Born a Crime

into believing that your blood is tainted. You’ve spent all your time assimilating and aspiring to whiteness. Then, just as you ...

the Apes, and the monkeys have taken over. — So you can imagine how weird it was for me. I was mixed but not colored—colored by ...

me speaking Xhosa or Zulu and they’d say, “Wat is jy? ’n Boesman?” “What are you, a Bushman?” Why are you trying to be black? Wh ...

people were supposed to speak. So colored people thought that I thought I was better than them. They would mock my accent, like ...

“Hey,” she said, “can I ride your bike?” I was completely shocked. Oh, wow, I thought, I made a friend. “Yeah, of course,” I sai ...

“Trevor, you’ve been robbed,” he said. “Why didn’t you chase them?” “I thought they were being nice. I thought I’d made a friend ...

up the street picking berries off the mulberry tree and eating them. I went over and started picking some to take home for mysel ...

Then he knocked them out of my hand and smushed them into the ground. The other kids started laughing. I stood there and looked ...

painful, just startling. I turned to look at him and, splat!, he hit me again, right in my face. Then, in a split second, before ...

way back down the road to our house. When I ran inside I looked like I’d been beaten to a pulp because I was bawling my eyes out ...

was blood. I’m laughing because it’s only berry juice.” My mom thought everything was funny. There was no subject too dark or to ...

mom’s boyfriend. He wasn’t trying to be my father or even a stepfather, really. He was more like a big brother than anything. He ...

in traffic. Abel would yell out the window. The other guy would honk and yell back. In a flash Abel would be out of our car, ove ...

“Don’t tell me what?” Abel said. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s not nothing,” I said. She glared at me. “Don’t tell him.” Abel ...

the boys. I knew he had a demon inside him, and I hated that; it terrified me how violent and dangerous he was when he snapped. ...

Abel wasn’t laughing. As I told him what the bullies had done, I could see the anger building up inside him. With Abel’s anger, ...

now except for the light from the streetlamps, but we could see the boys were still there, playing under the tree. I pointed to ...

back. Then he stripped a branch off the tree, a switch, and started whipping him. He whipped the shit out of him, and I loved it ...

old boy. In an instant I went from Yes, I got my revenge to No, no, no. Too much. Too much. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Dear God, ...

was like he was sorry for every bad thing he’d ever done in his life, because he didn’t know there could be a punishment like th ...