Girl, You Live in the Hood!
The only thing missing was the pair of aviator style wire frames with yellow lenses.
Instead of mine, the yellow aviators are fronting someone else’s face. Should be easy enough to spot here in the hood, but honestly I might have to look at everyone twice. I am the only pink person on my block.
My aunt buys the sunglasses from the QVC television network and includes them in a bag of Christmas gifts she wraps for my mother. Aunt Doris is not present when my mother opens the sunglasses on Christmas morning 2014.
“Why did she give me these?” mom wonders.
“I’ll take them,” I say.
Since I couldn’t properly see to drive in anything other then dry daylight conditions I thought the glasses might help me, and they did, for the next six months, until someone broke into my car and stole them.
I awoke early — 6:05 a.m.— on a June morning during an unseasonable heat wave and sipped some cold coffee I had shoved into the refrigerator.
All of the windows of my rental house were covered in condensation, creating a cool cocoon against the warmth of the rising sun.
I moved my coffee to the table where I have two computers: a big screen iMac desktop, and a Macbook laptop. I was at the laptop ten minutes later when there was banging on the door.
More like “bah-bam-bam-bam.”
Sitting behind the laptop with my back to the door, I turned slowly. Through the fogged windows I made out the shadow of a person, but could not see who it was.
The figure at the door is dark, short.
“Shit, it’s Shorty,” I am thinking as I slide the upper half of my body further toward the dining room wall, hoping to hide myself from him.
Shorty walks the streets in the cool of the mornings this time of year, pushing his lawnmower down the middle of the street, plastic gas can strapped to the front with bungee cords.
I’m told he has MS, or had a stroke or something. He drags his left leg behind his right and his left arm flails loosely. He pushes the mower with his good right arm. He stops in front of every shaggy yard and bangs on every door looking for work. I’ve hired him once before only to have the grass scalped down to raw dirt. It grows back like a bad haircut, in about two weeks time. Just long enough for Shorty to start making his rounds again.
“Bam-bam-bam” the rapping continues against the metal outer door. It’s a bad fit, that door and the frame it almost fills. Locked from the inside, the metal door is one of two that protects the entrance to the house.
“Bam-bam-bam.”
Dammit Shorty.
By now the dog is up and standing at the door. She’s an 85-pound American Staffordshire Terrier, or as the folks in my neighborhood prefer to say: “She a pit?”
Stereotypical vicious animal loves people, is wagging her tail slowly.
I go to the door and it’s not Shorty. It’s Latoya from across the street.
“Sorry to bother you so early, but I just wanna know,” she starts, “did you leave your car like this last night?”
I look past her into the driveway where my 2008 VW New Beetle is parked. Both doors are flung open, along with the hatchback. Shit is everywhere. Stuff I had bagged in the trunk has been rummaged Contents of the glove box, dumped on the passenger side floor; sunglass storage gaping open and the only thing missing were the aviators.
Latoya says, "Girl, you need to call the police."
"Why," I ask.
"Girl, you live in the hood."
She insists upon waiting with me until an officer arrives about an hour later. (If you don't know, the po po generally changes shifts between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. so if you can avoid it, don't have an emergency at that hour of the day.)
I change out of my pjs into a dress and bring my cold coffee outside to stand beside Latoya’s car door and wait.
She parks her big metallic gold GMC rig at the foot of my driveway like she’s protecting a crime scene, which she kind of is, and tells me somebody's probably been keeping an eye on me. That somebody being the one or two that decided to invade my privacy. As we wait, she also tells me she sort of works for the police department, because she provides concierge services to people who need a ride from jail back into their own custody I think is what she means. Her initials: LLL are proudly displayed across the face of her windshield and her business handle: Livin' Large Limo, across the rear window.
Latoya is maybe 51 years old I guess, grew up on this street and has seen it all go down one way or another.
“That house right there,” she nods toward my neighbor to the north, “that a drug house.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” she says. “People coming and going all times of night and day. My baby brother just got out of prison for dealing drugs. You know what crack is? Smack? Wet?”
She got me with wet.
"It's a joint dipped in PCP."
It’s true I see people coming and going at all times of night and day on the weekends. When the neighbors first moved in, I thought the older lady was the tenant. She and I exchanged greetings whenever we saw one another. There was a younger woman, maybe in her 40s that appeared to have some kids — a pair of sons who looked to be around 11 or 12 and a little girl, maybe 4.
But there were other kids too, older kids, like in their 20s. The young many often left the house with an Old School gym bag with handles passing it through a car window parked out front.
And a family dog: Blackie, a long-haired Dachshund.
The family takes Blackie everywhere it goes. And when it returns, it thinks nothing of opening the car door and letting him loose. He runs around the front yard unless I am out walking the beast, at which point Blackie makes a beeline for me and Makeda sans collar and leash. I can see it now: Blackie’s neck between her massive incisors. A crunching sound. Screams. Sirens. Animal control. Two dead pets — Blackie and my dangerous dog.
Day after day I contemplate what I will say to Blackie’s mama given the chance.
“Do you realize you’re putting both of our dogs at risk?” I rehearse.
As Latoya tells me everything about every house on our block — about Lamont the heroin addict who stole his own mother’s car to front his addiction — to the stuck up neighbor across the street who drives a Beamer and a Chrysler, to the folks around the corner who host a late night, after hours, walk up poker club, to who lives there now, and who lived there back in the day, until she finally lands on my address, the former home of a landscaper name of Mr. Lacey, who apparently kept a lot of cash on hand and frequently entertained prostitutes in the bedroom wing — one reason she explains why the windows are screwed to the sills.
My mind wanders to the popped floorboards and it wonders if Mr. Lacey hid any casj beneath them, when the police finally arrive about an hour later and take our comments then leave. With nothing really to report it’s just a formality. As they are wrapping up, neighbor from the north side drug house materializes and stands on the porch. Latoya gives her a wave. I look over and say nothing.
Woman who turns out to be Angela gets into her big black buggy and heads off down the street and while Latoya and I continue to talk, Angela makes a doughnut at the corner and heads back in our direction. Parks in front of my house and gestures through her tinted windshield for me to walk her way.
I’m like to Latoya: “Is she asking me to go over there?”
Latoya, is like: “Girl, you live in the hood.”
So, meaning yeah, I stroll cold coffee still in hand, now about 7:30 a.m., toward Angela’s vehicle. It's like way too early in the morning.
When I approach, she puts her window down: “How dare you disrespect me. I said ‘Good Morning' to you!”
I apologize profusely and claim I’m a little out of sorts considering my car has been broken into. And apologize a second time.
Angela, waving her faux red fingernails in my face tells me she saw my car like that earlier when she drove her daughter to work around 4:30 a.m. She says she thought I was packing to go out of town.
I say something about not leaving town lately or any time soon, but mention I’m from the North and sometimes visit family. She smiles and tells me she’s from New Jersey.
The tension eases somewhat now that we are slowly cementing the seminal beginnings of a relationship.
Then she lets me know she watches me, when I have friends over. Tension returns.
I say: “I never have friends over.” Which is true. The only person who shows up is Brad to watch the pets or legitimately mow the grass.
Then she says: “There was that one time.”
I am standing pretty much in the middle of South 15th Street in The Bottom section of Wilmington, North Carolina, spellbound by the sheer length and luster of Angela’s nails when I remember that one time, when Jamie Lynn Miller came to pick me up for a gala at the Cameron Art Museum. Jamie Lynn dressed like a hoochie in a mini skirt, black tights, puss ‘n boots, a purple shirt and a long-waisted shearling vest and sporting a kitty bag.
No sooner does she alight from her red convertible with black rag top, than Angela lets Blackie out the front door. Blackie yaps at Jamie’s heels running to usher her up the side walk onto the porch provoking Makeda to stand on her hind legs like a grizzly bear at the front door. It was a scene and a half.
Angela from her side yells: “Don’t mind! Das Blackie. He jus’ like a man. Loves da ladies!”