Entry Log: 2
Date: Friday, April 6, 2012
Place: Sarah's, Harlem, NYC
Back on the front porch. If I continue like this my ass is going to wear a hole in this chair. Though I doubt my sister will let me stay that long. She's great, don't get me wrong, but more of a tough-love kind of older sister. Eight years older than me, we've never been really close. She was off to college when I was still in primary school and I never saw much of her. And joining up with a local gang didn't exactly make us any closer. It wasn't till I joined the army that I tried to straighten my life out a bit. We exchanged the lone Christmas card every December but that was about it.
I'll never admit it to her, but I'm proud of her. She was smart enough to focus in school and do well in her classes. Me? I had a reputation of being a heavy-hitter brawler. As a black kid growing up in Harlem you quickly learned to either keep your head down or your fists up. And I've never had the sense to stay away from a fight. Sarah did though. She even managed to get a scholarship that allowed her to go to college and become a kindergarten teacher. Now she's back in Harlem, working at a local school down the road.
Her husband works for the city as a garbage collector. Nothing fancy, but at least it's honest work and they're doing well by their kids. In a way they're the real heroes. The folks back home who get up every day and make sure the country is still running and that their kids will have a decent future.
My niece and nephew are adorable. Chad is 8 and Aida is 5 and they're two crazy balls of energy. At the park yesterday they tried to catch a squirrel because they wanted a pet. Thank goodness that little bugger was too fast for them. I love watching them play, as I'm supposed to be doing right now while Sarah's gone grocery shopping. Aida is digging up worms and making little beds of dirt and grass for them. Poor bastards. And Chad is riding his old bike up and down the street. If he tries to jump the curb one more time that bent and battered frame is going to fall apart. They're so pure and innocent. Reminds me that there is some good in this world and it's not all blood and bullets, darkness and death.
And for a brief second I think that I too could have something like this. A house to come home to, a family to love and take care of. But then I look at my hands and I see that they're stained red with blood. The metallic tang of blood and fear fills my mouth and the dying screams of my mates echoes in my ears. And I know that there's no damn way that I'll ever have anything resembling normal. What does normal mean to a guy who can't sleep in a bed but lies down on the hard floor instead? To a guy who can't walk down a street without checking for IED's and snipers and flinches at every sudden sound?
Naw, normal is a bit too much to ask for. I'll settle with sleeping through one night without nightmares. Or being able to grill something on the barbecue without throwing up because of the smell of burnt meat. Or seeing the colour red without thinking of blood, or yellow without fire, or silver without bullets.
Man, that's some depressive shit. And I'm supposed to, what do they call it, "reintegrate myself into society", after I just wrote that? Hell naw.