So the kids, sequestered in their jewel-colored Nikes and their tight jeans, had to swallow their frustration and excess energy like a belly full of bees. In that house, in that family, outside spelled temptation, and besides, it was the Sabbath. The eleven kids, most of them teenagers, weren’t allowed to go outdoors. But that fall, one of these houses stayed locked up tight against the sunshine. Slicing through the center of these projects is DeKalb Avenue, with its run of single-family homes and middle-class aspirations. A bright morning like this could make anybody grateful. You couldn’t tell, on a clear morning like this, that the Roosevelt Houses still tipped the scales in the 81st Precinct with their homicide rates, that by nightfall the bodegas would ﬁll with toothless addicts buying loosies for a quarter. All two thousand people from the Roosevelt housing projects seemed to be tumbling outdoors, leaning on cars or gathering at the bodegas, slanting their faces toward the sun to soak in the last bits of warmth before winter. It was an unusually warm October in Brooklyn the men had switched their puffy coats for crisp white tank tops, and the young mothers pried back the plastic casings on their strollers.

Thanks to Cris and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sharing it with the Longreads community. Cris Beam | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | August 2013 | 23 minutes (5,787 words)īelow is the opening chapter of To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick.

To the end of june by cris beam