Everything about Me Is Tainted

Maria Hernandez

In 2011 and 2012, while more than 900 people were being murdered on the streets of Chicago, creative-writing students from DePaul University fanned out all over the city to interview people whose lives have been changed by the bloodshed. The result is How Long Will I Cry?: Voices of Youth Violence, an extraordinary and eye-opening work of oral history.

Told by real people in their own words, the book contains the extraordinary stories of 34 Chicagoans. This is one of them.

Maria Hernandez, who asked that her real name not be used, grew up in streetgang royalty. The man she believed to be her father, “Beto,” was a leader of the Latin Kings in Humboldt Park, a Puerto Rican neighborhood on the Near West Side where the powerful gang was formed.

Two events transformed Maria’s life when she was 11 years old. First came the revelation that Beto was not her biological father. Then came Beto’s arrest and eventual imprisonment on drug-trafficking charges.

Despite her childhood struggles, Maria graduated from college and plans to pursue a master’s degree. Although she still keeps in touch with Beto, she has not followed his path into the criminal underworld. Instead, she works in his old territory as a youth coordinator for an organization attempting to keep young people away from gangs. She frequently uses the word “crazy” to describe her life.

It’s an incredible story, but it’s a sad story. I grew up in Humboldt Park, born and raised—story of a typical Puerto Rican, I guess. My mom was 17 years old when she was pregnant with me; she had my brother two years later. So we were raised by my mom who was a welfare baby, so they call it. It was a way of life. I grew up thinking, “Well, everybody’s on food stamps. Everybody has cousins that are gang members, fathers that are gang- and drug-affiliated.”

We grew up in a community where kids were having kids, so there were a lot of kids. Summer days were long. Back then, it was a popular thing to be outside. We spent all of our time outside, just being outside roller-skating, riding bikes, playing freeze tag, eating freeze pops. We would walk to the corner store about four times a day, I’m convinced of it.

Our father was an original Latin King. It made me feel safe, because people were scared of him and everybody knew who he was. He was a great guy. His lifestyle was horrible, but for the most part I respected him as a man. I remember one time I cried, because I was in grammar school and the kids were like, “You don’t have a father, you don’t have a father.” So I went home crying and told my mom how they said I didn’t have a father, and I guess she told him. My kindergarten teacher put together a little play—and in walks my dad. I’m like, “Yes!” He walks in so ghetto with all these gold chains, a wifebeater T-shirt and saggy jeans. And it was just like, “That’s my dad!”

Everybody was saying, “He’s so cool.”

And I’m like, “I know.”

There was an international drug bust and my father was one of those incarcerated. They didn’t know that the FBI was in on anything and when they take you, they take all of your possessions, too. The cars, the house, the property—it’s going with the FBI. Period. I was about 11, and I knew this is it. He’s gone for good.

You got these fathers that are drug dealers and gang-affiliated and you start feeling like you’re on top of the world. Then it’s all wiped away, just like that. You never know when it’s coming, but when it does, it hits you and you’re stuck. Nowhere to go. It’s like starting from scratch. That’s why I kinda wish we never had anything. It was hard. You go from having money with this baller drug dealer to having nothing.

Right before he got incarcerated, my mom took me to McDonald’s, sat me down, and told me that my brother’s father wasn’t mine.

She was the typical Puerto Rican mom that cooked every day, so if we went to a restaurant, we knew it was a good occasion. So she sent my brother to play in the play place, and she was like, “I have something to tell you. Beto’s not your father.”

And I was like, “What?”

“Yeah, Beto’s not your father.” And deep down inside, I felt it. I have older cousins and, when they would describe me, they would say, “He’s his, but she’s not.”

I didn’t know how to feel. I was young and I didn’t understand it, but the more I grew up, the easier it was for me to just stick to myself. It’s like you paint an image and you imagine your life as a kid and it never dawns on you that things are never going to turn out that way.

Beto’s out of jail now. He was released a year ago. It’s funny because he was released right before I graduated college, so he was able to come to my graduation. You would think you spend that much time in jail and you would learn—but no. He wasn’t supposed to come back to Chicago; the authorities told him not to come back. He came back. It is what it is. Supposedly, he’s back to the drug thing. You know, I see him when I see him, and we talk every now and then. But my brother and I had more contact with him when he was incarcerated.

The end of my freshman year in high school, I met my real father on accident. I was in the car with my mom. We were driving down Belmont and we were in the turning lane going left and there was a truck across from us going the opposite way in the turning lane.

I don’t even know why I said something, and to this day I regret saying anything. But I’m like, “I feel like I know this man.”

And she’s like, “Who?”

I said, “The guy driving that truck.”

She looks, and she was like, “You definitely know him. That’s your father.”

My stomach hit the ground. I didn’t even know what to think. My mom, being the person she was, pulls through, goes around, follows the truck and is beeping, beeping, beeping till he pulls over. He pulls over. They get out of the car. She’s having a conversation with him and she’s like, “You need to help take care of her. I’ve been looking for you.”

I just felt bad for her because she’s seeking sympathy from somebody that doesn’t care. I kinda wanted to be like, “Screw him, and let’s go.” Nonetheless, she talked and every month after that he sent me a check for $300. Didn’t really get to know him much. I graduated from high school and invited him, but he had a daughter the same age as me and she graduated as well, so he said he couldn’t come.

I went away to college for two years at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and I was having issues paying my tuition. My real father was frustrated. He was like, “I just can’t do this anymore.” So I could feel the tension building up and then, that was it; my sophomore year in college we had a dispute over money. He was like, “I don’t want to have to do anything for you anymore.” I could understand that if he didn’t start doing stuff for me when I was 14, but he was off to a late start. Here I am trying to get my degree and he bails out.

It just got to the point where he was like, “This isn’t my fault, anyway. You should’ve stayed here and went to school somewhere in the city or somewhere cheaper where I wouldn’t have to help you. I told your mother not to keep you anyway.”

And I told him, “My mom raised me. She did a good job, and guess what? I’m gonna make it with or without you. I don’t expect you to be there. I don’t even care that you don’t want to be here. But when you’re old and gray and the rest of your children abandon you, don’t come looking for me.” I haven’t heard from him since. That was four years ago.

You come out of these situations and people don’t realize the damage that is done to you psychologically. I wear a smile, but people don’t see past that. I have a hard time crying and I think I love differently. I love to a certain point, but I can’t love past a certain point. I feel like it will make me vulnerable and it will open me up to get hurt. I’ve been proposed to twice, and they don’t know my story. I don’t like sharing it; this is stuff that people don’t know.

I used to have a horrible temper; it was just bad. Anything would just provoke a fight. And my mom was like, “I don’t know what to do with you anymore.”

I was still fighting in college. I felt unprepared for NIU. I wound up on probation and was about to get kicked out of my dorm room for fighting. So I had to leave. I was like, “You came here to do something, and you’re not doing it.”

I think when I got to UIC is when I realized just how different I actually was. You can’t really hang with the people you grew up with too much. I love them, and I still talk to them. We have history together, and it’s like, “You’re always gonna be a part of me and, when you need me, I’m here for you. But right now, I got other stuff to take care of.”

It’s crazy, ‘cause I met people at UIC and we would all walk to the Blue Line and they’re like, “Oh, you’re going the ghetto way. Catching the Blue Line west, that’s to the ’hood-’hood.” They used to joke about it, and I joked with them too. But I took those thoughts home with me: “There’s no way they’ll ever be able to understand me as a person.”

It’s so segregated in this city that it’s almost like a vicious cycle. There’s no way we’re going to break out of it. These kids see it and they know. And honestly, they know what’s bad and what’s not. They just don’t feel like they can promote change alone.

I work with high-school kids. These girls aren’t prepared for what’s to come. Once they have these kids—that’s it, they’re stuck. They end up having a hard time going to school and working, so they drop out, and then here we go again with the cycle. These kids want love. They get pregnant and they think, “I finally have somebody that’s going to love me.” I see this so many times.

And the sad part is they don’t have resources in the community to help them. It’s like the system is designed for them to fail. Now that I work and serve as a youth organizer, there’s times where I’m talking to these kids and I want to learn more about them. So I go to the parents—and the parents know less than what I know. And it’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they don’t know how to care. These kids are out there and they’re just learning based on what’s in the environment.

On the West Side, they run a drug deal right in front of our youth center, on the corner of the unit. And I have to talk them, like, “Hey, I know this is what you guys have to do, and I’m not telling you not to do it. But while we’re meeting, maybe you could move it.”

And they respect it. They do. I give it up to these drug dealers because— it’s horrible—I feel like they’re destroying the community and, at the same time, they sorta save it in some weird ways.

It’s like they’re destroying these people that are already addicted or heading down that path but then providing resources for these people that can’t make it otherwise. That’s what got my mom through. There were some times where we would have an uncle come through and be like, “Here’s $100.”

Honestly, I feel like the older guys don’t want these kids out there drug dealing. They don’t. They’ll tell them, “Here’s $20, man. Stay off these streets. Go do something.” But when it comes to the gang thing, they need their numbers. They need their recruitment to be high. That’s the only way they keep themselves safe.

These kids, they’re not ready for it. They’re recruited at a young age by gangs. They paint this cool image of like, “Man, you could be like us and we’ll protect you.” That’s how they got this boy named Cornelio, who was just killed this past year. Cornelio, when I started working with him, he was 13. He was a tough kid, just this heart, and that’s what they look for: that true, true heart. And Cornelio, they wanted him and they got him and he’s dead. And that’s how it works.

The police can’t do much unless they have an actual incident that took place and they have the proof right there. As community members, we know what happened and who did what. But it’s all hearsay. So these cops can’t do anything with that information. Now, what I don’t respect about the police officers is that you see these guys on the corner and you know they’re up to no good, so you pull over. But instead of telling them to disperse, you sit there holding a conversation with them, get back in your cop car, and roll off. That’s what I don’t respect. I’m not going to say all officers do that. I see it a lot, though. They have to maintain a good relationship with the gangbangers. They want peace on their clock.

My kids will argue that these cops are extremely crooked and in on all of this. So for these young people, it’s like going against joint forces. You’re fighting against people in the community and you’re fighting against cops and you’re fighting against family members—because for a lot of my kids, just like for myself, family’s tied into this. So they don’t want to cause controversy with family. They learn to dismiss certain things and just hope to try and be a little different than everybody else.

My biggest thing for these kids is exposure. Take them outside these communities. I take them to places that normal people would be like, “Oh, that’s regular.” But take these kids to a theater or a restaurant, they’re like, “Oh my goodness, this place looks expensive.” And it probably wasn’t, but to them it’s like, “Oh, we’re downtown! We’re eating downtown!” They make the biggest thing out of the smallest thing.

We take them on college trips, because they need to see other students such as themselves that came out of the neighborhood. They’re in school, they’re successful, and they’re doing something major—as opposed to seeing their friends that are on the block pretty much the whole day.

I’ve thought about leaving Chicago myself. I thought about going to somewhere warm, like Miami. Oh my God, I visited Miami and it’s just like, they hold on to that Hispanic culture. They all speak Spanish. It’s something we lost here in Chicago.

I wanted to leave after undergrad. But my family acted like I killed somebody. I realized I could never leave. La familia—you know it’s all about the family. We’re all we got. Period. My mom says it and my brother says it. He even has it tattooed on him. We are all that we have, so to lose a piece is like breaking down a significant part of your backbone. There’s no way you can function without it. If one person out of the family makes it and wants to achieve more, they’re bound by the ties that they have to their family. So everything about me is just tainted. It’s like choosing between where my heart is and what’s right—and it’s hard to make that choice.