the Other Wes Moore (2010) Read Online Free Page B

Grants--or Pell Grants--was being slashed, and her grant was being terminated. Pells--need-based financial awards for college--were part of a larger federal budget cutback in 1982 (during his eight years in office, Ronald Reagan reduced the education budget by half). Mary realized the letter effectively closed the door on her college aspirations. She had already completed sixteen hours of college credits and would get no closer toward graduation.
    Mary was the first in her family to even begin college. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in the Community College of Baltimore. When she completed her associate's degree, she decided to pursue her and her parents' longtime dream of completing her bachelor's.
    Johns Hopkins University was only five miles from where Mary grew up, but it might as well have been a world away. To many in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins was the beautiful campus you could walk past but not through. It played the same role that Columbia University did for the Harlem residents who surrounded it, or the University of Chicago did for the Southside. It was a school largely for people from out of town, preppies who observed the surrounding neighborhood with a voyeuristic curiosity when they weren't hatching myths about it to scare freshmen. This city wasn't their home. But after completing her community college requirements, Mary attempted the short but improbable journey from the neighborhood to the campus. Her heart jumped when she received her acceptance letter. It was a golden ticket to another world--but also to the dizzying idea that the life she wanted, that she dreamed about, might actually happen for her.
    She worked at Bayview Medical Center as a unit secretary in order to supplement the grant that was helping her pay for school. The $6.50 an hour she was making at Bayview was enough to keep the balance of her tuition paid, the lights on, and the kids fed, as long as her Pell Grant was in place. But with that grant now eliminated, it wouldn't be enough. The next day she called Johns Hopkins and let them know she was dropping out. That part-time job at Bayview would become permanent.
    Wes got himself ready and went to check on his mother again. He felt he had to take care of her: his father had been a ghost since his birth. His older half brother, Tony, spent most of his time with his maternal grandparents or with his father in the Murphy Homes Projects in West Baltimore. Wes was the man of the house.
    As Mary wiped her still-damp face, she told herself she was down but not out. She just had to quickly recalibrate her ambitions. She still had big dreams--maybe she could become an entrepreneur, open a beauty salon or her own fashion company. Growing up, she'd worked at a grocery store in West Baltimore owned by an older black couple, Herb and Puddin Johnson. She remembered looking up to them and wanting to own something the way they did. The Johnsons had achieved a level of independence that others in the neighborhood didn't know existed, let alone understood how to obtain. And their example had long driven her. But she couldn't deny it: without schooling she was worried.
    She gazed out the window, down the same streets she'd been staring out at her whole life. The same streets she'd walked down when she began her first days at Carver High School. The same streets that had cared for her family, taught her family, looked out for her family for so many years. She wondered how long she would have to call these streets home.
    This section of Baltimore had never fully recovered from the riots of the 1960s. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baltimore burned. No street saw more destruction than Pennsylvania Avenue. Mary could remember the days after the assassination when her parents forbade her and her seven siblings from leaving the house because just outside their windows a war was unfolding. The bitter riots were sparked by King's assassination, but the fuels that kept them burning were