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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
When my husband and I moved to a mostly black neighborhood four years ago, 8-year-old Tyrone became our friend. Then one day he asked me if I was white.
May 4, 2004 | Tyrone was on my doorstep.
"They-they-they they told me you was white," the 8-year-old stuttered, nodding in the direction of the bodega on the corner that sold single cigarettes and served as a backdrop for all sorts of questionable behavior.
"They told you what?" I asked. I didn't get it.
"They-they-they they told me you was white."
"They what?" I asked, glancing down the block at the usual crowd of apathetic teens in dark clothes outside the bodega. I wasn't sure what Tyrone was saying. Maybe I hadn't heard him correctly. I bounced my baby girl up and down on my hip to keep her from getting fussy.
My husband and I had moved to this out-of-the-way street from an apartment on the nicest block in this "up and coming" Brooklyn neighborhood four years earlier. Ernestine, who kept vigil from her second-story window, commenting on the goings-on below like the old men in the booth on the "Muppet Show" and whom we never saw from the shoulders down, told us not to worry; the folks over on our new street would warm up to us eventually.
"They'll get used to you," she offered one day. "They're not used to white people over there, but they'll get used to you."
I was expecting my first child, my son, and had my share of things to be worried about. This hadn't been one of them. Now I was worried.
The disgusting smell of the house we were renovating forced me and my newly sensitive nose out on the stoop a lot. It would be months before we'd learn that there were other white people on the block -- they just didn't spend any time out in front of their homes like everyone else. They came and went quickly from their cars and peeked out from behind drapes in response to a ruckus. Alone on the front step with my big belly and a book, I was an instant neighborhood attraction.
Tyrone and his sister Millie started to hang out with me immediately. They were a funny pair -- sort of like the smart little criminal and the big dopey sidekick of old cartoons. Millie was the 3-year-old firecracker, and Tyrone was the softer, slower, 4-year-old brother looming behind. They lived in the house across the street and just walked up one day and started grilling me: "You live here?" "That your husband?" "You got a baby in there?" "You got money for the ice cream truck?"
They had no visible adult supervision, though their mother -- an enormous, louder-than-life woman with dark eyes and strong opinions -- always managed to find out when they'd done something wrong. One day I asked her where I should send her kids when I had somewhere to go (on occasion I did have reason to leave the stoop) and she pointed out the acceptable houses. She seemed to appreciate my concern for her children's well-being and from that time on we developed a nodding relationship.
I'd nod at her when I'd catch her staring at me, and she'd nod at me when she'd catch me staring at her.
Over the summer, painters, plasterers, plumbers and electricians came and went through our unlocked front door, and so did this brother-sister pair. We'd find them wandering around the parlor floor, helping themselves to the fridge. They liked to drink the water from our cooler. They liked to use our bathroom.
We spent time together over the years. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Afternoons with Tyrone and Millie satisfied my maternal urges to do art projects that my infant son was too young to do. I'd invite them in to paint. I gave them disposable cameras. Sometimes we'd have dance parties. When baby No. 2 was on the way and my energy was too low to entertain my toddler in the tricky pre-dinner hours, Millie and Tyrone's company made things easier. We planned to run a lemonade stand but never got around to it.
My husband and I developed warm neighborly friendships with the visible people on the block -- pulling each other's trash cans to the curb, sweeping in front of each other's homes. It was the white folks who never really came around. Once I caught a cluster of them staring at me icily while I twirled a jump rope.
