It's been a year and now school is starting and I cannot find LaTravis Hawkins*. He's supposed to start high school and he's nowhere to be found. His mother is not returning any phone calls, he's not responding to any texts. I have a feeling I know where this whole thing is about to go.
Over the past year, my relationship with LaTravis has changed. If I said drastically, that may be an overexaggeration, but it would be closer to the truth than any other word choice.
This time last year he wasn't missing, he just was refusing to go to school. LaTravis had spent his entire summer playing basketball sporadically on the streets of Chicago and was told by the school administration that he'd have to repeat the sixth grade. Upon hearing that, LaTravis told his mother that he wasn't going back.
Pride finds a way to manifest itself even in failure.
Temeika* (LaTravis' mother who is all of 35 years old with a 16-year-old daughter who seems to live a different -- better -- life than both she and LaTravis) has other issues. She's had to move the family twice in a six-month period. Apartment-to-worse apartment. Trying to run away from the dude her son referred to as his "stepfather," trying to run away from her own demons.
In the four-plus years I've known LaTravis, this is the first time I've ever met or spoken to his mother. It seemed that since her boyfriend was (finally) gone she'd (finally) decided to be a parent to her child. She said she needed help with LaTravis. "He don't wanna listen to me," "I can't get him to do anything," "I don't wanna lose my child." The all-too-typical, all-too-often-heard story of the stereotypical type of parent Bill Cosby wrote about in his last book.
So LaTravis has spent 13 years of his life living with his mother but hardly ever seeing her. No guidance, no direction, no limits. The only thing the kid has had to cling to has been the game of basketball. It's been his escape from the neglect. It loved him back. The fact that his face still has an innocence beneath the scratches and scars of the streets that had developed over those years is a miracle in itself. The difference between 12 years old and 13 years old is enormous.
Especially when the life you happen to be living is on pace to end by the time you're 15.
The 12 weeks leading up to last year's first day of school were a hazy shade of childhood. I last saw LaTravis on June 1, 2008. His ear had gotten pierced, even though he said it had been pierced for a few years but he just never liked wearing an earring. Now he was bling. He seemed good, though; relaxed, funny, his usual self. I watched him play ball with his crew, they still had no answers for him on the court.
He played at a slow pace, much slower than before. It was almost as if not to embarrass his boys, who were all older and bigger than him. Half-court games of two-on-two and games of "varsity" (aka: 21). He'd win one easy, then lose two on purpose. Turnovers on game-points, missing free-throw shots on 20 to send himself back down to 11.
In the two-on-twos, his teammate (who actually was the best player in their crew) would just look at LaTravis after LaTravis would miss a shot that he'd normally make or after a bad pass that is usually a guaranteed dime. It was a look of, "I know you are b.s.-ing, but why?" I want to pull LaTravis to the side and ask him what he's doing, but the kid has a smile on his face. He was for once having a good time. He was -- for once -- being a kid.
It was after June 1 when everything changed. No sight of him, no phone calls. His 22-year-old "superstar" cousin returned home from college and took LaTravis under his wing. Reintroducing him to the side of the game that he hadn't had a chance to do while the NCAA had him under scholarship. And while the older cousin "hoop dreamed" around the city, he took LaTravis with him.
From ball courts to Benz shops. From Attack Gym to Avalon Park to Altgeld Gardens. I heard stories: stories that I shouldn't have been hearing, stories a child should not be living. Out of the apartment by 8 a.m., back after 2 a.m.. No cell phone, no calls, no check in. The day I met his mom was the day I had planned to take him and his crew with me to a weekend basketball camp. I needed to do something to get him out of the streets, away from his "cousin."
That's the day I found out LaTravis almost died. Twice.
A disease that causes instant and uncontrollable seizures called petit mal hit LaTravis unexpectedly. He blacked out at 1:30 in the morning while hanging out at someone's apartment one night. His friends -- all under the age of 16 -- had no idea what was going on, panicked, and found a way to rush him to the hospital. All scared, they just left him there. No call to LaTravis' mother, LaTravis' cousin or to me. Next thing Temeika knew, she said, she was getting a call from the hospital saying her son, who left the house that morning to her knowledge 100 percent healthy, was ready to be released. No previous information given. No warning.
Imagine even as a neglectful mother getting that call about your child?
Then, five weeks after that, LaTravis escaped a shootout at the place he plays ball the most. When I called all over the neighborhood trying to find out if he was up there at the park when it happened or if he'd been hurt, one of my boys who lives just blocks away from the park said he saw LaTravis and he was up there when it happened, but he got out and that he was safe.
He also said he didn't like what he was seeing in LaTravis. What he was seeing in LaTravis for the first time, was a kid looking like he was having nothing to do with basketball and a kid hanging with people that had nothing to do with basketball. He said he's seen LaTravis with "another cousin;" said this time the cousin was older than 22 and so were the other "cousins" in the car they were riding in. Cups of Hennessey and smoke made up those rides. He said, "They were at the gas station, but they wasn't gettin' gas."
I knew the routine. I knew where this was about to go.
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