Next Stop: Growing Up Wild-Style in the Bronx - Softcover

Sanchez, Ivan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416562672 ISBN 13: 9781416562672

Publisher: Touchstone, 2008

Synopsis

Beyond the safety of New York City's news headlines, Next Stop is a train ride into the heart of the Bronx during the late eighties and early nineties at the height of the crack epidemic, a tumultuous time when hip-hop was born and money-hungry slumlords were burning down apartment buildings with tenants still inside. From one stop to the next, this gritty memoir follows Ivan Sanchez and his crew on their search for identity and an escape from poverty in a stark world where street wars and all-night symphonies of crime and drug-fueled mayhem were as routine as the number 4 train.

In the game, the difference between riches and ruin was either a bullet or a lucky turn away. Almost driven insane by the poverty, despair, and senseless violence, Ivan left it all behind and moved to Virginia, but the grotesque images and voices of the dead continued to haunt him. This book honors the memories of those who died. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Next Stop shares with a whole new generation the insights and hard lessons Ivan learned.

About this title

About the Author

Ivan Sanchez was born in the Bronx, New York City, in 1972. He left the inner city in 1993, and earned an associate's degree in applied science from Virginia's ECPI College of Technology and a bachelor's degree in management from the University of Phoenix. He currently holds a supervisory position with a major manufacturing organization in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and works as a youth advocate and motivational speaker in his spare time.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Apartment 5F

At a time when money-hungry slumlords were burning down apartment buildings with the tenants still inside to collect insurance, my family was moving into a spacious three-bedroom apartment at 60 East 196th Street, apartment 5F, at the corner of Creston Avenue. None of us had any idea that apartment 5F would eventually become a kind of headquarters. If the graffiti that plastered my bedroom walls at the time could talk, it might just say we were destined for a life of lunacy the likes of which most don't live to tell about.

The year was 1978. There were few Puerto Rican families in the neighborhood, and none in our building. At the time, 60 East was predominantly Italian and Irish. My family had the privilege of being the first Hispanic tenants. Although racial tensions existed at the time, we managed to be welcomed into the neighborhood, despite the "spic" comments. Growing up in the Bronx, my mother had seen her brothers get chased down the block and beaten because they were Puerto Rican. To protect us, she "Italianized" us. She did a good job. My mother very rarely spoke Spanish at home. If she did, it was because she was hiding something from us or she was very upset about something and most likely cursing up a Spanish storm. If you ask her today, she'll tell you she can't even speak "real" Spanish. She speaks more of a Spanglish -- a dialect that mixes Spanish slang with English slang and melts them together with a New Yawk accent.

Since we weren't taught how to speak Spanish, we didn't have the ju accent you heard from the other Spanish kids who would eventually move into the neighborhood. The best example of the ju accent was in the I Love Lucy show, when Desi Arnaz would come home and say, "Lucy, ju got sung splaining tu do."

We were second-generation New Yorkers and we dressed, walked, and talked like any other Italian or Irish kids walking the streets of New York with Catholic school uniforms and attitude to match. It would be years before the movie Donnie Brasco would make the catch phrase fuggedaboutit popular, but I'm telling you if you messed with my family...fuggedaboutit. It's a lucky thing for me I wasn't really born Italian, because from the time I turned fifteen to the time I turned twenty, my biggest dream was to be in the Mafia.

When we moved into apartment 5F, my mother, Patricia, was twenty-four years old. She was a beautiful single mother of three children: my brother, William, was eight; my sister, Tanya, was four; and I was six. We were a young family on welfare, but my mother very rarely allowed us to see what we didn't have. My mother always wanted to provide a better life for us. It was her reason for living, and she always said, "If I can raise you guys in a nice place and make sure you get a good Catholic school education, then I have no doubt you'll all make it to college." The word college was equated with success for my mother, and although my father's side of the family wasn't educated, my mother came from a family of doctors and lawyers in Puerto Rico. It was only natural that she have those same hopes for her children.

Before apartment 5F we had lived with my abuela Francesca and my uncle Georgie for a while. Moving to Creston Avenue marked a new beginning for my family, but especially for my mother, who was escaping from an abusive relationship with a man named Mike, whom we knew as our stepfather at the time. Mike drove for Pepsi and eventually went on to become the first Puerto Rican to have his own million-dollar Pepsi route.

Years later my mother would say she regretted leaving Mike because, in her words, "He was wonderful to you kids." Financially he could have given us a very different life, but it wouldn't have been worth seeing my mother be tortured, so I'm grateful she found the strength to leave an abusive relationship.

The neighborhood was rough, but the apartment felt more privileged than our surroundings. All of the rooms were huge and we always had more space than we really needed, even if my brother and I had to share a bedroom. My mother's bedroom door had glass on it, giving it an elegant feel, and the living room was big enough for Tanya and me to dance around in it while imitating the moves on Disco Fever. There was no elevator, so we had to carry our bikes down five flights of stairs when we wanted to ride, but if nothing else we stayed in shape the entire time we lived there.

My mother might have been single and raising us on welfare, but she knew how to make things look good, and the apartment was a perfect example of just how far my mother could stretch a few dollars. She took pride in her home. I wish I could've said the same thing for her kids.

After having lived there for a while, Willie and I discovered that by opening the window in the hallway between the fourth and fifth floor landings we could throw the garbage out, instead of carrying it down five flights of stairs and around the corner to the alley. The bags never landed in garbage cans, though. They usually exploded on the sidewalk, splattering anything nearby. No one actually saw us do it, but when the superintendent accused us of it, our poor mother always defended us and couldn't believe the man's audacity in accusing her Catholic schoolboys of such a thing.

Sorry, Mom, it was true. Your sons did it. We were lazy.

When we first moved in, the building was completely surrounded by lush gardens. In the late '70s, it was rare to see a building in the Bronx with flowers all around it and a large fountain in the center of the courtyard, complete with water running out of the mouth of a lion. It stayed beautiful for a few years, but by the early '80s the building was made up of more minorities than Irish and Italians and the gardens had been stomped into submission. The neighborhood kids would run relay races right through them, over one staircase and down the other side and right back through the other gardens.

The Puerto Ricans, including me, who now occupied the building seemed to care more about beautifying the building with their own brand of artwork -- graffiti art. I remember my mother finding out my graffiti tag was stud, which was written all over the building. She gave me the beating of my life and told me it was because she didn't want me calling myself a stud. I was only about nine years old, ten tops. I wasn't getting it for defacing the building but because I was calling myself a man-whore.

Eventually, all the gardens turned to concrete and instead we had a milk crate hung off the fire escape, which served as our private basketball court for hours on end. This was our hood, and I was comfortable even if we were destroying its natural beauty.

One day I heard what sounded like a big explosion. Turns out someone had thrown a dresser off the roof. The crash woke the whole building, and I laughed once I realized the building wasn't collapsing. The culprit was a kid named Ray. His family was the second Puerto Rican family to move in. Eventually we became best friends. Growing up, Ray and I spent most of our time playing on the rooftops and generally getting ourselves in trouble.

Ray and I had a lot of fun, and even today we haven't settled the egg argument. One winter night a few days after it had snowed, Ray and I stole eggs out of our refrigerators and peered over the edge of the roof in search of victims to pelt. I tapped Ray on the shoulder and pointed down Creston Avenue at a young man walking up the block carrying a Christmas tree. Ray gave me the nod. As the man walked below us, we each dropped our eggs at the same time.

We ducked beneath the ledge of the roof and began to quietly laugh as hard as we could. Something was different about this time, though. Usually when we pelted someone with eggs they stood on the street below, wildly waving their fists and cursing. This man wasn't yelling anything.

"Yo, Ray, what's going on? Poke your head out there and see what's up," I said.

Ray looked over ever so slowly and then dropped back down and said, "Oh shit, I think we killed him, man."

"What do you mean we killed him?" I asked.

"He's dead, man. He's lying on the ground. The tree is lying right next to him, and he isn't moving," said Ray.

I was scared and wondered how things would be in juvenile hall for a ten-year-old. I was never a good fighter. My brother had only taught me how to take a punch after several years of beatings. I collected so many black eyes from Willie that my mother must have thought I was the clumsiest little bastard she had ever met. Although my brother tortured me for many years in that apartment, I never saw reason to rat him out. I figured that eventually I would get the best of him in one of our fights. One day I finally did.

I don't remember what the hell we were fighting about, but I remember running through the long hallway trying to get away from him, and he was coming at me with everything he had. I reached my mother's room and Willie was trying to throw a punch just as I slammed the door. His hand went right through the glass, and he began to bleed profusely. Tanya witnessed the whole thing and she was creaming bloody murder.

My heart just about beat right the fuck out of my T-shirt. I didn't want my brother to bleed to death, but I also didn't want to be on the receiving end of another vicious Ill Bill beating.

As my brother went into the bathroom and wrapped his arm in a towel to stop the bleeding, I went close to cop a plea. "Bill, can we call a fucking truce, man? I didn't mean for this to happen. Are you okay, bro?"

"If you don't get the fuck away from me I am going to pound your face into the fucking windowsill and throw you off the fire escape to the street below."

"Come on, man. We're both going down for this shit if we don't make something up. Let's just tell Mom we were playing tag and you ran into the door, man. Puhlease, bro, I'm begging you."

My brother, being my brother, had to get the final word in. "Just know this, y...

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1416562672
• ISBN 13: 9781416562672
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256