Blue
lights over Baltimore
She
was incredibly happy, as highway 1 carried them toward the city
limits. Couldn’t wait to get there!
Baltimore
had been on her mind, ever since she had faithfully watched every
available episode of “Homicide: Life in the Streets”. The TV-show
had somehow ended up placing a deeply concerned love in her heart,
for this town she had never been to.
But,
that was going to change today. When she and her husband entered the
beginnings of Baltimore's suburbia in their rented “Cruise America
RV”, a sense of returning overcame her and she breathlessly tried
to see everything at once. At the same time, the intense realization
that she was a stranger and a foreigner in this city, could not have
been more evident. This filled her, apart from a huge and
overwhelmingly exiting state of anticipation, with a small sliver of
sadness she first found curious and quite inexplicable. After
thinking about it, though, she decided that it probably had something
to do with that feeling of coming back to an unknown, yet familiar
place, from a very long journey.
This
was another America altogether. Her husband and she lived in New
Mexico, a place filled with great empty deserts and mountains, mostly
devoid of humans. She loved it there but felt that it lacked the
diversity of people she knew existed elsewhere in the country.
Black
people were such an important part of what she considered the
“American Experience” and, in New Mexico, their presence was
sadly missing, as far as she was concerned.
In
the past, when she mentioned her desire to see Baltimore, some of her
white friends would ask:
“Why
Baltimore?”
They
did not have much else to say if she inquired as to the nature of
their question.
“It’s
a black town and there is a lot of crime,” they would say.
This
comment was usually followed by a gushing:
“But
it’s a great city with wonderful museums.”
Then
the conversation would move on, as if nothing else were needed to
explain the lack of interest.
For
her, though, this reaction only made her more intent and she thought
that she wanted to see for herself what Baltimore had to offer to
someone who cared to look. The man, who was the creator of “Homicide:
Life in the Streets”, loved his city, this much was clear. To him,
despite all the imperfections and conflicts, it seemed a place well
worth mentioning. She had come to see what he saw.
They
rolled down the street, emerged in traffic and she watched people
crossing the road, standing at street corners, or entering
convenience stores, which advertised beer, cigarettes and milk. There
wasn’t a white person in sight. To her, it was like being in
another country. Block after block appeared in front of them, each
one less inhabitable. Suddenly she noticed a strange kind of landmark
along the sidewalks. Every couple of blocks, there were the tallest
lamp posts she had ever seen. With a big round blue light flashing on
top. After taking a closer look, she realized that there were four
cameras attached just below the blue light, pointed at the streets
and side-walks below and, just underneath that, she saw a sign that
read: 24/7 YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!
When
she told her husband what she had discovered, he reacted instantly to
the message in the intended fearful way. It made her sad, to see how
easy it was to manipulate people. But, she was not scared by such
theatrics.
She
just continued watching the inner city of Baltimore, while her heart
began to ache. This is unacceptable she thought. No one should have
to live like that. As they continued through the remnants of former
neighborhoods, with boarded up hostile buildings and lost souls on
the sidewalks, she wished they could stop so she could leave the safe
capsule of their vehicle. She wanted to talk with the people in the
street and ask them what had happened here. It made no sense to her
and she asked her husband how something like that was possible in
America, today?
He
could not answer her question.
Instead,
he steered them onward, frightened and hoping for a turn-off that
would get them back to the “safety” of an interstate. By now,
there were blue lights on every block. The place looked deserted,
except for the occasional group of young black men with hard faces
and single mothers wheeling their offspring bravely toward unknown
destinations.
He swore when,
ahead of them, a traffic light turned red and forced him to stop the
RV. A homeless-looking man started along the line of waiting cars and
her husband rolled up the windows hastily, leaving only a tiny crack
open. She was looking for change to give the man, who had reached
them. Before he could say anything, her husband told him that nothing
could be gotten from them.
The
man said:
”
Come on, why do
you have to be like that?”
Her
husband responded:
”
I am too afraid.
I am sorry. I don’t want to get killed.”
Before
the man could answer, the green light appeared and they began to move
again. She was embarrassed by what had occurred and wished she could
get her husband to abandon his fear, so she could get out into the
street and find out what everyone there had to say about the horrible
state of their city. But she understood that he could not accommodate
her and touched him gently, saying:
”
I am sorry it
makes you feel this way.”
All
of a sudden the ghetto ended. There was no warning, no transitory
area to pass through, and no way for those who lived on the edge of
the ghetto to cross over to the generic perfection of the houses that
were now lining Highway 1.
On
one side of the street, the boarded up dilapidated architecture, with
broken steps and front yards covered in weeds, told a silent sad tale
of lost lives and livelihoods, while across the road manicured
gardens showed off their abundance as if to say,:
”
See here, this is
the American dream and you will never have it.”
It
was shocking to both of them. The brutality and finality of the
division left them speechless and she thought of their house back in
New Mexico and the beauty of their land. She knew that from now on
she would always think of Baltimore and how it could be changed from
hopelessness to a new and better place, where people could live their
lives in dignity instead of poverty and crime, illuminated by those
damn blue scary lights. She had some ideas and decided one day soon
she would be back. There was much to do. In her mind, she was sure
that it was possible because the way things had been allowed to
become was truly intolerable. She thought that, perhaps, she had
found her “American Dream.”
PS:
Go Ravens! Ray Lewis 4ever!.... ;)
©
Corinne Wesley 2014 Edition
