Hell Broke Loose

Hyinth Davis

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.

Hyinth Davis is a 20-year-old from Roseland. Growing up, Davis was surrounded by substance abuse, violence and poverty. Both of his parents were on drugs, and his father was physically abusive to both Davis and his mother. But unlike many young people in similar circumstances, he has resisted the temptation to join a gang. Instead, he spends a lot of his spare time at Kids Off the Block, a safe haven for young people, run by community organizer Diane Latiker.

Because of the 2009 beating death of Fenger High School student Derrion Albert, Davis’ neighborhood has received a great deal of notoriety. To the countless people worldwide who watched the viral video of that murder, Derrion Albert became a symbol of street violence in Chicago. But to Davis, he was simply another lost friend.

I’m not trying to say it’s a curse, but it feels weird knowing that five of your friends got killed within the same year. So it’s kind of hard, even though most of them were gangbanging. I’m not saying they deserved it, but most of them don’t want no help. I kind of like separated myself from them, because I didn’t want to be a part of that crowd. I’m not trying to live like that, ‘cause I’m not that type of person.

I grew up with my mother and my father, and both of them were on drugs. When I was growing up, my mother was beaten. Like beaten, you know? When it started, I think I was like 3 or 4. My father used to beat her in front of my face.

The biggest incident happened when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I was just not doing what I was supposed to be doing when I was in first grade. I mean, I wasn’t a bad student. I just didn’t do the work. So the teacher had called the house, and my mother had come up there, and the teacher was like, “Well, Hyinth is a good student, and I know he can try harder. I just know he can do better.” My mother was like, “Okay.” But my father, you know, I guess my mother told my father. He took it overboard.

He brought out the belt and he just started hitting me. So my mom, she tried to stop him. She was like, “No, no, don’t hit him. You have to talk to him.” But he got mad. My mother, she was blocking my way, so he hit her. And then it got to the point where he broke her leg and her arm. She was on crutches. She was on crutches. She had a cast on her leg and a cast on her arm, and she couldn’t walk. She was on crutches.

It was kind of sad living in the house, but I really couldn’t do nothing about it because I was young. I remember me running to the store at 57th and Sangamon, getting on the pay phone and calling 911. And I didn’t know my home address. I didn’t know the street or anything. I couldn’t tell the police that my mother was getting beaten. I was panicking, crying. I was scared. I used to have nightmares every night.

My mother, dead. I thought in half my nightmares that he killed her. It was all bloody, and I used to see her just lying there in a casket. All I could do was cry. My mother, she’s a loving person and everyone likes her. I don’t think that she deserves what he’s done to her. My family’s been much better since she left him. My mom seems like she’s happy, and she claims she’s not taking drugs no more. She’s really trying to get herself together, but it’s kind of hard ‘cause she’s still living in that environment where people are slowly bringing her down. It’s hard for her to just walk away, you know.

I could forgive my dad, but I won’t forget. I don’t have a relationship with him anymore, even though he’s still around. He just recently got out of jail. That’s always been an off-and-on thing for him—going back and forth to jail. When I was born, he was locked up. I don’t know how long he was locked up, but he wasn’t at the hospital to sign the birth certificate.

Me and my two sisters, 13 and 26 years old, we’re close. My two little brothers, ages 8 and 10, they’re in foster care. When my mother had them at the hospital, I guess, the foster people took them away. They got custody of them. It’s kind of hard, because I don’t speak to my two little brothers at all. I only saw them one time. They don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who they are. I would love to be in their lives, to guide them, do things that brothers should do. It gets to me. It really hurts.

The happiest moment that I had with my family, we took a vacation. We went to Florida. We went away for, like, a week. That was the happiest moment because there wasn’t no type of negativity drama surrounding us. You know, we actually enjoyed ourselves and didn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen today, what’s going to happen the next day. Happiest memory from my neighborhood? There’s not much I can say, you know, about Roseland, because there was a lot of shooting. There’s still a lot of killing. I think someone just got killed on 111th. I think it was yesterday. I’m not sure.

I got robbed three times. One time I was coming home from school— this was my sophomore year. I had these red-and-white shoes on. I was the only one in school that had them. So my friend and me was just walking and my friend had my phone, listening to my music. The next thing you know, the boys who robbed me, they was like, “That’s my song. Play it again.”

I’m like, “Don’t play it again.”

So they put a gun up to my head and was like, “You have ten seconds to take off your shoes.” I had to hurry up and take them off. They was actually counting. Then they took my driver’s license. They was like, “Just in case you trick, we know where you live.”

It was snowing, and next thing you know, I was barefoot walking home. Then I had to go and get the locks changed on the house.

The most recent time I got robbed was my senior year. It was around prom time. I remember that I had $100 in my pocket, and I ended up getting jumped on by my friends—guys who I thought were my friends. I’m mainly by myself now. I feel as though groups cause problems, so I’d rather be by myself because I don’t want a target on me or anything. Always be by myself. Can’t trust anyone. You know, people always tell me how you got to trust some people, but it’s easy for them to say because they haven’t been through what I’ve been through.

My biggest fear is getting shot or ending up dead. ‘Cause I always think that the people that have something going for themselves, they end up being the one that’s gone first. Like my friend Cordero, he was just walking, and then mistaken identity, and he ended up getting shot in the head. I think it was a drive-by. They stopped and they was shooting and then he ended up getting shot. On 111th, down the hill, by the park.

Red, which is what we called David Rodgers. We graduated with honors from eighth grade, and he was real smart then. In our freshman year, we had honors classes and we was both getting A’s and B’s and, you know, he was doing something positive. And then hell broke loose. He started shooting people and robbing people. It just went from there. But I remember, like a week before he died, he knew he was going to get killed. He was like, “I know it’s too late, because I messed up.” And then, next thing you know, he died. He got killed. Right there on 115th and Michigan.

My one good friend, Gregory, he got killed just by walking. He was just walking. They was shooting, and then I remember we was in front of my grandma’s house. We all run in the house and my friend, he was walking, he was trying to run in the house and, next thing you know, he got shot in the face and just laid straight down. In front of my grandma’s house, on 65th and Washtenaw.

My other friend, Derrion Albert—you probably know about Derrion. We was all at a party the night before, and so, the next thing you know, Derrion got into a stupid argument. Um, I didn’t know it was going to wind up being that serious—you know, where they could just beat you to death. Me and Derrion, we was close in his freshman year. I was a junior and he was a freshman. And we just clicked from then on. We was so cool. So cool and close. His killing affected me real bad. I mean, I couldn’t even sleep, ‘cause I’m like, “I just spoke to Derrion that day before.”

For a person to have that much hatred in their heart, where they have to hit you and beat you with a stick—it’s just sad. But I’m trying to not let what happened to him bother me. I could never forget it, but I could just erase it out, you know—just keep living life, just doing something positive. I mean, I’m trying to live a productive life. I’m still young. Life is too short, and life is passing by. So I’m not trying to waste time.

I live with my auntie now. She’s supportive; she’s real supportive, but she lives off the first-of-the-month check. She’s never had a job. I don’t want to live life like that. I don’t want to live life half-the-way and get $674 a month just to pay the bills and then you don’t have no money left over. It’s like, your life is not going anywhere, ‘cause you settling for less than you could be.

I want to buy my own home someday. I don’t want to just live in someone else’s apartment. I’m going to move to a better place, like hopefully the suburbs somewhere. I’m just looking out for the better and the self in my life. When I look in the mirror, I see a positive person. I see me striving for the best in the future. Hopefully, I mean I was in college at Olive-Harvey, but I took a semester off because I needed to get a job. So I’m planning on going back in the fall. But right now, I’m just looking for a job. It’s kind of hard because I’m like, I don’t have no one to take care of me. I want to take care of myself but it’s like, a lot of jobs say they’re not hiring or, you know, call back next month. It’s, like, very hard.

I see a lot of teens my age, you know, they out here robbing, smoking, gangbanging, drinking. I’m just trying to live life and just stay away from all of that, but it’s kind of hard because it’s like we trapped in the environment. You can’t just play basketball, hang out with friends, go shopping. You can’t do that without getting robbed. Without getting shot at. So it’s basically like we living in a prison. We have to watch ourselves. Sit in the house and look out the window before we step out the door.