Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
I APOLOGISE for being black. I apologise for being poor.
And that I do not live, but linger in an existence that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
In the ghetto, poverty is the smell of urine, human sweat, dog faeces and desperation. It is the rank smell of mattresses on which too many 'accidents' leak from the bloated bladders of kids too scared to brave the inky blackness to get to the pit latrine outside.
It is the smell of crusted-over sewerage and week-old garbage because the waste management team has forgotten to come to pick up the garbage yet again. It is the coppery smell of the abattoir...it is the sweet stink of animal carcass sometimes left to blacken and bloat on the street under an unrelenting sun.
But I apologise for the way I live. I apologise.
I'm sorry for the diseases of my kids, and that your kids may get lice from playing with mine. I'm sorry I don't pay any bills, and for my poor social skills. I apologise for collecting my waste in scandals bags and 'parachuting' them into the nearby gully. I know it's wrong, and may spread disease, but hey...
I apologise.
I'm sorry that I am unemployed, and a fat leech on your perfect society. I apologise for your hate and suffocating fear of me. I'm sorry that it seems my whole childhood was written in blood. I apologise for believing the tired BS that 'this is just the way it is', and I'm sorry my community keeps showing up to turn your stomachs during the 7 o'clock news.
But I apologise.
This is an advance mea culpa for my kids' future kids who will fall into the scripted roles you have stereotyped for them: whore, pimp, drug addict, murderer and victim. And for the future crimes they will commit I apologise. I'm sorry that I bleach my skin, and know not why. And that I hate myself so much sometimes I wanna cry.
The poor always listen. So I listen to your lectures and sermons. And I know it's now my fault why I am poor and violent. What's that big word you use? Biological determinism. We are who we are today because our foreparents were violent, too. It has nothing to do with economics or government policy. It's just us.
So I apologise.
Poverty is the sound of crying, malnourished babies. It is crash of zinc fences as men running from gunshots blunder into them. It is the heavy reverberating tattoo of machine gun fire and shouted expletives echoing in the night. It is the wail of the mother whose firstborn has been struck down by an angel of death from an adjoining community.
Poverty robs you of privacy. It means burying your head into your pillow to stifle the moans of your mother and her young lover as they fumble in the dark. Poverty is knowing precisely when your older sister gets her first period.
And for that life, I apologise.
Poverty means that you can't even mourn in private as callous reporters stick microphones in your face and point cameras at you while asking: 'How do you feel?' Poverty means that there are cops who I hate, who flout the same law they are sworn to preserve, and commit extra-judicial killings in the name of a shoot-out. I apologise that the cops feel that they have to kill me because I am a menace to your perfect society.
I apologise.
You don't know me. You live your little middle-class lives on the edge of the dark. You say what of education? There are opportunities to be had, and other people make it, my excuses are tired, and are as stale as a three-day soda. But I'm sorry I hurt so much I find it hard to care. I keep bugging, making choices based on a past that should long be over. I'm a ghetto Hamlet, powerless but aware, eyeing my final destruction as it creeps closer. And closer.
And for that, I apologise.
I search for enlightenment in the books I read, but my pupils can't become 'pupils' in the ignorant clouds of weed. I'm sorry for the same down-on-my-luck stories I always tell, but I know that there will be no peace without justice, and I'll see you in hell. I'm sorry that I seek freedom in alcohol and drugs, but one day, I woke up to find myself enslaved by my numerous vices.
I apologise to society, and other people from the ghetto who beat the odds and made it out on the strength of their own will. But mostly, dear reader, I apologise to you.
You ask why I wallow in self-pity, and I say I choose to. It is the path that I walk strewn with blood, crimes and the lies. But I offer a final apology to myself that I might have to raise my three kids as a poltergeist.
You see, I'm awfully sorry for being poor, and especially for being black. And just because you don't hear me, doesn't mean I don't scream.
Dammit, I apologise!
Poverty means knowing about AIDS, and not caring. Poverty means welcoming the release of death.
Poverty is knowing that you are nobody, and worse, you will never amount to anything.
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
