56987966

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NOTE #1: ERYBODY GOT BUMPED FOR MICHAEL ERIC DYSON! THAT'S RIGHT!
NOTE #2: SEE MY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE COUSIN ON MY FRIENDS LIST? NO BOYS ALLOWED!! (SCRUBS, KNUCKLEHEADS, MEN OF LEGAL AGE, BOYS WITH PONYTAILS AND EARRINGS IN BOTH EARS, THIS MEANS YOU!
An Evening in April
One night in April, when the Chicago weather is still cool enough for us to wear winter coats, my son, Sekou, decides that he needs a snack from Walgreens. It’s almost ten o’clock, our curfew, but we have enough time to walk down the block to the store. I hide our crackers under the pillow, and we go downstairs and leave our room key at the front desk. At Walgreens, I buy Sekou some Twinkies. When we get out of the store, he looks around for a place to sit and eat. It’s too late and windy for us to walk far. “Let’s sit over there.” I point to a small metal fence surrounding the Walgreens parking lot. Sekou wrinkles his nose. “I don’t wanna sit there. The change man sits there.” Down the long stretch of West Lawrence Avenue, where we have lived for the last month, there are several shelters. Sekou is used to seeing people sit on the fence and ask for change as customers come out of the store. Most of the people he sees aren’t that old, but the way they slump over the fence, like rag dolls, and the strange bruised color of their eyes make them seem much older. At our building, “Salvation Army” is printed in neat blue letters on a white awning, and it almost looks like someone’s house. There are kids in white and blue school uniforms, just like Sekou, and babies in strollers with cute fat feet, and the word “lodge” is marked everywhere, on doors, linen, and all paperwork. Sekou passes the change men every morning on the bus as he rides to school, as they sit on the steps to their shelter or lounge on folding chairs in the parking lot. To him, the change men live in shelters. He does not.
radhiyah ayobami
Excerpt from my essay: An Evening in April
Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers Edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint (Random House $12.95)
here's a little from a good review on the austinist.com-
In terms of specific content, Radhiyah Ayobami's "An Evening in April" and Burlee Vang's "A Red Spoon for the Nameless" are two good reasons to give this book some attention. Both essays are elegant, understated, and powerful. Ayobami's piece artfully addresses the difficulties of parenting and the institutional tragedy of homelessness; Vang's essay explores the constraints of family on sexuality and personal expression.