And they’d come so low, I imagined feeling the chop of the blades against my numb cheeks. Almost always at night, the police helicopters roared by with bright lights that ripped through bedroom curtains and past the squeezed-shut eyelids of men, women, and children. Helicopters, lots of them, often pulled my gaze away from those houses. Crawl over to the television or the stereo, twist the knob until the sounds of Dance Fever or Earth, Wind & Fire overtook the noise of angry men in the twisty, dead-end streets below us.īut then, nothing-not Deney Terio, not Philip Bailey-competed with the ghetto birds. You mean black people, one family of black people, lived in those giant houses way up on that hill …? Someone mentioned that Ray Charles lived in one of those houses up the hill from mine and … Huh? Those giant things were houses …? One family lived in …? And Ray Charles? The singer? Ray Charles is black. Washers and dryers in laundry rooms in the house. I noted the differences between our apartment living and their more comfortable house living. I started visiting the homes of church friends. The police helicopter was looking for someone and we didn’t hardly hear the television. I wrote in my journal every night, and began to see my parents, to see me, and also, note my surroundings. I had other things to do: playing with a new baby brother, watching the Family Film Festival on KTLA, and gobbling canisters of these new things called Pringles.īut by 1982, I was in seventh grade, and had developed angst and the ambition to be a writer.
Nor did I really care about the thwap-thwap-thwapping coming from that helicopter that circled over our neighborhood.
I was 7 years old then and didn’t notice the shady goings-on in the alley beneath my bedroom window. There were scenic views of the Santa Monica Mountains, the glimmering Hollywood sign, the white dome of Griffith Observatory, and the homes perched atop Baldwin Hills. It was one unit within a 1-square-mile section of apartments informally called “The Jungle.” The area included apartment buildings with whimsical names like Coco Capri and The Islander and boasted swimming pools, large living spaces, courtyards with palm trees and birds of paradise. In 1977, my parents moved my two siblings and me into a second-story, three-bedroom apartment on Santo Tomas Drive in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles.
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