Out_of_the_Devil_39_s_Cauldron

Social Security expired and we lost that income, which caused a huge reversal of fortune that forced
our family back into the gutter. We said goodbye to East Fordham Road and in 1982 moved to the
projects on Crotona Avenue, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the South Bronx. After Fordham
Road, moving to Crotona Avenue was like moving into hell, but it was hell on earth.
Even the neighborhood looked like it was in pain because of the corruption and rundown
buildings, where graffiti covered every concrete wall within reach. This was a place where you
could touch the poverty. And always, hanging in the air over everything, was the ever-present reality
of crime. Right next to the bodega (grocery store) on the corner, the Chinese takeout looked like a
miniature Fort Knox. Every time you went for Chinese you didn’t know whether you were going to get
food or heading to the bank because of all the bars surrounding the place. Now we played baseball
and football on a schoolyard concrete lot—no longer the lush green park of the East Bronx.
We lived a block away from the Bronx Zoo, and sometimes I wondered whether we needed to
be caged up and the animals set free. The pent-up anger, frustration, and rebellion of those who lived
in this neighborhood were contagious, and we caught the infection. Sometimes killings occurred at
two o’clock in the afternoon, right out in the open. Without warning you’d walk by a crime scene on
your way to the store and see where the police had taped down the corner. Or, worse, you would
glimpse the body of a young man covered in a white sheet, nothing but his sneakers sticking out.
During our first few weeks there, all my brothers and I did was get into fights with guys from
the neighborhood. In a tough neighborhood like the one we now lived in, someone always wanted to
test you and see what you were made of, and my brothers and I were really tested. Whenever we
came home from school, we never told Mom about all the fights because we knew she would worry.
We tried our best to hide the cuts and bruises, making some lame excuse for why our bodies bore the
marks of street violence. Eventually the neighborhood bullies got tired of fighting us, and we became
friends. But being friends was worse than being enemies because every bad thing these guys did, we
followed along just to fit in. Hey, who said there were any good boys in the hood? There were a few
nice kids; they just weren’t hip like us. And in time their parents moved away from the neighborhood
so they wouldn’t lose their children to the streets or watch them end up in jail.
My brothers and I knew there was no way out for us, so we adjusted to the environment of
drug dealing, shootouts, muggings, stabbings, and death—which went on every day—by hanging out
with school friends who lived in better neighborhoods. The violence in the neighborhood was out of
control. One time involved a friend of mine who was very well-known with the drug dealers in the
neighborhood. As he sat in his car at a stoplight, two guys drove up on a motorcycle. Before it was
said and done, bullets rained into his car, cutting his life short. I was stunned by the news. Who would
have thought his life would be over while waiting for a traffic light? That was life in the hood—alive
today and dead tomorrow.
A Taste for Blood
My brother George ran upstairs to our apartment one day, shut himself in our room, and didn’t
come out for two days. When he finally came out, he paced the hall like a caged animal. I saw a
crazed look in his eyes and knew something was wrong.
“What’s going on, George? Why are you not acting right? Talk to me,” I said, my voice
coming out stern.