Safa means tranquil, serene, calm…I try

Following the “memory lane” theme from my last post, I received some disturbingly weird closure to an incident from my youth.

When I was around 6, my mom and I returned home from running some errands. During this time we lived on the 3rd floor of an apartment building in Harlem. I remember I had to go to the bathroom real bad. The door had 2 locks on it. When my mom turned the bottom lock with her key, someone from inside the apartment locked the top lock. When she put the key in the top lock to unlock it, the bottom lock clicked from the inside. My mother assumed it was my dad being funny. This went on for about 4 or 5 rounds. Finally, she turned the key and the door opened.

When we got inside, we could see the window wide open in her bedroom (as the bedroom door was open). She ran to the window and I followed. We saw this man running down the alley with our TV on his shoulder and his female companion running with our other belongings. I guess the lady had to keep us at bay while he struggled down the fire escape with the TV!

As it turned out, the lady was a “friend” of the family and the man her boyfriend. Looking back now, I wonder why my parents just didn’t call the cops. Needless to say, the friendship ended. As I got older, I always saw Cheryl’s kids as they would visit their grandmother in the same neigborhood as my grandma. They always talked about how we grew up together and were like family. I don’t think they knew about what their mom had done some 10 years before.

I went home to New York a few weeks ago. We got on the subject about what happened b/c my sister told us about the death of Cheryl’s son last year. My dad asked if I remembered what happened. Of course I never forgot. I was not prepared for what he told us was the end of this story…

He said a few days later, he and a few of his buddies went looking for the guy. They found out he was at this resturant. They got on the bus (I know, a bunch of ghetto broke vigilantes) to go to this resturant. At a red light, they clearly see him eating through the window of the resturant. They ring the bell on the bus to exit about a half block up from the resturant. They got off the bus and began walking back towards the place. My dad says they walk in the resturant and ole dude is face down in his lunch with a bullet hole to the head. Someone shot him in between the time my dad saw him on the bus, and they walked a half block back to the resturant…all of 7 minutes? My dad said he was eating alone so someone must have walked in, did it, and left.

I never knew that happened. Now I’m not saying it was justice for his breaking into our apartment, but man! My dad was like, yeah we were just gonna eff him up! I don’t know if they ever caught who did it…AND NO, IT WASN’T REALLY MY DAD!