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When I picked up
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City
Neighborhood in a D.C. bookstore before Christmas,
I thought that I
would be in for some good escapist reading. Just
like I find myself
drawn to semi-sensationalistic books about
infectious disease outbreaks
in Africa or serial killing sprees in California,
I thought I would find
it intriguing to read about the drug culture of
poor blacks in
Baltimore. Yes, there would be feelings of sadness
and frustration, but
I would have the comfort of not actually being at
risk. It was a safe
way to play with the emotions. No danger, just
feelings of pathos for
people I don't actually know who are very far
away.
What I didn't count on was that The Corner, a
close-up non-fiction
account of the lives of Baltimoreans living and
working at the open-air
drug market at the corner of Monroe and Fayette,
would actually hit very
close to home. I don't have a drug problem and I
am not black. I have
never been on social assistance (or the government
cheese). In fact, I
have spent most of my working life drawing a more
than adequate salary
as an attorney.
So, what could I possibly have in common with the
people in The Corner?
With the dope and crack addicts who commit crimes
and slide into the pit
of addiction? With the kids who have no use for
school except to show
off their new clothes and locate rival gang
members with whom they are
due to catch up and to whom they owe a lesson? Me,
the middle-class kid
with good grades and a Stanford law degree, have
something in common
with them?
I lived in Baltimore from 1993 to 1997, the very
same years for which
The Corner authors account for the lives of the
people they follow. (The
Corner is ostensibly a "year in the life" tale,
but by the completion of
the epilogue, the readers have learned the roads
the people's lives have
taken over a four-year period.) During that
period, I was not down on
the corner, but at university in Baltimore at
Johns Hopkins. But our
paths did cross in small ways, the way they must
in a small city, even
though I had no idea at the time.
In my sophomore year, I used to have my blood
taken at Union Memorial
Hospital where Gary McCullough's dad landed when
he was ill and where
Gary went to visit him bearing the weight of a
deep shame for being a
drug addict. I used to rush by Greenwood avenue as
quickly as possible
while on my way to the bus stop to head to a movie
in Towson in
Baltimore County, the place that is so foreign to
the West Baltimoreans
of the book and which they despise -- for its
general whiteness and
unsympathetic judges -- and dream of as an escape
from the drug-addled
neighbors and dangerousness of their current
surroundings.
In my freshman year, I joined a program the
university had in which
undergraduates would tutor elementary students
from Baltimore City
public schools twice a week. I worked with a
spunky young girl I'll call
Colene Rucker, who I think lived in a West
Baltimore row house, but I'm
not even sure because I only visited her at home
once (she was usually
bused over to the university campus), and the
small row houses of the
poorer parts of the city, east or west, looked
very much the same to a
young Canadian who had never seen such poverty and
character and energy
and death.
When I went to Colene's house, I met her mother
and saw the neat
surroundings she called home. In the first few
minutes there, our lesson
was interrupted when the police busted into a
neighbor's house. Colene
and her brother ran outside to see what was up. It
was almost impossible
for me, and for the guy who was tutoring Colene's
brother, to get their
attention back after that.
I didn't know why the police was there or whom
they wanted. I didn't
know what the problems were these people were
facing and I didn't
understand how children in such a well kept and
organized home could
find genuine delight in a drug bust. I didn't
understand how Colene
could talk to me with equal eagerness about toys
and new sneakers and
gunshots going off in her neighborhood on New
Year's Eve.
I felt like a foreigner (I was, actually). And as
I sat in Colene's
house, I tried to sip my apple juice politely and
be friendly and
comfortable, not patronizing, even though I was a
shy person and rarely
comfortable in any new situation. I tried not to
show my confusion.
It wasn't until reading The Corner that I began to
understand that in
inner-city Baltimore, there was no contradiction
in children behaving
like both children and crusty veterans of the
urban drug culture at the
same time. That the nice lady next door really
could be both a nice lady
and a drug fiend without violating any laws of
physics. Or, at least, if
even such juxtaposition was contradictory, that
didn't stop it from
being common and from being the way things were.
Another thing I didn't realize when I sat in
Colene's kitchen, trying to
make phonics more amusing than a gaggle of cops
breaking down a door,
was that I would end up with my own struggles and
that, in its own way,
Baltimore would come to represent death and loss
for me the way it did
for so many principals of The Corner. My boyfriend
of six years, whom I
met on my first day at Johns Hopkins, would later
be killed by a hit and
run driver shortly after I began practicing law in
Washington, DC. From
that point on, all the times my boyfriend and I
had spent together when
we were at school in Baltimore would become cold
memories. There would
be no one I could turn to for clarification about
the details of the
experiences we shared in Charles Village or Towson
or -- over my wearied
objections -- at pawn shops in east and west
Baltimore looking for good
deals on video games. My own recollections of what
we did and where we
went were to become the reality.
That was my backdrop for reading about the
McCulloughs and Blue and the
other people of The Corner. I did not grow up in
Baltimore, but I became
an adult there. It was where I had my first
apartment, where I acquired
the pets I still care for today, where I met the
man I thought I would
marry, but whom I lost.
I wonder if I ever saw any of those people in the
book when I lived in
Baltimore. I wonder if the guy who stole a check
out of my boyfriend's
check book, while it was lying in his dresser in
his unoccupied Charles
Village apartment, stole it for use on a corner,
or even for use on
Monroe and Fayette, the corner in the book. I
wonder if that was the
corner I drove by in my junior year when I got
lost in my new car,
driving home the baby rabbit I'd just bought, and
witnessed a group of
kids kicking and beating up a young girl on the
sidewalk, not knowing
what to do except cringe and drive on.
I don't know. But I do know that for me, as for
the people in The
Corner, so distant and alien to me when I might
have seen them on the
news or driven by them on a street corner, yet so
human and close to me
in their imperfect approaches to their struggles,
Baltimore has come to
represent something bittersweet. It holds memories
of a coming of age,
but it also stands for disappointments and
unrealized dreams. For losing
hope, losing innocence, and sometimes losing will.
And most of all, for
being overtaken by circumstances that allow for no
power, only pain.
The Corner had a lot to do with me after all.
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