Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana

Author:Sidik Fofana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

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I been savin up as long as I can. If you asked for a ledger right now, I’d say I have oh, about $1,294 pooled up in different envelopes around the apartment. The banks may have some of my money, but not all of it. With the first thousand I went right on down to the management office to petition for my old three-bedroom back, and you know what they had the nerve to say? That I gotta start from the bottom of the waitin list. Of course there was hot words thrown about, and I almost had to put my hands on the lady behind the computer, but they make it so that hands don’t really do much now to further your cause. Plus they sit there and tell you stuff that make you totally hopeless anyway, like that the lady who live in your apartment now was on the waitin list since 1986.

Some people say I’m a good person, some people say I got my ways. I’ve never been one to deny any of that. I also believe that people who don’t learn lessons should still get taught. If you with someone or a group of people for some time and you can’t use the switch to turn off, and you end up bein insensitive, then that there is a problem. If you so-call work with kids and you have a day of things not goin your way and you can’t separate that from not knowin what someone is goin thru and maybe givin them a break, well, that there is a problem too. Like for instance, if a superintendent or suttin come and you know you did bad cuz a girl had her head down and didn’t do no work and now you worried you not gonna have a job next year or not save up enough money to travel barefoot to Kathmandu. You wouldn’t go to that girl after and be like, Pick your head up off your desk right now, that’s an order, just cuz you yourself feelin helpless. Then you don’t decide to change your tone when, let’s say, her boyfriend Najee, who in the class, too, raise his hand and go, Mister, give her a break. All you do is pitch your head away and wave him off til he forced to say, She in a shelter and her pops just died, and after all that you just kept sayin, So? So? and holdin on to this no-excuses business and the boyfriend is pleadin with you, Her daddy died, and you say, I… don’t… care, real slow, with so much poison it’s like you makin it known that you’re talkin to every single soul in the class, includin the one other adult in the room. Then yes, I think those people should be taught suttin they will never forget. I can never be a bad person for thinkin that. Even if the girl who had her head down all of sudden

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