Life and Death East St. Louis

School seems like a joke some days. Five out of the seven, I wake up before the sun rise to take care of my family before I head out the door. My father leaves early in the morning around four and he drives for two hours to work. It was the only job he could get and there was no other choice. My mother lays sick in bed, moaning in pain, covered in her own sweat. She had come down with something, but we don’t know what. We are too poor to pay to for her to go to the hospital and be seen. As the eldest it is my job to take care of my younger sister and make sure she is ready for school and has lunch.

After my sister is ready for school I walk her to school, through piles of garage and hills of something that is hard to put into words. Our shoes are worn down and when it rains I can feel them filling with the chemical water that rains down on us. In the distances you can make out of the chemical plant and the clouds of disease, but we still continue on our way. Every day it feels like there no way to change the world and that no matter what happens things stay the same.

As we come to a street corner, I can make out a police car, rust that runs along the sides and none of the wheels match. The police officer looks tired and his clothes are worn. With all the crime that surrounds us, one would believe that we would need a police force of hundreds but we only have a few.

I left my sister at her school to walk about another block to my school. I stop about half way there to reflect about my life. I can barely make out the words on the billboard that hangs over the city. What do these words mean to me? Even if I could read to my highest level would I be able to leave this world that I have been born into. I am an outcast and no matter how good I read and write it changes nothing. People will just look at me and judge me that why not on my skills or what impact I could have on the world. Literacy does nothing for me but helps me figure out where I am not going. It is useless if I am forced to stay here by the world around me.

I force myself everyday to school to achieve what. I lie to my sister that there is an impact that education has on you. All it has done for me is to open my eyes to the injustice of the world, to see how everyone is treated equal except if it upsets the ones with money. Education isn’t taken seriously in the school system why should I take it. There is no funding for us to get books, to use the lab or even pay the teachers. They try to teach us but without materials it fails. I am stuck in this life and I see no way out.