The following is a fictionalized account of a real event that occurred in front of our house on Monday, October 26.

It was all about the drugs. They started with Rico who was the big time. That's how they got to Baltimore. Then on to Steve, also know as Zero, who bought them off of one of Rico's people. The day he bought the stuff, an old friend Devin showed up at his door. They picked up right where they had left off more than five years ago now and the evening involved a generous amount of alcohol. The next day, Devin was gone, and so were the drugs. Devin is Tiffany's brother.

So Tiffany came up the street screaming and wailing. Her 9 month large belly was sticking out, stretching the over worn t-shirt to a translucent grey. "My baby's in there, ohhhh, my baby! My BABY'S IN THERE!" It sounded like a fire, but there wasn't a fire. And no one ran. In fact, everyone was standing still and just watching. A little bit scared and a more than a little unwilling to get involved. Samitha the neighbor yelled for someone to call 911 while three masked men leaped from Tiffany's house and jumped into a champagne colored truck. So it was an attack or robbery. Tiffany's baby surfaced, not the one in her belly, but six year old Isaiah, shell shocked and soon crying. They put him inside the neighbor's so he wouldn't see his mother screaming. She hadn't been shot- she was in labor. "Where the hell is the ambulance?" everyone started wondering. Tiffany's sister was yelling "I need the fucking po-lice!" Blankets and pillows came out to cushion a now prostrate Tiffany as she lay across the concrete step.

The police did arrive, ten minutes or more after the fact. As if there weren't a half dozen squad cars within as many blocks. Maybe the 911 call had initially been too vague. Tiffany's brother, waving a relic of a pistol in his hand and yelling, was anything but vague. "I fucking fought them off, beat em' off me. Ain't nobody can GO OUTSIDE ON WHEELER AND FAYETTE NO MORE." He punctuated each word with an emphatic adrenaline induced wave of the piece in his hand. If shots hadn't actually been fired, there certainly was a chance they still might be. The ambulance took Tiffany away, her water breaking as they moved her onto the stretcher. The police fanned out to talk to witnesses. The car was actually brown. Maybe there was actually four. They wanted drugs? Devin's drugs - the only thing possibly worth robbing a house for in this neighborhood.

Mother yelled at me to stop picking on my little brother, and my little sister was born. Tiffany's child was born of the gun.