own. The last time I saw
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Epilogue 2003
Primo, he was taking a call on his new cell phone to negotiate the price
of a sub-subcontract for retiling thirteen bathrooms in a publicly owned
tenement that was under renovation.
A few days later he called me in California, disappointed. He had been
awarded the subcontract but was unable to accept the project because he
could not find experienced workers whom he could trust to help him.
Primo's fifteen-year-old son, Papo, who dropped out of high school in ninth
grade and has run away from his mother's home in Florida, is especially
disappointed by this because Primo had promised to move him back up to
New York and hire him to help on this large renovation contract. Papo's
mother is moving with a new boyfriend back to New York, and she has told
Primo that she is not going to make any effort to bring his son Papo back
up with her: "He's good for nothing, running wild on the streets." Primo
confided to me that he feels deeply ashamed over not being able to help his
son who is "living wrong" in Florida.
In January, 2001, I invited Primo to my grandmother's funeral. She
used to visit the Game Room, and most of the dealers took pride in having
a respectful conversation with an elderly grandmother. After extending
condolences to me, bursting with pride and anticipation Primo asks me
to guess his good news. I guessed correctly on the first try: "Jasmine's
pregnant?"
"Yeah! Finally! Isn't that great? And, you know, it's like her body was
just waiting for her to get that good job at the bank with health benefits
and everything. Yeah! She's feeling great."
Primo's youngest son, Primo Jr., is now seven years old and living with
his mother Maria and a stepfather in Connecticut who was recently released from prison. They were evicted from their New York City Housing
Authority apartment because of the stepfather's felony record. Her sister
Carmen was also evicted by the same law when she allowed Caesar to remain in her household following his release from jail for beating Carmen's
twelve-year-old daughter Diamond. Carmen did not press charges against
Caesar at the time, but the neighbors called the police because of the girl's
screams, and a new mandatory domestic violence enforcement law caused
him to serve a three-month jail sentence. Following his release, Caesar went
to Florida to live with relatives and attempt drug rehabilitation. Carmen
followed him to Florida with her children to try to rebuild the relationship
together. They are now all staying in Maria's living room in Connecticut.
On his last crack binge, Caesar sold the Gameboy and bicycle that Primo
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Epilogue 2003
had given Primo Jr. for his birthday. Primo has vowed to stop giving Maria
any money to help with Primo Jr. until she evicts Caesar.
Candy, who was working as a home-care attendant for the elderly, slipped
a disk in her spinal column lifting a patient. She is now homebound in
chronic pain. She cannot "even lift the phonebook" and has grown physically addicted to her pain medication. Primo reports that she is severely
depressed and angry at the world. Her husband Felix continues to work
legally in demolition and window renovation. He sniffs cocaine only on
Fridays because he does not work on Saturdays. He cleans out his body and
mind by Sunday, ready for work on Monday morning. Everyone insists that
Felix has never again beaten Candy since the day she shot him during her
ataque de nervios. Their son Junior is back in prison for selling crack. For
several years Candy's household increased its income by taking in several
foster care children. There was a rumor that two of the older boys (actually
Luis's sons who had been entrusted to her as foster children by the courts
when their mother fell into crack addiction during Luis's imprisonment)
were sexually molesting little girl twins that the Bureau of Child Welfare
(BCW) had entrusted to the family. The foster care system investigated and
ceased making further placements in Candy's household.
To everyone's surprise, Luis has remained drug free since his release and
has settled down to live with an African American girlfriend. He did not
regain custody of his five children, who had been placed in three different
foster care families, but he has two new babies with his new companion.
They both receive SSI disability checks, but he supplements their income
by working off the books for Primo's contractor. In fact, Luis is the one who
is urging Primo to attempt more aggressively to establish himself independently so that they can make more money together more stably. He is also
"into computers now. He is always opening his computer apart: constantly
souping it up. You know, adding memory chips and shit like that."
Tony no longer sells drugs. He is working as a unionized doorman and
has moved back into his mother's house following a difficult breakup with
his girlfriend Clara, who graduated from community college. She evicted
Tony so as not to be subject to the loss of her subsidized apartment because
of his pending felony case for sale of heroin to an undercover officer. He has
not forgiven her and refuses to provide child support.
Little Pete and his brother Nestor are still in prison.
Angel and Manny moved with their mother to a new project apartment
on the West Side and are reported to be "up to no good, but still friendly."

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Epilogue 2003
All oiPrimo's sisters have moved to the suburbs of New York City and are
employed, the eldest as a secretary for a trade newspaper. The two younger
sisters are hospital workers, and one goes to night school part time to become
a registered nurse.
Benzie still works as a cooks aide in a downtown health club and continues
to live in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, who also continues to be stably
employed as a taxi dispatcher.
Ray no longer visits East Harlem. Primo thinks that he has completely
retired from drug selling and instead supports himself and his family by
collecting rents in formerly semiabandoned buildings that he renovated
with his drug profits. He bought the buildings for almost nothing at a
police auction of property confiscated from drug dealers.
Each time I revisit El Barrio, I am forced to confront the everyday violence
against children that is routinized into the fabric of U.S. inner-city social
suffering. Hence my second-to-last set of fieldwork notes:
{July, 2000]
Esperanza's grandson, Briancito, is now five years old and his learning
disability has become much more noticeable. Esperanza tells me that
he did not talk until he was three and that he flies into rages. Last
month, he hit one of his special education teachers with a chair. She
is worried that he has his father's anger. Photographs of his father,
Brian Sr. (Esperanza's only son), who is in federal prison cover the
walls of the apartment. He was condemned to life without parole for
multiple drug-and-gang-related murders. In the photos he is dressed
incongruously in white tennis clothes, looking like a harmless chubby
nerd. Only the solid cement gray wall backdrop in the photograph
suggests anything out of the ordinary. Esperanza avoids the subject,
but apparently, he killed his victims with automatic weapons over
drug debts. Esperanza has legal custody of Briancito and dotes on
him. Her eyes well up with tears when she says, "I have to bless
God - when they took away my baby [Brian Senior] they gave me a
new one {hugging Briancito]."
Esperanza is worried over the welfare of the three other grandchildren who live with her. She says she can no longer do much for their
mothers her two youngest daughters. When I ask Esperanza what
she thinks of this book, she abruptly shifts the conversation to talk
about the way her neighbors treat their children badly. One mother
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Epilogue 2003
on the floor below has a fourteen-year-old son, a five-year-old son,
and a nine-year-old daughter whom she hits publicly. The mother
screams especially viciously at her daughter while they wait for the
elevator, telling her she has a big head, that she's ugly, stupid, etc.
Primo interrupts, "Oh, man, but that little girl is cute." He shakes his
head slowly from side to side: "I know that little girl. That's wrong;
that's just wrong." Then he smashes his fist into his palm. Esperanza
replies that the little girl drops her head and stares at the ground
ashamedly while they are waiting for the elevator, peeking up every
now and then to see who might have heard her mother berating her.
The five-year-old boy in that same family had a tumor on his head that
was operated on last year. The mother is angry at her fourteen-year-old
son who is telling everyone in the building that she caused the tumor
by hitting the five-year-old too hard in the head too often in the exact
same spot. Esperanza claims the mother continues to hit the child on
the head even since the operation. Someone finally called the Bureau
of Child Welfare, but the social workers did not confiscate any of the
children because there were "no signs of abuse." Esperanza throws her
arms up in the air: "What can you do?" She says the mother now brags
that she is not afraid of "BCW" because she doesn't even care if they
take away her children. Almost as a non sequitur, Esperanza sighs that
she thinks mothers should only do coke when their kids are asleep and
when "their head is good, you know, in the right place.... Otherwise,
they should just have abortions. Do you believe in abortion, Felipe?"
Esperanza also complains about the violence of her immediate
neighbors in the apartment next door. Recently, their ten-year-old
daughter screamed so loudly for help when they beat her that
Esperanza called the Bureau of Child Welfare. She says, "I don't like
turning parents in, but I would have felt bad if that child had been
killed with me hearing her HELP! calls coming right through the
wall. They were loud. I'm telling you." She condemns child abuse
using that word and says she is trying to break the cycle of violence
in her grandson, Briancito. Every time he does anything wrong, however, she can't refrain from shouting, "Stop that! You want me to hit
you?" And I have to keep myself from startling noticeably because
when Esperanza screams she is LOUD.
Esperanza is sad that she had to throw her twenty-one-year-old
daughter out of the apartment, but she has a one-strike-you're-out
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Epilogue 2003
felony for aggravated assault and drug possession, and the Housing
Authority began inspecting Esperanza's apartment to ensure that her
daughter is no longer living on the premises. The evicted daughter's
cute eighteen-month-old little girl still lives with Esperanza and
appears to be everyone's favorite. The tiny girl gets a lot of love and
attention and bosses everyone about even me as only a confident
toddler can.
An angry-faced, 6'5" young man walks in with a message for
Esperanza's middle nineteen-year-old daughter Sandra who is unemployed and still lives here in Esperanza's apartment with her
six-year-old daughter. I am worried about the child because I have
never seen her smile or even interact with anyone and she is the
only person in the family who is seriously overweight. Sandra's new
boyfriend works at the post office sorting mail at night and he gives
her money for partying.
The angry young man is on his way to collect money owed to
him by someone on the floor below. He has a bunch of gold chains
on his chest and impressive biceps covered in tattoos, one of which
is a scorpion decorated with the Puerto Rican flag. He is carrying
a baseball bat in his left hand as if it were a toothpick and stands
with his feet apart even more toughly than I ever remembered being
possible. He makes me feel old and square... not to mention thankful
that we are meeting safely inside Esperanza's apartment and not out
on the street in the middle of the night. Primo asks the guy who he
was going to play baseball with. He giggles, "Nigga's heads," and
fakes a swing at Briancito's head who also giggles from in front of
the television where he spends most of his time. Once again I fail to
contain my startle reflex, which makes everyone else think that the
simulated baseball bat beating to five-year-old Briancito's head is even
funnier. The big guy, who by now no longer looks angry to me, starts
bragging about how well his boxing training is going and how, on
his trainer's orders, he has quit smoking pot and drinking anything
artificial with sugar in it. Primo discusses some technical boxing stuff
with him that I cannot follow, but we all watch as he demonstrates
new positions and punches that he has just learned at the gym using
Primo as an imaginary opponent. With a mischievous wink, he tells
us not to tell his trainer, but that he is trying to build up his strength
and punch with enough force and precision to break someone's neck
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Epilogue 2003
with one punch. He shows us with a slow-motion swing where the
would-be magic disabling spot is located on Primo's neck.
Primo finally introduces me to the marijuana-selling, wannabe
boxer who no longer looks angry at all, and it turns out that he
is Luis's oldest son. He is now nineteen, and I tell him that I have
a fading Polaroid family portrait of him as a ten-year-old child in a
blue windbreaker with his father and three of his little brothers and
sisters when they were at a New Years Eve party at Primo's mother's
apartment. They were clutching their father, whom they did not want
to leave and go "on a mission [smoke crack]," I do not tell him that
my last fieldwork note referring to him six years back describes him
at 2:00 in the morning standing on top of a bus shelter: "June 1994.
What is going to happen to him? His father Luis has just been jailed
and his mother is exchanging sex for crack under the elevated railroad tracks on Park Avenue." He now has three young children of
his own. Primo assures me that he is a "good homebody... gives his
money to the mother - at least some of it." Luis's son mumbles politely that he remembers me and, turning into the awkward little
kid I remember from the past, he shakes my hand with touching
formality.
Heading home just before midnight, I share the elevator going
down from Esperanza's eighteenth-floor apartment with a harried
mother of three children, pushing a baby carriage. The biggest of
her kids, less than three years old, drops his jacket across a puddle of
urine in the corner of the elevator by mistake. His mother explodes,
choking her voice into a hiss as if losing total control over herself and
raising her arms to pummel him. The child cowers, but his mother
lowers her fists at the last moment. I suddenly realize that she had only
feigned her fury in order to make her little boy cower appropriately.
Instead, she shouts at him, chopping him up into a million pieces
with the tone of her voice. He hangs his head, staring at the puddle
of urine on the elevator floor.
The subway breaks down at the 116th Street stop on the way
home. I have a chance to study my fellow passengers closely. Nobody
in the subway car seems to find it unusual that there are so many
underweight children out at midnight, tagging along after distracted
and emaciated mothers who are obviously on crack missions. Several
of the skinniest mothers are pushing baby carriages. Two well-dressed
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Epilogue 2003
women sitting next to me do not appear to be involved with drugs.
They are heading downtown to go dancing at a new club, chitchatting
relaxedly about their boyfriends, one of whom "just got outta jail."
My last extended set of fieldwork notes spanning visits and telephone
conversations in 200102 focuses more on the institutional violence of the
new panopticon that enforces "quality-of-life crimes" on El Barrio's streets.
The notes begin with a description of me leaving my grandmother's memorial service to visit my old block. I proceed uneventfully to walk around
the neighborhood looking up old friends and acquaintances. I find out
my former landlord recently died and the superintendent of a neighboring
building tells me what has happened to the children I used to take to the
museum in the old days. The notes describe appreciatively the increased
working class visibility and energy along my old block. Toward the end
of the afternoon, however, I commit the quality-of-life crime of buying a
fifty-cent sixteen-ounce can of El Coqui malt liquor named after the frog
on the endangered species list that lives only in Puerto Rico. The notes
end abruptly with undercover police officers issuing me a citation for a
misdemeanor offense for drinking in public and warning me to leave the
neighborhood right away in yet another example of the micropractices that
enforce U.S. apartheid:
Who the fuck do y'a think you're bullshitin'! We know what you're
up here for. We've been following you; watchin' every move you've
been making. We seen you lookin' all over the place; talkin' to people;
waving. So who you lookin' for huh? Who? Huh!
Awright, awright, go ahead play dumb. Don't tell us nothin'.
But don't think you can get away with shit up here. You're just
lucky we're not rookies or we'd be searchin' you more strictly not
just giving you a ticket. It don't bother us !cause you're just gonna
get picked up a half block further down by some other undercovers
right down there on the next corner this neighborhood is hot now
buddy.
And don't think you can just skip the court date on this ticket just
'cause you're from California. They'll issue a bench warrant and the
next time you get stopped for anything, you'll come right up on the
computer and bingo! They'll haul your ass right in I don't care if
you're in California or Hawaii [laughing].
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Epilogue 2003
Two months later, heeding the police officer's warning, I returned to New
York to appear in court:
My fine is only $10, but it takes four hours to be processed through
the misdemeanor court system, which is much less organized than
I expect. The courts seem to be run more by the charisma of the
guards and police officers, who shuttle scared, confused, and sometimes angry quality-of-life criminals from one courtroom doorway to
another. They call out to passing clerks and colleagues sometimes
even whistling to get their attention from all the way down the
hallway - "Yo! Do me a favor? Put this guy on your waiting list." Or
"How many ya' got left to go? Can you take one more?"
We spend most of our time waiting in hallways while the guards
try to figure out which courtroom is not too crowded to take us. A
friendly African American police officer waiting for his turn outside
one of the courtrooms advises me in a loud voice so that the woman
waiting next to me also hears him: "Just deny it. Just deny it. The
officer who ticketed you won't be there and the judge will have to
let you go." I thank him and he succeeds in shifting the conversation
onto the situation of the woman next to me.
I finally make it into one of the courtrooms, but only after telling
the clerk who is doing me the favor of squeezing me onto his
docket before lunch that I am "just gonna plead guilty - I promise."
He squints at me, waves me to a bench and hisses, " O K . . . But
remember just say you're guilty." I nod my head several times,
eagerly and ironically thankful, and take my seat. The first five
cases before me are all for marijuana possession, and each one is
immediately dismissed with no discussion whatsoever. The de facto
decriminalization of marijuana in New York City is one of the many
unintended consequences of Mayor Guiliani's campaign against
quality-of-life crimes. I learn this from the bored guard in the back
of the courtroom who is preventing us from reading the newspaper or
from falling asleep. He notices my surprised expression at each rapid
marijuana dismissal and whispers, "The judges hafta' dismiss all the
marijuana cases. It's too expensive to have marijuana tested. So all's
a defendant's gotta do is say it ain't marijuana and then he walks."
In contrast, a young African American man who is called up right
before me is issued a $35 fine for spitting. Out in the hallway he had
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Epilogue 2003
explained to me that the police caught him on a Saturday night with
an empty paper cup in his hand: "They wanted to ticket me. But I had
already finished my Hennessey and I know my rights. They can't do
nothin' to you for no empty cup. So I cursed the motherfucker when
he hassled me and I spit on the ground. He told me there was a law
against spitting on the street. So, I spit again, but this time on the
side of his van. I'm telling you, I'm moving to Florida. You can't even
walk sideways anymore in New York City without getting arrested."
When I am finally called up before the judge, they make me sign
a semilegible photocopied waiver expressing my willingness to be
heard by a retiree who has been recalled to service in an effort to
ease the crowding caused by the increase in misdemeanor arrests. The
two-minute interaction ends with me pleading "guilty with an explanation" and with the judge issuing me a $10 fine, but also expressing
his condolences for my grandmother's death.
After another forty-five minute wait outside in the hallway, a police
officer finally takes us to the cashier line to pay our fines. I make friends
with a young Puerto Rican man in front of me in the line who has
been issued the exact same public drinking fine. We commiserate
about how strict the cops have become. When it is his turn to pay, he
has to plead with the cashier to give him a special temporary voucher
in order to be let out of the courthouse: "I'm broke. I'm tellin' you I'm
broke. I don't got the money. I'm fuckin' broke." He looks embarrassed
and depressed. It feels natural for me to offer to pay his $10 fine after
his second "I'm broke," but I do not dare because he might think
I will demand a sexual favor in repayment.
After court, I go uptown and see Esperanza in her housing project
courtyard waiting alongside a half dozen other mothers for the special education school bus to bring their children home. Esperanza's
daughter, Sandra, who is very pregnant, is also waiting for her sixyear-old. She tells me "you're going to live long, Felipe, because I was
just talking about the dream I had about you earlier today."
Esperanza is feeling much better. Her son, Brian Sr., was finally
moved to a prison in Pennsylvania that is closer and easier to visit.
The children pour off the bus with that overflowing energy unique to
kids who have just been released from school on a sunny afternoon.
Several of the mothers threaten violence to their children as they
climb into the fenced-off grassy areas that are sandwiched between
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Epilogue 2003
the housing project's cement walkways. The kids do not seem to be
very worried about their mothers' threats and romp in the tiny patches
of forbidden green grass.
I called Primo shortly after the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center
disaster in New York City to tell him I am going to be visiting:
Primo advises me against traveling by airplane and tells me that he
does not dare take the subway downtown anymore to his methadone
maintenance program out of fear of terrorism. He is trying to persuade the nurse to ask the doctor to give him take-home doses so
that he does not have to face the risk of public transportation. I hear
his baby, Primo Jr., fussing in the background, and Primo tells me
he has to put down the phone to fix his bottle: "I'm the one who
takes care of him because Jasmine went back to work." When she
tried to take her maternity leave, the bank told her they would promote her to supervisor if she kept coming to work. She complied,
but now, five months later they still have not promoted her. Primo's
oldest son, Papito, is doing better. He moved out to the suburbs
to live with one of Primo's sisters and works at a Subway Sandwich
Shop.
Primo's contractor is trying to persuade Primo to come back to
work, but there is no one to take care of the new baby: "At least that
motherfucker finally paid me most of the money he owes me and he
has offered to raise my pay. He's respecting me a little more now, but
I'm still gonna just make him wait a little more. I might be broke, but
I'm not a slave. And I want to be there for my kid. He's four months
old now and he needs me." Primo is most excited by the fact that he is
down to only 30 milligrams of LAAM per day. Apparently, they have
discovered that LAAM cause "serious cardiac arrhythmia" and they
are taking everyone off that drug. He is hoping to be completely clean
soon. When he occasionally sniffs a little heroin, he always makes sure
to carry a vial of clean urine from Jasmine or his son Papito in case
they do a random drug test. He has not come up dirty in over a year.
Several months later Primo leaves an urgent message on my answering machine. Esperanza sent a copy of my book to Brian in prison and
the prison officials "confiscated your book. They told him they wanna
investigate the author, and like figure out who's who." They think
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Epilogue 2003
the book will reveal the identities of the other individuals who committed the multiple murders with Brian. They are threatening Brian
that he should now give up all the names because it is all going to
come out anyhow now that they got your book. I immediately called
Esperanza to reassure her that there is nothing about Brian or his
fellow murderers in the book. He was less than six years old at the
time of the fieldwork. I also remind her that a Federal Certificate of
Confidentiality legally prevents my research data from being used in
a court of law.
Just to be safe, however, I sent a copy of this epilogue to a lawyer
friend who specializes in federal drug and murder cases. She confirmed
that there was nothing particularly incriminating in this epilogue, but
advised me to delete all references to drug dealing inside the housing
projects: "The Feds are just so crazy now. All they care about is drugs."
When I visited Esperanza on my last trip to New York, she is in a great
mood:
Esperanza's son Brian filed a lawsuit claiming the interrogation they
subjected him to when they confiscated my book was harassment.
They threatened to transfer him back to Texas if he did not drop
the suit. He dropped the suit and now they are transferring him to
an even closer prison on the Hudson River. Jasmine was promoted
to head teller at the bank: "She's marching straight A!" They even
offered another promotion but she turned it down because she does
not want to supervise people. The county hospital assigned Esperanza
a new Latina psychiatrist, who has told her that her mental health
treatment for the past dozen years was botched: "She is going to fix
me up with better meds and more intensive therapy." Esperanza is
hopeful. She says she was even able to handle the death of her mother
three months ago:
We were all there. All her kids and even my daughters. Everyone
was there except my brother Felix. It was a Friday and that's the
nights that Felix gets lifted - you know, sniffs his little bit of coke.
I had called my son Brian in prison and left a message for him to
try to get permission to come visit his grandmother in the hospital.
Instead they gave him an extra phone call. He called, but her eyes
350

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Epilogue 2003
were already closed and she wasn't talking no more. Just breathing
real slowly.
The phone line couldn't reach her so he asked me over the phone
to ask his grandmother to bless him. And when I called out across
the room, "Mama, Brian pide bendkion" it was like that was all she
was waiting for. She opened her eyes, made a little noise, and died
right then.
We went back to Candy's and Felix was there. He could tell
something was wrong, but we didn't want to tell him because he
was lifted. He kept asking all night how our mother was. He could
tell something was wrong, but we just played it off and cooked
some food.
The next day I told him and he thanked me for not telling him
when he was lifted. He couldn't have handled it. Felix used to
visit our mother every day. But now he comes over and visits me
instead every day.
I ask Esperanza about the little girl in the apartment next door
who calls for help when her parents beat her. She stops smiling.
"I don't know, Felipe, the City finally came and took her away." I
promise to include the little girl in this epilogue.
San Francisco, April 2002

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