Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady
“Angela, I'm ready to go,” I said.
“Nah, fuck that. I got this nigga's baby and he gonna give me some money.” He pushed her again, but this time she stood her ground. “I'mma fuck this whole place up if you don't give me my money,” she continued. “This your damn baby and you gonna help take care of her.”
I stood quietly by, waiting for the first blow to be thrown. Angela had never looked as much like Miss Betty as she did in that moment. Dude began to walk away, then he turned around and walked swiftly toward Angela. I braced myself for a punch, but what he threw were two bills, the denomination I did not know.
Angela inspected them, stuffed them in her pocket and walked away in satisfaction. We caught the bus home, while Angela ranted about Dude's bullshit and how she would fuck him up. I listened, but I could no longer hear her. I just wanted to get home where I knew I was safe.
Soon after, Angela left Lincoln Park again, this time for good. She got a house in one of the other Portsmouth projects. Which one, I was never sure. Last I heard, she was still struggling with a drug habit and had five children.
AngelaâI often think of that pretty brown girl, with the shy smile and bright eyes I met when I first moved to Lincoln Park. I see her standing on her porch reaching out to me on mine. We are close enough to touch, close enough to hold each other, but no matter how far we stretch, our hands do not meet. I have many regrets concerning my time in Lincoln Park. I work every day pondering those regrets, hoping to resolve them, but Angela is one I will never resolve. We had dreams, we wanted better, and we deserved more than those cinder walls and cement ceilings could give.
Angela is me and I am her. Her mother is my mother and my mother, hers. For every Laurie and Angela wading her way through the projects of America, I mourn, because no one escapes unscathed, and I celebrate, because there is hope we will all escape eventually. I pray this for Angela, just as I pray this for myself.
Wondering and Wandering
Wondering and Wandering
During summer months, my brothers, sister, and I spent much of our time together, mainly because Momma, who then worked at Family Dollar, wouldn't let us go outside when she wasn't home. We'd sometimes sneak out undetected, but later found Momma had jimmied the doors with a butter knife, so she'd know if anyone left the house while she worked. After getting caught too many times, we resigned ourselves to spending most of our days playing Tunk and Pitty Pat for kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom duties.
We each had a day when we had to clean the kitchen. None of us were too enthusiastic about that, so we played cards, bet our kitchen days, and hoped our skills would free us from those chores. My favorite mark was Dathan. He wasn't the best Tunk or Pitty Pat player and he wagered the highest amounts, so I could leave our marathon of card games with him owing me a month's worth of kitchen days.
We three oldest had already established it wasn't fair to bet against Mary and Tom-Tom. Neither was old enough to clean the kitchen alone and they still hadn't mastered the rules of either card games. So, with them we pitched pennies against the wall for bedroom and bathroom duties.
When we grew tired of the games, we looked out our windows and hollered playfully at our friends. Sometimes, the temptation became too much for Champ and he'd take his chances leaving the house, knowing that meant a guaranteed whipping when Momma got home. Dathan did the same. I took to reading Stephen King books, the Richard Bachman ones in particular, and found myself engrossed in stories like
The Body
and
The Long Walk
, amazed at the level of quiet dysfunction littering Stephen King's pages. And then there were times I too became adventurous, when the threat of a whipping grew quiet as my need to be out playing, laughing, and running grew louder. It was then I too disobeyed.
One such temptation was the fire hydrant that sat in front of our house on Lexington Drive. On most summer afternoons, I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Mary and Tom-Tom, waiting for some brave soul to walk out of his home with a wrench as long as his thigh and unveil summer relief. After the traditional check for the police and one or two threats from the oldest Lincoln Park villagers, who as children had participated in the same ritual, the black knight in cut-off shorts and a white tank top shirt placed the large wrench on the hydrant and jumped, forcing all of his weight onto the stubborn cap, until a pop and sizzling sound escaped the hole.
On stifling summer days, the opened hydrant shot water onto the street with the force of a tidal wave. The young man with a small curve in his back and arms like noodles braved the savage force with a square board fashioned out of the top of a broken coffee table. He meticulously slid the board under the jutting water, forcing the wave into the air to be released as water droplets, dangling like icicles dripping onto the sidewalk. Like a conductor mid-symphony, he lifted the board, entreating the notes of water to rise higher. With a flick of his wrist, he lowered the board, allowing them to shoot onto the ground like a lost melody. As he stood behind the hydrant, straddling it like a wild horse, the water sprayed into his smiling face. Muscles in his arms contracted and released, allowing the crisp cold of the water to tattoo lakes and rivers into his skin.
We children of Lincoln Park gathered around the front of that hydrant, moving as if in a dance, thanking the weather gods for the end of a long drought. With our hands outstretched to the sky and our faces upturned to the once offending sun, we lapped droplets of water that rained on us.
During summer months, while Momma was at work, we were still plagued by hunger, sometimes fighting to the death over crushed packs of Maruchan noodles or the red bands that clung to slices of bologna. Summer morning free lunches provided nourishment where there wasn't any. We'd head to the Lincoln Park recreation center, get in line alongside the other park children, and wait for the center to open.
While we waited outside, we often joked on other kids, proclaiming our family had more money than their families, even though we were all poor. We stood in a ragged line, as crooked as the lines of the sidewalks, and waited, inhaling the scent of melted cheese and greasy fries creeping out of the center's door. When they finally opened, we rushed past the center's workers, who to us never had names. But what they did have was our food. It had become ours as soon as those doors opened. As we filed in, seated ourselves at the cafeteria tables, those ham and cheese delicacies sandwiched between plastic bags that had melted into the bread were placed in front of us. The recreation center morphed into our very own restaurant. The center workers, our waiters and waitresses, passed out juice and milk boxes in conveyor-belt style. As much as I would have liked, I was never able to get seconds. The best I could hope for was Mary not finishing her sandwich so I could eat the rest of it.
Today, even as I visit upscale restaurants and order the most expensive meals on the menu, I haven't been able to find one thing that tastes as good as those ham and cheese sandwiches passed out at Lincoln Park's recreation center. I don't know where the sandwiches came from, who funded the lunch program, or where the recreation center workers went after delivering the lunch, but I do remember the smiles on their faces as we children, approximately one hundred of us, raided that center each summer day and left with smiles in our bellies that for many would have to last until the next morning.
There were many parts of Lincoln Park that were disturbingly beautiful. If I let my guard down, I could see myself there forever. First, there was an abundance of jokesters; Mary, with her young wit, fit effortlessly into that circle. No one could outjoke Mary. Even though she was a girl of nine, she could hang with Lincoln Park's big dogs.
Shalamar, a thick, tall boy that lived on Deep Creek Boulevard, the row behind my house on Lexington, was also a master jokester. He quickly became friends with Champ and often ventured to our porch early summer mornings, singing, “A House is Not a Home”
by Luther Vandross. Shalamar had a voice lighter than the wind. When I closed my eyes and listened intently to his harmonizing, I could see Luther on my porch serenading me. When Shalamar wasn't singing, he was joking with us or on us. The funniest jokes were exchanged between him and Mary. He tried to joke on Mary's nonexistent titties or her sometimes unkempt hair, but that is where his arsenal usually depleted itself. Mary, on the other hand, went for the jugular. She'd hurl every “black” and “fat” joke she had. “Shalamar sweats tar. Shalamar farts smoke.” We'd sit on the porch for hours, until Momma came home, laughing as Mary “smoked” Shalamar, but he wasn't her only mark. When we played on the court that sat in the middle of the park, before drug dealers overran it, Mary could really put on a performance.
A white family moved into Lincoln Park, the only one I saw in my years there. For the most part, they stayed to themselves and kept their kids in the house. All we knew about them was they were large, and we only knew that because of the clothes they hung on the line. They were an unknown quantity in what had become the predictable Lincoln Park. Amongst a sea of black faces, all of which I trusted because of their blackness, the white family stood out like a singular marshmallow in a vat of steaming cocoa. They weren't as annoying as some of our neighbors, those who sat on their porches gossiping about others and bragging about things they had even though all of us lived in the projects. The only offensive thing they did was wash their underwear by hand and hang them on the line to dry. It was offensive because the bloomers and boxers were large and dripping with dirt-tinged water. They quickly became prime fodder for Mary's jokes.
One afternoon, while watching the “boys” playing basketball on the court, Mary did the unthinkable. She went over to the white people's clothesline and began pointing out black marks that hadn't been scrubbed from the fabric of the garment. Mary's small head could have been cloaked in the bloomers, which hung from the line.
“Look at this one, Laurie,” she cackled. “That's a doo-doo stain.” I and the other spectators laughed, slapping our legs and holding our sides. With each gust of wind, the bloomers and boxers rose and fell like sheets. The force of movement pulled droplets of water from the fabric. Then, Mary feigned vomiting, pointing out one dark stain after another. “This is some shit.” We laughed again.
“I can't stand it,” she said as she grabbed the largest pair of bloomers and pulled it to the ground. “It's dirty anyway,” she screamed as we all took off running. We ran back to Lexington Drive, laughing all the way. I expected a white figure to come sprinting behind us, but no one ever came, so we made our way back to the court. Our group was still standing there, still laughing at Mary's antics. We returned with smiles across our faces, Mary's because she'd entertained, mine because I'd never been as proud of my little sister as I was in that moment. She was patted on the back, “Mary, you so funny,” as she was enclosed in a congratulatory circle. Then, we heard a back door open and a screen door slam. Our heads shot past the clothesline, straight to the door.
A large woman hobbled out. Her eyes were fixed on the underwear on the ground and her thighs rubbed against each other as she made her way to the line. She was everything I'd imagined Judy Blume's Blubber to be when my third-grade teacher read the book to us. We watched her suspiciously, waiting for sharp movements. Mary poked out her chest and readied for whatever was to come.
I was afraid for my little sister, but ready to pounce if the woman posed a threat. She bent slowly with her large rear facing the crowd. Her spider veins looked like tire tracks from a car zooming up and down her legs. I could have sworn I heard creaking as she pulled her body upright. She shook out the bloomers, inspected them carefully, and then inspected the clothespins that sat snuggly on the wire. She then hung them again, with gentleness, and made her way back toward her house.
We each let out a collective sigh. After the sigh came a roar of laughter. She stopped. It was as if pause had been pressed. We lowered our raucousness, but only to giggles, waiting for her to
turn around and do something or say something. Just as quickly as she had stopped, she was in motion again, hand on the screen door, one foot, then the other, then her whole big body, inside the house. And we laughed at her for her silence. Laughed at her dirty “draws” hanging on the line. We laughed as if we had conquered something in that moment, as if we for that time owned the world.
I did feel bad for that white lady and her family that day, but I felt worse for myself and mine. In my mind, their presence was an intrusion into our world, one that warranted belittling and torture. I'd already decided whites belonged on the other side of the television, in the world where they ate Pizza Hut regularly, played with Ronald McDonald in commercials, drove in nice cars and not clunkers like Momma's, and stared at us like we stank as we passed them in the store. So, if they stepped out of the television and from behind those stares into Lincoln Park, if they willingly cast off what I believed to be their birthright in order to reside in the dumps with us, then they got what they deserved.
That family soon moved out of Lincoln Park after the underwear incident. I'd heard their house had been broken into and one of their kids had been beaten up. I'd heard about those things and then I hadn'tâjust like everybody else who lived in the projects of Lincoln Park.
Almost every other weekend in Lincoln Park there was a fight, a shooting, or a fight that turned into a shooting. There was the shooting of Keyone, a fourteen-year-old friend of Mary's who didn't heed my warnings to stop selling drugs. There was the shooting that claimed the life of my cousin's best friend, Craig. There was the early morning murder of Victor, who had attempted to hide under a car. His killers shot him at our bus stop. The morning he was killed, all of the kids who rode my bus lined up at the curb, inspecting a puddle of his blood that ran to the sewer drain. We stared at the remnants of Victor as if they were exhibits in a museum. The way the brain matter clung to the steel grates warranted examination. I stared at its whiteness, the red tinge that surrounded it, and wondered what thoughts had run through his brain as it oozed onto the ground. Whether those thoughts were still wrapped in the spongy material was a mystery I entertained throughout the entire day at school.
During the five years I lived there, Lincoln Park was a war zone. Almost every night there was some news about the Park on WAVY-TV. I learned not to walk in front of the windows after dark, and I was trained to drop the moment someone yelled “gun” or the music of gunshots played their tune. No one was safe and nothing was promised. It didn't matter who I knew or who I was. Living in Lincoln Park was like playing Russian roulette; sooner or later I would be hit.
One evening I sat on the phone at the kitchen table, talking to Tracy, a friend from school, about going to prom. On that call, we evaluated our options, dissecting each guy we deemed a possible date. In the midst of our conversation, I saw a figure rush past the kitchen window. I wasn't too alarmed by the quickness of the figure. Most nightwalkers hid during the day, sleeping or staying in until the sun made its descent, but I was alarmed by the rush of people that
followed. I heard “Get him,” and “He's over there.” I continued my call with Tracy until the first shot. The sound ricocheted so loudly against the window my teeth chattered. I dropped the phone and vaulted upstairs to Momma, to safety. Champ and Momma had already taken their places at the window, so I sandwiched in between.
I used to wonder why we were so brazen as to stick our heads into the open air while bullets went careening through the Park. Now, I know we felt no fear because seeing and knowing were most important. Being able to breathe once we realized it wasn't anyone we knew, anyone we loved, was imperative over protecting our own heads. And so I watched as the man, who I later learned was from Jamaica and donned the name “Ponytail,” ran for his life. I watched his shirtless back ripple as he ducked behind Momma's car, trying to squeeze his body between it and the curb, which Momma had parked too closely to. I watched as his body narrated a story, as his legs sprinted forward then backward, as his arms and hands pumped against the air, as he tried to figure out which way to go. His story was my story; he wanted to live.
I later heard Ponytail was beefing with New York boys over the prime “territory” that was Lincoln Park. Rumor had it he'd encountered the boys that were chasing him earlier that day at the basketball court right in my backyard. When the New York boys approached him and even threatened him, Ponytail ripped off his shirt, showing the curves of his small, muscular frame. He beat his chest like a warrior and screamed, with the thickness of his Jamaican ancestry, “If ya gonta shoot me, shoot me right heah.” I spent many nights after his murder wishing he hadn't said that.
When he couldn't squeeze himself into the small space between Momma's car and the curb, he darted into the alley that separated my row of houses from the row to the left. The others followed and then there was nothing else to see, there was only hearing. A scream. It was high, shrill, and still hangs inside of my mind today. There were gunshots, too many to count, and I wondered how many times they had to kill him before he was dead enough for them. And then there was silence. So much silence it hurt my ears.
The boys that had run into the alley rushed away like a squad of soldiers, stuffing weapons into the backs of pants and into oversized pockets. They jumped into cars and sped away.
But the silence continued, rang for what seemed a life, Ponytail's life. And then, as often was the case, the people came in droves as if the space surrounding Ponytail was our meeting place for that night. Momma, Champ, and I exited our home, and made our way to the alley where Ponytail's body lay in the fetal position. His arms were wrapped around his shins. He looked smaller than the figure I saw running past my window. His braids lay delicately against the back of his neck and his bare back was littered with leaking holes. There was a crown of blood around his head and I watched his back intently, waiting to see if it would rise and fall. It remained stagnant. I didn't know death could claim a body so quickly.
He lay on that ground in his cut-off shorts, with his shirtless back and neat braids, for three hours. We all stood with him as if a vigil were about to start. Eventually, the cops came. One even took what looked like tweezers and stuck them into Ponytail's head. He pulled something out, inspected it, and walked away. Blood oozed out of the now larger opening and someone yelled, “Why don't y'all get him out of here? This don't make no sense.” Momma ran upstairs, got one of the sheets off of our beds, and draped it over Ponytail's body. No ambulance ever came. More policemen did, but they just prodded, talked on their walkie-talkies, and sat in their cars. I learned this is what they do when one of us is taken.
The one time they did leave their cars was when a young woman darted toward Ponytail's body. Her scream was different from Ponytail's, different from what I'd imagined mine would have been. She was so elegant in her agony, body wrenching, hands gripping her chest, breathing labored, mouth opened in beauty, howling past the moon. She did not make it to his body. The cops grabbed her before she could claw at the sheet. But their hands did not take from her beauty. As they held her long, thin arms, her legs danced in the air. Her back curved against the policemen's bodies as one spasm after another convulsed throughout her. “Who did
this?” she screamed. “Why did you kill my husband?” The “whys” followed her into the policeman's car.
The coroner eventually came to retrieve the body. Ponytail had been there so long rigor mortis had already occurred. I didn't know that until I asked Momma why his legs stayed stuck at his chest when they rolled him over. She said, “It's the rigor. It's set.”
Something was also set in me. If Lincoln Park was my plight, if one of my brothers would fall the way Ponytail had, if Momma, my sister, or myself fell to the streets, I hoped I would exhibit the beauty and grace Ponytail's wife had owned, that I would howl so melodically the moon would open itself to me and shine on my loves as it had on Ponytail, that my body would move so gracefully I could make horror look stunning.