Flag House

“Okay, we’re recording now.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Everything you say from this point forward will be on record.”

“Right. I understand.”

“Great! Why don’t we start with letting us know who you are? Your name, and your position.”

“Sure. My name is Alex Ortiz. I’m a Secretary Director in the Office of Family Assistance, a part of Administration for Children and Families, a division of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.”

“I think we have that cleared up. Now, let’s move on to why you asked me here. How can I help?”

“I’m resigning. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Ortiz, people leave their government jobs everyday. Unless you’re a cabinet secretary, quitting your job isn’t a big deal. I mean, unless there’s some juicy scandal involved. Did you get caught embezzling, Mr. Ortiz? Did you sleep with someone you shouldn’t have?”

“No! Nothing like that.”

“Well then, why should I care? Why should anyone care?”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Nobody does care, do they? I mean, some care. For a minute. If it makes it into the news cycle. Don’t get me wrong. There are a few, like me, who care plenty. Care too much. Maybe that’s because we hope that we can care enough for the rest of you, but that’s not true. There’s not enough of us for that.”

“Care about what?”

“About what’s tearing up the very fabric of this country, the cancer that eats us from within.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t you think you’re being a bit cryptic and hyperbolic?”

“Sure! Sure. Let’s be real. We can’t cure a disease we don’t understand, can we?

“So, let’s take a look at what’s happening out here. Poor or low income families make up half of our country. More than a quarter of all blacks live in poverty, nearly as many Hispanics. A third of the families on welfare are black, but Hispanics and whites each make up nearly just as much. But it’s the African American community that bears the brunt of the blame for the need for social programs. When anybody says welfare, the image of the unmarried, black mother who’s too lazy to work, but can’t stop doing drugs and having children we have to pay for is the first one that comes to mind for a lot of people. For some, it’s the only image.”

“So you’re quitting because poverty has an image problem?”

“It does. 37% of people on SNAP, or what we used to call food stamps, are white compared to only 22% of all recipients made up of African Americans. Of course, that might be different if we had a living wage and didn’t have to supplement incomes for so many working families. You know, about 60% of people on food stamps work but just don’t earn enough to cover their bills and eat. But the myths persist, and they create enough resistance for anything to truly change. But, no, that’s not why.”

“So, why then?”

“Because nothing changes. Nothing seems to ever change, not where the change is really needed.”

“And where is that?”

“In the very communities we want to blame for the problem. If they’re not killing each other, the people we pay to protect us are killing them or locking them up, and for some reason, that’s just fine with plenty of people. One less thug on the streets is an improvement.

“But they’re wrong. I may work in Washington, but I still live in Baltimore. I grew up in Baltimore, and I’ve had a front row seat to the devastation that systemic poverty has wreaked in large pockets of that city.”

“So this is about Freddie Gray?”

“No, man! Freddie Gray is about this. Do you want to know why I got into this line of work?”

“Only if it’s relevant.”

“I could point to a number of things—being raised on welfare by a single mother who struggled with drugs and alcohol, never really knowing my father or even having had a strong male role model in my life; but to be perfectly honest, my childhood wasn’t as bad as it was for some.

“I was dating a girl named Sol when I was still at Temple. Her father named her that because when she smiled, it was like the sun suddenly appeared in the sky. Sol had two young daughters, and a deadbeat of an ex-husband. She was living in Flag House at the time, one of the high rise housing projects we finally began tearing down in 1990s. It was notorious as the type of housing that would be taken over by drug dealers, like you’d see in Homicide or The Wire. She would usually meet me at the room I rented during summer breaks from school. But we were eating in Little Italy, one time, and it didn’t make sense to go across town to my place when we were already right in the shadow of the towers.

“Flag House was so close to the Inner Harbor, I’d walked past them plenty of times, but walking up to them, at night, under the gloom of street lamps? It was intimidating, even to a kid with my background. This is what my mother was always hustling to keep us out of. The gauntlet of angry, young black men all staring you down as you walk past didn’t make it any easier.

“Sol had warned to keep my arm around her, and to keep my eyes straight ahead, or towards her until we made it into the building. Inside, there was just one working elevator. The other one had been disabled by the dealers to have more control over who went anywhere, and to make it easier to evade police.

“When the elevator finally arrived—maybe it was just the anxiety of so many violent eyes on me, but it felt like we were waiting for an eternity for it—the doors opened, and I had to steel myself so I didn’t gag at that rancid ammonia smell left from old urine. Fortunately, she lived on the eighth floor. I don’t know that I could have taken it if she had lived any higher.

“We stopped to check in on her daughter, first. The family across the hall was watching her. Sol introduced me to three women. The oldest was in her mid 40s. She lived there with her daughter, approaching 30, and her daughter, a pregnant teen who already had an infant daughter. Four generations of women, all living in the only home they’d ever known.

“I wasn’t surprised. I had just taken a course called The Sociology of Poverty, so I had read plenty about the vicious cycle that plagues many African American women. In a society where the men readily abandon their partners and children, the female parent typically exhibits resentment towards her own children, once the charm of being a parent wears off. If that child is a girl, she will seek intimacy in the arms of anyone willing to give it. Sadly, that usually ends up being one of the very black males that will disappear the very moment a new child comes into the equation.

“But that’s fine, because that girl’s going to have a child, someone she thinks will finally love her unconditionally. But then, the reality of parenting hits, and she has no one to help her, except the mother who drove her away in the first place. And sometime during the sleepless night and the endless crying, she ends up resenting her own child.

“They turn to alcohol and drugs to escape the loneliness, get addicted, turn to stealing or prostitution to feed the habit. And when they realize they need help, they have to wait for weeks before a bed becomes available in a treatment center. Weeks is too long to survive in that environment without giving in to the physical trauma of withdrawal and the desire to escape it. By the time the bed is open, the moment has passed, the desire to stop has been stifled. And on it goes.

“I understood the concept, but to see it, to meet the very women that had only existed in textbooks and research papers for me… That’s what put everything I was doing in perspective for me.”

“Okay, so I get why you do it. Why are you stopping?”

“I got up and got dressed early the next morning. I was fine in the safety of Sol’s apartment, but I was eager to be out of Flag House. Worse than taking forever, it seemed like the one working elevator wasn’t working at all. I thought, maybe the dealers disabled that one, too, once their workday was done. I decided to take the stairs.

“It was like descending a level of Hell. Most of the lights were out. The stench of urine and feces was overpowering. Once my eyes adjusted, I could just make out addicts, curled in dark corners, sleeping off their highs. I don’t think I was ever as happy to see the Sun as I was coming out of that stairwell.

“Just a couple of blocks west, there was this small field of bright yellow flowers planted on a large median just off the Jones Falls Expressway, a splash of beauty haunted by the shadow of those towers. I walked into it a bit, fell to my knees and cried. I’d walked past that very spot plenty of times, too, and never had the flowers looked so glorious. I got myself together, stood up, and turned back toward flag house. I could see someone looking down, hands gripped on the fence that wrapped around each tower like chainmail, and I wondered how the flowers looked from there. Could they even see them?”

“Like you said, they brought all those high rises down.”

“Yeah, but they just spread the problems out into surrounding counties. We eliminated the fortresses dealers used to operate a little more easily, but we also created easier access for addicts, especially white ones, migrating from Oxycontin and other overprescribed opiates. All we did is relocate their businesses to the suburbs, expanding their customer base”

“So you failed. That’s why you’re quitting?”

“We all failed. We continue to fail. We bicker about details and blame, and look for easy fixes instead of solutions. Look at the program I run, Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood. We’ve given out 150 million dollars in grants for programs to promote stable marriages and responsible fatherhood. Has any of that made a difference? We have our success stories. Most of these programs do. But you can’t force most kids who grew up in that environment, without fathers in their lives themselves, to want to be good fathers.”

“You’re leaving because you realize it’s hopeless.”

“I wouldn’t say hopeless. There are programs that have been shown to work effectively. Music and art programs that were successful in countries with similarly impoverished and violence-riddled urban populations have been imported into a few cities, here. Anything that uses up idle time and offers kids a healthy way to express themselves helps, including sports. Some school systems hire social workers to follow up on potential truants and make sure those students have everything they need to succeed in school. But that’s only happening in small pockets. It’s nearly impossible to get those programs funded with the political climate the way it is. Generally, we’re cutting arts to give these kids more time to study for standardized tests, a half-assed attempt to make up some of the ground we’ve lost to other students around the world. Not hopeless, just… not full of hope.”

“But wasn’t that what Obama was selling?”

“Sure. But he wasn't just the black president, he was the president. He can’t be seen as only partial to black people problems. Besides, Republicans have used gerrymandering and voter suppression strategies during midterm elections to entrench themselves in Congress and state houses. They opposed anything that could end up looking like a win for him. They were just coming around to the costs of mass incarceration, even if only from a fiscal perspective. 

“But even if they get out, what do they have to come out to? With few prospects, many will end up right back in a life of crime. They'll survive, whatever way they can.”

“So what happens, now?”

“Who knows. Maybe we’ll keep doing the right things. Maybe we’ll show them that we value them enough that they begin to value themselves. Only when they value their own lives will they begin to value the lives of others. Or maybe we keep dividing ourselves, keep blaming them for a situation we’re all responsible for creating. Or maybe we just keep treating them all like the dangerous criminals a few of them are. That seem to be the strategy of the new administration.

“If that happens, parts of the West Side will look more like the West Bank. Eventually, that deep seated rage they use to destroy each other will be turned outward. Black on black violence will transition to black on everything else violence. They’ll be primed for recruitment by terrorist organizations, if the gangs, themselves, don’t evolve into domestic terrorist outfits. We’ll be more scared. We’ll double down on the use of law enforcement and incarceration to try and restore order, kill guilty and innocent, alike, deepen their resentment of us, even further. And the spiral descends downward to... who knows where. But wherever that is, I don’t want to be around to see it. I can’t.”

“Where will you go, Mr. Ortiz. What will you do now?”

“I’m going home, Mr. Fitz. Puerto Rico. My family's from Ponce. I wasn’t born there, but I spent summers there. I have a profound connection to the people. They face many of the same issues, but they’re all worse off, financially, if you can believe that. They need me, and there, even small deeds can have large impacts.”

“So that’s it, then. You’re giving up.”

“Not giving up. Just giving in. This country hasn’t hit bottom, yet. Keeping everyone divided for the benefit of a few has proven to be an effective strategy. When America gets tired of shooting itself in the foot, over and over, I’ll be back. That is, if I’m not too in love with life in the tropics.”

“Ha! Well, if you know who wins, I might be right behind you.”

“Absolutely. Come check me out. I’ll show you all the great beaches the tourists don’t know about.”

“Well, I think we have enough. I'll get this to my editor, but to be honest, there's nothing new here. You realize, none of this will likely see the light of day?”

 “Sure. I get it. The information's been out there, but the people who need it most still don't get it.” 

“And they won't. Unless you get Fox to put it out there, but you know that's not going to happen. I'm sorry. I can see how important this is to you. I wish there was more I could do. Before we wrap, is there anything you’d like to add?”

“No, I think you have the basics. Except, and I’ll leave it at this: We’ve figured out that addicts don’t have to hit rock bottom to finally decide to enter recovery. They only need a moment of lucidity powerful enough for them to realize that they are killing themselves. There's a large part of this country that’s addicted to fear. It controls the way they live, the way they vote, the way they think about, even treat the people they’ve been taught to fear. Let’s hope America has it’s own moment of lucidity, because rock bottom will come with unbridled violence and race wars. And let’s hope that when that moment of lucidity comes, there will be a bed available for us, before it all collapses.”

Coke Is It!

I’m sitting around a small kitchen table with my friend Nicky, Roberto, the drug dealer I’d just met, and twenty-eight grams of powder cocaine. There is a pot of coke on the stove, mixed with water and baking soda, boiling down to crack rock. That isn’t for us. Ricky and I decided to go half on an ounce of dust. It was easier to sell without having to piss off the dealers in the projects and poorer neighborhoods. Pissed off ghetto dealers will shoot you. Powder sells to anyone.

I’m not happy doing this. My mother died a little over six months ago. AIDS. I had sworn never to use hard drugs after watching heroin annihilate her. Selling them is just as bad. Worse. I feel like I’m about to enable chaos for dozens of people.

I’ve justified it to myself. I told myself that it was my only choice, my last option. If this didn’t work... I have two children, two beautiful boys. Fernando, my oldest, had turned two in October. We call him Boo because he looked so scared when he was born. Cristiano, born thirteen months later, had just turned one. He came out looking like Leonard Nimoy, so we call him Spock. I had just spoken to their mother, Maria, and she had nothing to offer.

Maria and I split up a few weeks ago. It was a long time in coming. She was barely sixteen when we met, and I was just some horny, nineteen year old virgin. It wasn't long before she had the baby she’d chosen me for. Cristiano, our second child, was no one’s choice.

When Cris was born, Maria went despondent. She paid a minimal amount of attention to Cris. I spent more time with him, and I was working forty hours a week, selling camera equipment for Ritz. When she had recuperated from labor, a very easy labor where she practically shot Cris out of her womb like a cannon, Maria started to let me know that she felt as if she’d wasted her childhood.

I had warned her when we first started dating that we were too young to start a family. My mother had her first child at sixteen, and I was witness to the disasters that can befall the family of a single, teenaged mother. I don’t recommend it. But it was exactly what Maria wanted, and she had chosen me to father her child. I had done my part. I could hang around or go away. The choice was mine.

I chose to stay. I had never had a father around, even though I was the first child my mother had in wedlock. My father had spent some time in jail, and once he got out, my parents just couldn’t pick up the pieces, mostly because mom had started using again, mostly because dad had been in jail. I was eight the last time I saw my dad. There was no fucking way I was going to be that father.

I stayed. I stayed even though I suspected that it wouldn’t be long before this maternal instinct gave way to a need to be young and free. I stayed through three years of pointless arguments, futile fights, and painful cheating. The last six months were the worst. Maria would be waiting for me to get home from work so she could flee for the night. What started out as a little partying on the weekends had become a nightly celebration of her youth. I’d spend the night tossing, turning, and crying until the sun began creeping out and I would finally hear her key in the door. There was no doubt she was fucking anyone but me, in the end.

I was buying my first home, a small rowhouse on the four hundred block of North Rose Street. It was during the height of The Great White Flight from Baltimore. What I didn’t know was that the drug area that had once started closer to North East Market was creeping down to our block. The neighborhood seemed like it was falling apart, and Maria having gotten her jaw broken by some thug that summer was proof of that.

I felt lucky to have found a place on the south end of Patterson Park, right on Eastern Ave. It was three stories tall, had four bedrooms, big enough for us, the kids, and my younger sister and brother, who had gravitated to me after we’d lost our mom. It looked like the perfect place to make a fresh start.

I had even convinced Maria that it was the best thing for the children, the best thing to save our relationship. The friends she made on Rose Street only enabled her bad behavior. But on the last day of September, the day before we were supposed to move, Maria decided she was going to stay. Her friend Tammy—they were both dancing at the Golden Nugget on The Block—was going to move in, and together they would cover the mortgage. At least that was the plan. ...until it wasn't.

Like anything else in her life, Maria was unable to remain committed to even that. It only took a couple weeks before she decided to try her hand (or is that her ass?) at dancing for more money in New York. With her stretchmarks, I doubted she could pull it off, but I was still left with a house I would soon lose and two children I could barely take care of. But I had to try.

I found someone to live in the house on Rose Street, although I never did get much more than the first month’s rent from her. As far as childcare was concerned, I had this girl named Kim move in. We had flirted on a few occasions, and as was often the case, I was her go-to guy to call whenever she had boy problems. Kim would sleep in my bed, as long as I understood that she wasn’t really ready to start a relationship. That was cool. I was a gentleman. I just needed her to watch the boys when I went to work. She wasn’t really ready for that either, though.

I would get home, and the boys would be wearing the same diapers they wore when I had left. I wasn’t sure that they’d been fed. I wasn’t sure that they’d even spent any time out of their playpen. It was miserable. But there was nothing better I could afford selling cameras for $6.50 an hour. I had yet to learn the art of the sale, so commissions were still light. I had to do something.

I went to Social Services, sat in their grungy, stank sitting room for hours just to get a bunch of dirty looks and to be told that I didn’t qualify for help. I might qualify for childcare, but the waiting list was six months long. So yeah, when the chance came up to make a small investment for my children’s future, illegal as it might be, distasteful as I found it, I went for it.

Nicky was a DJ. He came from a large Filipino family that were all into music and dancing. We would all pile into a couple of cars and head down to Traxx Nightclub in D.C. on teen night, and because I was twenty-one, I could buy pitchers of beer and get everyone drunk. They loved me.

Nicky came to me with the proposition, and I had just gotten my Christmas bonus, not to mention Christmas commissions. If you can’t sell cameras at Christmas, you don’t belong in the business. Nicky had the connection. It would already be vialed into individual grams. All I had to do was put in my half and drive up with him. I would even see Maria, who had been dodging me on sending money to help with the kids. It felt right.

Granted, when I did see Maria, when I figured out she had nothing to offer, everything suddenly felt very wrong.

***

I’m a terrible drug dealer. Nicky’s already sold his, and I’m still stuck with most of mine. I’m too nice. I immediately start selling on credit to friends who promise to pay me on payday. Payday comes and goes, and I never see the money. If it wasn’t for my little brother, Joe, selling some at the supermarket where he stocked shelves, the whole ordeal would have been a disaster. Nicky ends up buying a lot of my stake, at cost of course.

It doesn’t take me very long to realize that this isn’t going to work out. And after only four short months, the family was falling apart. My sister’s fallen in love. She’s practically living with the guy, and it isn’t going to be long before she stays with him for good. Joe and I are constantly fighting about the noise he and his friends make when I’m trying to sleep after a long day’s work. I’m tired of listening to Kim talk about all the boys she’s interested in, none of them me. My poor sons are still suffering.

If my mother were still around...

Eventually, the desperation eats at me. I go to Maria’s father, Jupiter. It’s not my mother, but if anyone has an interest in seeing Boo and Spock thrive, it should be their grandfather. Maybe once he understands the situation, he’ll at least agree to help pay for childcare. Not so.

However, his new wife Karen, formerly his daughter’s babysitter, has been bugging him to have his vasectomy reversed because she wants a kid of her own. His offer? He’s willing to take Boo off my hands, if only to show Karen that the experience of parenthood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His ex-wife, Martha, would take Spock. Those are my options: give away the children I fought so hard for, or think of myself and allow them to continue living a squalid, meager existence.

Of course, when word reaches Maria, she’s back in Baltimore within days, in my face, raving about how dare I give up her children. As always, she has no real solutions. Maria’s return to Baltimore, especially her insistence on staying at the new house with me and the gang, hastens the inevitable. For however bad things were, Maria’s manic energy makes matters worse. My sister moves in with her new beau. My brother moves in with his girlfriend and her mother. Kim, my ersatz nanny, also moves back home.

I find a couple of rooms to rent across the street from my old middle school, the former Hampstead Hill Junior High, whose name changes with every infamous atrocity that occurs within its walls. Within weeks of handing over Boo & Spock to my in-laws, the house that was supposed to save us, keep our little family together, is just another abandoned, empty shell in the neighborhood. For the first time in my life I am totally, utterly alone.

I bury myself in my work. I learn the art of the sale: You’re selling yourself, not the camera. I start taking cameras home, and shooting during long walks on my way to work, from Highlandtown to Harborplace, and back. The store manager begins displaying my pictures. Apparently, I have a good eye. I even start getting work shooting weddings and other events. It feels good.

I’d failed as a husband. I’d failed as a father. I’d certainly failed as a drug dealer. I’d failed at keeping a house or even my family together. I needed this, something I could feel good at, feel good about. Having nothing finally gives me the space to make something of myself.

Originally published by Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore

Beads: A Dream

“Oh, I have a project due on Monday.”

This doesn’t surprise me. I’d been through this enough times with my older kids, now grown men, to be surprised by these sudden revelations. Hell, I’ve been through this enough times with Malcolm, already. The pattern was the same. The pattern was always the same. I no longer even lost my temper.

“That’s fine, Mal, but you know we’re in Baltimore for the weekend. We’re going to have to do it while we’re here. Do you have a supply list?”

“No. I left the information sheet at school.”

This is also no great surprise. We had tried various ways to keep Malcolm organized—reminder notes, a folder that stayed in his bookbag where he was to keep all his important papers so any needed information was always accessible, but the notes and folders always seemed to end up lost, or forgotten.

“But that’s okay, Freddie. I really only need one thing.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that, kiddo?”

“Beads!”

Beads. That’s easy enough. Baltimore has an infinite supply.

I think about taking him to Beadazzled, or one of the other high end shops stocked to the gills with a dazzling variety of the tiny plastic or glass jewels. They cater to the do-it-yourself, neo-bohemian spirit that had begun sweeping over the city years ago, when we realized that what we could create on our own would always be more precious than anything that could be found in a store. Granted, there is plenty of pre-made jewelry, as well, for those less creatively inclined, or those who have run out of time.

But the truth is that we were already headed uptown. To turn around now wouldn’t make sense. Admittedly, there’s the issue of cost, too. Some individual beads at the high end stores can cost more than what I have in my pocket, and I don’t want to spend too much on a project I have too little information about. There’s no point, especially when 33rd and Greenmount is so close.

“No worries, kiddo. I know exactly where to go.”

You can always tell when you’re getting close to the corner of 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue at night because of the grim, red and blue glow illuminating the black sky. The city begins strategically setting up pairs of cop cars at the McDonalds at 29th Street, and they keep running up Greenmount, in pairs every couple of blocks, all the way up to 40th—a not so subtle attempt at a reminding the populace that the city is still in control.

It’s been that way since before the most recent uprising, and I imagine will remain that way for far longer. More important than reminding criminals who’s in control, it makes the residents feel safer, safe enough to come out and shop on a hot, summer night, where, without the lights, the shops would simply close at dusk, and the residents would stay cooped up inside, or spend their money outside their own neighborhoods.

Tonight must have been particularly active. The pattern of pairs had been broken, and there were several cop cars congealed right at 33rd, the red and blue lights flashing in a rabid, frenetic pattern on the streets, up the walls of the storefront rowhouses, out into the night sky. The sidewalks are lined with young black males lying prone on their stomachs, hands behind their backs, knees pressing into the gutters—lined up like tunas on a dock after a big catch.

“Just stick close to me,” I tell Malcolm as I sense his nervousness. I casually draw him closer, enough to comfort him, but not enough to offend his independent tween sensibilities. “We’re almost there.”

We enter the store, a lovely old storefront on the northwest corner made more beautiful by the sheer, seemingly endless mass of beads covering the display windows, the chaos creating a expressionistic mosaic wrapping around that corner, more elaborate than anything Pollock could have concocted. Even Malcolm is agog at the immensity of it all—or he would be if the drama outside the doors hadn’t have bled inside.

One of the narrow aisles is blocked with several police officers, knees, hands and feet busy into the backs and necks of three young black boys, none of them older than Malcolm, their pockets bursting with stringed beads. I can’t help but to think why so many officers are needed to subdue three children. One of the officers, a sergeant, barks at us to wait. I recognize him. We went to high school together.

“Garrity, right?”

He looks at me quizzically. “Do I know you?”

“Yeah! We came out of Poly the same year.”

“French Fry?”

“Yeah, but nobody calls me that, anymore.”

“Right. Sorry about this. Things are crazy, you know.”

“ I can see that, but these are just kids, though.”

“Yeah, well, a dog is just going to grow into another wild animal if you don’t train them right.”

I don’t know how to respond to that.

“Is that your kid?” He asks, snapping his chin at Malcolm.

“Sort of,” I reply, “he’s my stepson.”

“Well, keep him safe,” he advises me, “and keep him away from these animals.” Garrity stretches an arm out, as if to protect us from the danger of the three boys now being dragged out of the store, hands zip-tied behind them, pockets still bulging with cheap beads. Once they are out, he looks back at me. “Nice running into you,” he says as he follows his squad and quarry back onto the streets.

Now that the store is clear, I let Malcolm loose, tell him to pick out what he needs. While he does, I can’t help thinking that the only thing separating Malcolm from the kids we just watched getting dragged out, aside from location and upbringing, is that no one can tell Mal is black just by looking at him. I wondered how he would be regarded, how he would be treated, if his skin showed more of the truth.

“I can’t find anything.”

“What do you mean, kiddo? Look at all these beads!”

“I know, but these are all on strings. They already have their patterns.”

I don’t understand, but he doesn’t have his assignment sheet, so there’s nothing for me to reference. “That’s okay, kiddo. There’s a store I can take you to tomorrow where the beads aren’t already on strings. We’ll try again, tomorrow.”

We walk out and cross Greenmount. There, Malcolm sees a kid he recognizes. Carlos, a boy he had gone to school with when we still lived in the city. He was carrying fistfuls of stringed beads. I stop to let them talk, a chatter I can barely understand, but soon enough they are on the ground going through Carlos’ collection. I hear a light pop, followed by an explosion of beads up in the air and hitting the sidewalk like plastic rain. I go to interfere, thinking this is the result of some unwarranted tug of war, but stop myself when I notice that the are still happy, still laughing.

I watch as they both sweep the beads together with their hands, create a mosaic, right there, on a 33rd Street sidewalk stained with years of grease, sweat and blood. After a while, the mosaic becomes a pile, and the beads are all gathered and poured into a clear plastic bag.

“You want some?” Carlos asks Malcolm.

“No, that’s okay,” he replies, before Carlos takes off running in some seemingly random direction.

“Freddie, is the store still open?”

I look behind us. The lights are still on. “I think so, kiddo.”

“Can we go back? I think I know what I need now.”

“Good!” I say as we head back to Greenmount, “let’s try it, again.”

Dream Catcher

I was invited to contribute a tale to REDLINES: Baltimore 2028, an anthology of speculative fiction edited by Jason Harris to be released, anon. After many delays & much contemplation, I came up with Dream Catcher. Below is a snippet, just so you can sniff it. I'll let you know (of course) when it's available. & come to the release event at the Living Well (2443 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218) on September 28.

My eyes open at six. I sit up, touch my pad on, and begin reviewing my dreams. I don’t remember them. I never do. I know why. They’re boring. There are a few good ones—sex dreams, dreams where I’m bouncing over trees and buildings, dreams of flying. Those are few and far between.

I touch my keyboard up and type in some basic descriptions—shaving in a desert with sand and a rock, a ride on a bus next to a stranger speaking gibberish, in a laundromat waiting for a dryer. Mundane things. A waste of time.

A beautiful girl. I hope this is a sex dream. She stares at me. She says, “Be free,” and walks away. I want to follow her. I can’t. I have to go to work. I touch some music on—top forty—and head for the shower.