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Writing-Art/Storytelling
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Five o'clock drew very near and so did our final closing of our store. A couple of dozen people were still inside drinking, eating, and dancing in the little party we had set up. The party was generally just a boom box, chips, cookies, soda and balloons. "It's five!" Roger announced reading his watches on his arms. "Speech! Speech! Speech!" he cried, started a chant directed at my mother. "Speech! Speech! Speech!" everyone roared like elephants, filling every cubic inch of the store with the chant. My mom, slightly red in the face with embarrassment, stood up on a footstool behind the counter. She stood with freshly braided hair in a ponytail and in her Good Reads t-shirt, starting her speech. The room fell silent and all eyes glared at her with undying attention. My mother started her speech that would go down in the short history of Good Reads. "Well," my mother began. "I don't really know what to say. I never really thought I would ever see all our shelves without any books. God, they're dusty." The silence was broken with a short intermission of laughter. "What can I say?" She stopped for a second, and then continued. "We sold a lot of books. This bookshop all started with a dream of my husband. He was the one who always wanted to sell books. I never did. I always use to ask him, 'why open a bookstore when you can open a Blockbuster?' " For the second time, the silence was broken with laughter. "But, like many things, I was proven wrong. I never thought I would see the day when a bookstore, and not just book vendors, would be successful. I never thought I would see the day I would run a bookstore in my husband's memory. I never thought I would see the day when all books in this store would sell out. Most of all, I never thought I would see the day when this store would close. I can't pretend that I am not angry about it because I am," she said with her voice slightly deepening. |
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"But I refuse to focus on corporate Harlem and what is wrong in the world on our last day here. I just know what we have given this communityŠthe greatest gift of all. We've given knowledgeŠin a time where facts are confused. And I want to go down in history, not as the store that closed because they wanted to build another coffee shop. I want to go down in history as the store that gave Harlem books. And I want to thank my husband from above, my son, my daughter, and everyone here tonight for making that possible." She stopped and chuckled, "that's all." The clapping
filled the room as my mom stepped down from the stool. The sounds of
finalization passed by the setting sun behind the buildings of Harlem.
The wind carried it over the Old Navy, Starbucks, and The Disney Store,
towards the stars and the moon. There wasn't a sense of fight and anger
in the clapping like there was when Mart 125 closed. As the clapping
grew closer and closer to their destination, there would only be sounds
of sorrow and a loss of one of the greatest things in the Harlem community
was ever offered. In a few minutes, the clapping would reach its final
destination, a place that laughs when big corporate stores try to buy
it. |
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