Just a Song for Marcus
I didn’t sleep well last night. I dreamed about Marcus again.
Marcus is a chubby, chocolate-covered 14-year-old with a crooked smile who lives with his mom in a small, two-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles. Section 8. Welfare. Gangs. Guns. You know the rest.
My son and I used to live next door to him. We still see him sometimes. Sometimes he even comes by to visit.
There’s nothing particularly special about Marcus. He can’t do a 360-degree slam dunk, run the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds or hit for distance. On a good day, he’s an average student. He’s just a kid I know, that’s all.
It’s just that when I start thinking about Marcus, his life, his future, his thoughts, his dreams, I often find myself staring blankly into space. A sadness envelops me and I begin to hate all things adult. I don’t want to talk about Bill Clinton or vacations or interest rates or skiing. I just want to think about Marcus.
*
You’ve read lots of stories about kids like him. I’ve written my fair share of them, but until you live with him close up and personal, you don’t really know him. When a lot of folks see him approaching them on the street--his Mack Daddy waddle and oversize Raiders coat--they automatically get nervous. Women clutch their purses a little tighter, men flex cat-like.
There’s nothing intimidating about him at all. He’s not very big. Just a black boy who unfortunately shoulders society’s stereotypes.
Marcus’s world is one of pain, where moments of joy must be quickly snatched from an overriding sadness and savored for as long as he can make them last. It starts with his mother, a heavyset woman with a mouth like a garbage dump. “Goddamnit, didn’t I tell you to. . . . When you get home, I’m gonna beat your ass. . . . Boy, I’ll smack the. . . . out of you.” It’s constant, incessant, loud, embarrassing. All up and down the street.
She loves him. In her sweet moments, she lets him stay up late and miss school the next day. That’s the way it works.
I’ve never seen his father. They say he’s homeless somewhere down in Arkansas. There’s a guy who lives with his mom. A nice guy, actually. They were once lovers, but that has long since passed. Their pain is their bond, manifested in drugs, alcohol and personal abuse. Lost. Confused. Drifting.
There are kids worse off than Marcus, like Joshua, a 14-year-old white kid living homeless with his mother in a Glendale hotel. He hasn’t been to school in two years. And there is Deshawn, 17, roaming recklessly through the streets of Los Angeles in an old, broken-down Nissan Sentra, a gift from his father before he deserted Deshawn and caught a train out of town.
It’s just that I know Marcus, and for two months I stood by and watched as the sweetness of life was ground from him. And I didn’t know what to do. So I didn’t do anything. And now, sometimes, when I dream about him, I don’t sleep well.
Forgive me, Marcus. I’m the adult. I should have solutions and answers. Sadly, I have nothing to offer, save these song lyrics.
*
How can we have peace in the Middle East
When there’s none at home?
How can we have understanding in
the land
When there’s none in the woman
And there’s none in the man?
How can we heal the wounds of the world
If we cannot heal our own?
Where does this peace on earth begin
If not in the home ?
Where do we go now?
Do we let the devil win?
Or do we get up and fight?
Surely we know how to conquer all
our fears.
Bring an end to the violence
Bring an end to the tears.
Well there’s too much talk about it
And too many walk without it .
Where is the love?
Where is the God in your life?
To my left a woman abuses her child
To my right somebody’s beating his wife .
Tell me, where is the love?
Where is the God in your life?
How can we heal the wounds of the world
If we cannot heal our own?
Where does this peace on earth begin
If not in the home?
--Rachelle Ferrell
I love you, Marcus. I wish more people did.