Blue lights over Baltimore
She was excited, 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 episode of Homicide: Life in the Streets. The show had
somehow ended up placing a deep love in her heart, for this town she did not
know. But, that was going to change today. While she and her husband entered
the beginnings of suburbia in their rented RV, a sense of returning overcame
her and she breathlessly tried to see everything at once. At the same time, it
reminded her that she was a stranger and a foreigner.
This was another America
altogether. They 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 enquired as to the nature of their question.
“It’s a black town and there is a lot of crime.”
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, 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 as people crossed the road, stood at street
corners, or entered convenience stores, advertising beer, cigarettes and milk.
There wasn’t a white person in sight. To her it was like being in another
country. As block after block appeared in front of them, each one less
inhabitable, she noticed a strange kind of landmark along the sidewalks. Tall
lamp posts with a big 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, 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 be killed.”
Before the man could answer,
the green light appeared and they began to move again. She was intensely
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 impossible 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.
© Corinne Wesley 2007
ich schaue mir gerade Deine Seite noch einmal an. Sie ist cool:)))
Bis dann
Helga