Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro Read online

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  “One of the most absorbing works of nonfiction I’ve read in some time. . . . The book is a compulsive page-turner because LeBlanc knows her subject so well, the way a great novelist knows her characters.”

  —Newsday

  “A seminal work of journalism.”

  —USA Today

  “Extraordinary . . . A painstaking feat of reporting and of empathy.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A feat of reporting . . . An astonishingly intimate and detailed miniature of life in the South Bronx.”

  —New York Magazine

  “Disturbing, complicated, and emotional, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s book will haunt you.”

  —Marie Claire

  “A riveting portrait of the other America.”

  —People

  “Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s amazing first book documents young, broken lives in and out of love, jail, and the Bronx. Her persistence and patience, along with the honesty and generosity of her subjects, has resulted in a startlingly powerful first book.”

  —O, The Oprah Magazine

  “A stunning new glimpse into the sorrow and the pity of America’s inner cities . . . Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s soul-searing study exposes an often-mythologized way of life (kids having kids, doing and dealing drugs, serving time) with a vividness only hinted at in even the most hard-core hip hop portrayals—or in such admired studies of our urban woes as Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here.”

  —Elle

  “Remarkable . . . The great achievement of LeBlanc’s book is the scope of knowledge she conveys about her subjects. The depth and care of her reporting are evident in every sentence. . . . LeBlanc writes this story in a matter-of-fact, almost offhand style, making each tiny revelation all the more resonant for the casual manner in which it arrives. . . . The fact that after a decade with this family we leave them still wanting to know what happens next is a testament to the power and life of LeBlanc’s work.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “LeBlanc’s reporting illuminates the ugly, static reality of the street. She’s an unflappable narrator.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A profound multigenerational account of the daily toils of urban poverty . . . Perhaps the most intimate chronicle of urban life ever published . . . In Random Family, the discreet distance—the otherness—of urban poverty quickly disappears and the inner logic of this damaging world emerges.”

  —The Village Voice

  “A remarkable up-close and gritty chronicle of family survival in the ghetto. LeBlanc, a veteran journalist, has produced an important work, documenting the daily lives of families forged by love and the harsh necessities of poverty. . . . The predictable chaos and turmoil facing the urban poor, well chronicled in other works, are all here . . . but LeBlanc elevates the form by capturing, too, the humanity and core familial and romantic love that are as powerful as any other force in the complicated dynamics of these relationships.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Remarkable . . . Stunning . . . This book makes human the unrelenting problems of the ghetto. . . . The precarious world Random Family depicts, the fragility of life and relationships, is probably more like the sweep of human history than most of us realize.”

  —The New York Observer

  “The literary equivalent of a 100-mile dash . . . Powerful . . . Even though it is a work of nonfiction, Random Family reads more like a carefully crafted novel than journalism.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Quietly observational and therefore piercingly effective.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Remarkable . . . The lives of Coco and Jessica are desolate, bleak, and almost entirely without hope. LeBlanc tells their stories with grace and treats her subjects with a dignity that they may not have experienced before, but they certainly deserve.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “An almost cinematic page-turner.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Written with candor, sensitivity, and respect, Random Family is ultimately more than a hard-luck saga; it’s a universal story of survival and hope.”

  —BookPage

  “A chronicle of teenage urban life that manages to balance journalistic integrity and objectivity with a striking compassion and respect for its subjects.”

  —Salon.com

  “Fresh and engrossing . . . Clear-eyed and honest . . . LeBlanc offers no answers, which is the intrinsic beauty and power in her book.”

  —The Raleigh News and Observer

  “Should be required reading for every student of journalism.”

  —The New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “LeBlanc’s close listening produced this extraordinary book, a rare look at the world from the subjects’ point of view. . . . This fine work deserves attention from policy makers and general readers alike.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An observant, gutsy journalist immerses herself in the lives of marginal Bronx residents. Comparisons to Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here are inevitable and warranted.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An important, unvarnished portrait of people living in deep urban poverty, beyond the statistics, hip-hop glamour, and stereotypes.”

  —Booklist

  “Somehow managing to be both journalistically objective and novelistically passionate, in Random Family, Adrian LeBlanc has made a singular contribution to the literature of the American underclass. An unforgettable and intimate portrait of life in the urban trenches, as much about love and longing as it is about the statistics of despair.”

  —Richard Price

  “I know no other writer who has dug in as deep as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. She didn’t just report; she burrowed for years into a world she came to know so well that it lost every speck of foreignness. That astonishing intimacy allowed her to view this book’s random family as one might view one’s own family: with a mixture of exasperation and respect, disappointment and love. If God is in the details, this is a holy book.”

  —Anne Fadiman

  “In the richness, vitality, and visceral power of its prose, Random Family struck me in the same way that Hubert Selby’s classic Last Exit to Brooklyn did—with detail-driven force. The stories recounted here, of careening lives and urban struggle, seem both familiar and exotic, for this straightforwardly written, often gripping book reads like a fantastic tale from another world—which happens to be the Bronx. Well done.”

  —Oscar Hijuelos

  “Random Family is a remarkable piece of reportage, an important, up-close window into a tucked-away corner of America. Watching Jessica’s and Coco’s lives unfold over the course of ten years is by turns unsettling and affecting, and their stories have stayed with me. Adrian LeBlanc has written a book that’s epochal in scope and unflinching in its candor. It’s one compelling read.”

  —Alex Kotlowitz

  “This book has a fresh, even original quality. It is a family saga, but of a most unusual kind, an intimate and detailed portrait of a world that is shamefully hidden away. I read it compulsively, thankful for its candor and above all its fascination.”

  —Tracy
Kidder

  “Adrian Nicole LeBlanc brings to life a world often resisted. Writing in the tradition of James Agee and Walker Evans, she invites us to see in a new way people whose lives are often despised or dismissed. Random Family reads like a novel. This is a brilliant, original book.”

  —Carol Gilligan

  “I was gripped from the first paragraph.”

  —Anna Quindlen, USA Today

  Contents

  Part I: The Street

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part II: Lockdown

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part III: Upstate

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Part IV: House to House

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part V: Breaking Out

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

  For my parents,

  Eve Mary Margaret Mazzaferro

  and Adrian Leon LeBlanc

  . . . Some say that Happiness is not Good for mortals & they ought to be answerd that Sorrow is not fit for Immortals & is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.

  WILLIAM BLAKE, letter to WILLIAM HAYLEY

  London, October 7, 1803

  PART I

  The Street

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jessica lived on Tremont Avenue, on one of the poorer blocks in a very poor section of the Bronx. She dressed even to go to the store. Chance was opportunity in the ghetto, and you had to be prepared for anything. She didn’t have much of a wardrobe, but she was resourceful with what she had—her sister’s Lee jeans, her best friend’s earrings, her mother’s T-shirts and perfume. Her appearance on the streets in her neighborhood usually caused a stir. A sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl with bright hazel eyes, a huge, inviting smile, and a voluptuous shape, she radiated intimacy wherever she went. You could be talking to her in the middle of the bustle of Tremont and feel as if lovers’ confidences were being exchanged beneath a tent of sheets. Guys in cars offered rides. Grown men got stupid. Women pursed their lips. Boys made promises they could not keep.

  Jessica was good at attracting boys, but less good at holding on to them. She fell in love hard and fast. She desperately wanted to be somebody’s real girlfriend, but she always ended up the other girl, the mistress, the one they saw on the down-low, the girl nobody claimed. Boys called up to her window after they’d dropped off their main girls, the steady ones they referred to as wives. Jessica still had her fun, but her fun was somebody else’s trouble, and for a wild girl at the dangerous age, the trouble could get big.

  It was the mideighties, and the drug trade on East Tremont was brisk. The avenue marks the north end of the South Bronx, running east to west. Jessica lived just off the Grand Concourse, which bisects the Bronx lengthwise. Her mother’s tenement apartment overlooked an underpass. Car stereos thudded and Spanish radio tunes wafted down from windows. On corners, boys stood draped in gold bracelets and chains. Children munched on the takeout that the dealers bought them, balancing the styrofoam trays of greasy food on their knees. Grandmothers pushed strollers. Young mothers leaned on strollers they’d parked so they could concentrate on flirting, their irresistible babies providing excellent introductions and much-needed entertainment. All along the avenue, working people shopped and dragged home bags of groceries, or pushed wheelcarts of meticulously folded laundry. Drug customers wound through the crowd, copped, and skulked away again. The streets that loosely bracketed Jessica’s world—Tremont and Anthony, Anthony and Echo, Mount Hope and Anthony, Mount Hope and Monroe—were some of the hottest drug-dealing blocks in the notorious 46th Precinct.

  The same stretch of Tremont had been good to Jessica’s family. Lourdes, Jessica’s mother, had moved from Manhattan with a violent boyfriend, hoping the Bronx might give the troubled relationship a fresh start. That relationship soon ended, but a new place still meant possibility. One afternoon, Jessica stopped by Ultra Fine Meats for Lourdes and the butcher asked her out. Jessica was fourteen at the time; he was twenty-five. Jessica replied that she was too young for him but that her thirty-two-year-old mother was pretty and available. It took the butcher seven tries before Lourdes agreed to a date. Two months later, he moved in. The children called him Big Daddy.

  Almost immediately, the household resumed a schedule: Lourdes prepared Big Daddy’s breakfast and sent him off to work; everyone—Robert, Jessica, Elaine, and Cesar—went to school; Lourdes cleaned house and had the evening meal cooked and waiting on the stove by noon. Big Daddy seemed to love Lourdes. On weekends, he took her bowling, dancing, or out to City Island for dinner. And he accepted her four children. He bought them clothes, invited them to softball games, and drove them upstate for picnics at Bear Mountain. He behaved as though they were a family.

  Jessica and her older brother, Robert, had the same father, who had died when Jessica was three, but he had never accepted Jessica as his; now only Robert maintained a close relationship with the father’s relatives. Elaine, Jessica’s younger sister, had her own father, whom she sometimes visited on weekends. Cesar’s father accepted him—Cesar had his last name on his birth certificate—but he was a drug dealer with other women and other kids. Occasionally he passed by Lourdes’s; sometimes Cesar went to stay with him, and during those visits, Cesar would keep him company on the street. Cesar’s father put him to work: “Here,” he would say, passing Cesar vials of crack taped together, “hold this.” Drug charges didn’t stick to children, but Big Daddy cautioned Cesar about the lifestyle when he returned home. “Don’t follow his lead. If anybody’s lead you gonna follow, it should be mine.” Big Daddy spoke to Cesar’s teachers when Cesar had problems in school. Jessica considered Big Daddy a stepfather, an honor she had not bestowed upon any other of her mother’s men. But even Jessica’s and Cesar’s affection for Big Daddy could not keep them inside.

  For Jessica, love was the most interesting place to go and beauty was the ticket. She gravitated toward the enterprising boys, the boys with money, who were mostly the ones dealing drugs—purposeful boys who pushed out of the bodega’s smudged doors as if they were stepping into a party instead of onto a littered sidewalk along a potholed street. Jessica sashayed onto the pavement with a similar readiness whenever she descended the four flights of stairs from the apartment and emerged, expectant and smiling, from the paint-chipped vestibule. Lourdes thought that Jessica was a dreamer: “She always wanted to have a king with a maid. I always told her, ‘That’s only in books. Face reality.’ Her dream was more upper than herself.” Lourdes would caution her daug
hter as she disappeared down the dreary stairwell, “God ain’t gonna have a pillow waiting for your ass when you fall landing from the sky.”

  Outside, Jessica believed, anything could happen. Usually, though, not much did. She would go off in search of one of her boyfriends, or disappear with Lillian, one of her best friends. Her little brother, Cesar, would run around the neighborhood, antagonizing the other children he half-wanted as friends. Sometimes Jessica would cajole slices of pizza for Cesar from her dates. Her seductive ways instructed him. “My sister was smart,” Cesar said. “She used me like a decoy, so if a guy got mad at her, he would still come around to take me out. ‘Here’s my little brother,’ she would say. ‘Take him with you.’ ” More often, though, Cesar got left behind. He would sit on the broken steps of his mother’s building, biding his time, watching the older boys who ruled the street.

  Jessica considered Victor a boyfriend, and she’d visit him on Echo Place, where he sold crack and weed. Victor saw other girls, though, and Jessica was open to other opportunities. One day in the fall of 1984, when she should have been in school, she and Lillian went to a toga party on 187th and Crotona Avenue. The two friends were known at the hooky house on Crotona. The girls would shadow the boys on their way to the handball courts or kill time at White Castle burgers, and everyone often ended up in the basement room. The building was officially abandoned, but the kids had made a home there. They’d set up old sofas along one wall, and on another they’d arranged a couple of beds. There was always a DJ scratching records. The boys practiced break dancing on an old carpet and lifted weights. The girls had little to do but watch the boys or primp in front of the salvaged mirrors propped beside a punching bag. At the toga party, Jessica and Lillian entered one of the makeshift bedrooms to exchange their clothes for sheets. Two older boys named Puma and Chino followed them. The boys told the girls that they were pretty, and that their bodies looked beautiful with or without sheets. As a matter of fact, they said, instead of joining the party, why don’t we just stay right here?