Herbert Paige '20 Recruiting Profile

Herbert L Paige Jr

English Composition

9/25/19

The Bad and The Better

I left school on a Monday afternoon after having a wonderful day. I’m getting on the M116 bus to go to the east side of Harlem. I’m walking through the projects now saying, “wassup” to my family, friends, and even my neighbors.

 I’m in the elevator yawning, the same grey elevator I ́ve been riding for the last fifteen years. I’m waiting for this elevator that I've known most (or all?) my life to hurry up and get to my floor so I can take a good nap in my comfortable bed. When it finally reaches my floor, I see this red, almost pinkish 8X11 inch paper with a big black stamp on it.

EVICTION. 

So right away I bang on thedoor like I was the police. My mom opens the door and I asked her about the paper on our door. My mom asked,“Boy, what are you talking about?” I show her the eviction paper and she stood completely silent. All she did was walk off to her bedroom and show it to my pops where he was watching his favorite show on Netflix. He just paused his show and told me to go pick up my brother. 

As I walk to my brother’s school all I can think of is my parents’ reaction. I keep asking myself, “Where are we going?” When I reached my brother I took a deep breath, wiped the sweat off my face, and went into my brother’s school to pick him up. As my brother and I were walking back home, I stopped my brother and looked straight into his eye and told him, “Jordan we have to move to the shelter.” My brother asked me, “Why do we have to move?” “I don’t know, little brother, but that doesn’t mean we stop going to school or anything. We’re not going to give up. We are going to keep pushing. Trust me on that.”

As we both got in the elevator we both looked at each other wondering what is going to happen next. So we got to the front door of our apartment and I opened the door and we saw mom and my dad on the small couch looking at us sadly. They told us we have to move to the shelter and we have to leave today. My brother and I didn’t freak out. We just nodded our heads and began getting everything ready.

 My family and I were on our way to the shelter in the bronx we show like almost 100 people maybe more to be seen. When I say we was there all night I mean like from 5 pm to 12 in the morning, then they call my mom and told her, “At 5 am they would be a moving truck for you and your family to the bronx at E Tremont Ave.” Mom nodded and just said, ”Thank You!”

So it 5 Am on a Saturday we about to get on the truck with all this heavy clothes.
I’m telling them, “We are the Paige Family we won’t give up just because we are going to be in the shelter for a while. I love ya very much don’t stop now” So we got the shelter home I’m looking at this building. It looks like a regular house but mix with security guard. We have been there for a year, but one day I saw my mother running upstairs banging on the door. She was jumping up and down saying, “WE GOT AN APARTMENT!” We all screaming, hollering saying, “Thank You Jesus!” We all pack our clothes, crying and calling our families because till this day we never thought we were going to move soon. We on our way to Brooklyn, mom opens the door and my brother and I ran in the room. Till this day that was the best day of our life.