unfinished stories

parts 2 and 3

I worked in downtown Camden, NJ. It’s known for many things, primarily its drugs, poverty, and violence. Rated the most dangerous city in the US in 2004 and 2005, Camden is home to 80 000 people, most of whom live below the poverty line. No hotel, no movie theatre, no grocery stores; this town is lined with corner stores, unemployment centers, bail bonds, community service centers, dollar stores, two prisons, and Chinese fast food restaurants.

Just across the street that runs along the boarder of Camden lays the American Dream. The suburbs are among the finest in the US. Moorestown, voted the most desirable place to live in the US in 2005, is only ten minutes away. The vast contradiction that I am faced with everyday from where I wake up, to where I work, is enough to make me wonder about the very fibers and essence that makes up the American Dream. How many really live it, and how many have been forgotten as the rest of the country grows richer and richer. How many have been left behind, with no hope of ever seeing or tasting any part of what the fathers of their country dreamed of.

Just months later, here I sit in the comfort of my own suburban home, 3500 miles away, learning to drive to work each day with no one knocking on my window, no one offering me cash for my services: no one even daring to assume I’m apart of such perversities. The stories still haunt me. Faces and stories that are as real to me as the air I breath. I am left feeling empty; feeling helpless. Disturbing stories with out any endings, dance around me and with me. Broken dreams of others knocking at the doors of my own broken heart, asking if there’s anything else. A fog of confusion and despair has grown thick around the hope that once resided and spoke so quickly of dreams.

I will never know their endings, never see their outcomes, never understand my own role in them. Any nugget of knowledge I receive, will only be as good as reading a couple scarce sentences in a book that I had been reading so diligently, never being able to put it down, and then one day, it just disappeared. I can only know in part now, what I once knew in entirety.

The Story I Need to Tell

*an attempt at verbalizing the heart. Part 1 of 5 parts to follow:)

part 1: the streets

Driving to work I pass large groups of girls jumping rope along the sidewalks as their older brothers play basketball at the Clinton St. Park. One solo girl fights hard to stay in the game taking place on the court. Fire hydrants bursting water out as I drive by with open windows welcoming the brief relief from the sweatering heat. Boys with corn rolls, girls with beads dangling into their faces: running through the bleeding water running like a river down the street. Bikes flying around the corner across a busy street, cars screeching to a halt to barely miss the grinning six year old darting in front of them. Corners busy with sales of illegal drugs, sidewalks cruised by white women willing to accept any small payment for their bodily services. Fiends begging for bus and food money; receiving the charity they dart around the corner to the local ‘grocer’ that sells their substance down a dark alley way behind the brick wall that is falling apart. Fancy BMWs and Lincolns cruising slowing by, rolling down windows at remote corners to reveal men in business suits that seem to know this neighborhood too well.

I park, and notice the immediate attention I’ve drawn. The man standing by my window thinks I’m one of the people in the rich cars driving in from out of town. I shake my head ‘no’, and he apologizes while he walks away. I step out of my car. A few steps later, the next man eyes me up. He assumes I’m one of the other white girls looking for a bit of extra cash. Again I shake my head ‘no’. Pull out my keys, unlocking the old raggedy church on the corner of Broadway and Berkley that no longer resembles a church due to a fire from decades ago, and the lack of finances to keep it running. It is now deserted. Meant to be demolished, but there isn’t even money enough in the city to tear down the condemned buildings. I walk in, turn off the alarm, double bolt the door behind me, and slightly jump as two mice scatter into their homes. Sitting on a chair facing the front street where I can see twelve people lined up waiting impatiently for their morning dosage from the ‘pharmacy’. I take a sip of my coffee, smile, think to myself, ‘I’m living my dream’, and get started on my day of work.