By Greg Sykes
I moved into the projects at the early age of five. It was a growing community filled with prospect and it was a time when neighbors knew neighbors and people thought about one another. We had a mixed clientel of people - Black, Hispanic and white all lived under one roof. My mom at the time worked at a paraprofessional in the school system as a teacher's aid and my Dad worked at in Long Island for a Furniture company. They provided a good life where we never went hungry, and was brought up with values. I remember my mom never letting me leave the house without wearing clean underwear. My parents was strick and diciplined us they way their parents had diciplined them. There were many time where we were beating with a belt, and punished. They beleived that children should be seen and not heard. There was a general rule. When the street lights came on at 8:00, our parents set a rule that we were to be in the house - No exceptions. This one time my sister wasn't there at curview and my mom went ballistic. Well, cold cream and all she said come on "were going to look for your sister. She had on her robe and her bedroom slippers with curlers in her hair. At the time I was in the living room with my girlfriend Marlene and my sister at the time was about fourteen. We'll she draged me along to help my sister missing in action. It was the most embarressing day of my life. My mother parading arroung the project with a belt around her neck, screaming my sister's name as we went walking throuhg the neighborhood me and my girlfriend by her side. Well, it was almost like radar: My mother spoted my sister from a distance about 200 feet away in the park with a boy. She started picking up speed, nad stated running towards my sister with her slippers flooping in the breeze. Then in one death move you seen her little hand reach down and take off her slipper and started beating her with het slipper. I knew the boy Steve, who was a gangster and all I remember was him tuning his head and walking in the other direction. My mother then walked grabed my sister by her hair and dragged her back to our building. It was so embarrassing, because everybody in the projects watched it like it was a home movie. When we got upstairs, I was very upset. I remember my mother looking at me and asking me what my problem was. I stared at her with a vengence. Then she came over to me and slapped me. If looks could kill my mother would of be dead.
