Turning This House into a Home

Today, the movers brought my stuff!!  My belongings have been in storage for a year, while I moved around to Chicago, Southern California, and now Dayton.  It feels good to unpack everything and turn this house into a home (Luther Vandross’s “A House is not a Home” playing in the background).    

This neighborhood continues to fascinate me.  I feel my blackness here in a way I never have before.  Racial tension is pervasive here, yet there is an oddly friendly, old-timey neighborhood vibe.  For example, everybody knows everybody else on the block and there is a slow but constant flow of neighbors visiting one another’s houses.  When the work day is done, neighbors honk and wave to one another on the way home.  And kids here still play in the streets until the street lights come on.  However, amid these friendly exchanges, a confrontation tinged with racism occurs. One of the Little Girls stopped by to tell me about an altercation she had up the street.  I had just heard her yelling at another girl in the neighborhood, but I chalked it up to children being loud and boisterous.  The Little Girl confesses that a ten-year-old girl up the street called her little sister “a black A-S-S-  bitch” (yes, she spelled out “ass” because, as she explained, she’s only  eleven years old and she’s not allowed to use curse words—yet she did say the word “bitch” so who knows).  Her little sister is only three years old.  One of several mixed-race children in the area, most of whom are born to local white women and black men who presumably live across the river-- they definitely don’t live in this neighborhood.  As the Little Girl explains the altercation with the other girl, she says of her sister, “yeah, she’s black but she’s only three.  She can’t help it.”  I’m not clear as to which thing she can’t help—being black or being three years old.  I guess either way, she’s right; however, I assume she meant that her sister can’t help being black (the presumption being that if she could help it, she would).  

 In this neighborhood, being black is not considered a good thing and to point out the fact of one’s blackness is clearly meant to be an insult.   In defense of her little sister, the Little Girl rallies the other Little Girls and they rode their bikes to the end of the street to confront the offending  party.   At that moment, the Little Girls attempted to restore the honor of the three year old girl who was publicly called out for being black.  As I watched them ride away, I waved to a neighbor sitting across the street.  She simply got up and walked inside her house.  I guess she wasn’t interested in getting to know her new neighbor.   

Not more than ten minutes later, the man with the racist truck comes over to introduce himself.   I had recognized him yesterday as the truck’s owner when he returned home from work.  I was expecting a surly old man, but this dude (who looks like an older, heavier version of the late George Carlin— ponytail and all) is quickly greeted by the neighborhood children.  He smiles and asks them about their day and the children detail the rules of the game they were playing.   While I think the messages on Woody’s truck are vile, he seems like a cool enough guy.  We probably won’t be hanging out much, but we can exchange neighborly pleasantries from time to time.  As long as we never talk politics, we should be good.