Moving Beyond the Pain

The Penthouse Salon is a South Los Angeles oasis.

Black women come to have their hair straightened, curled and braided; to have highlights put in, the gray taken out. They come to smell the burning jasmine oil; to sit among the bamboo plants, the ferns, the African art.

They also come to be around Nadine LeBlanc. She owns the place.

In her booming voice, textured with a throaty raspiness, she expounds on the virtues of “universal enlightenment” and “oneness with God.” Or, when she is less lofty, Nadine leads the debate over husbands, boyfriends, work -- or who is finer, Kobe Bryant or Rick Fox?

You go to Nadine’s for your looks, say her customers, but it’s more than that. You can spill your guts.

On June 9, 2001, Nadine’s 19-year-old grandson stopped by the salon. He had just returned to South L.A. after finishing high school in Sacramento. Nadine hugged Christopher, reaching her small hands around his wide shoulders. She told him to shave the stubble on his cheek, and looked out the window as he left, lumbering into his old white Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Christopher flashed her a smile, gave her a thumbs-up. “Love you, Grandmommy!” he shouted. “See you soon.”

Soon after, police say, Christopher was driving on Dunsmuir Avenue, just off Pico Boulevard, when a man in a gold Saturn shot at him with a pistol. The fatal bullet flew. It crashed through the back window and hit Christopher behind his left ear. Blood soaked his white T-shirt, his black Nike headband and his khaki pants.

Nadine nearly vomited when she arrived and saw his butter-colored Timberland boots dangling out of the car.

She went home and crawled into bed. All day, all night. All day again, all night again.

In those first few days, Nadine sought comfort standing in her shower, the water pouring over her head and onto the white tile. One morning, under the pounding water, she made a promise.

“Christopher,” she recalls saying aloud, “Grandmommy is going to do something.”

Problem was, she had no idea what.

A few weeks later, Nadine paces across the whitewashed hardwood floor of the salon on 43rd Place near Degnan Boulevard in the Crenshaw district. She wears a purple dress shirt with a little brown-faced angel on the lapel. She holds a pair of scissors in one hand, clutched hard, as if squeezing it with all her might will make the pain go away.

“I can’t bring him back,” she says, looking out the window into the street. “He’s gone. I’m having a hard time believing that. I won’t see him graduate college or go to his wedding. He won’t be there to take care of me when I grow old. I just feel lost knowing that.”

Huge swaths of Los Angeles are blanketed by just this kind of suffering. Last year, L.A. was the nation’s murder capital, with 659 homicides.

Most of the dead leave loved ones behind. The survivors are victims too. Some grieve, some live in denial. Some take on new responsibilities. They raise the children of murder victims, pay off the victims’ debts, deal with police.

But some loved ones are different. They refuse to accept the killings. They embark on a mission against violence. They protest. They stuff envelopes. They speak out. And in the process of saving others, they discover something: They also save themselves.

Nadine LeBlanc is one of them. The 63-year-old hairdresser, a short, round-faced woman with broad hips, chestnut skin and dark brown eyes, was desperate for solace after her grandson was killed.

Drawn from scores of interviews and visits over the last two years, this is Nadine’s story -- the story of one survivor’s transformation.

“Does anybody care?” asks LeBlanc, weeks after her grandson’s death, ambling back to a customer reclining in a tilted chair. “Does anybody care about a black boy from South Los Angeles and a grandmother who’s lost part of her future? Not enough people do.”

Solidly Middle Class

Christopher’s life wasn’t supposed to end this way.

There had been tough times, but Nadine’s family was solidly middle class, a clan of college graduates and business owners, lawyers and veterinarians.

Not that Christopher’s life was easy. His mother and father were teen parents who divorced when Christopher was 2. His mother had custody of Christopher, but she had her own troubles, struggling with a kidney disease that would kill her in 1999. Because of his mother’s illness, Christopher was raised in part by his maternal grandparents, who live in a small stucco home near Watts, and by Nadine, his paternal grandmother.

Nadine had her rules, but mostly she spoiled him. When Christopher was 4, she took him on his first plane ride. Nadine recalled him looking so cute in his window seat, glancing over at her and giving his Grandmommy the thumbs-up sign. When he was 9, she took him to his first concert, the bands Jodeci and TLC at the Forum. They called it a date.

She schooled him on how to steer clear of trouble in South Los Angeles: How it was never a good idea to get too flip with the police because they had a reputation for messing with young black men. How he needed to stay away from certain neighborhoods.

By all accounts, Christopher grew to become a charming young man who never got into trouble. He had slender hips, wide shoulders, an easygoing manner and a broad smile. His great dream? To become a comedian. And to marry the beautiful young woman from the neighborhood whom he had known since they were children.

When he was 15, Christopher’s family sent him to Sacramento to live with his father. They worried about the danger facing any young man living in South L.A. He finished his senior year in May 2001. He wanted to go to college, or maybe get a job at the post office.

But before he stepped into adulthood, Christopher took a bus to spend the summer in his old Los Angeles neighborhood.

Within weeks, he was dead.

No Leads

Now it’s August 2001, two months after Christopher’s killing. Police first suspected Christopher was a gang member. They later ruled it out, but not before creating a gulf of tension with Christopher’s family.

To the family, each of the detectives’ questions is an accusation, each explanation -- why they couldn’t find the killer, what they planned to do about it -- doled out with no compassion.

“It’s like he’s just another dead black kid,” says Nadine.

The weeks wear on. Nadine isn’t eating. She has lost 20 pounds. She hardly sleeps, filling her nights with television reruns of the Lakers or the John Edward show, hosted by a psychic who claims he can speak to the dead. She stays away from where Christopher was shot. She stays away from the cemetery where his body lies.

She nags the detectives, calling them every week. Then she just stops.

“They don’t care enough,” she says. “I’m convinced.”

She begins to believe the murder will remain unsolved.

“We could use some luck,” admits LAPD Det. Humberto Fajardo. He pores through Christopher’s thick case file, full of autopsy photos, witness statements and pictures of gold Saturn sedans. Somebody must know the killer, he says. But nobody is talking.

Meanwhile, two more murders have piled onto his caseload. He was already investigating eight murders when Christopher was killed.

“Who knows what happened?” he adds. “The way things are going, we will never know.”

Being forced to rely on luck eats at Nadine. She can do nothing more than sit and pray that somehow the detectives will catch a break. It is a feeling of powerlessness, and it heaps onto her thick depression.

One morning, heading off to work, Nadine walks out of her home, a peach Mediterranean on a gently sloping street at the foot of Baldwin Hills. A woman she has never met approaches. “I heard about your loss,” says the woman, a friend of Nadine’s neighbor. “I am so very sorry.” The woman has tears in her eyes.

Nadine tells what happened to Christopher. The woman tells what happened to her son, how someone shot him to death in 1995. They stand in the middle of the street, crying and hugging.

“How sad,” Nadine recalls thinking. “You end up bonding with strangers over death.”

Friends and family are doing their best to pull her through, cooking dinners and baking apple pies, reminding her to watch her health and to gain her weight back. They stream through her home, sharing books on her new favorite subject: spirits and guardian angels.

Nadine believes her grandson is a spirit now. She walks through her house and explains how the sprinkler turned on suddenly one day. That was Christopher, she says. One day, a faint aroma, a scent like the sandalwood cologne Christopher used to wear, wafted through her home. That was him too.

“I can feel his presence,” she says. Then she sighs. “There’s not a whole lot else to hold onto.”

The days wear on. The only way she can sleep is to cry so hard she has no energy left. She tries hard to disguise her grief, especially at work.

At the salon, all of her customers know about Christopher’s death. The regulars knew him. For 27 years, Nadine has owned the Penthouse Salon. She has provided a place where black women could come and be comforted. Now, her customers, sensing her pain, are giving that comfort back.

One woman who visits the salon is Sabreen Abdulrahmaan. A devout Muslim, she started coming by after Christopher died, not to get her hair done, but to chat, to remind Nadine that “God is watching.”

Nadine appreciates the care and attention.

Then, on Sept. 19, Sabreen’s 25-year-old son walks outside a convenience store in South Los Angeles. Someone pulls a gun and starts shooting. Her son falls to the pavement. He dies in the UCLA Medical Center emergency room.

A mutual friend tells Nadine what happened to Sabreen’s son, a lanky young man who just a month earlier had come bounding through Nadine’s shop, looking for his mother.

The next day, Nadine walks out of her salon and sees Sabreen, a Muslim hijab covering her head. Sabreen stands on the sidewalk, just feet from the spot where Christopher was parked on the last day of his life. Nadine approaches. Once again, she finds herself hugging, rocking back and forth in the arms of another woman as tears fall. This time, there is no room for words.

“We didn’t say anything,” Nadine recalls. “I didn’t ask any details. I didn’t ask how she was. There was this unspoken communication. This woman I’d known for years and I. We knew.”

Just like that, Sabreen and Nadine share the same suffering.

Turning Point

2002 comes. The year brings more despair -- and, finally, a turning point.

Over a few months, Nadine learns, Sabreen’s best friend and Sabreen’s sister in-law both lose sons to murder. A woman at Nadine’s church has three sons killed in separate drive-by shootings in the same week.

“Six degrees of separation,” she says. In South L.A., if it’s not you, it’s someone you love, or someone at the corner store, or in the classroom, or from the basketball court. If it’s not them, it’s someone they know.

Is there any comfort in knowing so many others are going through the same thing? “No comfort at all,” she says.

In April of last year, on what would have been Christopher’s 20th birthday, Nadine holds a “celebration of life” party in his honor.

Dozens of friends and family come. They huddle in her large dining room around two oak tables, eating roast chicken, rice and ham. Nadine moves the coffee table in her living room and gathers her guests in a large circle. She speaks of Christopher, thanks God for his life, asks that his spirit be kept happy.

“Watch over our child, Lord,” she pleads in prayer. “Watch him smiling down on us. Let him spread his little wings.”

But the party feels flat, like a bottle of seltzer exposed to the air too long. Ted Eagans, Nadine’s brother, says his family is still in shock, “just sick and tired and numb.”

Summer 2002 goes by. Nadine suffers alone. She doesn’t have a therapist, and doesn’t consider going to one. She talks less of Christopher, particularly around her family. They speak less of him too. Nobody wants to open the wound.

In September, well over a year since Christopher’s death, the pain is as fresh as ever. Nadine still has trouble sleeping. She seeks comfort looking at framed photographs of Christopher, tending the little wooden cross she planted under the plum tree in her backyard, and touching the brown-faced ceramic angels she keeps on shelves and tables.

One day, she walks to the Bank of America on Crenshaw Boulevard. She walks through the front door and notices a poster near the ATM. The poster has a color picture of a young woman from Inglewood. She is smiling, dressed in a simple gown. Under the picture, it says: “Will you help my family find out who killed me?”

Nadine stands like a statue in the middle of the foyer, staring.

She remembers asking herself, “Where can you hide?”

It’s October. The Los Angeles Police Department swears in a new, tough-talking chief as the number of local homicides climb. Murder stories are everywhere -- The Times, the Compton Bulletin, TV news. In fact, Nadine finds, there is no place to hide.

Exhausted by grief, she moves her salon to a smaller space a few blocks away. It’s an effort to downsize, trim back some of the hassle of running a business.

One morning, Nadine sits in her dining room and opens a letter.

“We at Women Against Gun Violence extend our deepest sympathy for the loss of your loved one, Christopher Michael LeBlanc. We understand the pain you are feeling because many of us have also lost a loved one -- a child, spouse, sibling or friend -- to gun violence.”

In all the time since his murder, she recalls thinking, she had not seen her grandson’s full name printed like that: Christopher Michael LeBlanc. It shocks her. Maybe this is a sign, an answer to her prayers. She decides to accept the letter’s invitation.

In November, Nadine attends her first meeting of the group. About 15 women huddle together at the group’s headquarters, an old bakery on Venice Boulevard. Nadine’s sister goes with her. The sister stands and tells how her family can’t get over Christopher’s death. Nadine has never heard her sister talk so openly, never seen the tears flow so freely.

Then Nadine gets up and talks about how she can’t shake the pain. She falls back into her chair and weeps. She leaves the meeting determined to get involved.

Back to Her Old Self

It’s 2003. Nadine sleeps now. Her appetite is back. Change has come, she says, as she has started helping others. Family members say the old Nadine has returned, with all her old zest.

In visits set up by the anti-violence group, she visits schools, community centers, even LAPD headquarters, explaining how violence caused her to nearly crumble, and how the city’s cycle of murder must be stopped.

People respond to her, just like in the salon. One day, after speaking to a group of young mothers, two women approach Nadine and say her talk has persuaded them to give away the guns they own. “God it felt good, them saying that,” she says. “Who would have thought I’d be doing this?”

She plans another birthday party for Christopher. It would have been his 21st. Invitations go out. Then she thinks twice. There’s no more need, she says, to sit around in sorrow, thinking about the past. No more need for pity. She cancels the party.

She spends April 2, Christopher’s birthday, at the Women Against Gun Violence office, stuffing envelopes with letters like the one that drew her in.

Nadine decides to throw a birthday party two months later -- for herself. She fills her home and backyard with more than 200 people, three bands, food and drink. For those few hours, Nadine laughs and dances on her flower-covered patio.

On a recent day, she visits a class taught by her brother at the Springfield College campus in Inglewood. She brings a videotape about the dangers of guns, and two large artist portfolios bearing pictures of her grandson. One is a high school photo. It reads: Christopher Michael LeBlanc. April 2, 1982 -- June 9, 2001. Murdered.

She plays the tape. She denounces guns. She tells Christopher’s story and what it was like to see those boots.

Then Nadine scans the audience, eight women, and tells them what she has learned from the death of her grandson. She knows her own strength. “I always thought if something bad happened to someone in my family, I would not be able to make it,” she says. “I know that’s not the case now.”

She goes on, tears welling: “And I found out that murder is something that touches us all. It’s not just the bangers or the bad kids on the corner. I used to think they were the only ones that got killed, and I actually said to myself, ‘That’s one less thug that could hurt me.’ Now I know, it’s not just them. It’s all of us. It’s Christopher LeBlanc, a good kid who never did anybody harm. I am doing something good for him now.”

Some of the women begin to cry.

“Christopher, Grandmommy is fulfilling the promise she made you,” she says. “Grandmommy always keeps her promise.’”