Prison of Dreams (Short Story)

It isn’t everyday that you wake up with a dream. I can imagine that the only way you can is by snatching up the frantically fading memory that entertained you in your sleep and placing it on your head like a crown. A crown of newfound purpose that can only inspire a feeling of royalty. But that dream is a slippery soul and that crown can only raise you up for a moment before it escapes your sleepy hands and flutters away on a breeze to a more entitled grip, which is not nearly as strong as your desperate fingers. And although I have experienced this feeling many times before, I still hit the ground as hard as I always do.

My hope-filled eyes open to a much darker world and I draw in a deep breath as the cruel stench of reality hits my nose. I lay in a state of momentary dysphoria, before I string up my sinking emotions and remove myself from my comforting prison, with the muted reassurance that I had definitely woken before my father. He really had no reason to face this harsh reality anyway. He had just been released from a tortuous position at the local print shop. Well, to him it seemed more a blessing than a curse, which is a strange way to look at it. His reasoning still escapes me. A lot of people were losing their jobs nowadays. Plenty of whites were affected, but things were really tough for us Black-Americans, or Negroes as many people so casually prefer.

My mama still had her job as a maid for all the high up rich white folks in Harlem.     Their greed certainly never ceases to amaze me. It may just be my own strange way of thinking, but these tough times seem to be paying careful mind as to who they were affecting. I’d never say that to the face of any white man though, they already spit on me when I walk by them. Mama gets spit on a lot too, and sometimes she gets hit too. She doesn’t tell me a lot about things like that and I don’t understand why she doesn’t just stop working for those monsters, but I suppose there is the money and I suppose I do understand. She’s been working a lot longer the past few weeks since dad was set free, but sometimes I just wish she could get out of her prison too. But it’s a lot harder than just getting out of bed in the morning.

I dragged my anchored feet through the cramped and welcoming hallways that I could only think would light up the entire city, with their dusty shining hopefulness. A few necessities were prepared in the kitchen, by sloppy young hands, and scarce materials. Soon after the sustaining fuel had entered my weary body, I had swiftly put on my predictably beat-up work uniform and my unexpectedly shined shoes (by a kind boy who did the same to any other person wearing shoes with a dollar to spare, or a kiss if you can keep a secret). My walk to work was the same equally cloudy, no matter the weather, path it was every other day. A few expectorates from the resident white folk, no smiles from anyone but the shoe shining boy.

Not many places are too keen on hiring Negroes, not like they used to at all those bars with their jazzy entertainment. And not too many places would even bat an eye at a 15 year-old Negro asking to wait on their perfect white customers for any form of payment. But lucky for me, I don’t work at a fancy white restaurant, I work at a chain seafood restaurant in East Harlem for half of minimum wage and I love it.

As for the rest of my day, nothing out the ordinary happened. A lot of old drunkards and a lot of loud music, but nothing that you can’t get used to after a week or so. Another cloudy walk and another smile from a shoe-shine boy lit my path home. Although neither the clouds or the smile were needed because I could already see the glowing dust of that wonderful crowded apartment and I ended another day splayed out on the roof of my prison of dreams.