Veronica

Veronica sits in a doorway on Pulaski Avenue in September 2005 holding a lighter and some crack, with a red coke can and red sweat jacket at her side. I offer her ten dollars for some photographs, and she tells me she doesn’t look that good nude. I explain that I just want to take photos as she is right there. She hesitates, but agrees, and is cautiously friendly. We talk awhile and I learn her 20th birthday will be in four days. She also tells me her husband, the father of her little daughter, died the week before from a stroke at the age of fifty-three. They’ve just buried him.

She is six feet tall and has a face of the 19 year old girl she really is, underneath the hard experience of drugs, gangs and prostitution, that has consumed her teenage years. Veronica told me she once weighed 230 lbs. and took off 120 lbs through the crack diet. She explained that "people" made her feel bad about herself, her weight, her appearance, before she got her weight down to 140-150. When I asked who, she told me about her old boyfriend, who would beat her and make her perform pushups and squats as punishment when he decided she had done something wrong.

I see her again in November, when she records with me the story of her brother’s death by shooting, and we sit in Humboldt Park with graying gangbangers who greet her as a surrogate daughter and sell powder cocaine from wheelchairs. We eat Bacalao from a truck vendor.

I talk with her several times on the telephone, but she is increasingly missing from her own home, and I start talking with her mother, too, who laments that she cannot control her daughter, and must raise her granddaughter almost alone. It is a story I will hear again.

Veronica proves hard to follow, although we call her from time to time.

In late November I learn from the Cook County web site she has been arrested, and quickly released. In February she leaves a distraught message, saying she needs to go into rehab right away. When I do reach her on the telephone, she is laughing with a new boyfriend, and in no hurry to go to treatment.

March 27 2006: Arrested again. I speak with her mother, who explains Veronica has been charged with possession of 4 heroin bags, a felony. France and I don't make it to see her at the jail since she has been released on bond the day before visiting. Mother doesn't seem to know who bailed her out.

Later I check the computer at Cook County Court and see bail has been revoked and a warrant issued for Veronica's arrest. Home visits from the warrant squad probably won't help her living situation or her relationship with her daughter. This is unfortunate.

June 3 2006: Arrested again, no bail. I speak with Veronica's mother by telephone, and she confirms Veronica has been arrested again in the past week and charged with crack possession. She goes on to explain the heroin arrest was in the company of the new boyfriend, and that Veronica foolishly agreed to take responsibility for the drugs. The car was seized and the boyfriend's family paid several thousand dollars to bail both of them out and to recover the car from impound.

She hopes Veronica can be mandated to a treatment program.

On June 10th, France and I visit Veronica at jail. She is surprised to see us, and talks vaguely about getting into treatment. But her real interest is expressed by a hope she'll get released next week on probation. This is complicated by the fact she was found guilty in absentia for the March heroin arrest, and now is facing a new felony charge for the June crack case.

What's striking is that she is a lost soul, not knowing anything about her legal proceedings, or how to function in the jail, or what to do to prepare for her release. She's in a kind of daze, a captive waiting to learn what will be done with her next.

July 6 2006:
Veronica has been released. All charges dropped. This is peculiar since she believed she had been convicted in absentia for the heroin charge. She looks much happier than the day we saw her at a visit at the Cook County Jail.