Ghostwriting: A South-Central Story
Writing Sample – A South-Central Story
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
The house on 94th Street was supposed to be a good move for my family, a step up in the world for both my parents, Walter and Yolanda, and all six of us kids. The house was sharp and fresh with a new coat of paint. Its three bedrooms were spacious compared to our grandmother’s, where the eight of us bust the seams of her small Long Beach home. From my oldest sister (who was 14 years my senior) to my youngest brother (4 years younger than me), we were the black Brady Bunch. Three boys and three girls, six dark faces and six pearly white smiles. I was the “knee baby” of the bunch, meaning that there was only one sibling beneath me I could stand on. Everybody else got to tread all over me, like most older siblings do.
That first home was part of a triplex of houses—ours in the front, facing the street and two, connected units in back. In those days, there was the sound of birds in the trees and bicycle bells on the sidewalks. The street had a healthful glow about it with groomed green grass in front of every house and colorful flowers blooming in window boxes or carefully outlined beds in the yards.
I was in elementary school and, to me, the house was something that was ours and no one else’s. The world, too. That was ours for the taking. Even though I was a little black girl of the lower-middle class, growing up in Los Angeles, my future was whatever I wanted to make of it. Some of the greatest minds of the era had been encouraging me with the message of equality and freedom since I was in the cradle—Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Caesar Chavez, and my father—Walter Stewart of the Congress for Racial Equality (or CORE) among other politically motivated groups.
He may have been a factory worker by profession, but my father was a civil rights leader by calling. He graced the covers of Black Citizen magazine and numerous newspapers. He spoke with the most famous voices of the era about strategy and philosophy from the telephone in our kitchen. When I could first talk, I chanted protest songs. When I could read, I then understood the picket signs we held in our hands. I remember the rich smell of chicken and greens permeating Martin Luther King’s house on a Sunday, when he offered me a plate.
But I also knew that the civil rights vision I had been nursed on like mother’s milk growing up was not yet reflected in the reality that surrounded me, even at that cute house on 94th Street. We all knew it. The healthy glow of our neighborhood’s green grass in the afternoon was dampened by the orange glow of crosses afire at night. Reflected flames danced in the window glass and sparks drifted down to earth, among the flowers. The white hoods of the Klan came out of hiding in the black night to warn us colored families who were brave enough to move to this area. To scare away the people who had the audacity to think that these well-maintained houses were for black families. To challenge those who believed that black and white could mingle in the same neighborhood. How dare we?!
The crosses didn’t look as sinister in the light of day as I was walking to school. They lacked the raw power they had at night. By the time the sun came up, the flames were long gone and so was the immediate fear. Clutching my bag filled with books and a sack lunch, the crosses were only tall ashes that still stood in Christ’s shape.
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