FEAR IS NO STRANGER IN CHICAGO GHETTO

CHICAGO -- The puddle that was a little boy's blood on south Komensky
Avenue is washed away now. A miniature license plate, with the words
"You've Got a Friend in Jesus," hangs on a tree in memory of that boy,
Robert Anderson III, 4, who was killed by a stray bullet this summer while
making mud pies in front of his home on the city's West Side.

Life has returned to a shade of normal in Robert's neighborhood, known as
K-Town. But normal is relative in a place where tragedy is as certain as
the next morning's sunrise and where people live by the mantra that no
matter what comes, life goes on.

Now that the shooting has stopped, parents and children go about their
lives on Komensky Avenue. And sometimes Robert's family can be seen on the
porch, facing the spot near the tree where three months earlier he was shot
in the back.

"You just got to live life the way it was before," said the child's cousin
Gloria Reese, 22, her words rinsed with a dose of fatalism and reality.
"That's what you live for," Ms. Reese said. "You live to die."

In every corner of the country, life seems more fragile, more dangerous.
The Sept. 11 attacks and the continuing anthrax scare have made people
everywhere approach even the most mundane decisions of everyday life with
extra care, tinged with fear: Do I get on the plane? Do I go to the mall or
to the movies? Should I open this letter? Is it safe for my children to go
out and play?

But stark choices like these have been a fact of life forever in poor urban
neighborhoods like K-Town, which are ravaged by different kinds of terror:
poverty, gangs, drugs and gunshots that crack a silent night.

Most Americans have never had to consider the kinds of questions people ask
here: Will my child be shot coming home from school? Is it safe to walk to
the corner store? Is it safe to sit on the porch?

People here say that for many in troubled urban neighborhoods, it boils
down to two choices: either live in fear or live through it.

"This ain't corporate America. This is the ghetto," Ms. Reese said. "You
learn to get used to it."

It is not an unfamiliar feeling.

"It's almost a crisis in our community every day, and that's the norm,"
said Sherryl Moore-Ollie, 34, an assistant principal at William Penn
Elementary School on West 16th Street, where a year ago gangs waged a gun
battle outside the school.

Penn's teachers and administrators say the word they live by is vigilance.
Watch out. Always know where the children are. Stay calm.

"There's nothing new," said Anita Dantzler, 26, a sixth-grade teacher at
the school. "We follow procedure."

In another West Side neighborhood, East Garfield, Ashley Jenkins, 15, and
her friends know what to do when the shooting starts. They drop down. If
they can't get home, they know to run to a neighbor's home.

"A bullet ain't got no name," one girl said, standing with her friends
outside a basketball court. The court is across the street from where a
stray bullet killed Stevie Perry, 10, while he watched television in his
living room two months ago.

"You just got to watch your surroundings," another girl added as they
seemed at ease on a typical afternoon on west Ohio Street.

"You can't stop your life," Ms. Jenkins said.

Despite a steady drop in violent crime nationally in recent years,
residents in neighborhoods like East Garfield and K-Town still find enough
hardship to make life there a tentative proposition. This year 522
homicides have occurred in Chicago, compared with 501 by the same time last
year, the police said. At least 33 of this year's victims have been 17 or
younger, the police said.

Dr. Carl Bell, chief executive of the Community Mental Health Council and
professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois in
Chicago, said African-Americans in poor, high-crime communities have long
grappled with the terrors of urban life, with some success.

"Black people have support systems in terms of church and spirituality,
extended kinship," he said.

In K-Town, Jerome Merritt said that all the talk of terrorism lately had
reminded him of the stories his grandmother shared about the Ku Klux Klan
back in Tupelo, Miss. She "said they used to sit and wait to see who they
were going to come and hang next," Mr. Merritt, 47, recalled. His family
lived through that, he said. He expects that they will live through these
times.

Dr. Bell explained that with terrorists, including drug dealers and gangs,
"the first thing is to understand what the deal is, which is that they're
trying to control you.

"They're trying to monopolize all of your time, space and energy," Dr. Bell
said. "From there, you begin to strategize, and you begin a long- range
plan to become proactive. And you do things to make you happy, you do
things to make your heart sing."

For the Perry family, that has not been easy.

At the Perry home a few days ago, Charles Mayes, 81, sat and sobbed,
pointing to the spot where he had seen Stevie, his grandson, lying dead.

Stevie's mother, Sandra Perry, 26, sighed. "You would think that they could
find something better to do besides sitting there wanting to wave guns in
the air, and they shoot an innocent child," she said.

A 19-year-old man, who police said was shooting at two men over a dispute
in a crap game, has been charged with murder in the Aug. 11 shooting.

Back in K-Town, Ms. Reese said that since her cousin's death, she has been
going to church more.

"I am closer to my baby," she said of her daughter, Tenesha, 1.

Though she was troubled by the attacks of Sept. 11, Ms. Reese said she was
not fearful about further terrorist incidents, at least none that will
directly affect her.

"They ain't coming to the ghetto," she said. "They are going where the real
people are at, where the money is. They're not looking for us."

She sat on her family's porch, a white ribbon fluttering in the breeze near
the spot where Robert was killed, life getting back as close to normal as
people around here suspect it may ever be.