Struggles in the Shadows: Life in the Ghetto

I remember when I heard the horrifying scream as I groggily awakened. I didn’t know what was happening and was terrified to discover what these screams were. Maybe it was a dream, I thought, glancing over to my twin brother, Joey, who was still sleeping. I froze as the blanket covered my frightened body. The hesitation I felt about climbing from my mattress, however, would soon diminish as I gradually slipped off the edge of the bed. I made my way toward the bedroom doorknob. As I inched closer, the screams reverberated off the apartment walls and grew louder.

I slowly creaked open the door and heard my mother begging, “No, Michael, no!” I looked down at the floor and saw a line of blood drops leading toward the kitchen. Barely awake, I followed the puddled drops and saw my mother’s little body moving from side to side as she extended her arms to block the front door so my brother Michael wouldn’t get out. “No, Michael! No. You don’t need to do this.”

“Mom, just move. Please!” Mom begged in her accented English, “No, Michael! My God! Please!”

Michael’s forehead was masked with blood dripping profusely over his eyes and face. I had never witnessed this much blood and could not understand why it was happening.

“Please, Michael! Sit down. I’ll clean your head, and it will all be forgotten.”

“No, Mom. I can’t!”

“You can, baby.” Mom begged. “Please, sit down!”

“No, Mom! I’m gonna kill ’im!” Michael yelled before he dashed toward the kitchen drawer and grabbed a butcher knife, scattering the roaches off the utensils.

He yanked the kitchen window open, leaped out, and disappeared into the building hallway five stories up through the next window over.

Mom tried to stop him, but he was too strong. I started to cry, mostly for my mom. She prayed to God, “Ay! Dios mío, Dios, por favor salva a mi hijo!”

“Mom!” I cried, running toward her. “Mom! What happened?” “Oh! Dios mío!” Mom prayed aloud.

“Mom? Where’d Michael go? What happened to Michael?” “Oh, Dios! My baby!” I pulled Mom’s apron, even though it was spotted with blood, and said, “Mom, it’s okay, it’s okay— Michael will come back.”

Mom’s eyes were bloodshot as tears streamed down her cheeks, her body exhausted from worrying about Michael’s fate. She struggled toward the kitchen table and sat there quietly. Confused, I stood beside her trying to soothe the pain she felt in her heart, stroking her long black hair with my shaky hand. She rocked herself back and forth like you would a baby in your arms, and with her hands over her face, she uttered, “God will be with my Michael. God will watch him.”

I later found out that a junkie in the hallway had stabbed Michael because he wouldn’t give him the money in his pocket. I felt an angel was with us that dark morning; it took notice of our prayers, and Michael never found the junkie he was going to kill.

I was eleven years old when this happened, and I was the youngest of five, with Joey a few minutes older, and then it was Anna, Gerard, and Michael being the oldest. Fighting was all I seemed to learn in the ghetto.

The idea of having a better life seemed like it was only true in those stories you read in magazines of people with their single-story homes and white picket fences. My mother prayed for a special place where someday she would free us of all this torment; she hoped to give us a life away from the projects. But that was a hope for a future I couldn’t understand. This upbringing was my normal.

It was the year 1979, when owning a pair of bell-bottom polyester pants and white-and-royal blue, low-profile Pro-Ked sneakers would fit you in with the other kids. But designer clothing wasn’t for Joey and me. Instead, Dad only got us what he could afford and would last the longest, including the second-hand shoes the kids called skippies and always made fun of.

It was a time when the New York City blackout happened and people were breaking into store windows and apartments. A time when Jack LaLanne was a television staple, as was using a 45 adapter with a worn-out disco single to play the Bee Gees or Captain & Tennille, “Love Will Keep us Together.” The music echoed through the project hallways.

I remember taking long walks with Michael down to the Pickle Guys, passing my favorite toy store and wishing I had that new G.I. Joe in the window, or watching the neighborhood Pigeon Man feed the birds. Our favorite places to go were Coney Island or the World Trade Center. It was like Disneyland in the ’hood. Parked Cadillac’s rang out to the sound of “Another Star” by Stevie Wonder, and the indistinct noise of tapping heels and snapping thumbs resonated over the neighborhood benches.

It was a time when homeboys sat on the benches playing congas and drinking Miller beer buried in brown paper sacks, making catcalls to the Spanish girls who passed by dressed in tight-fitting jeans and revealing shirts.

A time when the seven of us would sit in front of a black and white TV in our two-bedroom apartment to watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Welcome Back Kotter, or my favorite, The Six Million Dollar Man, never missing an episode. In my neighborhood, people thought of the projects as home. I thought of it as a sewer for criminals who lingered in unlit hallways, looking for someone to rob. It was common to catch a junkie shooting up heroin in the stench of his own piss, sitting on the stairwell.

A prostitute, or almost anyone, could be having sex anywhere. But amid all this, for us, the projects were home. It was a melting pot of people on welfare, including us, and simple existence was based on your survival instincts. Neighborhood winos, prostitutes, and junkies infested every crack of this jungle, and our trusted men in blue would simply drive by, making fun of their misfortune.

The night mornings were the worst when gunshots would often echo between the buildings, not knowing if a bullet would go through a wall and hit any of us. I would lie in bed frightened until daylight. The Hell’s Angels, who lived across the street, would keep that side of the block calm. It was like watching a mafia movie from my fifth-floor window, where the big guys would protect their turf and no one would mess with them, gaining respect by fear alone.

Where we lived at Twenty Avenue D, Apartment 5e, there were Hispanics, blacks, Jews, and even Italians. You might call it the United Nations Building, where everyone was on equal ground and no one had more than the other. We never knew where our next meal might come from, and our apartment was crammed, but that didn’t stop us from relying on the one trait that kept us together— love.

#ReedsyExpectations