A West Side Story

A West Side Story

For most of my life I have moved back and forth from the east side to the west side but I now live here in what is called the west side of Aurora. The place in which I stay is not a house, or an apartment, it's not even so much a townhouse. Although my home has an address saying Apt. #1 it is not an apartment. Down our cellar door leading to the basement is a small one bedroom place. At the front of this old, brick building that I've lived in for 7 years, is two doors. One door is sort of off to the side of the house and it leads to another small one bedroom place. The other door leads into my place which is a three bedroom, two story house. In our kitchen is a door with a chain lock and a lock on the door knob. This door brings you down to a hallway in our basement. From the hallway you can either turn left into a storage area, keep straight to the busy front yard, or right into that small one bedroom place. Our dining and living room are covered with fairly large wooden floors. The carpeted stairs curve as you reach the top and the very first room to your right is my little brother's. In front of the stairs is my sister's and my bedroom. Our room is very busy seeing that we have a 3 disc c.d. player, a computer, a TV on our dresser, a book case, and a bunk bed. Next to my room is my Mom's very large room and next to that is the bathroom. Our house itself is not so bad but the street on which we live is a whole other story. Throughout our 7 years of living here we have had many people in and out of our building. My mom always suspects that they're drug dealers she has even suspected a molester and a prostitute. Most people consider my side of town the "ghetto". There have been shootings and robberies. Sometimes my mom sleeps with a bat next to her in bed. Connected to the back of our house is an enclosed porch. On it we store bikes and toys. Many times we have had people come up on our porch and attempt to or succeed in stealing our belongings. For all the tenants in our building there is a parking lot in which each family is allowed two cars. One morning my mom walked out on the porch and noticed her car was missing. It had been stolen and this made my mom furious. When it was found it was totaled and my mom had to buy a new family car. Since the first year we moved here up to now my mom has always wanted to leave our scummy neighborhood