Memoir of An African-American Man, Achievement, I
Achievement, 1 of 2
—Time to share—
I grew up in a slum where the gang members,
at the risk of their lives, fight over their turf.
My lullaby was red and blue warning lights
flickering from dashing squared cars and ambulances,
and my bedtime story was the blow of sirens passing through
the streets and alleys between boarded up abandoned houses
standing in rows here and there.
My mother, though loved me dearly,
happened to be a high school dropout
and single who brought this world to me at her teens.
She was a minimum wage earner, therefore, her life was
nothing but struggles, kept body and soul together in misery
between laid off to employed to laid off, between paycheck to welfare
to paycheck that is thinner than a sheet of paper.
Although under educated, she was a pious woman,
and that is why her keen desire was not her son to follow
the steps of her mistake and suffer like his mother.
Her wish was to raise her only child to be a decent citizen
with a noble profession and thereby add some value to the community,
return some good things to the society.
Apart from mother’s great expectation, however,
I was a disobedient rogue child, a kind of problem kid
on the block when I was a lad. I got into bad company
and led astray by them, was irregular in attendance to a school
and cut classes whenever I felt like.
Until one day I learned of my mother’s tragic death
on the way back home from her work,
she was struck by a stray bullet
in the midst of gang members cross fire.
Copyright © Su Ben | Year Posted 2016
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