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“THERE IS NO LOVE LIKE GHETTO LOVE”
After a depressing period in white homes I searched back to the most harmonious couple I could recall in the underclass: Leon and Cheryl in Augusta, Georgia. Their love and devotion to each other had been so enriching and contagious that I often thought of them as living proof that real ghetto love could thrive. While I had lived in their home, I had had peace and support, enabling me day after day to hitchhike out to explore the poverty in the area. But when I came to their house, I immediately felt something had changed. Leon asked me in, but he was not happy. He seemed to be in a trance as he told me his wife had died from a disease which was curable but which they had not had money to get under proper treatment before it was too late. Leon had not recovered from the loss. He never went out of his house which stood right next to the elite medical school in Augusta. All day long he sat on the blue shag carpet in front of his little stereo as if it were an altar, listening to music while staring at a photo of Cheryl above. Some days he sang love songs throughout the day, putting her name in them. Once in a while he would scream out in the room: “I want you! I want to hold you. I want to be with you again ... We must unite, be one... I want to die... die... “
Never have I seen a man’s love for a woman so intense. At most once a day would he turn around and communicate with me, and then only to tell me about how he wanted to join Cheryl in heaven.
Three years later I traveled all over America to give the book to all those friends who made it possible. One of them was naturally Leon, who had helped me so much. But when I came to his screen door with the book under my arm, a strange woman answered my knock. No, Leon didn’t live there anymore. He was shot three years ago - by a white man. All afternoon his mother showed me the photo album with Leon and Cheryl’s pictures and told me tearfully about their three happy years together. We sat sobbing in each other’s arms on the front porch. I know that Leon and Cheryl are united again. “There is no love like ghetto love.”
Holley St. Augusta, GA – September 1975
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