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Fourteen-year-old Kareem Bezel’s fingers crawled across his makeshift nightstand and hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. The first day of school had finally arrived, and for Kareem, it came too soon. The blinding sunlight crept through the curtains, and caused him to pull his sheets up over his eyes. While lying there for another minute, he wished that he didn’t have to get up.
Kareem sat up, dropped his feet to the floor with a thud before he slipped into a pair of cheap house shoes. He groggily walked to the bathroom. The bathroom floor was uneven and the drop-ceiling tile was water-stained. If that wasn’t enough, the ugly, once aqua paint that covered the plywood paneling was peeling.
He let the warm water escape into the sink, as he stared at himself in the mirror. What he saw was his chestnut-brown eyes and full lips, set on his dark-skinned face. The young girls admired his pinkish bottom lip. Conceitedly, he admired himself, and thought that he spawned the adage: The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. He washed his lanky figure and then brushed his crooked teeth. He recalled that his aunt Renee, a dental hygienist, had urged him to get braces. Not wanting to be called “brace face” or “metal mouth,” he declined.
Kareem walked back to his room and jumped into an Adidas sweat suit, Adidas shell-tops, and fitted Sixers ball cap. Twenty minutes later, he left his room and walked downstairs to the kitchen.
Jean-Mary’s kitchen had a warm seventies feel. The old sink and counter frame, outdated washer and dryer, and icebox sat atop cracked floor tile. The same poor quality paneling from the bathroom, in brown, lined the kitchen walls, and that matched the russet curtains. What was interesting to Kareem was that the early 20th century home was better than a lot of other Philadelphia dwellings, but he hated it.
Kareem sat at the kitchen table and ate sausages, eggs scrambled and pancakes. Jean-Mary waltzed into the kitchen as bubbly as a kid in a fudge factory. She admired her grandson and then said, “Now look at my baby.”
Jean-Mary was Kareem’s paternal grandmother, whom he regarded as Mama. She sat at the table and removed her glasses, revealing brown eyes set like a chipmunk’s on her round face. She was a light hued and jovial woman in her early sixties, with salt and pepper hair in a perfect chignon. She donned navy trousers and an electric-colored blouse.
“Good morning, Mama. Thanks for breakfast,” Kareem said smiling.
Jean-Mary poured herself a mug of coffee, and beseechingly asked, “Good morning to you, too. Are you ready for your big day?”
Kareem was not ready for the question, so he chewed his food slowly to delay a response. He first had to accept that he would not be attending the neighborhood high school. As an honor-roll student for all four 8th grade marking periods, he received a voucher to attend Upper Merion Area High School in King of Prussia, a suburb of Philadelphia. He was fully aware that he could never skip class or school and that he had to be attentive while he was there. He had desired to be an attorney, for the financial reward, but he was very analytical and paid very close attention to the details like a seasoned attorney. He wanted to make a lot of money to change his world and his family situation.
“You know what, Mama. I am ready. I do not really want to go out there with all of those white people, but I know that it’s for the better,” Kareem finally responded wholeheartedly. “I’m doing this for my dad. I really wish he had not gone to jail trying to take care of me, Mama. I want to get straight A’s so that I can go to college for free.”
“Boy, you can be anything that you set out to be,” Mama replied. She was proud of his words. “You have the potential to be the first black president, so I encourage you to get everything that you can from this school. Being out there with all of those white people, as you called them, is one of the best things to happen to you this far in life,” she said and sipped her coffee. “Just do your best and I will be proud.”
Kareem listened gallantly as Jean-Mary encouraged him to showcase his academic talent, but his mind was riveted on his not being in the hood. How would he be perceived in the suburbs? The bottom line was that he was given a rare opportunity and he’d excel. “Mama, I’ll make you proud, for sure. But, president? I’ll pass,” he said and chuckled.
***
Jean-Mary drove Kareem to school that morning. They sped up the Schuylkill Express way in her charcoal-colored Lexus ES-300 and Kareem imagined the environment that he was about to enter. They exited at King of Prussia and he marveled at what he saw. Images that were only reflected on TV for him: minivan car pools transported droves of children to school, students waited at bus stops, clean streets were lined with perfect lawns, and he hadn’t seen that many men in business suits in one morning.
They pulled in front of the high school and Kareem looked around. The two-story high school was built with tan bricks. At 7:05 a.m. the sun radiantly beamed off the one-way glass windows that spanned each floor. The entrance doors that he could see were painted blue. Kareem wanted to roam the inside of the school, but there were equally interesting props outside the school. A football field was surrounded by a track and bleachers on both sides, with a field house. More fascinating was the school’s regulation baseball field, volley ball field arena and multi-purpose field for field hockey and soccer. He wanted to try those sports, as they weren’t offered in his city high school.
Jean-Mary looked at the scene and was equally impressed. The school boasted sports programs that would have college scouts throwing scholarships at students. She could not find a reason for the disparities between their neighborhood, Germantown High School, and Upper Merion High School. Despite that, she hoped the Kareem took interest in one of the sports in order to improve his admittance into an ivy-league university.
She had thought back to when she enrolled her baby into the school. The guidance counselor, Johanson Chabrier, attempted to place Kareem into track-four classes. The school had five tracks and four was next to the lowest level. That was where they warehoused the black students, but Jean-Mary vehemently opposed that placement. She wanted Kareem challenged and the Advance Placement courses were necessary for excellent college placement. That left the counselor with no choice but to test Kareem. After the test, Kareem was placed in AP Algebra and AP World Civilizations. All honors courses filled the remainder of his roster. The AP courses would prepare him for SAT II tests, which would be awarded as college credits and shave time off him earning a degree.
She leaned over and gave Kareem an encouraging hug and kiss. “I love you, and be good.”
“I love you, too,” he told her and hopped out the car. He disappeared into the crowd of students and Jean-Mary pulled off.
She prayed that Kareem made more out of life than her son, James. James served a LIFE sentence at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary for violating drug trafficking laws and the murder of a fellow dealer. Mama had no choice but to forgo her retirement and take care of Kareem. Kareem had been trapped in a household where he didn’t quite fit into the puzzle, which affected his school work. His mother, Delores, verbally and mentally abused him, and he occasionally suffered ass- whippings brought on by his mother’s drinking problem. The abuse was so severe and obvious that Delores’s sister had anonymously reported it to the Department of Human Services. But the authorities could not proceed, because Kareem denied any abuse.
A trip to the hospital for stitches in the knee after trying to escape an ass beating, being called names and told that he should have been aborted were hardly any reasons to deny abuse. Despite that, Kareem did not rat out his mother, which would have landed her in jail, and worse, place him and his older brother Andre into foster care. On top of the alcoholism, Delores married Eli, and left James in jail to rot; an act that Kareem had never forgiven her for. How could she leave his father? Was she insane? Was Eli having sex with his mother? That was answered when Delores became pregnant with Dawn, Kareem’s younger sister.
To the public, it seemed that Delores, Eli and Dawn were the perfect family, and Andre and Kareem were adopted. Delores appeared to loathe her boys because they were dark- mocha hued and resembled James. Dawn was light-skinned. Kareem was an obstacle in Delores’ marriage, and nothing would stand in her way of happiness.
Despite all of the turmoil, attending Upper Merion was Kareem’s big break. Nothing could prevent him from overcoming that drama and moving on in his life.