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Wallace Park: A Memoir
Category:
Memoir
Publisher: Amazon
ISBN-10: 0615726518
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 294
Copyright: December 2013
ISBN-13: 9780615726519
Price: $1.99 (eBook)
A young boy's struggle for a better life comes true when his mother puts him on a plane to Portland, Oregon.
Alberto rushed at me in the school hallway, pushing me and then punching me square in the face. I cried and ran down Essex Street to Uncle Carlito’s and told him what had happened.
He was furious, so he put a razor blade in his leather jacket, grabbed my hand, and said, “I’m gonna go skin me a bully! C’mon!”
Carlito pulled me briskly down the street back to the school. It was hard for me to keep up with Carlito’s stride, but I was determined to see the look on Alberto’s face. Uncle Carlito pushed open the classroom door.
The teacher took a step back, and her voice cracked when she asked him to leave, but Carlito was determined to find the bully. I pointed him out.
These were everyday occurrences. The screams, shootings, noise, and bizarre behavior were part of everyday life in the projects. It infected us all, but our strength as a family kept us together.
Even though we were living on welfare in a roach-infested apartment, my mother believed in the future—someday we would live in a better place. But times were tough. More than once, my father took the meat from free lunches that kids threw away to provide us with a meal. My brother was once stabbed while saving my life.
My parents finally scraped together enough money to send us to a place called Portland, Oregon. It was a desperate attempt at a safe new life, but our sudden escape from the ghetto actually meant the beginning of the struggles I faced growing up in Portland.
Here, I write about failures, triumphs, and the changes we went through every day. I write how the loss of my mother at an early age and, years later, the loss of my father were put into perspective by the love and support of a childhood friend who would later become my wife.
This is a story of my internal fight to see my mother’s dream for me come true; it details the stark contrast between surviving the ghetto and facing the challenge of starting a new life in an unknown place.
It shows that, like a recovering alcoholic, a person who has lived with violence must forever fight to channel that violence into new tools for survival, and it chronicles the passion and frustration born of such a beginning. It shows that the dream for a better life can come true. I’m an average person, and my story is everybody’s story.
Excerpt
Part One
Chapter 1
New York City—Lower East Manhattan
The horrifying scream became louder 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 spineless 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 disturbingly 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, God, please!”
“Mom, 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. You can,” Mom said. “Please, sit down!”
“No, Mom! I’m gonna kill ’im!”
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