The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,42

mom had moved her here. I don’t know if drugs came into it before or after that, but she was missing for close to six months. Police brought her back. After that, behavior problems—you can imagine what it was like. I mean, how do you treat a kid who does something like that? But Sam got her act together in high school, graduated in May, and she was in my classroom three months later, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I’ve got a nose for it, and I didn’t sense anything with her. She seemed like a good kid. She was a good kid.”

“So what happened?”

“Same thing that always happens. You get weak, you get tempted, you relapse. Her mom says she started going into the city with these friends of hers, partying, not coming home until the next day. She didn’t want to come down too hard too fast—Sam is hypersensitive—but before she knew it, the girl was gone. That was three weeks ago.”

“When did she call home?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

While I was with the Rent-a-Mob, feeling sorry for myself. “You talked to her yesterday? And she said she wouldn’t go back.”

“She’d run out of drugs over the weekend. Between Sunday and yesterday, she must have scored some more.”

“And they let her stay in the halfway house?”

“It’s more like an asylum. You’ll see.”

If your knowledge of Baltimore jumps from Edgar Allan Poe to The Wire, you have a distorted view of the city, expecting it to be hip deep in drugs, bullets flying through the projects, tattooed thugs eyeballing you as your car rolls through the corner. It’s not that way, I tell people. Even the places that were like that are getting better all the time. There are Volvos parked along Patterson Park. Don’t believe everything you see, I tell them. I’m from Baltimore. I should know.

But Gregory takes me to the Baltimore I’m not from, the city I don’t know or even begin to recognize.

“This isn’t such a great neighborhood,” I say, watching two kids on a street corner bump hands, passing something back and forth. The closed store behind them is hidden under burglar bars, the glass underneath busted out.

“We’re not in Lutherville anymore. Don’t worry. If anybody gives you trouble, start sharing about Jesus and they’ll give you a wide berth.”

“I should have brought my fish.”

Gallows humor. I really don’t like the look of these streets. Long blocks of side-by-side row houses, every couple of facades boarded up and tagged with paint. Old sunbaked black men sitting on stoops, kids in long white muscle shirts running in front of the car with only a foot or two to spare, leaving Gregory to hit the brakes or run them over. At the intersections, lean young men in hoodies and puffed-out coats lean over for a look into the car.

“They’re just checking to see if we’re buying,” Gregory says. “It’s no big deal.”

His calmness reassures me a little. This is the real world. What looks risky to me is everyday life for many of God’s creatures.

“I envy your assurance,” I tell him. “I shouldn’t be a stranger to such places, after all.”

“Why not?”

“Jesus ate with the prostitutes and tax collectors. I’m on his team, married to one of his official servants, and in theory my life is meant to be more like his. I’m supposed to aspire to this kind of thing. But it makes me uncomfortable all the same. I guess I don’t have your affinity for the working class.”

“This isn’t the working class,” he says. “This is flat-out poverty. I don’t want any part of this, or the system that perpetuates it, any more than you do—” He breaks off. I sense there’s more he could say, but for some reason he doesn’t want to. He pretends to pay attention to the road. Finally, this: “In all honesty, I think my Marxism is about as theoretical as your Christianity. I want out of here as much as you.”

“And Sam? How did she end up in a place like this?”

He shrugs. “How does anyone end up in a place like this?”

The amazing thing is, we’ll pass a bunch of dealers hustling on the curb and one block up there’s a parked police car. You’d think they would at least move their action farther down. But these are the front lines, I guess. You don’t run away because the other side shows its head. If you’re in a battle, you stand your ground.

The streets teem with kids. Teens. Grade-schoolers. Running alone or

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