Blood is thicker than water- a phrase many have heard and implemented in their everyday lives. For the Knighton brothers, it was more than just a phrase. For them it was a motto, their creed. It meant that nobody, friend or love interest, was above...
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Freedom was sweet and it was finally mine. God knows how much I missed the smell of fresh air, the sound of birds chirping and the smell of freshly cut grass. Before prison I didn't even realize how much I took shit like that for granted. Since my release, my appreciation for the little things grew— that was what life was all about. Looking back, I hated that it took having my freedom stripped from me to see that. I'd lost three years of my life to the system and I'd never get them back. Thinking about it often made me sad, but then I remembered that there was no use crying over spilled milk. What's done is done. Grandma used to say and she was right. The day I was released I made a promise to myself that I'd never see the inside of a prison again. I'd gotten my life back and this time around I was gonna do things differently.
A lot had changed in the three years that I was locked up. Memphis felt so foreign to me now— it didn't feel like home. When I left, the woman who raised me was still alive and well, the project building I grew up in stood tall and the streets belonged to Ken Knighton. That was how things were. But I was back now and grandma was long gone, my neighborhood had been completely gentrified and the man I'd come to hate had taken over the streets. I'd missed so much being locked behind those damn walls and being back I just felt out of place— like I didn't belong. It was one hell of a feeling. How was it that I no longer loved the very place that made me who I am? The shit was a mystery to me.
Memphis wasn't for me anymore. I had long made up my mind when I'd come home to upscale shopping malls and smoothie joints— instead of the high rise brick building that once stood so high you had to crane your neck to see the top. Maynard Gardens was one of the worst housing projects in Memphis, but it was my home and it always would be. My heart broke a little when I went to visit my old hood upon my release and I stood in front of T.J. Maxx, Target and Starbucks. My building— gone. Right along with the neighboring and adjacent buildings as well. I couldn't stomach it. The thought of all those black families being displaced and driven out of their community angered me.
Many nights I wondered what ever happened to Ms.Evelyn and her great-grandson who she was raising before I went away. I wondered what happened to Harmony and Porsha, two teenaged mothers who always sat on the building steps to gossip. I wondered about Ms.Lafayette, an old bible thumper who swore up and down that she ran the projects. The list went on and on— so many people who could barely even afford to live in Maynard were now gone. My heart ached for them. The transition couldn't have been easy. It wasn't for me.
The fact that I was basically homeless once I was out was hard for me to accept. I didn't have a place to go and I bounced around from shelter to shelter the first two weeks that I was back. It's crazy how at some point or another, life will show you who's really with you and who ain't. The minute they locked me up, any friend I thought I had turned their back on me. Even the nigga that I'd loved more than life itself deserted me in my time of need.
