“I gotta go,” she said, then turned and walked away. I watched her, walking fast, leaving her brother behind. It was the pace of a guilty person. That’s when I thought about how she and her sisters and their friends were all hunting Tonya around that time. She glanced back at me, and I wanted to follow her, ask her why she was acting so strange. But just like that, she was gone.

Twenty-Eight
Relocating

We were one of the last families to leave 4950, and that meant walking around a high-rise that was half-empty. There were even fewer gangbangers around because there were less people to sell drugs to. Mama escorted me everywhere. Gone were the days of running to the corner store by myself, and I didn’t have any friends left to hang with.

Mama visited apartments when I attended school and announced one day that she’d found us a place on 57th and Michigan Streets; far enough from the site of the projects, but close enough to walk to Farren. She didn’t want me to have to change schools when I was so close to graduating and going to high school. We also loved Ms. Pierce and wanted her to be my teacher through eighth grade. The apartment had a space for a kitchen table and a long hallway, with a little place off the side of the living room called the sunroom that didn’t seem to have any real purpose. Only two other people lived in the building, and you could be outside right away instead of waiting on an elevator. There were no random people on the stairway, just the residents coming and going, and no sounds of gunshots.

By the time we moved out of the projects, our block was completely different. The season of gunshots had ceased, and the temperature was cool enough that the few dudes in the playground had to wear jackets over their white tees.

On moving day, I didn’t have any friends to say goodbye to, but it was nice to have Auntie Nora and Uncle Tim over to help pack us up. Just like the Browns, a huge moving truck arrived one day and took our things to the new place. I caught Mama scanning over the building and parking lot. I couldn’t tell by her expression if she felt disgust or sadness, but I knew that she was taking a moment before our departure to remember her childhood and also the many traumatic events that she’d lived through, especially losing her son to first a gang, then the criminal justice system.