And I'm Watching It All From My Window

It was a typical Friday afternoon, and I was typically rushed. I was throwing on a T shirt, glossing over my hair and scanning the poem I would recite a few minutes later at La Pena, a cultural center downtown, when I caught a glimpse of the scene outside. Six or seven junior-high kids were walking down the street, the two boys in the rear yelling over the others' conversations. The girls had rolled up their shirts in the back to reveal pudgy midsections. As they stepped over condoms, around abandoned cars and past barking guard dogs, they joked and talked about who'd been shot and which of their friends was pregnant.

When I was in the sixth grade, I went to the public school in this neighborhood. I remember walking home with my classmates, having conversations similar to the one beneath my window. "Did you hear about Lisa's baby? Is she gonna stay in school?" We didn't always talk about kids we knew; rumors about friends of friends traveled through our group like rushing water.

By 11th grade, I had passed through several local school systems more affluent than West Oakland's as part of my parents' attempt to get me the best education possible. Getting older and hanging out with a new crowd gave me a different perspective than the one I'd had as a sixth grader. Kids' getting shot was no longer some drama from which I could detach myself, or a joke to be shared with friends over sunflower seeds and Icees. It was real--hard deaths and stone poverty in my own community.

In five years, my block had changed. The boys from grade school were now men standing on the corner. Their eyes had grown increasingly red, their speech dense, their expressions more vacant. The forty-something women, mothers of girls my age, had become old and tired--secondhand mamas to their children's children.

Closest to my heart were the neighborhood girls who looked like they'd lost hope of ever knowing a better life. Girls I'd gone to school with at the age of 11 had become women at 15. Their stomachs sagged, their hands were full with diaper bags or money to push into the palms of the men on the corner. These were girls who walked like me; some even talked like me. But it was never me. I had things to do. I was on my way somewhere.

Dance class, gymnastics and writing workshops were some of the activities that kept me busy. I looked at the other girls on my street and saw that they were just as smart, pretty and capable as I was. I knew that the fundamental difference between us was that I'd been nurtured to expect only the best of life.