You would see building after building and people just standing around. Off the highway, on State Street, the number 29 bus would take you on a ghetto tour, passing all those projects. The buildings stared you down, their windows like eyes, watching. If you drove up the 90/94, a highway built to separate Blacks and whites without Jim Crow language, the Robert Taylor Homes loomed off to the side of your car. All the spaces around the building belonged to them, but we had our own spot, and for the longest time, no one bothered us there. There were dudes draped around the building’s opening, standing guard in the parking lot, the tunnel inside the building leading to the stairway, everywhere, really. Sometimes you’d catch us flowing through the masses of guys in white tees on a quick trip to buy candy from Ms. By the summer of 1999, me, Precious, and Stacia-all twelve years old-ran around in this tight formation, snapping through the block in neon colors like a school of tropical fish.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |