How fake is it?

People on the train uncomfortably shift in their seats, fingering cigarettes while their fingers tap. They crave their stop if only for the next nicotine hit. An old soul with a few missing teeth eyes my bag, assessing the Filipino pearl bracelet on my wrist, and the dangly ear-rings which hang from my lobes- all accessorising the simple white sundress I had worn in the heat of the day.

Why hadn’t I thought to change? Then again- I shouldn’t have had to.

The man with the missing teeth engaged in some small talk with me as I rode the RiverLine from Camden, NJ to Beverly the other night- ready to get into some spontaneous fun with a friend- and making the necessary relocation from my urban abode. Some lady with halitosis breath and sagging breasts exclaimed, “Well don’t you look purdy, you cumm’n from a weddin’ or sumthin’?” Some of the passangers who apparently know her scoff and shake their heads from embarrassment. “AND you can shut the fuck up Will! What I can’t be nice?! Mind yo fuckn’ busness and stay ova der. Stay ova der. Can’t give a fuckn’ compliment? I’m sorry MISS, I didn’t know it was rude to give a god damn compliment....” she ranted on and on, eventually veering her ranting towards something about that Will character and jail, and court, and getting three broken ribs, and paranoid schizophrenia- and it was hard to say who she was talking to any more.

In the meanwhile Will had exclaimed that she better not use his fuckn name. Who is she to tell people his business.. then turned to me later in the ride. “..heh heh, mannn, she said you look lik you commn’ from a weddin’. Don’t pay huh no mind, she just don know high class.”

PAUSE. This was the point when I actually had to stop and think out my scenario. I was on the last train out of Camden. This guy had assessed my appearance. I was alone. I had- in the bag of course- my phone, wallet, medication, and several articles of clothing. Never mind the clothing, just losing my wallet and phone would have sucked. And the thing that got me- was it wasn’t even that I’m the goody-goody these people were assuming I was. In a sense- I come from the gutter.

Let’s rewind time for a moment.

Any given person could cruise the streets of the New Jersey suburb that is Willingboro. Any person who is from Boro or winds up in its black hole knows that the town is separated into “parks”. The street names help distinguish what park a person is in. If you were from Buckingham, your street began with a B; if you were from Millbrook, an M; If you were from Garfield, a G; etc. I was from Twin Hills, sometimes referred to as “Killa Hills”, which can- to this day- be seen spray painted across the blacktop pavement of the Twin Hills Elementary Basketball court.

Why did the park you live in matter?.. Foolishness.

You see, while Willingboro looks halfway decent in some parts from the outside, the inner workings of the community were what gave it its ugliness. The property taxes used to be considered cheap and the town was in a build up. Carl Luis even grew up there, graduating from the same high school I attended; the stadium was named after him. The town took in families over the years from nearby cities- Philadelphia, Camden, Washington D.C., Newark, Patterson, New York, and who knows where else.. so many families with so many good intentions- trying to get their kids out of bad situations.. and then tossed them into one big shit show.

Kids don’t usually make much sense. Half the time they emulate what they grow up around- their older siblings- TV- media- all that stuff. So take all these kids, from all these places- not exactly rich, and not particularly smart- with big attitudes- and you have yourself a bunch of fake gangstas. I’m comfortable calling them fake because Willingboro is NOT the hood. It is not any of the places the people come from. But when all the idiots keep acting like it is, with just relocation as the change- all of them are nearly headed to jail, repping “their park”- repping the family set- repping their hometown- cussin and fighing all over the place.

Even though it was a bunch of fake people, the actions got very real as we got older. It wasn’t just name calling, or small tousles any more. By the time I got to highschool, it was rivalries that took the scrap-fights from the Shopright parking lot to the back corners. Bomb threats closed out classes, bullets found on grounds left everyone on lockdown- and you’d see nothing but dime bags and blades falling from the second story windows like confetti because noone wanted to get frisked with their shit on them.

All the fake became real when kids die from smoking cronic instead of mint, flip cars going down the drive, and stray bullets wind up in friends’ backs- literally. How fake is it when it seems like one student or more dies each year? When all the girls seem to either have kids or be pregnant? When about 70% of the school cannot pass remedial Math and English classes? When 50% didn’t actually attend enough class to pass..When more than half the school has an STD or AIDS.. when cops put people to the ground for no particular reason?..and it was hard to shake the ebonic vernacular I had picked up over the years when I finally got out.

Not everyone gets out of that town. That’s why I call it a black hole.

But all the same, growing up there- especially as the ONLY white girl in my graduating class, I left with a cultured view of the world. I was resilient against not only the generic foolishness, but dealing with black history month EVERY YEAR in a predominantly black neighborhood. A girl had once admitted to me that part of the reason I was ostracized most of the early years of my life, was because my peers had assumed my family was a part of the KKK- just because I was white. Instead of empowerment, every February was a hate-fest directed my way when my family had nothing to do with that part of history- because noone thought to disassociate me from the ordeal... maybe I’ll talk more about that topic another day... maybe.

I guess the point is- that I got a lot of bad decision making out early on.. rhythm in my dancing.. and a pretty decent jumper since I knew more about AND1 then Atreyu. Yes, I can corn-row hair. I can even fry chicken, make greens, and good mac n’ cheese. I remember when Usher was reminded of a girl that he once knew, and it was 7 o’clock on the dot in his drop top..

Fast-forward to the other day on the train.

I’m no fool. Since I left the neighborhood the biggest adjustment has been the fact that people do not know what I come from. All they see is the sweet smile, the porcelain skin, and a confident posture. It would have made so many more people on the Riverline comfortable if I would have doted my Nike Dunks, turned my th’s into d’s, and taken about twenty steps backward in my progress toward success. I know from experience what they were thinking- looking at me- so seemingly out of place. It’s a good thing I didn’t have the nervousness to go with it. I probably would have had my stuff stolen. No joke.