I Am Afraid of the Bronx

I admit that I feel a little targeted. That someone has been watching - the auto glass guys, the waterproofing guys, the teenage sons of the family two doors down - looking to pounce, an opportunity to steal, pillage, or otherwise disorient (so to speak) the Asian girl, the one who's out of her bounds.

They're not wrong. That I don't exactly belong here. But paranoia probably isn't going to help the situation.

We're talking mostly about clash of the classes here anyway, not the races. A little of both, of course. Our building was renovated in a particular way, by a particular developer, to attract urbanites of a certain ilk. We're mostly professional, a number of artists and teachers, racially all over the map. The Puerto Rican families who live on the block (mostly rowhouses, some rent out their basements) and the guys who work on the block regard us with interest, amusement, suspicion - the whole gamut. It's gentrification in action, I suppose. Our presence brings a new energy, a different energy, people on the block in the evenings, lots of dogs on leashes. I think someone in the building has contacted the city about planting street trees. We take up all the parking spaces.

I suppose a central distinction of classes in neighborhoods is choice, i.e. many of us could live in a number of places, but we've chosen this building on this block, for whatever reasons. The families who've been here a while may not have chosen to live here per se, they more likely just ended up here; and if they had a wider variety of choices, they might choose something else.

Since the weather warmed up in spring, there are always people out on their stoops. The matron of the house three doors down watched me struggle with parallel parking one day, seemed to enjoy it, and has been an enthusiastic greeter (overhead hand-waving) ever since.

But the adage that where there are families, things are safe, is of course not true. Hello? The Sopranos?

I don't go out alone at night. I have lived in "edgy" neighborhoods before, but never so far off the map. If I walk just a block in any direction, there's nothing but factories and warehouses, shady underpasses, the occasional lurker-with-cigarette in a dark doorway. Teenagers with teeth-baring, spiky-collared pitbulls. My mother would be so pleased. We have an agreement, that J. walks the dog after dark, or we go together. There are no women-living-alone in the building as far as I know. There was one (white) woman who tried it out, but left after a month, citing S., the super, as cause: something about drunken untoward behavior, and food missing from her refrigerator.

J. encourages me to walk more "confidently" down the street, that my body language "invites" anyone who can smell fear. A self-defense course might be in order, but I've put this off for years. I am somehow ambivalent about how empowered I really want to be; it feels too far outside my core self, more like taking an acting class than anything else. But you can't have it both ways, I guess...

Every day is an adventure. The city apparently wised-up to the Thursday Only street-cleaning sign in front of the building and this morning switched the sign to Mondays & Thursdays, then promptly doled out tickets to anyone who happened to, you know, go off to work. "@()*$#*(%#()*(%)" was my greeting when I answered the call from J. "I got a ticket!" It must be his fifth or sixth on the block.

Ella has lost some blossoms, but I also see new buds. And we now have a new addition to our green family: Mr. Rubber Tree, who hails from a Korean deli in Chelsea and is in desperate need of re-potting. He and Ella make a funny pair, and yet somehow... it works.