MEMORIES

DISPLACED ANGER

After Pop died, I became a very angry child filled with a rage that I didn't know how to control. And Ma had her hands full trying to control me. I became disrespectful and withdrawn, a kid just looking for trouble. I kept my pain and my fear locked away deep inside of me where nobody could touch it. I started to resent everything and everybody in my life. And I started hanging out with a bad crowd of kids, worrying Ma to death.

My grades dropped drastically and I started cutting school to hang out on the streets with my new friends. When Ma tried to rein me in, I would explode and just walk out of the house. I didn't care about anybody but myself. Overnight, I turned into a totally different kid. Twelve is a hard age for any boy but it's even worse when you're hurting the way I was. I wanted to strike out. I wanted to make everyone around me as miserable as I was. And I pretty much succeeded in doing that and came so close to ruining my own life in the process.

I'm not proud of it but I became involved with a local street gang. I learned how to do a lot of things that I shouldn't have been learning how to do at that age. I learned how to hotwire a car, I learned how to shoplift, I learned how to smoke and I learned that the girls all seemed to like what I had to offer. I learned all about life on the mean streets of Brooklyn and I learned to adapt to it.

In one way I was pretty lucky. Most of the cops in the area knew me because they had known my Pop. So they tended to look the other way when I got into trouble. They'd just take me home to Ma instead of taking me to Juvie like they should have. Their intentions were good but it was the wrong thing to do. I just kept doing what I was doing because I knew I wouldn't have to suffer the same consequences the other kids did if they were caught. I was on the fast track to hell and I didn't care.

Ma tried everything she could think of to keep me in line. If she'd ground me, I'd just sneak out the first chance I got. I knew how to get money if I needed it so taking away my allowance wasn't an option. Even a whipping didn't do much good. I'd just stand there and take it, then go right back out on the streets. Yeah, Ma had her hands full with me all right. I stopped doing my chores, I only went to school when I had to, and I talked back to Ma all the time. I thought my new friends were the greatest and that being part of the local gang was cool. A bad attitude for a kid as angry as I was.

Ma put up with my behavior for as long as she could then something happened that made her decide to take drastic measures to save me from my self-destructive behavior. The day had started out just like any other day. I got up and cut school, meeting some of my friends at the local arcade. We spent a couple of hours just hanging out, showing off to each other and flirting with girls. Then one of the guys, Billy, decided to head over to another street corner when a rival gang hung out. We all knew it wasn't a good idea to trespass on another gang's territory but none of us thought much about it at the time. We were just kids and didn't think about getting into any trouble with the other gang members. Things were okay at first until Billy started mouthing off to one of the other gang members and called him some very unfriendly names. Next thing I knew, one of the other kids had pulled a knife and stabbed Billy three times in the chest. Everybody took off running when he fell to the ground, his blood seeping out onto the sidewalk. Everybody but me. I just stood there, staring at him and remembering the day that Pop died. Billy was thirteen years old, just a few months older than me at the time.

I guess I kinda went into shock seeing Billy die like that right in front of me. I don't remember the cops showing up or trying to ask me questions about what had happened. I don't know how I got back home. I found out later one of the cops knew my dad and he was the one who ended up taking me home and telling Ma what had happened. I shut myself in my room and refused to come out or talk to anybody for three days. While I was shutting myself away from the world, Ma was on the phone with her sister, Rosie, in California making plans for my future.

Ma decided that the only way to save me from myself was to get me away from the streets that I called home and the local gang members that I considered my friends. Even if that meant sending me three thousand miles away to live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al in California. I wasn't given any choice in the matter. The decisions and the plans were made without me knowing anything about it.

I can still remember when Ma finally came into my room four days after Billy was killed and told me that I was going to go and live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al out in California for a while. I can remember screaming at her, threatening to run away if she tried to send me away and feeling so lost and alone at that moment. I felt abandoned and hopeless, as if Ma had stopped loving me and no longer wanted me around. I was so wrapped up in my own anger that I didn't see the tears on her face as she tried to explain that she was doing this for my own good. I sure didn't see it that way at the time. All I knew was that I was being sent away from my family and the only home I had ever known to live with an aunt and Uncle that were literally strangers to me.

Ma always told me that I was as stubborn as a mule when I wanted to be and her decision to send me away just made me that much madder at the world in general. I shoved all of my other emotions deep inside of me so I wouldn't have to deal with them and started building a wall around myself that would become almost impossible for anyone to penetrate. In less than a year since Pop's murder, my life as I knew it had ended.

My aunt and Uncle drove to New York from California to pick me up and take me home with them. I guess Ma was afraid to send me out there on a bus by myself and that was probably a wise decision. I would probably have disappeared into the streets of another city along the way long before I ever got there. I made everybody's life miserable in the meantime. I refused to talk to Ma. I told her she didn't love me anymore or she wouldn't send me away. And I refused to talk to Aunt Rosie or Uncle Al when they finally showed up to take home with them to a place I had only read about in books. I hated everybody, myself included. At that time, I had no way of knowing that my life was about to change again in ways that I never expected it to.

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