The helicopters fly overhead like termites, swarming at the sight of spring. Then the light show begins, casting wide white highlights over lawns and rooftops. Reminiscent of flashlights in a tent or the fort my cousin and I would make by putting a sleeping bag over my twin beds and hiding out underneath. But this is not make believe, this is my soundtrack. Daily. You can count on the Avenue dance, where we wait to see if the hardest dude on the block casually goes inside his house to answer the phone that never rang or if he'll stay posted on his porch with his boys. See it's all about the atmosphere here. Movement. Subtlety. Mouths close because eyes and ears are the senses of choice. You listen for sirens, screams, dogs, cussin', screeches from cars, even people on foot. God forbid you hear them all, and more often than not, you do. The key is to be as inconspicuous as possible with no sharp movements. I had someone use my ladder to climb onto the roof of my garage to cut through my neighbors yard running from the cops. I even looked up at 3 in the afternoon to see four young men face down, hand cuffed on my lawn. It was actually the 3 backup cars that made the raucous that got my attention. Had I not happened to look outside, I would have been none the wiser. But when I recall that day, the foreshadowing music was playing with a free download, I just didn't have my ears tweaked to "sensitive" mode. So you're probably thinking why not move. And I guess that is a valid question but we all know there is no such thing as security in a world of free will. This beautiful gift is our birth right and a part of our spiritual path. Free will... the ability to choose. So I prefer to assess risk opposed to relying on the notion of security.
Growing up in the suburbs of Upstate NY, that same free will was exercised regularly, but never made the news. By the mid 80's at the height of the skin head movement, we would get their literature in our mailbox on the regular. I remember my mother's face when she studied a small pamphlet with threats and how to prepare mercy killings on "NIGGERS". She just kinda went blank and tried to get rid of it by throwing it away. It took a lot for my mother to unravel and I can only imagine how she reconciled staying put when her children's lives were in jeopardy. But you get tired of running when you understand fear is an endless cycle of restlessness. The same consciousness that created the problem, can't solve it according to Einstein. But from the outside looking in, there was no safer place. The burbs lined with strip malls and golf courses. When she left I dug that garbage out of the trash and I was incensed. Who could differentiate my friends who dressed like punks from American History X extras? She later told the police after it happened a few times, but nothing was ever done about it. Clearly our security was not in the hands of the police and coming from her generation, that was nothing new.
My mother has such a strong faith that truly surpasses all understanding and that prevented her from taking that craziness on. She understood the ignorance and fear that drove that person to put that in our mailbox was beyond her comprehension. So she chose to keep quiet and rely on sound and sight to evaluate her surroundings. She tuned in and let people bait themselves. Now I understand why there were suddenly homes I couldn't go to after school and people I could no longer associate with. She observed how certain parents spoke about politics, race and religion. How older siblings of my friends acted in the mall or in other social settings at the sight of black people. They may not have been the culprit, but she understood the power of their thoughts and words and was taking no chances on them manifesting while I was playing hop scotch on their property. But they weren't astute enough to understand her intuition nor motivation because she wasn't obvious. She was like mother wolf with blood on her teeth and they were too stupid to understand they were even on her radar. She grew up with confederate flags, crosses burning and lynch parties. This... was silly season to her.
You're probably hoping I have learned the art of shutting up and tuning in. I've gotten better but must warn you, I'm not that evolved yet. Today I only hear the ice cream truck and lawn mowers and see kids racing on their skateboards past the school. Jay is blasting "Children's Story" across the street while he's washing his boys Impala. But trust, if the next song on this soundtrack is a ghetto bird, I will become a symphony of silence. And I will gracefully do a curtain call with no encore because this ain't funny so don't you dare laugh. Goodnight.
3 comments:
Raced up the block doing 83!! LOLOL Wow, I have to say I saw the picture you were painting having lived there a good part of my life as well. Great piece - gimme some mo!! LOL
Update this blog girlie, this is needed. I was all psyched when I saw the title...
Browne Molyneux
This is a very true story. I used to be in South Central ALL the time. My grandparents lived there in the house where my Mother grew up. I spent 60-70% of my time out of suburbia in the Inland Empire and in the "streets" of South Central. I would go for walks with my grandmother to the corner store, no fear at all. There would be loads of random transients, crack heads, prostitues, drug dealers, but for the most part, they kept to themselves. I was pretty much unafraid. We'd run out into the street for the ice cream man, not thinking about what else he might be selling. We would hear gun shots, and your nightly helicopters whizzing by. Sometimes, as curious children, we'd go outside to stand in the rays of the helicopter's lights, only for them to hesitate over us for a second, they fly on. There were drug dealers living loudly next door to my grandma's house after a while. Really belligerent transients would throw their old clothes, mattresses, sheets, whatever they didn't want, across the street from my grandparent's house. Much to our horror, my grandpa, growing old and a bit senile, would try to start verbal fights with them, shaking his fist and threatening them. They didn't move until after the brotherhood crusade at the end of their street either shut down or just stopped having publicized, jesse jackson lead, events there. There was little damage control in the neighboorhood and crime escalated. Someone began terrorizing the neighborhood by literally blowing up cars at random times on the street. The traffic to the house next door and random police raids began to be too much and the neighbors began to blast Mariachi music, Dr. Dre, and Snoop music at any hour, disregarding that they lived next door to an elderly couple. Eventually, my grandparents moved. I do kinda miss South Central, though. On my travels to my grandma's new abode near Gardena, from my apartment in Silver Lake, I take figeroa or purposely exit on Slauson, just to relive some of the memories. :)
~Aisha
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