Life In The High-Rise Hell Of Cabrini-Green

CHICAGO - It is 2:30 p.m., the end of the day at Jenner Elementary School, and Gerald Williams, 7, bolts away from the building clutching the hand of his little sister Toya, 5. Urging her to "Run, Toya, run!" Gerald pulls his sister across the cluttered expanse of blacktop separating the school from the Cabrini-Green high-rise where they live. Toya's book bag bangs against her legs, she whimpers and stumbles, but Gerald will not stop running. By the time they have reached home, both are gasping for breath.

"My momma told us to run," Gerald explained. "Ever since that little boy got killed, right over there, momma told me and Toya run home fast as we could. And if we hear shooting, we s'posed to drop to the ground and roll around so they can't hit us." Wide-eyed Toya nods in agreement, never letting go of her brother's hand.

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed by a sniper as his mother walked him to school. Anthony Garrett, 33, confessed that he had balanced his AR-15 automatic rifle on the edge of a 10th-story window and fired at a group of teenagers "until I saw someone fall." When he learned that his victim was a first-grader and not a rival gang member, his conscience drove him into custody.

Right on cue, Cabrini became a cause, a shame, a mistake that must be corrected. The sprawling 91-building complex, crouched like a crazy cousin on the edge of some of Chicago's glitziest real estate, is a blight easily ignored - until shots ring out and someone who should not have died does. The screams were heard on March 8, when 9-year-old Anthony Felton was shot in the chest, and on July 23 when Laquanda Evans, 15, was felled by a sniper.

MOST ARE ON WELFARE

Just over 7,000 people reside officially in Cabrini-Green's 3,493 apartments. Officials estimate that 10,000 others may reside there illegally. It is the second largest public-housing development in the world, behind Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago's South Side. More than 91 percent of Cabrini's residents are unemployed; most are on welfare.

There have always been children like Gerald and Toya, racing across gang turf after school, looking over their shoulders with wide, frightened eyes. Elderly residents - some who remember the beginning, when lawns sparkled and people sat with their doors open - now scurry out early to the area's few high-priced stores, then return to their shadowy apartments, where they sit in darkness, jumping at strange noises.

Mothers watch as their young sons don gang colors and begin to swagger. Gunshots ricochet off the brick; families sleep on the floor instead of in their beds. Even a young woman carrying her child must worry about the tilt of the infant's hat, lest he be identified with some rival gang - by a gang that doesn't stop to ask questions.

On Friday, work crews descended on the complex with buzz saws, buckets of white paint, fresh bricks and mortar. The city's latest anti-violence plan calls for the installation of security booths, turnstiles and metal detectors in Cabrini's 33 high-rises.

Four of the more sparsely occupied buildings - havens for the gang and drug trade - will be shuttered completely, and 270 off-duty police officers will sweep the area for weapons. All residents in first-floor apartments will be moved, and the apartments will be sealed. Eventually, Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Vince Lane has promised, "every single apartment in Cabrini-Green will be swept. There will be no place for crime to hide."

But residents say that nothing will undo the damage. Since the first building went up in 1942, mismanagement and grand plans gone wrong have turned Cabrini into the country's ugliest example of a dream deferred. Now the very name "Cabrini" is synonymous with what many people fear most about America: rage and hopelessness spiraling out of control.

Watching Friday's bustle of cosmetic activity with a practiced wariness, 51-year-old Rosie Johnson echoed the thoughts of many residents: "You can't put hell out with a garden hose."

PAINT WON'T DO IT

Cassandra Booth, who has lived in Cabrini since January, agreed. "I got to get out of here," she said, balancing a squirming 6-month-old on one hip. "I done seen enough to know that painting it white won't make it better."

Booth, 19, and her two children, 2-year-old Erica and little Ernest, live on the 13th floor of the building Anthony Garrett sprinkled with gunfire on the morning of Oct. 13. The elevator doesn't work, and the hall's light bulbs have been smashed, so she must walk up a dark stairwell with her children. She goes out in the daytime. At night she does not.

"If my baby runs out of milk or diapers or something, I just pray he's OK till the next day," she said. "I have nightmares about those stairs. Sometimes there are people up there, just sitting on the stairs, staring at you in the dark. And it just stinks so much. I close my eyes every night and just wish I could be somewhere else until the sun comes up. . .

"I promise my children that I'm going to get them out of here. That little boy could have been my baby."

On the other side of the complex, farther than the route Gerald ran with his sister, is the building where silver-haired Edna Crenshaw lives. A walk with "Miz Crenshaw" is a chance to see hope. Everyone waves or smiles at her. The gang members tease her; children tug at her skirt.

Inside her apartment, the evening has begun to cast shadows. Granddaughter Melissa, who lives with Crenshaw, screeches from room to room, laughing and playing with a friend from next door. There are clothes and newspapers covering the floor, commendations for volunteer work tacked on the wall. One plaque says, "To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe."

That is the way Edna Crenshaw lives her life. Her two children have grown up and left Cabrini. Her daughter went to college and earned a master's degree in sociology. With hell all around her, "Miz Crenshaw" refused to succumb to the heat.

"I took my kids wherever they went," she said. "They were brought up in Sunday school and church. I didn't send them, I took them. And I'm doing the same thing now with granddaughter, my son's daughter. Too many of these folks let their kids loose too soon.

"I never had any problems, in all the 36 years I been living here. About three months ago, somebody did shoot at my front door. The bullet stuck in the door, but I didn't hear anything because I was sleeping. The Lord didn't intend for me to hear anything. I've never had anything like a break-in. A stray hit my kitchen window one day, but that's pretty common around here. That's nothing to get all sweaty about."

IT ONCE WAS DIFFERENT

When she moved into Cabrini in 1956, things were different. "It was beautiful. It was mixed, there were white people and black people. You could sleep on your porch. You could sleep with the doors open.

"The people who ran this place seemed to care more. They screened everybody who moved in. They did inspections in the apartments. They don't do any of that anymore. I hate to say it, but when the white people started disappearing, so did the services. Maybe to them we're not paying a lot of rent, but to us, with our incomes, it's a lot. Services are due, and we should get them. We're not all killers and drug dealers. We're human."