27 years ago, in 1987, I learned how to ride a bicycle during a
late summer night that was oddly silence of music, gunfire, and people
yelling. That night was my best night as
a child because I had taught myself something that I thought was impossible to
do but I had mixed emotions about it. My
Father, whom I adore dearly, refused to allow me to learn how to ride a bicycle
but never gave me a solid reason as to why.
My oldest Sister, Monica, boyfriend at the time lent me his
bike, surely to keep me away from them as they looked into each others eyes
for the evening, gave me simple
instructions on how to teach myself to ride.
He said “put your foot on one pedal push with the other and once you get
enough speed put the other foot up on the other pedal and PEDAL!” Easy enough I
thought to myself but a disappointment grew in me as to why my dad couldn’t
just give me those same simple instructions.
Here I am pushing myself on a bicycle down Keystone Ave.
trying to get enough speed and courage to put my other foot on the pedal…faster---faster---faster---faster----faster
I kept telling myself then a car would appear and I’d have to stop. After giving a dirty look at the driver of
the car I’d push on faster-----faster----faster---faster---faster---faster and
the first try I almost wiped out but was able to pedal a full rotation and
picked up some speed and there I went….
Once I had “mastered” this bicycle riding I just wanted to
zip up and down the street but had to watch the front windows of my house to
make sure my dad did not see me riding a bicycle. Faster I went down the street to the point I
thought I was going to hit Warp speed! but never did to my disappointment. After what seemed all night my sister’s
boyfriend took his bike back and said he’d let me use it when I needed to so I
could keep up on how to ride it. I could
barely sleep that night because I was so excited about where I would go on my
own and that’s what my dad was afraid of.
The summer of 1987 was a good summer altogether but crack
cocaine started to come in Chicago and homicides were around the 600 mark for
the whole year but it was the summer I got to discover Chicago on my own. My aunt and uncle, have since past away, lived
about a mile and a half from us and once my uncle knew I could ride a bicycle
he told me to visit him and he’d ride with me to the lake. How cool I thought to myself that I’d be
going to the lake during the summer without parental supervision! So every day I’d make my way to my aunt and
uncle’s house and my aunt would have some lunch ready for me then my uncle and
I would head out East on Fullerton Ave.
The first time I rode to the lake I thought I was the
coolest kid on the block because everyone else was stuck at home, going to
summer school, summer camp, or something annoying like that and I was at the
lake enjoying the freedom of riding my bicycle.
My uncle would be obviously very hot by the time we reached the beach
and he would just walk right into the lake slacks and button down shirt and
all. He’d come out and tell me to go and
take a dive into the lake so I would and we’d keep on riding. Surely once we got back to his house we were
both nice and dry and we’d have a small snack that my aunt would have ready for
us.
One day things changed for me entirely on my way to my Aunt
and Uncle’s house, I had bought a bicycle from some kid down the street and it
was a BMX bike that the frame was spray painted black and the rims were a dark
yellow with yellow handles. What you may
not know is that the neighborhood I lived in was all FOLKS (street gangs) which had issues
with that color combination but I didn’t care.
To add insult to injury the rims where five point rims so that really
screamed ‘RIVAL’ to the people in my community.
One day I took off from my house excited that today we would ride
further south into downtown but I had discovered an antique shop next door to a
fast food burger joint so I would stop there to have some fries and look around
the antique shop before I got to my aunt and uncle’s house.
One day I stop at the burger joint but they were closed, as was the antique shop,
because it was earlier than my usual arrival time there so I had left my bike up on the side of the building and as I got onto my bike
a silver Porsche with tinted windows rolls up and someone pulls out a double
barrel shot gun and I froze. I had spent
many hours watching war movies and the such with my dad so I was able to
identify the weapon and I knew its ability so I quickly realized that I was
screwed if he pulled that trigger. What
seemed like an hour I stood there and had a million thoughts run through my
head and the main one was of my dad worried about me going too far from the
house and not knowing I knew how to ride a bike and owned one at that…what do I
do?
I thought about what would happen if I was killed and how it
would affect my family and the guilt my aunt and uncle would feel among a ton
of other things, then my mind went from slow motion to real time I told myself
don’t react! Don’t cry! Don’t blink! Don’t look down! Keep your eyes on them!
Then I hear the sound that many would have not lived through, *click* he had
pulled the trigger and the hammer had come down but nothing came out of the
barrels. I then hear the people in the
car laughing and the Porsche peels off taking with it my ability to cry, to
feel fear, to be a 12 year old, and many other feelings and emotions I’m still
unaware of not having.
I stood there and watched them drive off down the street and
as I start to pedal away the owner of the burger joint flips the closed sign to
open and unlocks the door and asked if I was coming in today and I looked right
at him and said no in such a way that the look on his face changed from
friendly to concern. I pedaled away
slowly trying to decide if I was going to cry or not but then what if they came
back? I thought about telling my aunt
and uncle but then they would tell my parents and that would be the end of my “freedom”
and my bicycle so I kept the secret to myself for all these years.
Today the effects of that day still trigger a dying need for
me to cry and hold that child because he didn’t deserve to have his childhood
crushed that way I just want to take him away from all of that and give him a
book or a football and let him live his life a while longer in innocence in
hopes that it would allow him to make better choices as an adult.
Now, as an adult I have issues around expressing my grief I
have a hard time comforting anyone that is facing hard times. If someone tells me that their mother is
dying I have a blank stare and go into a practical conversation around being
prepared and doing what is needed for that transition. If someone tells me that a 5 year old was
gunned down I think about that Porsche and wanting to see it explode a million
times over just to begin the idea of maybe feeling better. I cannot feel what I want to feel sometimes
and at the wrong moment I feel like I’m going to fall apart and keep myself
from falling apart by think about that 12 year old boy that needed to keep it
together while facing a double barrel shotgun...
I wish I could finish this thought but I’m still dealing
with this void and I’m going on 39 years of being here so one day I might be
able to finish this….
