We moved back to my old West Side block, and I was a million miles from my dreams

This week’s column is the third in a series of excerpts from the author’s memoir, “True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope & Clarity”

Knowing that we would soon be moving to Komensky, I was even more afraid, convinced that if something bad happened once we got there, I would always be the one to blame. And yet, as I prepared to lead the covered wagon back to “Dodge City,” I could not afford to show how concerned I was, for the sake of the women and children.

My stepfather helped me lay the linoleum, and I added the finishing touches to the apartment, tightly bolting the security bars at the back window and back door.

In August 1981, we moved in (married by age 20, with two sons). The apartment was nice. Everyone, especially (my wife), was impressed with the job I had done.

As Grandmother had promised, she stayed with me, right up until the last wall was painted ...

The sunlight that spilled in from the kitchen windows seemed to wrap its arms around us … Gone was the stench that had filled the apartment. There were no signs of roaches or mice or any such thing. The scent of pine cleaner, of fresh paint and new vinyl hung in the air.

But inasmuch as the apartment had undergone a transformation, so had I. I felt a sense of empowerment in seeing the work of my own hands that had turned something so ugly into something so beautiful.

I also felt a sense of self-sufficiency. Never again would I rely on others more than I would rely on myself, though it would still be a while before I learned to apply this lesson to other aspects of my life.

Even with our sparkling new place, life back on Komensky did not start off perfectly. For a time, we did not have a refrigerator in the apartment. We had applied for a voucher with Public Aid, which furnished refrigerators to the poor.

In the meantime, we kept our boys’ milk cold in a Styrofoam cooler, and I found it necessary to extend my beautification efforts to outside the building.

One day I went next door to Mr. Newell’s and borrowed the old man’s garden tools. I dug up the front and back yards, flung grass seed and watered the soil.

In time, we got a refrigerator and the grass began to sprout from the cracked ground where I thought grass might never grow again. Mr. Newell later admitted he was just as surprised to see grass growing next door again.

Even a bed of flowers in front of our apartment building sprang up. Miss Hattie, who had lived on the first floor with her two children when we first moved in, had planted them. It was eerie seeing those beautiful flowers, seeing that by the time they rose up from the ground, Miss Hattie was already dead and buried.

She was found one morning, raped and murdered a few blocks away. In the months before her murder, she showed signs of mental illness and had taken to displaying obscene behavior in the middle of the street and talking to herself.

In the spectrum of local happenings, her murder raised only a few eyebrows.

As night fell that first evening at our new apartment, I felt strangely at home and as if my young life had already come full circle. In being back on the block, I also wondered if I would ever leave again.

This much I did know: I was a million miles away from my dreams and back where I had started.

That night, after the boys were settled in bed and my wife lay sleeping, I sauntered through the apartment in my bare feet, twisting the doorknobs and locks.

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