A Not-So-Sweet Escape From a Troubled Home

“A ny way you can . . . “

It was chilly, but not cold enough for the long leather and fur coats worn by the people who made their way past Roger and into the white stucco building just behind him. But this was Georgia, the swanky, celebrity-studded restaurant on Melrose Avenue where the hip and the not-so-hip come to dine.

Roger, 16, watched glumly as the parking attendants, dressed in bright red vests, white shirts and black pants and black ties, dutifully took charge of such prized possessions as a jade green Range Rover, a silver Jag, a red Ferrari, a black Porsche and lots of Benzes.

It was about 9 p.m. On the adjacent corner, people were flowing into Matty’s, an Italian restaurant owned by actor Tony Danza’s brother. Across the street was Spike Lee’s Joint and Mo’ Better Meaty Meat Burgers, all lit up in colorful neon. Melrose was poppin’, and in the flurry, Roger went almost unnoticed--just a skinny, nondescript black kid trying to sell overpriced candy to overstuffed adults.

“Anything I have to do . . . “

Roger is not alone. There are scores of children like him.

You’ve most likely seen them, some as young as 12, standing outside the automated bank teller machines, the video stores, the drugstores, the grocery stores, hawking $5 candy that their sponsors bought for a buck at a 99-cent store.

They say they are with some organization that sponsors free trips and excursions to help inner-city kids. That’s usually not true. Mostly likely, it’s just some adult working an old hustle who needs kids to make it work. The kids will tell you that they are trying to stay away from drugs and gangs. That’s true. They are kids from poor families and gang-infested neighborhoods. Like Roger, they need a way out of the madness.

So, they follow the flyers posted in their neighborhoods promising “Jobs For Kids, 12 to 15 years old. Work Evenings and Saturday. Make up to $75 a week. Win Free Trips, Bonuses, Prizes.” Sometimes, there are rare individuals like Roger’s sponsor, Clayton, who actually follow through with the promises.

“Clayton’s really in it for the kids,” says Roger. “I’ve been with five organizations. Only two were legitimate. Clayton’s not legitimate either, really, but he cares about us. He takes us to Magic Mountain, he gives people prizes, he takes us to dinner. He’s trying to help. We need something. And right now, this is all we’ve got.

“Anything you need to survive . . . “

Roger is a fixture outside of Georgia on Melrose.

“Excuse me sir, would you like to buy a box of candy to help kids stay out of gangs and off drugs?” comes the spiel.

Roger sells his candy, but hates it. He hates peddling his poverty to a bunch of well-dressed strangers. “It’s embarrassing,” he mumbles. “I’m too old for this. I’m ashamed to tell my friends and my girlfriend that I work here. My girlfriend and my homeys think I work inside.”

But he’s there almost every night. Some 20 job applications, including one at Georgia, have so far been fruitless. He’s been doing this since he was 12 years old. These days, he says, it’s not so much for the money.

Mostly, Roger just doesn’t want to go home.

“Anything I can . . . “

Home, you see, is where the hurt is. It’s a three-bedroom apartment where gang members hang on the steps drinking and smoking dope. It’s where you get hassled and robbed and chased. It’s where graffiti covers most buildings on the block and there’s always trash in the street. It’s a place of bad memories.

Dad is in jail, so is Roger’s older brother. “He was trying to be like my dad, selling dope and stuff like that. I don’t even think about them anymore.” Two sisters, 4 and 14, are at home with his mother, now receiving a welfare check from the Department of Social Services, the place where she worked as a typist less than a year ago.

So, Roger doesn’t go home much.

“I work every night because I’m trying to stay away from the gangs,” Roger said to me as he pocketed a $10 purchase and tip from Los Angeles Lakers center Sam Bowie.

Roger says that when he recently took a few days off he got robbed and roughed up at a Chinese restaurant near his house. “That’s what happens when I don’t work. That’s why I work every day. I leave early in the morning for school. When I get out of school, I go over to my friend’s home and do my homework, and then I come here. I go home late at night. I don’t like to go home before 11 or 12, because they are still out there drinking and smoking before that.

“There’s nothing at home, so I stay out here.”

“Anything I can. That’s what I will do to stay alive.”